This dissertation examines migration behavior with a focus on male labor migrants from Mexico to the United States. I develop the concept of migration intensity, defined as the degree to which a migrant shifts his attachment, association and engagement from the place of origin to the migration destination. Using data for male Mexican migrants in the years 1950 to 2005, I find strong complementarities among remittances, migration patterns, and investment decisions, allowing me to derive an Index of Migration Intensity (IMI). The IMI shows that male Mexican migrants use a continuum of labor migration strategies. Augmenting a conventional Harris-Todaro model, I develop a simultaneous model for the initial migration, return, repeat migration, and remittance decisions of migrant workers. This model can incorporate various migration strategies, including "circular migration," "target earning," and "emigration." Modeling the effects of immigration policies, I find that stricter border enforcement has two consequences: an intended deterrence effect, and an unintended intensification effect whereby stricter border controls lead migrants to make fewer return trips, prolong total U.S. time, and reduce remittances. The impact of the latter on origin-country incomes may induce others to migrate as well. I then examine the determinants of Mexicans’ propensity to migrate illegally (extensive migration behavior) and their degree of socio-economic detachment from home (intensive migration behavior), using instrumental variables estimation with individual fixed effects. My findings support the hypotheses that stricter U.S. border enforcement leads to higher migration intensity, which in turn leads to a net increase in the volume of illegal Mexican migration. My results also indicate that reducing the U.S.—Mexican wage gap would curtail both the extent of illegal migration and migration intensity. The dissertation also investigates the significance of social networks in facilitating undocumented Mexican migration to the U.S. I argue that the importance of social network assistance arises from problems of asymmetric information. Drawing on secondary data sets as well as field research, I quantify the extent of social network assistance, disaggregated by type of assistance and helper.

Recent literature has emphasized the importance of changes in occupation, i.e. occupational mobility, for both personal and aggregate outcomes. In this study I examine the various causes and consequences of that important decision. I begin by developing a new, generalized, model of measurement error which can fully incorporate changes in discrete classification like occupational mobility. I then use this framework to show that occupational mobility has spuriously risen in the monthly Current Population Survey. I then study the consequences of occupational mobility using a high quality 2% sample of the German Social Security Data to study how wages change around occupation and employer transitions. The results are consistent with idiosyncratic matching at the occupation, but not the employer, level. For men, wages increase by 5.5 percent following a voluntary employer transition that does not involve an occupation transition and 10.1 percent following voluntary employer transition that does involve an occupation transition. I build a model where workers differ in their cognitive, manual, and interactive skills, which creates comparative advantage in certain occupations. I estimate this model and show that most of the wage gains for young workers following an occupational transition are due to improved matching of worker skill with occupation tasks, and not simply movements to higher paying occupations. I then use the estimated model to show that the matching of workers to their comparative advantage has worsened in Germany between 1975-2010. Finally, I examine the testable implications of models of search and models of learning to see if they are consistent with the facts I have developed about occupational mobility. I find that while search models can be consistent with a number of empirical facts they, by themselves, are not able to rationalize "back-and-forth" switching that is observed in the data.

This study investigates the job dimension of migrant behavior. It presents a model of worker mobility among occupations and employers. It is assumed that workers behave as if they monitor their expected earnings from continued employment in their present positions. Earnings are presumed to be a function of variables that describe the worker's productivity and prospects for future wage growth. Our model consists of six equations. The first two describe decisions to change occupations and employers. The dependent variables are binary, reflecting the dichotomous nature of the decisions. The remaining equations describe wage rates at the end of period. While we employ a common wage specification, we allow the coefficients of the explanatory variables to differ among the four decision regimes. Each of the equations includes a random error term which captures factors that are known to the decision maker but not measured by our data, as well as inherent randomness in the decision process. We permit nonzero correlation among the error terms in the decision equations and wage equations. This framework gives rise to our three principal items of concern. First, we seek evidence on variables that influence mobility decisions. Second, we examine the post-mobility wage profiles, seeking evidence of discrepancies across migrant regimes. Finally, we look for evidence of self selection in the mobility decision process. We estimate the model with the data collected from the University of Michigan's Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Based on the results from wage-gap calculations, it is found that within the category of occupational migrants, workers enjoy efficient economic returns, although they can be still better off by not changing employers than changing (intrafirm transfers and promotions). However, it is found that workers who end up with the same occupation with different employer suffer from wage discrepancy. The evidence of self selection is detected in occupational nonmigrants.

Inner-city economic development as well as educational reform is essential for empowering poor urban residents to compete in the economy and polity. Increasingly, the notion of local control over economic development, and education to that end, has arisen as a critical concern among theoreticians and practitioners. A model that inextricably entertwines economic control with education is worker-controlled and -owned enterprise. Such enterprises can provide jobs and income for often-unemployed urban residents who have been particularly hard-hit by economic restructuring, recession, and racism. Within such enterprises, poor and low-skilled workers are challenged by and imparted dignity through participation in policy decision-making and work design. A focus on economic development moves the civil rights agenda of the 1960's and '70's to confrontation with contemporary economic and racial realities, while collective (albeit private) control of enterprise challenges conservative, traditional approaches to community economic development. A highly successful home-health care enterprise in New York City which has created a substantial number of high-quality, low-skilled jobs for inner-city residents utilizing the worker-controlled and -owned model was studied. A case-study approach to determine the historical sequence of events was employed. A qualitative methodology involving interviews with individual workers and managers as well as statistically-compiled responses from virtually all workers to determine worker participation and satisfaction was utilized. The enterprise was compared with other traditionally-structured New York City home health care agencies as well as with another worker-controlled and -owned enterprise which was not a home health care agency. The study concluded that the worker-controlled and -owned model can be effective in addressing both urban poverty and poor education. Six essential elements for achieving democratic urban economic development are: (1) job creation; (2) service to local low-to-moderate income constituency; (3) design of challenging, full-time, tenured work; (4) democratization of workplace decision-making and profit; (5) payment of reasonable wages and benefits; and (6) contribution to further community economic development. The model studied introduced worker-ownership only after the enterprise had stabilized out of consideration for poor workers' financial limitations as well as a need for managerial control in establishing a viable enterprise. A nonformal educational method proved highly effective with low-skilled workers.

