Recent research attributes the lack of merit pay in teaching to the resistance of teachers. This article examines whether the structure of merit pay affects the types of teachers who support it. We develop a model of the relative utility teachers receive from merit pay versus the current fixed...

This highly innovative and intriguing book applies principles of microeconomics to unusual settings to inspire students, teachers and scholars alike in the ‘dismal science'. Leading experts show how economics reaches into the strangest of places and throws light onto the occasionally dark side...

This paper investigates the effect of body size on dating and sexual experiences of white (non-Hispanic) and African American (non-Hispanic) female adolescents. Using data from Add-Health, we estimate the effects of obesity and BMI z-score on the probability of having been involved in a romantic...

This article investigates the link between position in the birth order and early scholastic ability. Using matched mother-child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979 cohort, NLSY79), I find that being the first-born is beneficial even after controlling for (nonlinear) effects...

Previous studies on the spread of obesity in social networks have focused on the contemporaneous effect of peer weight outcomes on individuals. This article is the first to investigate the longer term effects, within adolescence and from adolescence into early adulthood, of peers on individual...

The labor supply and benefit claiming incentives provided by the early retirement rules of the Social Security Old Age benefits program are of growing importance as the Normal Retirement Age (NRA) increases to 67, the labor force participation of Older Americans rises, and a variety of reforms...