Robert Topel
Biographic Data
| ID | 1177899 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Topel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Topel |
| SIGNATURE | TOPEL R |
| AFFILIATIONS | National Bureau of Economic Research |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 273 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Health Economics: A Selective Historical Review for the 125th Anniversary of the Journal of Political Economy
Reforming the Welfare State: Recovery and Beyond in Sweden
Over the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous social programs and the economic equality they fostered became an example for other countries to emulate. Of late, Sweden has also been much discussed as a model of how to deal with financial and economic crisis, due to the country's recovery from a mid-…
The Value of Health and Longevity
We develop a framework for valuing improvements in health and apply it to past and prospective reductions in mortality in the United States. We calculate social values of (i) increased longevity over the twentieth century, (ii) progress against various diseases after 1970, and (iii) potential future progress against major diseases. Cumulative gains in life expectancy after 1900 were worth over $1.2 million to the representative American in 2000, …
Entry, Pricing, and Product Design in an Initially Monopolized Market
drafts. We also thank Walter Oi, our discussant, and other participants in a conference held in May 2001 at the University of Chicago to honor the memory of Sherwin Rosen. The authors gratefully acknowledge Microsoft Corporation for research support. The authors may be contacted by the following means. Steven
Labor Statistics Measurement Issues
Rapidly changing technology, the globalization of markets, and the declining role of unions are just some of the factors that have led to dramatic changes in working conditions in the United States. Little attention has been paid to the difficult measurement problems underlying analysis of the labor market. Labor Statistics Measurement Issues helps to fill this gap by exploring key theoretical and practical issues in the measurement of employment…
The Welfare State in Transition: Reforming the Swedish Model
Factor Proportions and Relative Wages: The Supply-Side Determinants of Wage Inequality
Supply-side factors may contribute to rising wage inequality. First, certain changes in the supply of skills allegedly exacerbate wage inequality. Women's increased labor force participation and increased immigration are the leading candidates; both allegedly reduce the wages of less-skilled men. However, immigration's impact on wage inequality has been minor and the effects of women's participation is inconclusive. Second, in evaluating the like…
Favoritism in Organizations
Objective measures of employee performance are rarely available. Instead, firms rely on subjective judgments by supervisors. Subjectivity opens the door to favoritism, where evaluators act on personal preferences toward subordinates to favor some employees over others. Firms must balance the costs of favoritism--arbitrary rewards and less productive job assignments--against supervisors' demands for authority over subordinates. The authors analyze…
Job Mobility and the Careers of Young Men
Using longitudinal data, we study the processes of job mobility and wage growth among young men. During the first ten years in the labor market, a typical worker will hold seven jobs, about two thirds of his career total. The evolution of wages plays a key role in this transition to stable employment: wage gains at job changes account for at least a third of early-career wage growth, and the wage is the key determinant of job changing decisions a…
Specific Capital, Mobility, and Wages: Wages Rise with Job Seniority
This paper uses longitudinal data to estimate a lower bound on the average return to job seniority among adjustment. The author finds that ten years of current job seniority raise the wage of the typical male worker in the United States by over 25 percent. This is an estimate of what the typical worker would lose if his job were to end exogenously. Overall, the evidence implies that accumulation of specific capital is an important ingredient of t…
Housing Investment in the United States
A supply-determined model of housing investment is estimated from quarterly data over the 1963-83 period. The model is built on dynamic marginal cost pricing considerations and allows short- and long-run supply elasticities to differ. These are estimated as 1.0 and 3.0, respectively, but most of the long-run response occurs within one year. Rapid adjustment speed and the sizable long-run elasticity of supply are important factors in understanding…
Local Labor Markets
This paper studies the processes of wage and employment dynamics within local labor markets. The theoretical context is a dynamic spatial equilibrium among locales that is supported by incentives to migrate to markets offering the greatest present value of future earnings. Thus costly migration arbitrages geographic wage differences. Using a time series of cross-sectional files from the Current Population Surveys of 1977-79, I find that wages are…
Estimation and Inference in Two-Step Econometric Models
