College major choice and ability: why is general ability not enough?.

The choice of college major is one of the most important decisions students make. In this paper we study the impact of ability on college major choice, using a data set for full-time students enrolled in four-year business and economics programs offered by the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana. We distinguish between general and major-specific ability, which measure different dimensions of cognitive ability. We show that both measures are important in explaining individual decisions and that misleading results can follow from observing only commonly employed general ability. We also find important gender differences as males are more likely to base their major choice on the ability to complete the coursework, while females are more likely to decide according to unobserved preferences.college majors, ability, gender differences;

Estimating Explaining Reallocation's Apparent Negative Contribution to Growth

We explain a puzzle from two recent meta-analyses that cover 25 countries and claim to show that inputs systematically move from higher-value to lower-value activities despite strong aggregate labor productivity growth (ALP). These papers use variants of the Baily, Hulten and Campbell (1992) decomposition of ALP to show that the reallocation covariance term is negative in all but two countries and the reallocation between term is negative in nine countries and weakly positive in most others. We decompose ALP using three micro-level data sets from Chile, Colombia, and Slovenia and show the same puzzle holds. We show that the ALP between term can be decomposed into a term related to reallocation and a term related to the change in the total number of .ms, the latter of which often works to reduce the total between term in our data. We also show these ALP patterns can arise because of heterogeneity in labor and capital, unobserved output prices, or capacity utilization, but controlling for them only marginally helps to explain away the ALP reallocation puzzles in our micro-level data sets. We show that there is no puzzle when one decomposes aggregate productivity growth in the terms of National Accounts, as inputs in the aggregate move from low to high value activities in 36 of our 39 country-year observations. We conclude that there is a fundamental difference in re- allocation measured by the ALP decomposition and that measured by the decomposition of National Accounts growth.

Retirement Decisions in Transition: Microeconometric Evidence from Slovenia

In this article, we analyse old-age retirement decisions of Slovenian men and women, eligible to retire in the period 1997-2003. In comparison to established market economies, we find relatively high hazard rates of retirement that decline with age. This unusual pattern can partly be attributed to weak incentives to work, inherent in the design of the pension system and reflected in predominantly negative values of accruals, and to transition-specific increase in wage inequality in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This is reflected in low wages and relatively high pensions of less productive (skilled) workers and vice versa. We find that the probability of retirement decreases with option value to work and net wages, although the response to the former, when controlling for the latter, is rather weak. Our results also imply that less educated individuals and individuals with greater personal wealth are more likely to retire.option value; retirement decisions; transition

On the Evolution of Size and Productivity in Transition: Evidence from Slovenian Manufacturing Firms

This paper compiles a set of stylized facts on the evolution of firm size and labor and total factor productivity distributions during the process of transition. These facts are based on the data for all Slovenian manufacturing firms active between 1994 and 2003. Stylized picture of transition can be summarized as follows. Initially, we can distinguish between two types of firms: small and on average more productive and large and on average less productive firms. Removal of institutional restrictions has spurred growth of small firms and entry of new firms on one hand and decline and exit of large firms on the other. These simultaneous shifts have transfirmed the shape of firm size distribution from bimodal into unimodal. While labor and total factor productivity distributions exhibit large right-hand shifts and lower heterogeneity over time, firm productivity rankings changed substantially. Smaller firms, which were initially more productive, exhibited lower productivity growth rates and thus gradually lost their advantage. Commonly held view of transition as a process of reallocation of resources from inefficient state to efficient private firms is at odds with our results of aggregate labor and total factor productivity decompositions. Almost half of aggregate labor productivity growth can be explained by within firm growth and the rest by reallocation. Our evidence suggests that within firm growth seems to be related to the process of technological catching up of less productivelarge firms. These stylized facts may give a wrong impression of transition being a detfirministic process, while it is not. The process is stochastic and thus similar to those found for established market economies. Hence theoretical models of transition should reflect detfirministic features that we outlined and preserve stochastic elements introduced in now standard models of industrial dynamics

From innovation to exporting or vice versa? Causal link between innovation activity and exporting in Slovenian microdata

firm productivity and export decision are closely related to its innovation ac- tivity. Product innovation may play a more important role in the decision to start exporting, while the decision for process innovation may be triggered by success- ful exporting. This suggests that the causality between innovation and exporting may run from product innovation to exporting and conesequently from exporting to process innovation and reverse productivity improvements. Using detailed mi- crodata, including innovation survey, industrial production survey and infirmation on trade, for Slovenian firms in 1996-2002 we investigate this dual causal relation- ship between firms' innovation and exporting activity. We find no evidence for the hypothesis that either product or process innovations increase the probability of becoming a first time exporter, but find consistent support both in the innovation survey as well as in the industrial production survey that exporting does lead to pro- ductivity improvements. These, however, are likely to be related to process rather than product innovations and are limited to a sample of medium and large sized first time exporters only

Pay me Right: Reference Values and Executive Compensation

This paper studies the impact of external reference values on managerial compensation contracts. We consider the effect of adoption of non-binding pay nfirms on actal remuneration behavior using a unique country example. We find that introduction of pay nfirms changed the reference values for CEOs and led to adjustment of executive compensation towards new equilibrium. These pay nfirms affected pay in firms with actual compensation below and above reference values. Further we find that reference values changed compensation in all types of firms, although executive compensation increased more in firms with more dispersed ownership and control. These results confirm the importance of reference values in bargaining process between owners and managers

Self-selection, Export Market Heterogeneity and Productivity Improvements: Firm Level Evidence from Slovenia

This paper adds a new dimension to the recent literature on relationship beween firm's heterogeneity in tfirms of productivity and its decision to exports and/or invest in foreign affiliate, namely the heterogeneity of foreign markets. Exploiting a rich and complete dataset for Slovenian exporting firms in the period 1994 - 2002, we gain several interesting insights. First, we demonstrate the importance of fixed entry costs in foreign markets causing that the number of foreign markets served by individual firm increases with firm's productivity level. We show that firms enter additional export markets only gradually - on average one market in two years. Second, we demonstrate that, on average, exporting firms are not always more productive than firms supplying only domestic market. Also, we confirm a conjecture that higher productivity level is required for firms starting to export to advanced countries as opposed to starting to export to developing countries. Finally, we observe that firms can gain significant productivity improvements when serving foreign markets. Significant productivity improvements occur only when serving advanced, high-wage foreign markets. In a small open country, exporting per se does not warranty such effects