AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 4, April 2013
The Digest
A free monthly publication featuring non-technical summaries of research on topics of broad public interest
Ambiguity about the possibility of wage negotiations may discourage women from applying to some positions and contribute to gender wage gaps.
Past studies have demonstrated that women earn approximately three-quarters of what men earn and that women represent only 2.5 percent of the highest-paid positions at U.S. firms. Researchers have long sought to identify the source of these wage gaps, which might be differences in human capital, workplace practices such as...
Article
Changes in Federal Reserve policy on interest rates over the last decade have affected domestic short-term interest rates in seven emerging economies.
In The Federal Reserve, Emerging Markets, and Capital Controls: A High Frequency Empirical Investigation (NBER Working Paper No. 18557) Sebastian Edwards concludes that changes in Federal Reserve policy on interest rates over the last decade have affected domestic short-term interest rates in seven emerging economies in...
Article
Fifteen U.S. states currently have broad-based college merit scholarship programs. Based on either high school grade point averages or scores on college entrance exams, these in-state tuition scholarships are awarded to at least 30 percent of each state's graduating high school class. In total, the 15 states spend about $2,191 per recipient or $1.4 billion per year. The aid programs appear to slightly increase the probability that residents born in the state live there after...
Article
The steep decline in median net worth between 2007 and 2010 was primarily due to the very high negative rate of return on net worth of the middle three wealth quartiles.
Median wealth in the United States declined by 0.7 percent from 2001 to 2004 and median non-home wealth (that is, total wealth minus home equity) fell by a staggering 27 percent during that period. Then, from 2004 to 2007, median wealth grew by 20 percent and median non-home wealth by 18 percent....
Article
A 60 percent increase in the commodity price index increases output by close to 1 percent.
Fluctuations in commodity prices often are associated with macroeconomic volatility and thus pose significant challenges for policymakers in commodity-producing nations. In Macroeconomic Performance During Commodity Price Booms and Busts (NBER Working Paper No. 18569), authors Luis Felipe Céspedes and Andrés Velasco investigate the macroeconomic response of a group of commodity-...
Article
An increase of 100 basis points in the sovereign's CDS spread translates into a rise of 71 basis points in corporate CDS spreads.
When a nation is on the brink of sovereign default, there's always the risk that it will raid its private sector for tax revenue -- or even take it over in search of funds. That's one reason that the credit risks of a nation's corporate sector tend to rise when the nation's sovereign default risks go up. But the strength of that...