This paper uses data from the 1980 and 1990 U.S. Censuses to study labor market assimilation of self-employed immigrants. Separate earnings functions for the self-employed and wage/salary workers are ...estimated. To control for endogenous sorting into the sectors, models of the self-employment decision are estimated. Self-employed immigrants are found to do substantially better in the labor market than wage/salary immigrants. Earnings of self-employed immigrants are predicted to converge with natives' wage/salary earnings at about age 30 and natives' self-employed earnings at about age 40. Including the self-employed in the sample reduces the immigrant-native earnings gap by, on average, 14%.
This article investigates survival and growth of more than 50,000 Upper Austrian farm households within a maximum likelihood sample selection framework. The results suggest that age, schooling and ...sex of the farm operator, size of the farm family, and off-farm employment status, as well as initial farm size, significantly influence farm growth and survival. The present study provides support for the notion of a "disappearing middle" in the size distribution. The process of polarization is closely related to the off-farm employment status of farms. Correcting for sample-attrition bias is important when analyzing the performance of part-time farms.
This paper compares income inequality and income mobility in the Scandinavian countries and the United States during 1980–90. The results suggest that inequality is greater in the United States than ...in the Scandinavian countries and that this inequality ranking of countries remains unchanged when the accounting period of income is extended from one to eleven years. The pattern of mobility turns out to be remarkably similar, in the sense that the proportionate reduction in inequality from extending the accounting period of income is much the same. But we do find evidence of greater dispersion of first differences of relative earnings and income in the United States. Relative income changes are associated with changes in labor market and marital status in all four countries, but the magnitude of such changes are largest in the United States.
We examine the impact of immigration on self‐employed natives. In a new general equilibrium model of self‐employment and wage/salary work, a range of plausible parameter values implies small negative ...effects of immigration on native self‐employment rates and earnings. Using 1980 and 1990 Census microdata, we then examine the relationship between changes in immigration and native self‐employment rates and earnings across 132 of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. We find evidence suggesting that self‐employed immigrants displace self‐employed natives but do not have a negative effect on native self‐employment earnings. The effects are much larger than those predicted by the theoretical model.
This paper is an empirical examination of how a community's income growth is affected by polluting manufacturing activity. The hypothesis I test is that this activity has two conflicting effects: ...first, industrial investment encourages economic growth through the creation of employment and other positive economic spillover effects and, second, the associated pollution causes out-migration of residents. I hypothesize that a community that is initially relatively wealthy will experience relatively more out-migration of its higher income residents, who are assumed to have a lower tolerance for pollution. Thus, such communities will grow less in response to such investment compared to its poorer neighbors. Therefore, in my econometric model the marginal effect of pollution on income growth is allowed to vary with initial incomes. I use a unique data set that incorporates Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and census tract-level data for New England for the years 1980 and 1990. The estimated effect of pollution on growth is negative, on average, and is more negative in initial incomes. In an effort to measure the out-migration effects of pollution, I use a separate measure of toxic pollution. I find that, holding constant total pollution, ‘toxic’ pollution has a more negative effect on growth for wealthier communities. These results are consistent with the above hypotheses.
This paper presents a new econometric framework that permits simultaneous estimation of price-cost margins, scale economies and productivity from a panel of establishment data. The model contains ...only a few, economically interesting parameters to be estimated, but it is nevertheless consistent with a flexible (translog) underlying technology, quasi-fixed capital and the presence of persistent differences in productivity between establishments. The framework is applied to study market power, scale economies and productivity differences in a number of manufacturing industries in Norway. The results reveal statistically significant, but quite small, margins between price and marginal costs in most manufacturing industries.
Early hip hop film musicals have either been expunged from cinema history or excoriated in brief passages by critics and other writers.Hip Hop on Filmreclaims and reexamines productions such ...asBreakin'(1984),Beat Street(1984), andKrush Groove(1985) in order to illuminate Hollywood's fascinating efforts to incorporate this nascent urban culture into conventional narrative forms. Such films presented musical conventions against the backdrop of graffiti-splattered trains and abandoned tenements in urban communities of color, setting the stage for radical social and political transformations. Hip hop musicals are also part of the broader history of teen cinema, and films such as Charlie Ahearn'sWild Style(1983) are here examined alongside other contemporary youth-oriented productions. As suburban teen films banished parents and children to the margins of narrative action, hip hop musicals, by contrast, presented inclusive and unconventional filial groupings that included all members of the neighborhood. These alternative social configurations directly referenced specific urban social problems, which affected the stability of inner city families following diminished governmental assistance in communities of color during the 1980s.
Breakdancing, a central element of hip hop musicals, is also reconsidered. It gained widespread acclaim at the same time that these films entered the theaters, but the nation's newly discovered dance form was embattled--caught between a multitude of institutional entities such as the ballet academy, advertising culture, and dance publications that vied to control its meaning, particularly in relation to delineations of gender. As street-trained breakers were enticed to join the world of professional ballet, this newly forged relationship was recast by dance promoters as a way to invigorate and "remasculinize" European dance, while young women simultaneously critiqued conventional masculinities through an appropriation of breakdance. These multiple and volatile histories influenced the first wave of hip hop films, and even structured the sleeper hitFlashdance(1983). This forgotten, ignored, and maligned cinema is not only an important aspect of hip hop history, but is also central to the histories of teen film, the postclassical musical, and even institutional dance. Kimberley Monteyne places these films within the wider context of their cultural antecedents and reconsiders the genre's influence.
This paper presents an employment-based measure of intra-metropolitan accessibility to employment opportunities that provides strong evidence supporting the spatial mismatch hypothesis. The measure ...is based on intra-metropolitan variation in net employment growth rather than on spatial variation in employment levels. The principal spatial disadvantage suffered by black male youths is their residence in areas of weak or negative employment growth. In pooled employment regressions, differential accessibility explains 30 to 50% of the neighborhood employment rate differential between white and black male Bay-Area youths. In separate employment regressions by race, approximately one-fifth of the differential is attributable to differential access.
Between 1986 and 1990, the Mexican government reduced tariffs and import license coverage by more than 50%. The author, using micro-level data, analyzes the impact of trade reform on Mexican wages ...and employment. Industries that had greater reductions in protection levels, she finds, had a larger percentage of low-skill workers. Wage dispersion increased in both the non-tradables sector and, to a much greater degree, the tradables sector. This pattern suggests that trade reform increased wage inequality. The decline in import license coverage appears to have reduced relative wages of workers in reformed industries by 2%, but did not affect relative employment. Reductions in tariffs had no statistically significant effect on relative wages or relative employment.
In this paper, we examine the impact of enforcement of the U.S.-Mexico border on wages in U.S. and Mexican border regions. The U.S. Border Patrol polices U.S. boundaries, seeking to apprehend any ...undocumented entrants. It concentrates its efforts on the Mexican border. We examine labor markets in border areas of California, Texas, and Mexico. For each region, we have high-frequency data on wages and person-hours the U.S. Border Patrol spends policing the border. For a range of empirical specifications and definitions of regional labor markets, we find little impact of border enforcement on wages in U.S. border cities and a moderate negative impact of border enforcement on wages in Mexican border cities. These findings are consistent with two hypotheses: border enforcement has a minimal impact on illegal immigration, and illegal immigration from Mexico has a minimal impact on wages in U.S. border areas.
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