We would like to thank Cynthia Bansak and Lorien Rice for several helpful suggestions. We thank Lawrence Katz, Mark Hooker, Carlisle Moody, and Christopher Ruhm for providing us with state level data. This research was supported by a grant from the Austrian FFF, grant P II962-SOZ. AbstractPrevious estimates of the effect of unemployment on crime commonly omit determinants of criminal behavior that vary with the business cycle, creating correlation between unemployment rates and the residuals in aggregate crime regressions. In this paper, we employ several strategies that attempt to minimize or break this correlation and eliminate the accompanying omitted variables bias to estimates of the effect of unemployment on crime. Using a state-level panel for the period from 1970 to 1993, we explore the sensitivity of crime-unemployment elasticity estimates to explicit controls for per-capita alcohol consumption, a factor that has been shown in the past to be pro-cyclical and a partial determinant of criminal behavior. In addition, we use prime defense contracts per-capita at the state level as an instrument for state unemployment rates. Both controlling for alcohol consumption and using instrumental variables to correct for omitted variables bias yields large effects of unemployment on the seven felony offenses recorded by the Department of Justice. Moreover, in contrast to previous research, we find significant and sizable positive effects of unemployment on the rates of specific violent, as well as property crimes. JEL Codes: J6, K42Keywords: Unemployment, Crime 1 The existence of a positive significant unemployment effect varies considerably by offense, ranging from 12 and 16 percent of the studies summarized for assault and murder to 47 and 52 percent for larceny and burglary. Entorf and Spengler (1998) using a state panel for Germany also find ambiguous unemployment effects. Studies using microdata, however, generally find a high association between joblessness and criminal activity (Freeman, 1996). Moreover, the demographic composition of convicted offenders consists disproportionally of persons who would command low legitimate wages: for example, the young and relatively less educated (Grogger, 1997).

Abstract. Since the early 1970s, a number of authors have calculated gender wage differentials between women and men of equal productivity. This meta-study provides a new quantitative review of this vast amount of empirical literature on gender wage differentials as it concerns not only differences in methodology, data, and time periods, but also different countries. We place particular emphasis on a proper consideration of the quality of the underlying study which is done by a weighting with quality indicators. The results show that data restrictions -i.e. the limitation of the analysis to new entrants, never-marrieds, or one narrow occupation only -have the biggest impact on the resulting gender wage gap. Moreover, we are able to show what effect a misspecification of the underlying wage equation -like the frequent use of potential experience -has on the calculated gender wage gap. Over time, raw wage differentials worldwide have fallen substantially; however, most of this decrease is due to better labor market endowments of females.

The author reports on a series of experiments designed to investigate the factor of incentive mechanisms in the case of private provisions of public goods. In the Control treatment, there was no mechanism so that subjects faced strong free-riding incentives. In the so-called Falkinger mechanism treatment, the author implemented the Falkinger mechanism. The studies explored the impact of the mechanism in different economic environments. Results showed that the proposed incentive mechanism is very promising. Section I of the paper introduces the mechanism to be examined. Section II discusses the experimental design. Empirical results are provided in Section III, and Section IV interprets these results followed by a summary.

Using a longitudinal dataset covering the period 1987-2000, the authors explore the impact of female employers and gender segregation on wages

An important component of the long-run cost of a war is the loss of human capital suffered by school-age children who receive less education. Austrian and German individuals who were 10 years old during the conflict, or were more directly involved through their parents, received less education than comparable individuals from nonwar countries, such as Switzerland and Sweden. We also show that these individuals experienced a sizable earnings loss some 40 years after the war, which can be attributed to the educational loss caused by the conflict. The implied consequences in terms of gross domestic product loss are calculated.We would like to thank Joshua Angrist, Michael Burda, David Card, Claudia Goldin, Peter Gottschalk, Guido Imbens, as well as seminar participants in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Firenze, Freiburg, La Coruna, Linz, Milano, Munich, Paris, Regensburg, Vienna, and Warwick for comments and suggestions. Furthermore, we are grateful to M. John and M. Pammer for historical information; A. Bjö rklund, P. A. Edin, M. Gerfin, and John Haisken-De-New for providing us with additional data; and Sascha Becker and Daniela Vuri for excellent research assistance.

In this paper we investigate the contribution of health related behaviors to the education gradient, using an empirical approach that addresses the endogeneity of both education and behaviors in the health production function. We apply this approach to a multi-country data set, which includes 12 European countries and has information on education, health and health behaviors for a sample of individuals aged 50+. Focusing on self reported poor health as our health outcome, we find that education has a protective role both for males and females. When evaluated at the sample mean of the dependent variable, one additional year of education reduces self-reported poor health by 7.1% for females and by 3.1% for males. Health behaviors -measured by smoking, drinking, exercising and the body mass index -contribute to explaining the gradient. We find that the effects of education on smoking, drinking, exercising and eating a proper diet account for at most 23% to 45% of the entire effect of education on health, depending on gender.

No abstract

Previous estimates of the effect of unemployment on crime commonly omit determinants of criminal behavior that vary with the business cycle, creating correlation between unemployment rates and the residuals in aggregate crime regressions. In this paper, we employ several strategies that attempt to minimize or break this correlation and eliminate the accompanying omitted variables bias to estimates of the effect of unemployment on crime. Using a state-level panel for the period from 1970 to 1993, we explore the sensitivity of crime-unemployment elasticity estimates to explicit controls for per-capita alcohol consumption, a factor that has been shown in the past to be pro-cyclical and a partial determinant of criminal behavior. In addition, we use prime defense contracts per-capita at the state level as an instrument for state unemployment rates. Both controlling for alcohol consumption and using instrumental variables to correct for omitted variables bias yields large effects of unemployment on the seven felony offenses recorded by the Department of Justice. Moreover, in contrast to previous research, we find significant and sizable positive effects of unemployment on the rates of specific violent, as well as property crimes.