We show that if students care primarily about their status (relative rank) in class, they are best motivated to work not by revealing their exact numerical exam scores (100,99,...,1), but instead by clumping them in broad categories (A,B,C). If their abilities are disparate, the optimal grading...

We introduce grading into games of status. Each player chooses effort, producing a stochastic output or score. Utilities depend on the ranking of all the scores. By clustering scores into grades, the ranking is coarsened, and the incentives to work are changed. We first apply games of status to...

Australia has moved rapidly from a centralised Award based wage determination system to decentralised enterprise bargaining. This move has been associated with a substantial drop in strike activity. The relationship between working days lost and a series of macroeconomic variables is tested for...

Before the 1920s, Australian economics was virtually non-existent; but in the twenty years before World War II there was a conspicuous growth in the body of professional economists, located mainly in the universities. The system of wage fixation caught the attention of some of them. The paper...

Revised April 13, 2010The Governors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and several other states have recently proposed employer tax credits as measures to fight high unemployment in their states. Such policies are also being considered at the federal level. In the Working Paper, Jeff...

A l'aide de donnees du Recensement de 2001, nous etudions dans quelle mesure l'ecart urbain-rural entre les gains des travailleurs occupes est influence par la composition du capital humain et les economies d'agglomeration. Ces facteurs ont tous deux ete associes theoriquement et empiriquement...

We estimate the private (individual) and social return to schooling in Italy and four macro-regions. Our estimates take into account the effects of schooling on employment and wages as well as the key features of the Italian tax and social insurance system. We find that the individual return to...