GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PH.D. ECONOMISTS' CAREERS

This study of Ph.D. economists' careers during the period 1960–1989 examines both initial and current employment and explicitly accounts for the joint relationship between choosing an employment sector and placement within the academic sector. Initial placement and market conditions create effects that tend to persist throughout an isndividual's career. With the exception of the labor and welfare fields, women are not less likely than men either to enter or to persist in academia. But significant evidence shows that in the past, women have placed in lower-ranked departments. Among recent degree recipients, however, underplacement of women as a general phenomenon apparently has disappeared .     

Forecasting the Market Return on Common Stocks

Most institutional fund managers attempt to adjust the stock-bond composition of portfolios over time in anticipation of stock market movements. Using quarterly data in 1962–72 for the United States, this paper demonstrates that 'profitable' strategies for timing portfolio composition in common stocks and Treasury bills are generally not attainable after transaction costs if one uses lagged observations of corporate profit, money supply and consumer sentiment to forecast the market return, as this information is largely reflected in current stock prices. By contrast, accurate forecasts of these aggregate variables lead to substantial market-timing profits relative to a buy-and-hold policy of remaining fully invested in common stocks.     

A Decomposition of Changes in Labour Productivity in Australia: 1970-71 to 1989-90*

We show that business-cycle phenomena, climatic conditions and industrial structure are important determinants of annual variations in Australia's labour productivity growth. Another finding is that Australia's productivity slowdown in the 1980s was associated with a reduction in capital growth per unit of labour. The methodology relies on production functions at the industry level We analyze the sensitivity of results to the specification of these functions.     

INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT AND WATER QUALITY

Integrated pest management (IPM) is a promising alternative to conventional pesticide-based pest control because IPM practices are less likely to pollute water supplies. Rational application of IPM principles is at least as profitable for farmers as is conventional pest control. However, better protection of water quality is not automatic. Publicly funded IPM programs should explicitly incorporate water and other environmental quality objectives to help ensure that farmers achieve these goals.     

How Big is the Tax Advantage to Debt?

This paper uses an option valuation model of the firm to answer the question, “What magnitude tax advantage to debt is consistent with the range of observed corporate debt ratios?” We incorporate into the model differential personal tax rates on capital gains and ordinary income. We conclude that variations in the magnitude of bankruptcy costs across firms can not by itself account for the simultaneous existence of levered and unlevered firms. When it is possible for the value of the underlying assets to jump discretely to zero, differences across firms in the probability of this jump can account for the simultaneous existence of levered and unlevered firms. Moreover, if the tax advantage to debt is small, the annual rate of return advantage offered by optimal leverage may be so small as to make the firm indifferent about debt policy over a wide range of debt-to-firm value ratios.