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If you're a married woman living in the New York City area, there's a better than 50 percent chance that you don't work, according to a new working paper from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.
More specifically, only 49 percent of white high school-educated married women in their prime working ages were holding down jobs in the New York area as of the 2000 Census. The national average for this particular demographic is 67 percent. At the other end of the spectrum is Minneapolis where almost 80 percent of these married women are employed -- that's larger than the percentage of working men aged 25 and older in the U.S.
And the phenomenon isn't recent one. Since the 1970's married women in the Twin Cities have been living by the Protestant Ethic more than their New York counterparts. (The disparity isn't as drastic if you only look at college-educated married women -- highest rate goes to Albany with 80 percent and lowest to Honolulu with 64 percent -- but it's still there.) ...
ContinueThe answer is almost sure to be no, since as both a bargaining strategy and a tool to limit jealousy between cubicle-mates, companies want to keep pay information under wraps. But there's another reason that employers may want protect compensation information: A worker's knowledge of their own place in the pecking order could "motivate" them to slack off.
There's been a lively debate among economists in recent years over the importance of relative, as opposed to absolute, income. One side, let's call them the absolutists, says people derive feelings of well-being from how much they make regardless of where they are in the food in chain, and the chance to make more money should in most cases motivate people to work harder. The relativists argue that people don't make decisions in a vacuum, and a person's rank (compared with neighbors, coworkers, classmates) influences their actions.
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ContinueWolfers and Price (joined by Tim Larsen of BYU) have now turned their attention to the betting market's ability to exploit this inefficiency.
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Over 6 billion have been purchased since last April comprising roughly 17 percent of all stamps sales.
"We introduced these stamps as a customer convenience to ease the transition during price changes, and they also deliver economic value," the Postal Service said in a press release.
Does that claim hold up? Looking back at rate hikes over the past 30 years, it would be hard to make a good case for buying Forevers as they haven't kept up with inflation ...
ContinueI've reproduced some of the chart below from the May/June 2006 issue of Foreign Policy:
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ContinueBelow is a chart plotting year-over-year changes in the first two. It's much more visible in the employment growth line (blue), but both series seem to have peaked and have been trending downwards:
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Continue"Even though corporate profits have doubled since recession gave way to economic expansion in November 2001, and even though employee productivity has risen more than 15 percent since then, the average wage for the typical American worker has inched up just 1 percent (after inflation). With the subprime mortgage crisis threatening to pull the economy into recession, some economists say this may be the first time in American history that the typical working household goes through an economic expansion without any increase in income whatsoever."... Continue
In a similar fashion this January, the Colorado Rockies locked up their young short stop Troy Tulowitzki after just one full season to a 6-year $31 million deal plus a one-year club option.
Of course, teams haven't been shy about signing young stud players to longer terms deals in the past. After two fulls seasons, Vladimir Guerrerro was given a 5-year deal by the Montreal Expos in 1999 and Alex Rodriguez was given a 4-year deal by the Seattle Mariners in 1997. The Red Sox signed Nomar Garciaparra to a 5-year contract in 1998 after one full season ...
ContinueAnd Knowledge @ Wharton now points us to some recent research which argues that "bear raids" can cause real economic, not just financial, harm ...
ContinueRoberto Alomar, Sandy Alomar, Carlos Baerga, Wil Cordero, Carlos Delgado, Jos