The effects of differences in year‐round,full‐time labor market experience on gender wage levels in the United States

This paper utilizes longitudinal information on annual hours worked to construct a more robust measure of labor market experience for young workers in the USA. This enhanced experience measure is then used to assess recent gender wage differentials. Our experience measure yields a dramatic improvement in the ability of standard earnings regressions to explain the variation in wages across individuals, especially for young women. In addition, our results indicate that approximately one‐fourth of the gender difference in average wages is attributable to the higher work experience levels of men.     

Using a Real‐Options Approach to Model Technology Adoption Under Carbon Price Uncertainty: An Application to the Australian Electricity Generation Sector*

The present climate for investment in electricity generation assets in Australia is uncertain. We develop a real‐options model to contrast the timing of the uptake of various electricity generation technologies under two carbon tax simulations: when a carbon tax of known size commences at a certain date in the future; and a carbon tax of known size commences at an uncertain date in the future. We find that uptake in the future varies significantly depending upon an investor's view of uncertainty and whether the technology is primarily designed to be viable in a market with or without carbon taxes.     

STUDENT OUTCOMES AT UNIVERSITY IN AUSTRALIA: A QUANTILE REGRESSION APPROACH*

Students’ success during their first year at university is largely influenced by their university entrance score. Personal characteristics and secondary school characteristics also impact on success. This paper uses quantile regression to investigate how the effects of these factors vary along the grade distribution. It finds that the factors which influence grades have a more pronounced impact on the success of low‐achieving students than on that of high‐achieving students. These results have implications for student selection and also for the way scholarships may be used to attract talented high school students.     

House Price Markups and Mortgage Defaults

The transaction price of identical housing units can vary widely due to heterogeneity in buyer and seller preferences, matching, and search costs, generating what we term “markups” above or below the average market price. We measure markups for 3.4 million purchase-money mortgages and show that they can predict mortgage defaults and credit losses conditional on default even after accounting for collateral coverage (loan-to-value ratio) and a comprehensive set of other covariates. The findings suggest that standard collateral coverage estimation may be inaccurate, with implications for both individual and portfolio-level credit risk assessment.