Occupations and the evolution of gender differences in intergenerational socioeconomic mobility

This paper analyzes intergenerational mobility experiences of daughters and sons with respect to their fathers’ occupational status and documents changes in gender differences over time. While women have been in occupations with lower overall earnings potential, men are more likely to be in occupations characterized by long hours and low returns. The mobility gap in earnings has been closing and a mobility advantage with respect to education has been emerging.     

Effect of Immigrant Nurses on Labor Market Outcomes of US Nurses

We study the effect of immigration of foreign-trained, registered nurses (RNs) on the employment and wages of US-trained RNs. We use the “area” approach and study effects of immigration in labor markets defined by the state. We find substantial evidence that immigration by foreign-trained nurses increases the supply of nurses and that this increase in supply is associated with a decrease in annual earnings. Estimates suggest that a 10% increase in supply due to immigration is associated with a 1-4% decrease in annual earnings, although most estimates were not statistically significant and we did not find a similar association between an increase in supply and wages.     

Women as agents of change: Female income and mobility in India

Economic globalization will give many women in developing countries access to steady and relatively remunerative employment for the first time, potentially shifting bargaining power within their households and changing the choices that are made for their children. This paper exploits a unique setting — a group of tea plantations in South India where women are employed in permanent wage labor and where incomes do not vary by caste — to anticipate the impact of globalization on mobility across social groups in the future. The main result of the paper is that a relative increase in female income weakens the family's ties to the ancestral community and the traditional economy, but these mobility enhancing effects are obtained for certain historically disadvantaged castes alone. Although the paper provides a context-specific explanation for why the women from these castes emerge as agents of change, the first general implication of the analysis is that the incentive and the ability of women to use their earnings to influence household decisions depends importantly on their social background. The second implication is that historically disadvantaged groups may, in fact, be especially responsive to new opportunities precisely because they have fewer ties to the traditional economy to hold them back.     

Regime-switching analysis of ADR home market pass-through

We model and estimate ADRs’ home market pass-through and pricing-to-market using a regime-switching approach, which nests the two regimes in a conditional capital asset pricing model and treats any changes in these two regimes probabilistically. Our results from the 1998 to 2006 data show that the pricing-to-market regime dominates ADRs from China and Japan, whereas the home market pass-through regime dominates ADRs from Argentina and Germany when their respective home markets are volatile.     

Following in Your Parents’ Footsteps? Empirical Analysis of Matched Parent–Offspring Test Scores*

In this article, we explore whether an intergenerational relationship exists between the reading and mathematics test scores, taken at age 7, of a cohort of individuals born in 1958 and the equivalent test scores of their offspring measured in 1991. Our results suggest that how the parent performs in reading and mathematics during their childhood is positively related to the corresponding test scores of their offspring as measured at a similar age. The results further suggest that the effect of upbringing is mainly responsible for the intergenerational relationship in literacy, although genetic effects seem more relevant with respect to numeracy.     

Managerial pay adjustments: Decomposition and impact on firm productive efficiency

This paper decomposes managerial pay adjustments and examines their impact on firm productivity based upon Taiwanese firm panel data. Pay adjustments are decomposed into components arising from three sources: a scheme based on the external labour market comparisons, a scheme derived from the changes in firm and manager characteristics, and transitory pay adjustments. The stochastic frontier model is used to test how these pay components affect firm productivity. Empirical results suggest that the pay adjustments based on the comparison between managers' actual pay and their market-clearing pay are positively related to the output and technical efficiency of the firms, whereas this productivity-boosting effect cannot be seen for other components. This paper shows the importance of the external labour market in connecting managerial pay to firm productivity, and provides a model for the research of managerial pay in an environment where the compensation structure does not have apparent stock incentives.     

Bayesian Evaluation of DSGE Models with Financial Frictions

We evaluate two most popular approaches to implementing financial frictions into DSGE models: the Bernanke, Gertler, and Gilchrist ( 1999 ) setup, where frictions affect the price of loans, and the Kiyotaki and Moore ( 1997 ) model, where they concern the quantity of loans. We take both models to the data and check how well they fit it on several margins. Overall, comparing the models favors the Bernanke, Gertler, and Gilchrist framework. However, even this model does not make a clear improvement over the New Keynesian benchmark in terms of marginal likelihood and similarity of impulse responses to those obtained from a VAR.     

The Federal Reserve,the Emerging Markets,and Capital Controls: A High‐Frequency Empirical Investigation

In this paper, I use weekly data from seven emerging nations—four in Latin America and three in Asia—to investigate the extent to which changes in Fed policy interest rates have been transmitted into domestic short‐term interest rates during the 2000s. The results suggest that there is indeed an interest rates “pass‐through” from the Fed to emerging markets. However, the extent of transmission of interest rate shocks is different—in terms of impact, steady state effect, and dynamics—in Latin America and Asia. The results also indicate that capital controls are not an effective tool for isolating emerging countries from global interest rate disturbances. Changes in the slope of the U.S. yield curve, including changes generated by a “twist” policy, affect domestic interest rates in emerging countries. I also provide a detailed case study for Chile.