Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This paper evaluates the empirical performance of the standard Mincer earnings equation thirty years after the publication of Schooling, Experience and Earnings. Over this period, there has been a dramatic expansion in micro data and estimation techniques available to labor economists. How does the Mincer equation stand in light of these advances in empirical labor economics? Is it time to revise our benchmark model? On the basis of the existing literature and some new empirical estimates, I conclude that the Mincer equation remains an accurate benchmark for estimating wage determination equations provided that it is adjusted by (1) including a quartic function in potential experience instead of just a quadratic, (2) allowing for a quadratic term in years of schooling to capture the growing convexity in the relationship between schooling and wages, and (3) allowing for cohort effects to capture the dramatic growth in returns to schooling among cohorts born after 1950.

This paper discusses the impact Jacob Mincer’s 1962 paper “Labor-Force Participation of Married Women...” had on the analysis and empirical estimation of the supply of married women, and the supply of labor in general. It is argued that this paper has revolutionized the analysis of labor supply. The sharp increase in married women’s labor supply still constitutes a challenge to labor economists who try to explain the phenomenon in terms of income and price effects, where these effects are derived from cross-section studies. It constituted a puzzle to labor economists in the 50s and the 60s, still captives of the notion of a backwards-bending supply of labor. Mincer combined a theoretical model distinguishing between three uses of time (leisure, work at home, and work in the market) and Friedman’s distinction between permanent and transitory earning. He showed that the wage has a positive effect on married women’s labor supply, and that this supply is more affected by transitory than by permanent income changes. The new theory serves as the scaffold on which Mincer builds the empirical estimation. The interplay between theory, data and empirical estimation, and the ingenuity of the empirical research using scant data sources, made this paper the object of emulation. The ideas first discussed in this paper generated many of the developments of the analysis of labor supply over the last four decades.

This paper highlights the influence of the new home economics in general and Jacob Mincer’s work in particular on the field of health economics. I begin by considering the value of time as a determinant of adult health and medical care utilization. I then turn to a similar treatment in the case of children’s health and medical care utilization. I conclude with alternative explanations of the positive relationship between years of formal schooling completed and health, a topic that deals with complementary relationships between the two most important components of the stock of human capital.

This paper adapts Mincer’s ideas about informal training, best exemplified by on-the-job training (OJT), to investments that families make in children before formal schooling begins. Like OJT, in-home training (IHT) occurs in informal settings, requires costly time inputs and is complementary with formal schooling. In addition to choosing among home production, leisure and market work, parents also choose which particular home activities to pursue. That working mothers dramatically reduce the time they devote to leisure, sleep, and other home activities in order to preserve their time in human capital-building activities with children, illustrates and validates the home production framework.