A commonly used procedure in a wide class of empirical applications is to impute unobserved regressors, such as expectations, from an auxiliary econometric model. This two-step (T-S) procedure fails to account for the fact that imputed regressors are measured with sampling error, so hypothesis tests based on the estimated covariance matrix of the second-step estimator are biased, even in large samples. We present a simple yet general method of ca…
Unemployment Insurance: Survey and Extensions
employment, and they are generally viewed as programmes of social insurance wherein the costs of financing UI benefit payments are shared by all workers and firms in the covered (insured) sector. As is common in such situations, however, problems of moral hazard may arise: the frequency and severity of periods of unemployment are to an important degree products of the employment decisions of workers and firms, and these may be affected by the pro…
Specific Capital, Mobility, and Wages: Wages Rise with Job Seniority
This paper uses longitudinal data to estimate a lower bound on the average return to job seniority among adjustment. The author finds that ten years of current job seniority raise the wage of the typical male worker in the United States by over 25 percent. This is an estimate of what the typical worker would lose if his job were to end exogenously. Overall, the evidence implies that accumulation of specific capital is an important ingredient of t…
Local Labor Markets
This paper studies the processes of wage and employment dynamics within local labor markets. The theoretical context is a dynamic spatial equilibrium among locales that is supported by incentives to migrate to markets offering the greatest present value of future earnings. Thus costly migration arbitrages geographic wage differences. Using a time series of cross-sectional files from the Current Population Surveys of 1977-79, I find that wages are…
The Value of Health and Longevity
We develop a framework for valuing improvements in health and apply it to past and prospective reductions in mortality in the United States. We calculate social values of (i) increased longevity over the twentieth century, (ii) progress against various diseases after 1970, and (iii) potential future progress against major diseases. Cumulative gains in life expectancy after 1900 were worth over $1.2 million to the representative American in 2000, …
Favoritism in Organizations
Objective measures of employee performance are rarely available. Instead, firms rely on subjective judgments by supervisors. Subjectivity opens the door to favoritism, where evaluators act on personal preferences toward subordinates to favor some employees over others. Firms must balance the costs of favoritism--arbitrary rewards and less productive job assignments--against supervisors' demands for authority over subordinates. The authors analyze…
Housing Investment in the United States
A supply-determined model of housing investment is estimated from quarterly data over the 1963-83 period. The model is built on dynamic marginal cost pricing considerations and allows short- and long-run supply elasticities to differ. These are estimated as 1.0 and 3.0, respectively, but most of the long-run response occurs within one year. Rapid adjustment speed and the sizable long-run elasticity of supply are important factors in understanding…
Factor Proportions and Relative Wages: The Supply-Side Determinants of Wage Inequality
Supply-side factors may contribute to rising wage inequality. First, certain changes in the supply of skills allegedly exacerbate wage inequality. Women's increased labor force participation and increased immigration are the leading candidates; both allegedly reduce the wages of less-skilled men. However, immigration's impact on wage inequality has been minor and the effects of women's participation is inconclusive. Second, in evaluating the like…
Unemployment Insurance: Survey and Extensions
employment, and they are generally viewed as programmes of social insurance wherein the costs of financing UI benefit payments are shared by all workers and firms in the covered (insured) sector. As is common in such situations, however, problems of moral hazard may arise: the frequency and severity of periods of unemployment are to an important degree products of the employment decisions of workers and firms, and these may be affected by the pro…
Entry, Pricing, and Product Design in an Initially Monopolized Market
drafts. We also thank Walter Oi, our discussant, and other participants in a conference held in May 2001 at the University of Chicago to honor the memory of Sherwin Rosen. The authors gratefully acknowledge Microsoft Corporation for research support. The authors may be contacted by the following means. Steven
Unemployment Insurance: Survey and Extensions
employment, and they are generally viewed as programmes of social insurance wherein the costs of financing UI benefit payments are shared by all workers and firms in the covered (insured) sector. As is common in such situations, however, problems of moral hazard may arise: the frequency and severity of periods of unemployment are to an important degree products of the employment decisions of workers and firms, and these may be affected by the pro…
Estimation and Inference in Two-Step Econometric Models
