The second edition of this acclaimed graduate text provides a unified treatment of two methods used in contemporary econometric research, cross section and data panel methods. By focusing on assumptions that can be given behavioral content, the book maintains an appropriate level of rigor while emphasizing intuitive thinking. The analysis covers both linear and nonlinear models, including models with dynamics and/or individual heterogeneity. In addition to general estimation frameworks (particular methods of moments and maximum likelihood), specific linear and nonlinear methods are covered in detail, including probit and logit models and their multivariate, Tobit models, models for count data, censored and missing data schemes, causal (or treatment) effects, and duration analysis. Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data was the first graduate econometrics text to focus on microeconomic data structures, allowing assumptions to be separated into population and sampling assumptions. This second edition has been substantially updated and revised. Improvements include a broader class of models for missing data problems; more detailed treatment of cluster problems, an important topic for empirical researchers; expanded discussion of "generalized instrumental variables" (GIV) estimation; new coverage (based on the author's own recent research) of inverse probability weighting; a more complete framework for estimating treatment effects with panel data, and a firmly established link between econometric approaches to nonlinear panel data and the "generalized estimating equation" literature popular in statistics and other fields. New attention is given to explaining when particular econometric methods can be applied; the goal is not only to tell readers what does work, but why certain "obvious" procedures do not. The numerous included exercises, both theoretical and computer-based, allow the reader to extend methods covered in the text and discover new insights.

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Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data

A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

We investigate conditions sufficient for identification of average treatment effects using instrumental variables. First we show that the existence of valid instruments is not sufficient to identify any meaningful average treatment effect. We then establish that the combination of an instrument and a condition on the relation between the instrument and the participation status is sufficient for identification of a local average treatment effect for those who can be induced to change their participation status by changing the value of the instrument. Finally we derive the probability limit of the standard IV estimator under these conditions. It is seen to be a weighted average of local average treatment effects.

Evolution and Rationality Some Recent Game-Theoretic Results. Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects

We use administrative records on the incomes of more than 40 million children and their parents to describe three features of intergenerational mobility in the United States. First, we characterize the joint distribution of parent and child income at the national level. The conditional expectation of child income given parent income is linear in percentile ranks. On average, a 10 percentile increase in parent income is associated with a 3.4 percentile increase in a child’s income. Second, intergenerational mobility varies substantially across areas within the U.S. For example, the probability that a child reaches the top quintile of the national income distribution starting from a family in the bottom quintile is 4.4% in Charlotte but 12.9% in San Jose. Third, we explore the factors correlated with upward mobility. High mobility areas have (1) less residential segregation, (2) less income inequality, (3) better primary schools, (4) greater social capital, and (5) greater family stability. While our descriptive analysis does not identify the causal mechanisms that determine upward mobility, the publicly available statistics on intergenerational mobility developed here can facilitate research on such mechanisms. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reect

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Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States*

Between 1973 and 1978, the Indonesian Government constructed over 61,000 primary schools throughout the country. This is one of the largest school construction programs on record. I evaluate the effect of this program on education and wages by combining differences across regions in the number of schools constructed with differences across cohorts induced by the timing of the program. The estimates suggest that the construction of primary schools led to an increase in education and earnings. Children aged 2 to 6 in 1974 received 0.12 to 0.19 more years of education for each school constructed per 1,000 children in their region of birth. Using the variations in schooling generated by this policy as instrumental variables for the impact of education on wages generates estimates of economic returns to education ranging from 6.8 percent to 10.6 percent.

