This short paper discusses some aspects of the recent increase in
the number of full-time non—tenure track faculty appointments. It considers alternative explanations for the growth and concludes that the
predominant cause seems to be that institutions have elected to offer
non—tenure track appointments, not that they are forced to by inadequate finances or projections of declines in student enrollment. This
tentative conclusion rests on some statistics which imply that tenure
track appointments tend to be offered more frequently in fields where
there is also more upward pressure on salaries and where new faculty
appointments may have a wider choice of alternatives.
labor markets
A central issue in agricultural taxation and pricing policy analysis is the
degree to which the rural labor market can be characterized by a
competitive supply and demand framework, and if so, what is the magnitude
of the elasticity of demand for labor. The primary focus of this paper is
to determine the degree to which farm household behavior is consistent with
a competitive, clearing external labor market. In order to implement this
program, the old observation that in the absence of labor markets,
household composition is an important determinant of farm labor use, is
formalized by incorporating household structure into the general framework
of agricultural household models. The conditions under which specific
market distortions, such as off—farm employment rationing, will lead to
household demographic composition affecting farm labor demand are derived.
After completing this theoretical discussion, an empirical model is
developed which tests the proposition that household labor demand is
independent of family composition. This model is estimated on a detailed
household / farm data set from rural Java. Several statistical issues,
including measurement error and endogeneity of the market wage are
addressed through the use of appropriate instrumental variable techniques.
I cannot reject the null hypothesis that farm labor allocation decisions
are taken independently of household structure. In addition, farm labor
demand has a well determined negative wage elasticity in the range -0.3 to
-0.5. The results of the research indicate for the case of Java, farm
household behavior is consistent with a clearing, competitive external
labor market.
Estimates of the effect of veteran status on civilian earnings may be biased
by the fact that certain types of men are more likely to serve in the armed
forces. In this paper, an estimation strategy is employed that enables
measurement of the effects of veteran status while controlling for differences in
other personal characteristics related to earnings. The randomly assigned risk
of induction generated by the Vietnam era draft lottery is used to construct
instrumental variables that are correlated with earnings solely by virtue of
their correlation with veteran status. Instrumental variables estimates
tabulated from Social Security Administration records indicate that in the early
1980's the earnings of white veterans were approximately 15 percent less than
nonveteran earnings. In contrast, there is no evidence that nonwhite veterans
suffered any lasting reduction in earnings. In an attempt to explain the loss of
earnings to white veterans, experience-earnings profiles are estimated jointly
with time-varying veteran status coefficients. The estimates suggest that the
effect of Vietnam era military service on white veterans is equivalent to a loss
of two years of civilian labor market experience.