Teaching Preparation and Placement in “Non‐top‐tier” Ph.D. Programs

In a recent article, Jacobson (2015) provides an invaluable economics job market guide for economics Ph.D. candidates from “non‐top‐tier” programs in the United States. Her treatment is detailed and, to a large extent, thorough. However, Jacobson fails to discuss the development of effective lead teaching experience in graduate school as a (potentially central) aspect of job market preparation. In the present comment, we develop and summarize a job posting and placement data set that focuses on Ph.D. candidates from non‐top‐tier programs. The data strongly suggests that the development of lead teaching experience in graduate school, rather than an optional line on one's vita, is an often pivotal element of realized job placement for Ph.D. candidates of non‐top‐tier programs. These findings corroborate with List's (2000) finding that, “a candidate's teaching portfolio was highly influential in the academic market” (p. 197). We also discuss the acquisition of lead teaching experience and benefits of early teaching experience that may extend beyond first job placement.     

Targeting Teaching: The Welfare Costs of Market Restrictions

In most introductory and intermediate microeconomics textbooks, the measurable welfare effects of price controls, quantitative restrictions, and market restrictions more generally, are depicted as a Harberger triangle. This depiction understates these restrictions' inefficiency costs because it captures only the “top‐down” distortion caused by the wedge these restrictions drive between market‐wide quantity demanded and quantity supplied. It ignores the “bottom‐up” distortions caused by allocative inefficiencies on the constrained side of the market. In this article we describe a simple graphical exposition of these bottom‐up distortions. We argue that this graph can provide students with a picture of both the top‐down and bottom‐up inefficiencies. Moreover, it can be used for simple back‐of‐the‐envelope estimates of the magnitudes of the two inefficiencies.     

Labour markets during apartheid in South Africa1

Anecdotal evidence shows that despite extensive restrictions on the hiring of African workers, these workers were increasingly employed in semi‐skilled occupations throughout the apartheid era. This article shows that White skill acquisition throughout the apartheid era reduced the supply of White semi‐skilled workers and led to the removal of job reservation, the process of reserving skilled and semi‐skilled jobs for Whites. Although job reservation declined, there is little evidence of a decline in racial segregation in the labour market. It is concluded that the transformation in the labour market was driven by White economic incentives rather than any evident change in White preferences regarding racial segregation.     

The Effects of State Merit Aid Programs on Attendance at Elite Colleges

State merit aid programs have been found to reduce the likelihood that students attend college out of state. Using the U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) rankings of colleges and universities to measure college quality and Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System data to measure enrollment, we explore how this reduction in out‐of‐state enrollment differs by the academic quality of the institution. Our difference‐in‐differences results suggest that state merit aid programs do not induce students to forgo attending top 15 ranked schools. However, state merit aid does induce some students to forgo attending out‐of‐state schools ranked below the top 15 and shifts them toward lower quality in‐state schools, so that the net effect is a reduction in academic quality, as measured by USNWR. These effects may have long‐term implications for students' degree completion rates and labor market earnings.     

Gender Effect in Explaining Mobility Patterns in the Labor Market: A Case Study of Turkey

This paper examines the importance of gender for different job mobility patterns using an extensive household survey data from İzmir, the third largest city in Turkey. The determinants of job‐to‐job and job‐to‐nonemployment transitions are analyzed with the help of a multinomial logit estimation method. The results indicate that there is a distinction regarding the probability of job mobility patterns based on gender. It is more likely for women to be engaged in job‐to‐nonemployment transition, whereas men tend to change jobs more often. Although gender plays a significant role in job mobility patterns, traditionally imposed social constraints associated with childcare and household duties provide us with mixed results considering the behavior of women in the job market. On the other hand, having highly paid and secure jobs decreases the probability of both patterns of job mobility.     