A commonly used procedure in a wide class of empirical applications is to impute unobserved regressors, such as expectations, from an auxiliary econometric model. This two-step (T-S) procedure fails to account for the fact that imputed regressors are measured with sampling error, so hypothesis tests based on the estimated covariance matrix of the second-step estimator are biased, even in large samples. We present a simple yet general method of ca…
Local Labor Markets
This paper studies the processes of wage and employment dynamics within local labor markets. The theoretical context is a dynamic spatial equilibrium among locales that is supported by incentives to migrate to markets offering the greatest present value of future earnings. Thus costly migration arbitrages geographic wage differences. Using a time series of cross-sectional files from the Current Population Surveys of 1977-79, I find that wages are…
Housing Investment in the United States
A supply-determined model of housing investment is estimated from quarterly data over the 1963-83 period. The model is built on dynamic marginal cost pricing considerations and allows short- and long-run supply elasticities to differ. These are estimated as 1.0 and 3.0, respectively, but most of the long-run response occurs within one year. Rapid adjustment speed and the sizable long-run elasticity of supply are important factors in understanding…
Specific Capital, Mobility, and Wages: Wages Rise with Job Seniority
This paper uses longitudinal data to estimate a lower bound on the average return to job seniority among adjustment. The author finds that ten years of current job seniority raise the wage of the typical male worker in the United States by over 25 percent. This is an estimate of what the typical worker would lose if his job were to end exogenously. Overall, the evidence implies that accumulation of specific capital is an important ingredient of t…
Job Mobility and the Careers of Young Men
Using longitudinal data, we study the processes of job mobility and wage growth among young men. During the first ten years in the labor market, a typical worker will hold seven jobs, about two thirds of his career total. The evolution of wages plays a key role in this transition to stable employment: wage gains at job changes account for at least a third of early-career wage growth, and the wage is the key determinant of job changing decisions a…
Favoritism in Organizations
Objective measures of employee performance are rarely available. Instead, firms rely on subjective judgments by supervisors. Subjectivity opens the door to favoritism, where evaluators act on personal preferences toward subordinates to favor some employees over others. Firms must balance the costs of favoritism--arbitrary rewards and less productive job assignments--against supervisors' demands for authority over subordinates. The authors analyze…
The Welfare State in Transition: Reforming the Swedish Model
Factor Proportions and Relative Wages: The Supply-Side Determinants of Wage Inequality
Supply-side factors may contribute to rising wage inequality. First, certain changes in the supply of skills allegedly exacerbate wage inequality. Women's increased labor force participation and increased immigration are the leading candidates; both allegedly reduce the wages of less-skilled men. However, immigration's impact on wage inequality has been minor and the effects of women's participation is inconclusive. Second, in evaluating the like…
Labor Statistics Measurement Issues
Rapidly changing technology, the globalization of markets, and the declining role of unions are just some of the factors that have led to dramatic changes in working conditions in the United States. Little attention has been paid to the difficult measurement problems underlying analysis of the labor market. Labor Statistics Measurement Issues helps to fill this gap by exploring key theoretical and practical issues in the measurement of employment…
Entry, Pricing, and Product Design in an Initially Monopolized Market
drafts. We also thank Walter Oi, our discussant, and other participants in a conference held in May 2001 at the University of Chicago to honor the memory of Sherwin Rosen. The authors gratefully acknowledge Microsoft Corporation for research support. The authors may be contacted by the following means. Steven
The Value of Health and Longevity
We develop a framework for valuing improvements in health and apply it to past and prospective reductions in mortality in the United States. We calculate social values of (i) increased longevity over the twentieth century, (ii) progress against various diseases after 1970, and (iii) potential future progress against major diseases. Cumulative gains in life expectancy after 1900 were worth over $1.2 million to the representative American in 2000, …
Reforming the Welfare State: Recovery and Beyond in Sweden
Over the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous social programs and the economic equality they fostered became an example for other countries to emulate. Of late, Sweden has also been much discussed as a model of how to deal with financial and economic crisis, due to the country's recovery from a mid-…
Health Economics: A Selective Historical Review for the 125th Anniversary of the Journal of Political Economy
Economics (12 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality (5 works) · Labour economics (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Microeconomics (4 works) · Business (3 works) · Econometrics (3 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (3 works)