Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Allen M. Featherstone / This thesis analyzes the hiring and selection processes of five Farm Credit Services (FCS) Associations within U.S. AgBank to determine the effectiveness of potential employee testing and profiling practices as a predictor of success (defined as tenure and retention) within the organization. The data provided by the five FCS Associations were used to analyze whether that the results are a successful tool in predicting the success of a potential employee. Firm managers are acutely aware of the high cost of onboarding a new employee regardless of the industry in which the firm operates. Since employee training and education often takes months, and in some cases, years, it is critical that organizations select qualified, driven, and success oriented employees so that they can minimize the cost of hiring of new employees. To select the best candidates, many firms use personality profiling examinations to determine the candidate’s fit, not only for the job, but also for the company culture. Analyzing past results can assist managers in evaluating the outcomes of the time and cost spent seeking the best employee possible. Analysis was conducted by estimating a binomial logistic regression model using the test scores for loan officer hires from five Farm Credit Associations for the time period of 1999-2009. Each of the examined character traits was an independent variable, along with variables for gender and whether the candidate was a recommended-hire. The dependent variable is whether the employee is still employed with the Farm Credit Association. Results show that while some of the independent variables are statistically significant in predicting the success of an employee, others are not. The implications therein justify the value of the predictive index as an asset to hiring managers, and also provides direction on which traits are most highly correlated with one another and with the overall composite score.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what relation house prices have with regional migration in Sweden, with the interest of the study being to investigate how regional migration is affected by differentials in house prices and to see how it has affected migration choices for labor, and, to see if this relationship differed in 2007 and 2017. Theories surrounding regional house prices, regional migration, regional labor mobility, commuting, and accessibility are used to lay the foundation and support the empirical method. The regressions are run using cross-sectional data for the years 2007 and 2017. Whilst the literature review suggests that average house prices should have a negative relation towards in-migration, the conducted regression showcases a positive relation towards in-migration. Furthermore, the study concludes that there are many different variables that can affect regional migration. The results show that the effect of house prices has become weaker in the year 2017 compared to 2007, which could showcase that individuals have changed how they approach migration decision.

This study explores what is regarded as a workforce crisis in this country through an in-depth analysis of policy responses to job training strategies directed at the poor. Using a value critical approach which focuses on underlying ideological premises, the traditional economic and socio-political theories that define unemployment and persistent poverty are reviewed. Then, the strength of this interpretation is compared with alternative explanations, including dual and segmented labor market theories, to reframe the problems and reexamine the causes. / By tracing the history of welfare policy development and looking closely at the conventional beliefs shaping job training legislation, this research reveals how the legislative intent has evolved up until now without substantial change even though this country has experienced dramatic, structural changes in its economy and workplaces. Policymakers accept supply-side interpretations within human capital theory as an explanation for the economic crisis and blame the rise in poverty and joblessness on a skills shortage. However, a critical analysis of today's postindustrial labor markets disputes this claim and focuses attention on the underutilization of labor, and the nature of new jobs. / The enactment of the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) under the Reagan administration epitomizes a reversal in policy toward a philosophy of the New Right. Changes in JTPA's design offers insight into ulterior political motivations that have impeded training the poor and jobless for meaningful work. Authority for program plans resides with business-dominated councils, training allowances are restricted, and a system of performance-management imposes national standards for job placements without accommodating other factors to ensure quality in training, equity of services, or the targeting of persons most in need. Evidence from federal investigations, a national JTPA impact study, and interviews with Florida staff, employers and trainees confirm that rather than preparing the poor for self-sufficiency, JTPA has further marginalized the workforce by subsidizing low-wage employers. In conclusion, the integration of labor market policy into a new and broader welfare paradigm is explored. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-12, Section: A, page: 4404. / Major Professor: Steven J. Klees. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

Thesis advisor: Christopher Maxwell / In this paper I present an econometric analysis of selection bias in the NBA Draft from 1995-2003. Employing an interval regression maximum likelihood control model that predicts the eventual value of players based on their Draft position, I pinpoint which groups of players consistently over-perform or under-perform relative to their Draft position. Using this analysis I detect bias pertaining to four different groups of players. There was a bias against high school players, especially those taken in the lottery (the top of the first round of the Draft), which may point to risk-averse tendencies of NBA teams. There was also a bias in favor of centers taken in the lottery, who were consistently drafted too high. Black players were selected too low in the first round, and too high in the second round. The final effect deals with foreign entrants to the Draft. From 1995-2001 foreigners were drafted too low; in 2002 and 2003, when more foreigners were selected, they were drafted too high. My paper details the nature of these biases and analyzes their potential causes. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

