"Analyzing the location choices of the post-1964 U.S. immigrants results in three main findings: (1) these immigrants are more geographically concentrated than natives of the same age and ethnicity and reside in cities with large ethnic populations; (2) education plays a key role in location choice, reducing geographic concentration and the likelihood of being in cities with a high concentration of fellow countrymen and increasing the probability of changing locations after arrival in the United States; (3) internal migration within the United States occurs more frequently among immigrants than natives and facilitates the process of assimilation for the more educated individuals."

No abstract

This study uses data on the personnel policies and economic characteristics of businesses in the manufacturing sector to measure the impact of formal training programs on labor productivity. The major finding is that businesses that were operating below their expected labor productivity levels in 1983 implemented new employee training programs after 1983 that resulted in significantly larger increases in labor productivity growth between 1983 and 1986. This higher rate of productivity growth was sufficient to bring these businesses up to the labor productivity levels of comparable businesses by 1986.

To study the effects of new information technologies (IT) on productivity, we have assembled a unique data set on plants in one narrowly defined industry-valve manufacturing-and analyze several plant-level mechanisms through which IT could promote productivity growth. The empirical analysis reveals three main results. First, plants that adopt new IT-enhanced equipment also shift their business strategies by producing more customized valve products. Second, new IT investments improve the efficiency of all stages of the production process by reducing setup times, run times, and inspection times. The reductions in setup times are theoretically important because they make it less costly to switch production from one product to another and support the change in business strategy to more customized production. Third, adoption of new IT-enhanced capital equipment coincides with increases in the skill requirements of machine operators, notably technical and problem-solving skills, and with the adoption of new human resource practices to support these skills. (c) 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Three components of the literature on measuring the employer's rate of return to investments in employee training are reviewed: (1) studiesthat use large samples of firm‐level or establishment‐level data collected through mail or phone surveys, (2) studies that use data from one or two companies to conduct an ‘econometric’ case study, and (3) company‐sponsored case studies. The strengths and weaknesses of each of these approaches are evaluated and the estimated returns on investments (ROIs) are compared. The analysis indicates that the employer's return on investments in training may be much higher than previously believed. In order to obtainaccurate information on the employer's ROI from training, researchers should be encouraged to gain access to company databases and to supplement them with data‐gathering efforts to collect information on variables needed to isolate the effect of training.