National Bureau of Economic Research

About: National Bureau of Economic Research is a nonprofit organization based out in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & Population. The organization has 2626 authors who have published 34177 publications receiving 2818124 citations. The organization is also known as: NBER & The National Bureau of Economic Research.

Beyond Becker: Training in Imperfect Labour Markets

Abstract: In this paper, the authors survey noncompetitive theories of training. With competitive labor markets, firms never pay for investments in general training, whereas when labor markets are imperfect, firm-sponsored training arises as an equilibrium phenomenon. The authors discuss a variety of evidence that supports the predictions of noncompetitive theories and they draw some tentative policy conclusions from these models.

Culture, Openness, and Finance

Abstract: Religions have little to say about shareholders but have much to say about creditors We find that the origin of a country's legal system is more important than its religion and language in explaining shareholder rights However, a country's principal religion helps predict the cross-sectional variation in creditor rights better than a country's openness to international trade, its language, its income per capita, or the origin of its legal system Catholic countries protect the rights of creditors less than other countries, and long-term debt is less important in these countries A country's openness to international trade mitigates the influence of religion on creditor rights Religion and language are also important predictors of how countries enforce rights

Can Falling Supply Explain the Rising Return to College for Younger Men? A Cohort-Based Analysis

Abstract: Although the college-high school wage gap for younger U. S. men has doubled over the past 30 years, the gap for older men has remained nearly constant. In the United Kingdom and Canada the college-high school wage gap also increased for younger relative to older men. Using a model with imperfect substitution between similarly educated workers in different age groups, we argue that these shifts reflect changes in the relative supply of highly educated workers across age groups. The driving force behind these changes is the slowdown in the rate of growth of educational attainment that began with cohorts born in the early 1950s in all three countries.

Limited Asset Market Participation and the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution

Abstract: The paper presents empirical evidence based on the US Consumer Expenditure Survey that accounting for limited asset market participation is important for estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS). Differences in estimates of the EIS between assetholders and non-assetholders are large and statistically significant. This is the case whether estimating the EIS based on the Euler equation for stock index returns or the Euler equation for T-bills, in each case distinguishing between assetholders and non-assetholders as best possible. Estimates of the EIS are around 0.3-0.4 for stockholders and around 0.8-1 for bondholders, and are larger for households with larger asset holdings within these two groups.

The Quality of Goverment

Abstract: We investigate empirically the determinants of the quality of governments in a large cross-section of countries. We assess government performance using measures of government intervention, public sector efficiency, public good provision, size of government, and political freedom. We find that countries that are poor, close to the equator, ethnolinguistically heterogeneous, use French of socialist laws, or have high proportions of Catholics or Muslims exhibit inferior government performance. We also find that the larger governments tend to be the better performing ones. The importance of historical factors in explaining the variation in government performance across countries sheds light on the economic, political, and cultural theories of institutions.