The recent growth of self-employment (trabajo por cuenta propia ) in Cuba has expanded opportunities for employment, income, professional development, and the provision of goods and services, while simultaneously increasing individual economic autonomy and exacerbating socioeconomic inequalities. Through a review of the existing legislation that regulates self-employment, supplemented by a series of 64 in-depth interviews with self-employed workers in the food service, transportation, and housing sectors of Havana's economy, this study seeks to understand the present role and future prospects for Cuba's self-employed workers by asking the following questions: First, do self-employed workers (cuentapropistas) believe that they are beginning to lay the necessary groundwork for the eventual establishment of a small, private business sector. Second, how do self-employed workers currently respond to the existing legal and fiscal framework for micro-enterprise in Cuba? Third, how does work as a licensed self-employed worker differ socioeconomically from unlicensed, clandestine economic activity in the same three sectors? The hypothesis is that (1) current restrictions make impossible job creation or income generation significant enough to facilitate the emergence of small- and medium-sized enterprises, and that (2) government regulations discourage the growth of micro-enterprises, without declaring them illegal. However, (3) self-employed workers will continue to respond to current prohibitive government restrictions either by 'hedging' on their licenses (underreporting their incomes and engaging in economic activities not included in their license) or by 'informalizing' their private operations (operating underground without a license), not by ceasing to practice them The dissertation argues that the current legal framework discourages the growth of licensed micro-enterprises, drives many entrepreneurs out of business or underground, provokes tax evasion, and encourages operators to develop deeper links with the informal sector. A small number of large-scale operations tend to thrive, while the majority of micro-enterprises are condemned to informality (clandestine operation). Permitting the hiring of employees, extending enterprise rights to currently prohibited areas and markets, allowing for the deduction of one's actual expenses, and ending the monthly quota tax would have the positive effect of increasing competition, productivity, tax revenue, and legal employment, while simultaneously reducing prices, exaggerated incomes, tax evasion, and clandestine economic activity / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation explores the development of the apparel industry in the southern United States from 1937 to 1980. The apparel industry has received scant attention from historians, especially when compared to the numerous influential works examining the southern textile industry. The history of the southern clothing industry and its workers merits individual attention, for it yields its own distinctive story By virtue of its size, its reliance upon female labor, and its broad geographic scope, the southern apparel industry provides an opportunity to connect the often disparate concerns of southern cultural history, labor history, and women's history. This study examines the essential features of the apparel industry in the South and the varied experiences of clothing workers during the industry's great expansion from the late 1930s until the demise of the southern branch of the industry in the 1980s. The scope of the inquiry is broad, encompassing the role of organized labor, the changing racial composition of the industry's work force, the creation of a feminine work culture and its As companies relocated their manufacturing facilities in the South, they capitulated to the system of racial segregation. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the whiteness of occupations within the apparel industry declined and the racial and ethnic diversity of the industry increased. African American and Latina women workers accounted for a large percentage of what was once a predominantly white industry. And as the ethnic and racial diversity of the southern clothing industry increased, organizing efforts were more successful. The influential union label and boycott strategies of the clothing industry provide an important perspective on the place of women workers in southern culture and the labor movement. The role of women as the primary consumers of the family placed them in a critical position to influence the success or failure of boycotts, union label programs and, ultimately, solidarity. But as the United States apparel industry collapse began in the 1960s, apparel unions chose to rely on 'Buy American' boycott campaigns that pitted them against the very workers they had hoped to organize / acase@tulane.edu

<p>In the first chapter of this dissertation I develop a flexible and estimable equilibrium model that jointly considers location decisions of heterogeneous agents across space, and their optimal portfolio decisions. Merging continuous-time asset pricing with urban economics models, I find a unique sorting equilibrium and derive equilibrium house and asset prices in closed-form. Risk premia for homes depend on both aggregate and local idiosyncratic risks, and equilibrium returns for stocks depend on their correlation with city specific income and house price risk. In equilibrium, very risk-averse households do not locate in risky cities although they may have a high productivity match with those cities. I estimate a version of this model using house price and wage data at the metropolitan area level and provide estimates for risk premia for different cities. The estimated risk premia imply that homes are on average about 20000 cheaper than they would be if owners were risk-neutral. This estimate is over 100000 for volatile coastal cities. I simulate the model to study the effects of financial innovation on equilibrium outcomes. For reasonable parameters, creating assets that correlate with city-specific risks increase house prices by about 20% and productivity by about 10%. The average willingness to pay for completing markets per homeowner is between $10000 and $20000. Productivity is increased due to a unique channel: lowering the amount of non-insurable risk decreases the households' incentive to sort on these risks, which leads to a more efficient allocation of human capital in the economy.</p><p>The second chapter of this dissertation studies ability signaling in a model of employer learning and statistical discrimination. In traditional signaling models, education provides a way for individuals to sort themselves by ability. Employers in turn use education to statistically discriminate, paying wages that reflect the average productivity of workers with the same given level of education. In this chapter, we provide evidence that graduating from college plays a much more direct role in revealing ability to the labor market. Using the NLSY79, our results suggest that ability is observed nearly perfectly for college graduates. In contrast, returns to AFQT for high school graduates are initially very close to zero and rise steeply with experience. As a result, from very beginning of the career, college graduates are paid in accordance with their own ability, while the wages of high school graduates are initially unrelated to their own ability. This view of ability revelation in the labor market has considerable power in explaining racial differences in wages, education, and the returns to ability. In particular, we find a 6-10 percent wage penalty for blacks (conditional on ability) in the high school market but a small positive black wage premium in the college labor market. These results are consistent with the notion that employers use race to statistically discriminate in the high school market but have no need to do so in the college market.</p> / Dissertation

