The pastoral commons of the Maasai offers a case in which common ownership proved superior to private property and where the creation of property rights was a cause of the tragedy of the commons. Property rights diminished sustainable use of the commons by disrupting the complex institutional...

This article develops a model that extends the theory of clubs to the case in which a local congestible public good requires a capital facility for its pro vision in a community facing population growth. The trade-offs facing officials planning the capital facility are examined. The model offers...

Economists have long known that individual wages depend on a combination of employee and employer characteristics, as well as the interaction of the two. Although it is important to understand how employee and employer characteristics are related to wages, little is known about the magnitude and...

Using a unique dataset based on individual Unemployment Insurance wage records for Illinois in the 1990s that are matched to other Census data, the authors analyze the extent to which escape from or entry into low earnings among adult workers was associated with changes in their employers and...

The striking geographical concentration of economic activities suggests that there are substantial benefits to agglomeration. However, the nature of those benefits remains unclear. In this paper we take advantage of a new dataset to quantify the role of one of the main contenders - the matching...

This paper presents an analysis of workers who persistently have low earnings in the labor market over a period of three or more years. Some of these workers manage to escape from this low-earning status over subsequent years, while many do not. Using data from the Longitudinal Employer...