Employment Outcomes of Graduates: The Case of Universiti Utara,Malaysia*

Data on the labor market outcomes of graduates of the Universiti Utara Malaysia were analyzed using an ordered logit model. The type of degree, ethnicity, and number of job applications submitted are found to be significant determinants of labor market outcomes. Accounting graduates were found to obtain the best labor market outcomes. Malay graduates had significantly less favorable labor market outcomes. The findings for unemployed graduates support two current programs in Malaysia: re‐training for the long‐term unemployed and job matching assistance. The findings also suggest that universities should monitor the skill‐demands of job vacancies and give specific consideration to Malay graduates.     

美国与香港创业板的比较分析及对我国创业板的启示

本文首先介绍美国纳斯达克市场以及香港创业板市场的概况并着重分析了两者的相同点和差异点。进而根据对比结果,总结两者的经验对我国创业板市场建立的启示,为我国的创业板市场的建立提供建议。     

Determinants of international students’ decision to remain in Japan to work after graduation

Using microdata from a survey conducted by the Japan Student Services Organization, I applied binary outcome models to investigate the determinants of international students' decision to remain in Japan to work after graduation. The empirical results showed that the most significant determinants of the students' decision to permanently work in Japan were the initial motivation of the students before moving to Japan, the impression of Japanese people after moving to Japan, and the length of time spent living in Japan. Moreover, the GDP gap between Japan and the home country, having a part-time job, and Japanese proficiency were found to be significant determinants of deciding to remain to work. The results of the present analyses suggest that to attract international students more efficiently to Japan, policymakers should carefully consider international students' motivation before moving to Japan and should ensure that international students enjoy their time in Japan.     

Why We Should Stop Being Surprised that Lightly Regulated Markets Fall Short of the SEC's Goals for Market Quality: A Discussion of “Private Intermediary Innovation and Market Liquidity”

The stated goals of the SEC are to protect investors, maintain orderly markets and facilitate capital formation. These goals can be achieved with very light regulation if, as assumed by traditional economic theory, investors process information costlessly and protect themselves from informational disadvantages, and firms optimally balance the costs and benefits of committing to make their reports reliable. A growing body of research demonstrates that light regulation fails to achieve the SEC's goals, because investors find information processing costly and fail to protect themselves. After reviewing theory and prior evidence, I discuss new lessons learned from Jiang, Petroni, and Wang ( 2016 ), who show that Pink Sheets^® reduced the liquidity of firms with low reporting quality and increased the liquidity of firms with high reporting quality, merely by highlighting the quality of their listed firms’ disclosure. While the Pink Sheets^® innovation might have occurred through many causal channels, all of them entail a violation of costless processing and self‐protection, and lead to the conclusion that this lightly regulated market did not initially meet the stated goals of the SEC. I conclude by arguing that markets can achieve the SEC's goals only if they exhibit a particularly strong version of “dynamic” market efficiency, which requires that each individual trade on the path to even incomplete revelation occurs at the then‐optimal price. Because dynamic efficiency is unlikely, we should stop being surprised to see evidence that lightly regulated markets fall short on key dimensions. Instead, we should use our well‐developed understanding of market inefficiency to guide regulation.     

Professionalization in Action: Accountants' Attempt at Building a Network of Support for the WebTrust Seal of Assurance*

This paper examines the attempts by the North American accounting institutes to develop a new market in e‐commerce assurance based on their claims to professional expertise through the WebTrust project. Employing actor‐network theory in an in‐depth longitudinal field study, we investigate how WebTrust was originally developed and promoted as a seal of business‐to‐consumer assurance, which largely failed to generate support in the marketplace. Proponents were subsequently able to generate more interest in the eyes of managers of online organizations by reshaping WebTrust as a flexible set of principles and criteria for systems advice and business‐to‐business assurance. Our analysis suggests that attempts to expand the accounting profession's domain of expertise reflect a trial‐and‐error process where the outcome achieved may be far from the vision that motivated the institutes into undertaking the project in the first place. We further show that the initial network of support for such projects can be quite fragile and dynamic as various actors reposition themselves around the shifting meanings attributed to the project.     

