The Relationship Between Health and Schooling

Many studies suggest that years of formal schooling completed is the most important correlate of good health. There is much less consensus as to whether this correlation reflects causality from more schooling to better health. The relationship may be traced in part to reverse causality and may also reflect “omitted third variables” that cause health and schooling to vary in the same direction. The past three and a half decades have witnessed the development of a large literature focusing on the issue just raised. I deal with that literature and what can be learned from it in this paper. Eastern Economic Journal (2008) 34, 281–292. doi:10.1057/eej.2008.13

Referral Hiring and Gender Segregation in the Workplace

Segregation by type of work or discrimination are two common explanations for gender segregation in the workplace. A third, gender segregation due to referral hiring through segregated social networks, is less well explored. In this paper, I use an agent-based model of referral hiring to demonstrate that it could create high levels of gender segregation near those observed in data. But the model cannot account for all of the segregation observed. Eastern Economic Journal (2008) 34, 429–440. doi:10.1057/eej.2008.29

Working and Educated Women: Culprits of a European Kinder-Crisis?

Recently, many industrialized countries have posted fertility rates below the replacement rate, generating concern that populations in these countries are rapidly declining. Low fertility rates are often believed to be the result of greater opportunities for women in the workforce and in higher education. Past studies have reinforced this belief by showing that a negative correlation often exists between female labor force participation and fertility and female higher education attainment and fertility. This study uses cross-sectional time-series data for 13 European Union (EU) countries covering the years 1990–2003 to test whether this negative relationship between workforce participation and fertility still exists. The findings of this study show that neither increased female education nor increased labor force participation were significant in determining fertility. However, other social and labor market trends, such as the prevalence of part-time employment, unemployment rate, age at marriage, and contraceptive use, were found to be significant. Eastern Economic Journal (2008) 34, 213–222. doi:10.1057/palgrave.eej.9050029

Why the Con Hasn't Been Taken Out of Econometrics

Economists often decry the perceived tendency towards selective reporting of empirical results (“specification search”) in scholarly work. Yet, economists have largely neglected to analyze the incentive structures underlying this phenomenon of econometric “cons”. This paper endeavors to provide this analysis, posing a game-theoretic model of specification search. In this three-player game (author, journal, and profession), academic authors choose whether to report the “true” t-statistic associated with an empirical result, or whether to “con” by reporting a distorted t-statistic. Subsequently, both journal and profession must choose whether to bear the cost of “scrutinizing” the author's work (e.g., by reanalyzing his data). Multiple perfect Bayesian equilibria are found, including one where authors “con” and arc not detected, an equilibrium which may be Kaldor–Hicks efficient. Moreover, public and private mechanisms (existing or proposed) to curtail “conning” seem ineffectual. Eastern Economic Journal (2008) 34, 115–125. doi:10.1057/palgrave.eej.9050006

Gender Preference and Equilibrium in the Imperfectly Competitive Market for Physician Services

I analyze how the imperfectly competitive market for obstetricians and gynecologists (ob-gyns) clears in the face of an excess demand for female ob-gyns. This excess demand arises because all ob-gyn patients are women, many women prefer a female ob-gyn, and only a small portion of ob-gyns are female. I find that both money and non-money prices adjust: female ob-gyns charge higher fees and also have longer waiting times. Furthermore, institutional structure matters: waiting times adjust more when fees are inflexible. In the end, female ob-gyns capture some but not all of the value of the preferred service they provide. Eastern Economic Journal (2008) 34, 325–346. doi:10.1057/palgrave.eej.9050033