From the early nineteenth century through World War II Springfield, Massachusetts was one of the world's preeminent metalworking centers. On the eve of the Second World War hundreds of firms and thousands of skilled machinists produced machine tools, fixtures, castings, forgings, and precision components for the nation's automobile, electrical appliance, steel, and aircraft industries. However, by the mid-1950s Springfield industry commenced an inexorable decline, interrupted briefly by Vietnam War defense spending. Firms were purchased by outside investors and work moved, while foreign firms gained market share from local companies. Springfield's fall from manufacturing prominence mirrors events elsewhere in the industrial Northeast and is important to understand. The decline is examined mainly through a history of the American Bosch Company, its workers, and their union. Established in 1911, unionized in 1936, Bosch specialized in the design and manufacture of precision diesel fuel injections components. During World War II it employed thousands of skilled machinists. After the war it was purchased by Wall Street investors and in the early 1950s became part of a small corporation headquartered in New York City. By the early 1960s it had become the most profitable firm in the diesel products division of a Fortune 500 corporation. By the time it closed in 1986 Bosch was an aging plant with a few hundred workers owned by a Fortune 100 corporation. From 1950 forward management attempted to implement numerous strategies to reduce costs and maintain market share, including the construction of a low-wage plant in Mississippi, the acquisition of overseas factories, and in-plant schemes to streamline production. The union resisted in-plant restructuring efforts, but offered token opposition to the company's world-wide maneuvers. Throughout, unionists believed their machining skills coupled with their knowledge of the products being produced were assets the company needed to succeed. The company never shared this perspective, and unresolved, this disjuncture contributed to the closing of the plant. It is argued here that management's efforts failed because workers were treated as appendages of their machines.

Does the underrepresentation of women in school administration reflect differences in preferences or discriminatory selection criteria? To examine this question, this dissertation examines the criteria used to promote teachers into school administration and the consequence of these criteria for equity in promotions and school quality. In this dissertation, promotions are modelled as the joint occurrence of two sequential events: (1) teacher supply to the promotional queue and (2) school board demand for administrators. The empirical challenge is to statistically identify the supply and demand-side of promotion when only the joint occurrence of these two events are observed in the data. Drawing from a large nationally representative data set matching teachers, schools, administrators, and school districts, I test the hypotheses that access to school administration is not solely determined by qualifications, i.e. that discrimination plays a role. Key results show that when teacher desire for promotions and credentials are controlled for, men are more likely than women to be selected for promotions. Additional evidence suggests that women's promotion disadvantage may not stem from limited search strategies or an inability to manage schools. I conclude with an analysis of the pay gap between male and female principals. Results show that after controlling for a variety of human capital, school environment, school level and locale variables, male principals earn 5.4% more than female principals. This translates into a yearly $2,205.4 income gain.

Numerous U.S. studio executives claim that the lack of on-screen racial diversity is a result of producers responding to discriminatory racial preferences of international audiences. To test these claims, this paper augments prior film financial success models by introducing measures of cast diversity to quantify the impact that actor race has on film revenue in the domestic and international market. Using OLS regressions, I examine and compare this effect within the domestic and aggregate movie market to investigate the underlying motivations for producers to not cast nonwhite actors. The findings support the claims made by studio heads that, on the whole, films with greater levels of diversity significantly underperform in the international box office, yet are not a strong determinant for domestic consumption. Although producers may be making assumptions about foreign demand when investing in films, the revenue regressions seem to support their assumptions. However, the results are ultimately difficult to interpret. Holding budget and other key film characteristics constant, more diverse films perform poorly relative to less diverse films in foreign markets, so the demographic disparities in films could be mostly driven by rational, profit-maximizing behavior from studios and producers.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 288-316).

Globally, developed economies show the largest gender gaps in entrepreneurial activity. This analysis examines one potential cause of low rates of female entrepreneurship, work-family policies, specifically in France. The objective of this paper is to test whether or not there is a relationship between entrepreneurship and childcare accessibility in France, and if this relationship exists, to learn about its nature. Using data from 2009 to 2013, probit regressions are run for different outcomes of entrepreneurial activity with early childhood care aid eligibility as the explanatory variable of interest. These regressions are run separately for men and women and for the whole sample. This paper does not find conclusive evidence that childcare accessibility significantly affects the probability that one is involved in entrepreneurial activity either for women or for the whole sample. However, it does suggest that if the relationship is significant, childcare aid has a negative impact on the decision for entrepreneurship. Finally, I consider other variables closely correlated with childcare financial aid that may negatively impact involvement in entrepreneurial activity.

No description available.