构建体现职业岗位需要的课程体系的研究

研究从高职人才需求的偏差出发,提出体现职业岗位需要的课程体系的构建,并对所构建体系的自身架构进行分析,以期对高职人才培养体系进行初期探索。     

Barriers to employment: Entry and re-entry possibilities of unemployed job seekers in The Netherlands

Summary In this paper, the barriers to re-employment for unemployed job seekers are studied by means of duration models. The determinants included in the duration models are derived from an economic model of the different stages in the job search process. The empirical analysis of unemployment duration is based on both a reduced form and a structural approach. The reduced form model used is a proportional hazard model with a flexible base-line hazard. In the estimation procedure, special attention is paid to the problems of unobserved heterogeneity and attrition bias. The estimation results show that age and non-labour income have a significantly negative impact on the reemployment probability of unemployed job seekers. In addition, the hazard rate appears to be negative-duration-dependent. In the structural model, the rate at which unemployed job seekers find a job is decomposed into the application rate and the probability of receiving an actual job offer if an application is made. We find that the low probability of becoming (re-)employed is mainly caused by the low probability of receiving an actual offer. Furthermore, differences in the application intensity of unemployed job seekers can be explained by various personal characteristics, regional labour market conditions, elapsed duration of unemployment and search methods, whereas the outcome of the selection process is mainly influenced by the qualifications of unemployed job seekers.The authors wish to thank Jan van Ours and two anonymous referees for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

The Role of Teaching and Teacher Training in the Hiring and Promotion of Ph.D. Economists

Surveys suggest that a majority of graduate students seek academic positions after completing their degree. We survey groups involved in the job market to determine the roles of teaching and research in hiring and the subsequent success of new faculty. We find that while characteristics that signal research potential are highly valued by both graduate directors and department chairs, there are significant discrepancies in the extent that teaching is valued in the hiring process across institution types. Furthermore, although new faculty devote half of their time to teaching, only half of them agree that graduate school prepared them to teach.     

Job Search Channels,Neighborhood Effects,and Wages Inequality in Developing Countries: The Colombian Case

This paper analyzes the relationship between social networks and the probability of finding a job. We explore geographic closeness as the social interaction to explain the job search function. Using data from Colombia in 2009, we calculate how neighborhoods have an effect on the channel used to find a job (social network versus no social network). In addition, we study how wage premium relates to using a social network in finding a job, exploring the inequality that can arise using a different job search method. Our results show that neighborhood affects the individual's job search method and that referred workers earn less at the bottom of the wage distribution with respect to non‐referred workers. Colombia presents persistent high levels of informality and inequality with the existence of spatial clusters that impose important social and economic costs with strong informational asymmetries on the job market.     

A Primer for New Teachers of Economics

In many economics programs, both graduate students and new assistant professors are thrown into the classroom without guidance, with the potential for negative ramifications that can last throughout their careers as teachers. This article is a primer in which we offer unique insights into useful methods and practices for new teachers in the economics profession. We discuss organizational and logistical issues that new teachers must consider and then offer our advice on specific pedagogical tools and techniques. Following the growing literature on the benefits of student‐centered and interactive instruction, we focus on ways instructors can move away from the traditional “chalk and talk” approach. We organize and present these alternative pedagogies in terms of their level of complexity and time required. We conclude with suggestions and resources for the continued growth and development of new teachers in economics.     

Social Welfare in Sports Leagues with Profit‐Maximizing and/or Win‐Maximizing Clubs

This article develops a contest model to compare social welfare in homogeneous leagues in which all clubs maximize identical objective functions with mixed leagues in which clubs maximize different objective functions. We show that homogeneous leagues in which all clubs are profit maximizers dominate all other leagues. Mixed leagues in which small‐market clubs are profit maximizers and large‐market clubs are win maximizers (type‐I mixed leagues) are dominated by all other leagues. From a welfare perspective, large‐market clubs win too often in (purely) win‐maximizing and type‐I mixed leagues; whereas, small‐market clubs win too many games in (purely) profit‐maximizing leagues and in mixed leagues in which large‐market clubs are profit maximizers and small‐market clubs are win maximizers (type‐II mixed leagues). These results have important policy implications: Social welfare will increase if clubs are reorganized from non‐profit member associations to profit‐maximizing corporations. Moreover, we show that revenue sharing decreases (increases) social welfare in mixed (homogeneous) leagues.     

