#2008-040B "Are Children 'Normal'?"
by Dan Black, Natalia Kolesnikova, Seth G. Sanders, and Lowell J. Taylor
October 2008
Revised November 2008

In his classic work on the economics of fertility, Becker (1960) suggests that children are likely “normal.” We examine this contention. More...

#2008-016A "Local Price Variation and Labor Supply Behavior"
by Dan Black, Natalia Kolesnikova, and Lowell J. Taylor
June 2008

In standard economic theory, labor supply decisions depend on the complete set of prices: the wage and the prices of relevant consumption goods. Nonetheless, most of theoretical and empirical work ignores prices other than wages when studying labor supply. The question we address in this paper is whether the common practice of ignoring local price variation in labor supply studies is as innocuous as has generally been assumed. More...

PUBLISHED: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Regional Economic Development, October 2008, 4(1), pp. 2-14

#2007-043D "Why Do So Few Women Work in New York (and So Many in Minneapolis)? Labor Supply of Married Women Across U.S. Cities"
by Dan Black, Natalia Kolesnikova, and Lowell J. Taylor
October 2007
Revised October 2008

This paper documents a little-noticed features of U.S. labor markets – that there is very large variation in the labor market participation rates and annual work hours of married women across cities. We focus on cross-city differences in commuting times as a potential explanation for this variation in women's labor supply. More...

#2007-031B "Earnings Functions When Wages and Prices Vary by Location"
by Dan Black, Natalia Kolesnikova, and Lowell J. Taylor
August 2007
Revised July 2008

Economists generally assume, implicitly, that “the return to schooling" is invariant across local labor markets. We demonstrate that this outcome pertains if and only if preferences are homothetic--a special case that seems unlikely. More...

FORTHCOMING: Journal of Labor Economics