Federal, state, and local budget issues in the aftermath of the Great Recession stimulated a revival of interest in government worker pay. In the paper, we study the evolution of the federal-private pay differential from 1995 to 2017 using Current Population Survey data, enabling us to examine...

The gender wage inequality in Korea has been higher than in any other OECD country since 1996. In this paper, we study the evolution of the differentials between genders in wages and job satisfaction from 2008 to 2018 using the Graduates Occupational Mobility Survey. Wage regressions are...

The coevolution of trust in government alongside the growth of government is an aspect of research on the latter topic that has not been explored. We consider this coevolution in the context of a political economy model and a public interest view of government growth and incorporate the role of...

A feature of post-World War II economic history is the growth in government, paradoxically accompanied by a decline in trust of government. How does a mistrusted institution continue to grow? We utilize key findings in the economics, behavioral, and psychology literatures to develop a model to...

In the Journal of Political Economy, Rodrik (1998) finds a positive association between the openness of an economy and its government size. He explains this paradox by arguing that government expenditures are used to provide social insurance against the risk of terms of trade shocks that open...

This paper models the assignment of residual income claimancy to an R&D manager and applies the model to biotechnology firms. Residual income claimancy provides incentives for the manager to monitor the R&D process. Because the nature of R&D and of monitoring scientific effort is different, our...

School choice initiatives and charter schools have grown substantially in the past two and a half decades. Economists argue that this is a move toward more competition and should lead to improved school system performance. However, school choice and charter school enabling laws can be quite...

Kentucky’s K-12 experienced an 81% in increase in per pupil funds, after inflation, from 1990 to 2019. However, there have been only modest changes in its nationally-administered test scores, and no increases in the past decade. Moreover, per pupil funding seems to exceed that of all but the...