Search,migration, and social connections: Solving the migration puzzle to Beijing

We provide a plausible explanation for the phenomenon of migration to big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. This process can be observed particularly among students who migrate to these cities and prefer to look for their first jobs upon completion of their studies, instead of going back to their hometowns. Despite the slightly higher wages offered in big cities, it is unclear why recently graduated students feel attracted to remain in big cities, where the living costs are much higher and the job market is more competitive compared to small cities. We develop a search and matching model in which we consider that the social connections created by the agents during their studies are used as a tool to get jobs. We solve for the optimal investment in social connections, and for the level of social capital that makes agents indifferent between migrating and staying in their current locations. We use a computational model and show that for agents with a sufficiently large social network, the value of social capital is large enough to overcome the value of going back to their hometowns, where they would face lower competition and living expenses, but they would lack the advantages that a social network represents.     

Job Creation and Destruction in South Africa

Analysts of the South African labour market have mainly used household surveys to analyse the labour market. It has been more difficult to explore the labour demand of firms, as a result of limited data availability. We use the Quarterly Employment Statistics survey, an enterprise survey conducted by Statistics South Africa, to explore how South African firms create and destroy jobs, thereby shedding light on many of the policy questions that are relevant in a high unemployment society like South Africa. We find that job creation and destruction rates are similar to those found in Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development countries. There is little evidence that labour legislation creates rigidities that prevent firms from hiring or firing workers. We also find that larger firms are better net creators of jobs than small firms and that net job creation rates are negative in manufacturing. Our research has important policy implications – particularly for the South African National Planning Commission's 2030 plan, in which new jobs are envisaged to come mainly from small‐ and medium‐sized firms. Our research suggests that this scenario is not likely without changes to policy or legislation.     

Earning the “Write to Speak”: Sell‐Side Analysts and Their Struggle to Be Heard

This paper explores the ways in which sell‐side (SS) financial analysts seek to position themselves advantageously within the wider field of investment advice in spite of widespread skepticism over the value that their forecasts and recommendations add to investment decisions. The field of investment advice has been characterized in recent years by a number of regulatory and technological changes that have forced SS analysts to reconstitute the ways in which they influence the investment decisions of buy‐side (BS) actors. Faced with existential threats, SS analysts have responded to the disruptive impact of technology and regulation by struggling hard to ensure that their services are still valued by fund managers. Key to this ongoing process is the recalibration of professional expertise, which previous research has alluded to but not explored in detail. Central to the persistence of SS analysts in processes of investment decision making are activities revolving around the production and use of analyst reports which, our findings indicate, are less valuable for their informational content than their role as “relational devices,” ascribing legitimacy to SS analysts and earning them an entry ticket to more substantive, value‐adding interactions with companies and BS actors. We also show that economic considerations in the area of investment advice are influenced by social ties, the motivations of various actors in the field, and their relative position vis‐à‐vis other actors. More generally, we contribute to the literature on professional projects by showing how professional groups are constantly engaged in attempts to reposition themselves in the social space, but that field‐level changes can restrict the outcomes of these strategies to mitigation rather than advancement for the professionals concerned.     

The Puzzling Pattern of Multiple Job Holding across U.S. Labor Markets

Multiple job holding (MJH) rates differ substantially across U.S. regions, states, and metropolitan areas. Rates decrease markedly with respect to labor market size. These patterns have been largely overlooked, despite being relatively fixed over (at least) the past 20 years. This article explores explanations for these persistent differences. We account for roughly two‐thirds of the mean absolute deviation in MJH across local labor markets (MSAs). The results suggest that variation in MJH across labor markets is driven by labor market differences in job opportunities and worker preferences. Most important in explaining variation in MJH are MSA industry and occupation structure, ancestry shares, commute times, and, to a lesser extent, labor market churn.