The objective of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between changes in per capita manufacturing employment, manufacturing earnings per worker and human capital investment in nearly 3,000 U.S. counties over the period 1980-90. Two key hypotheses are tested: 1. Communities in...

In this paper we attempt to identify and model factors associated with medical doctors' county-level location decisions. Our goal is to determine whether public policy levers and private incentives exist which can be manipulated to increase the availability of doctors in rural areas. After...

In the empirical literature on minimum wage enforcement, the standard approach is to measure the number of violations, not their depth. In this paper we present a family of violation indices which, by analogy with poverty indices, can emphasize the depth of violation to different degrees. The...

The objective of this paper is to examine the impacts of decreases in student numbers on the cost of education in Indiana. The reasons why decreases in student numbers might affect educational costs are examined. School corporations where student numbers have decreased most rapidly between the...

In this paper, a conceptual framework is developed representing the dynamic optimization problem for maximizing educational quality subject to a limited amount of available funds. We then examine how the quality of education offered by a school system and the cost of producing education might be...

Minimum wage legislation is central in South African policy discourse, with both strong support and strong opposition. The validity of either position depends, however, on the effectiveness of minimum wage enforcement. Using detailed matching of occupational, sectoral and locational codes in the...

This paper investigates the determinants of non-compliance or violation of minimum wage legislation in South Africa, a country where violation is high, at just under 50 percent. The number of labour inspectors per capita is used as a proxy for enforcement, whilst non-compliance is measured using...

The incidence of diseases and accidents that lead to death is not uniform throughout the U.S. but rather varies widely among different regions. This study uses county-level data on numbers and causes of death for the entire U.S. in an effort to link these causes of death to various county-level...

This study examines the impacts of socioeconomic characteristics of a region on the availability of resources for public elementary and secondary education. A public school administrator is assumed to be confronted with a problem analogous to that confronted by any other firm manager. An...