In this paper we examine one of the fundamental beliefs underlying education policy - that the majority of teacher attrition is caused by the attractiveness of higher-paying alternative occupations. Using unique data from the state of Georgia that are created by merging administrative data from...

Demand for less skilled workers decreased dramatically in the US and in other developed countries over the past two decades. We argue that pervasive skill biased technological change rather than increased trade with the developing world is the principal culprit. The pervasiveness of this...

During the last 15 years--especially in the 1980s--wage inequality rose in the United States. It appears that this can be explained by a secular shift in production functions favoring workers with intellectual rather than manual skills, together with slower growth in the supply of skilled labor...