<p>This dissertation explores the role of executive compensation in determining the capital structure decisions of a firm. CEOs experience a large personal cost of default that interacts through the risk adjusted probability of default with their compensation contract. Since default happens in a particularly costly state of the world for a CEO whose compensation contract consists primarily of pay for performance elements, i.e. a CEO who has a large personal equity stake in the firm, a large pay performance sensitivity is negatively and significantly associated with firm leverage choice. I document this effect in detail for the first time, and I show that it is both statistically robust and significant in magnitude, approximately 1\% of firm value. I show that this effect is driven by the stock holdings of the CEO, not the option holdings. I provide a simple principal agent model that explains the observed negative relationship and makes additional predictions on the relationship of other firm characteristics to pay performance sensitivity and leverage. I then test and confirm these predictions empirically using a standard OLS framework and an instrumental variable approach to control for endogeneity in the compensation contract. I also look at leverage adjustment speeds and show that CEOs with higher pay performance sensitivity adjust leverage upwards towards target values more slowly and downwards more quickly than their peers, and I interpret this as direct evidence that CEOs are actively managing personal risk through firm leverage choice.</p> / Dissertation

<p>This dissertation is a collection of three chapters all pertaining to institutional economics. In short, the eld of institutional economics is an outgrowth of public economics, in the sense that in many cases he key institutions that frame economic decisionmaking are the product of public policy. However this is not exclusive. Institutional economics' key contribution is the acknowledgement that cultural and social institutions --- often developed organically over the course of centuries --- can play as signicant a role in individuals' economic choices as governmental policy. In the pages that follow, we will address the economic impact of cultural and political institutions in three contexts: Judicial decisionmaking in Islamic courts, the effects</p><p>of negative health shocks on retirement savings, and the tradeoff between retirement savings and investment in durable goods.</p> / Dissertation

<p>Social capital has so far been suggested to enhance the career outcomes of disadvantaged immigrants by compensating for their lack of human capital. Contrastingly, by examining labor market outcomes by immigrant groups, my dissertation argues that social capital can actually serve as a source of disadvantages for immigrants in the labor market, especially for a socially disadvantaged immigrant group like Mexican immigrants. Specifically, the dissertation proposes three kinds of social capital processes through which social status and network processes interplay to disadvantage disproportionately a low-status immigrant group in the job attainment process: access, activation, and return deficit of social capital. Using data from the 2005 U.S. Social Capital-USA survey, I examine these three kinds of social capital deficit across three ethnic immigrant groups: Mexican, non-Mexican Hispanic, and non-Hispanic immigrants. The first chapter explores the inequality of social capital across immigrant groups. The result shows that among the three immigrant groups, Mexican immigrants are the only immigrant group who have smaller, less diverse networks than the native-born. This access deficit of social capital for Mexican immigrants is driven primarily by their relative lack of human capital compared with other immigrant groups. The second chapter investigates whether ethnic enclaves constrain the access to social capital of enclave immigrants. The result shows that the constraining effect of ethnic enclaves on the social capital building of enclave immigrants is found only for the ethnic enclave of Mexican immigrants. This is because the ethnic enclaves of disadvantaged immigrants facilitate social connections to other coethnic enclave immigrants with similar socioeconomic traits, while constraining them from extending their networks beyond the enclaves. The access deficit of social capital for Mexican immigrants will eventually aggravate their job prospects because they cannot mobilize social capital for their job finding as much as other immigrant groups do. The third chapter examines the activation and mobilization of social capital in the job attainment process across immigrant groups. The result shows that Mexican immigrants activate and reap the benefit from mobilizing social capital for their job finding in ways that are different from those of the native-born as well as the high-status immigrant group. Due to their access deficit of social capital and negative stereotypes about them, Mexican immigrants are obliged to use a less rewarding job search method (i.e., using information passed from job contacts) rather than use a more rewarding job search method (i.e., using invitations from job contacts). Although Mexican immigrants benefit to some degrees from using information passed from job contacts in getting low-tier occupations, their heavy reliance on such a job search method can also prevent them from attaining middle- or top-tier occupations. By illuminating these serial processes of social capital in the job attainment for disadvantaged immigrants, my dissertation, therefore, sheds light on a new role of social capital as a source of immigrant disadvantages in the labor market.</p> / Dissertation