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Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of School Construction in Indonesia: Evidence from an Unusual Policy Experiment

The effects of diploma receipt in the returns to education were examined. The sheepskin effects of the increase in wages due to receiving a degree were documented by various researchers. A unique data set with information on both years of education and diplomas received drawn from a matched sample of the 1991 and 1992 March Current Population Survey of the US Bureau of the Census was used to estimate the diploma effects. The sample comprised individuals whose race was Black or White and were 25-64 years old in 1992. The estimates of sheepskin effects of high school and college receipt based only on information on years of education suffered from substantial biases. However the diploma receipt was a much more important determinant of wages than found by previous research: completing a bachelors degree was worth more than the human capital acquired during 3 years of college. Minority men and women appeared to receive a higher return to completing 16 or more years of education than their White counterparts. Significant positive effects for a high school diploma were found only for White men. The wage returns to high school for Black men and for White women were smaller than those for White men. The marginal returns to receiving either an academic or an occupational associates degree were statistically significant for White women raising wages by 10-20%. Significant differences between Black and White women existed for both types of associates degrees. The marginal effects of receiving a bachelors degree were positive for all groups and statistically significant for all but Black men. Masters degrees delivered a very high return for Black men which was significantly different from that for White men and Black women. Professional and doctoral degrees yielded an increase in wages above those for bachelors degrees for White men and women.

Degrees matter: new evidence on sheepskin effects in the returns to education.

Why aren't there more women in science? Female college students are currently 37 percent less likely than males to obtain a bachelor's degree in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and comprise only 25 percent of the STEM workforce This paper begins to shed light on this issue by exploiting a unique dataset of college students who have been randomly assigned to professors over a wide variety of mandatory standardized courses We focus on the role of professor gender Our results suggest that while professor gender has little impact on male students, it has a powerful effect on female students' performance in math and science classes, their likelihood of taking future math and science courses, and their likelihood of graduating with a STEM degree The estimates are largest for female students with very strong math skills, who are arguably the students who are most suited to careers in science Indeed, the gender gap in course grades and STEM majors is eradicated when high performing female students' introductory math and science classes are taught by female professors In contrast, the gender of humanities professors has only minimal impact on student outcomes We believe that these results are indicative of important environmental influences at work

Sex and Science: How Professor Gender Perpetuates the Gender Gap

This article attempts to improve our understanding of the causal processes that contribute to intergenerational immobility by exploiting historical changes in compulsory schooling laws that affected the educational attainment of parents without affecting their innate abilities or endowments. We examine the influence of parental compulsory schooling on children’s grade‐for‐age using the 1960, 1970, and 1980 U.S. censuses. Our estimates indicate that a 1‐year increase in the education of either parent reduces the probability that a child repeats a grade by between 2 and 4 percentage points.

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The Intergenerational Effects of Compulsory Schooling

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIESSEX AND SCIENCE:HOW PROFESSOR GENDER PERPETUATES THE GENDER GAPScott E. CarrellMarianne E. PageJames E. WestWorking Paper 14959http://www.nber.org/papers/w14959NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH1050 Massachusetts AvenueCambridge, MA 02138May 2009Thanks go to USAFA personnel: J. Putnam, D. Stockburger, R. Schreiner, K. Carson and P. Eglestonfor assistance in obtaining the data, and to Deb West for data entry. Thanks also go to Charlie Brown,Charles Clotfelter, Caroline Hoxby, Deborah Niemeier, Kim Shauman, Catherine Weinberger andseminar participants at NBER Higher Education Working Group, PPIC, SDSU, UC Davis, UC Irvine,and UC Santa Cruz for their helpful comments and suggestions. The views expressed in this articleare those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the USAF, DoD,the U.S. Government, or the National Bureau of Economic Research.© 2009 by Scott E. Carrell, Marianne E. Page, and James E. West. All rights reserved. Short sectionsof text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that fullcredit, including © notice, is given to the source.

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Researchers using cross-sectional data have failed to produce systematic evidence that teacher salaries affect student outcomes. These studies generally do not account for non-pecuniary job attribu...

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Marianne Page

Papers

Degrees matter: new evidence on sheepskin effects in the returns to education.

Sex and Science: How Professor Gender Perpetuates the Gender Gap

The Intergenerational Effects of Compulsory Schooling

Sex and Science: How Professor Gender Perpetuates the Gender Gap

Examining the link between teacher wages and student outcomes: The importance of alternative labor market opportunities and non-pecuniary variation