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Author: Leighton, Linda S.
Resulting in 6 citations.
1. Evans, David S.
Leighton, Linda S.
Some Empirical Aspects of Entrepreneurship
American Economic Review 79,3 (June 1989): 519-535.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1806861
Cohort(s): Young Men
Publisher: American Economic Association
Keyword(s): Assets; Census of Population; Educational Returns; Internal-External Attitude; Life Cycle Research; Locus of Control (see Rotter Scale); Mobility, Job; Rotter Scale (see Locus of Control); Self-Employed Workers; Work Histories

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Using data on full-time self-employed workers from the NLS of Young Men, coupled with CPS data, this report examines self-employment entry and exit over the life cycle and focuses on the relative returns to business and wage experience and education of self-employment vs wage work. Key findings include: (1) The probability of switching into self-employment is roughly independent of age and total labor-market experience. This result is not consistent with standard job-shopping models such as William Johnson (1978) and Robert Miller (1984) which predict that younger workers will try riskier occupations first. (2) The probability of departing from self-employment decreases with duration of self-employment, falling from about 10 percent in the early years to 0 by the eleventh year in self-employment. About half of the entrants return to wage work within seven years. (3) The fraction of the labor force that is self-employed increases with age until the early 40s and then remains constant within the retirement years. (4) Men with greater assets are more likely to switch into self-employment all else equal. (5) Wage experience has a much smaller return in self-employment than in wage work while business experience has just about the same return in wage work as in self-employment. (6) Poorer wage workers - that is, unemployed workers, lower-paid wage workers, and men who have changed jobs a lot - are more likely to enter self-employment or to be self-employed at a point in time, all else equal. (7) As predicted by one of the leading psychological theories, men who believe their performance depends largely on their own actions - that is, have an internal locus of control as measured by a test known as the Rotter Scale - have a greater propensity to start businesses.
Bibliography Citation
Evans, David S. and Linda S. Leighton. "Some Empirical Aspects of Entrepreneurship." American Economic Review 79,3 (June 1989): 519-535.
2. Evans, David S.
Leighton, Linda S.
Why Do Smaller Firms Pay Less?
Journal of Human Resources 24,2 (Spring 1989): 299-318.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/145858
Cohort(s): Young Men
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Keyword(s): Current Population Survey (CPS) / CPS-Fertility Supplement; Education; Firm Size; Firms; Heterogeneity; Job Tenure; Job Turnover; Wages

This paper uses data from the NLS of Young Men and the Current Population Survey for 1983 to examine the relationships among wages, firm size, and plant size. Results indicate that: (1) plant size has little independent effect on wages once the firm size of firms with fewer than 1,000 employees is controlled for; (2) evidence of sorting on observed and unobserved ability characteristics across firm sizes was found. Better educated and more stable workers are in larger firms; and (3) results from a first-difference estimator indicate that about 60 percent of the wage-size effect is due to unobserved heterogeneity when all firms are considered and about 100 percent when firms with 25 or more employees are considered.
Bibliography Citation
Evans, David S. and Linda S. Leighton. "Why Do Smaller Firms Pay Less?" Journal of Human Resources 24,2 (Spring 1989): 299-318.
3. Leighton, Linda S.
Structure and Determinants of Youth Unemployment: An Empirical Analysis of Black-White, Male-Female Differences
Final Report, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, 1980
Cohort(s): Young Men, Young Women
Publisher: U.S. Department of Labor
Keyword(s): Mobility; Mobility, Job; Teenagers; Unemployment

This research examines the structure and determinants of unemployment among young men and women. The NLS of Young Women and Men from l968 through l97l are utilized. Respondents included blacks and whites between the ages of 16 and 24. The unemployment rate over a period of time is decomposed into incidence, duration, and non- participation. To gauge which component of the rate is primarily responsible for group differences, percent differentials in the rate and its components are calculated for selected population groups. In general, higher unemployment wages are attributable to higher employment probabilities, but non-participation is also important in creating group differences, especially in male-female comparisons among blacks. With few exceptions, duration works to narrow the sex differential, and does not contribute significantly to the racial difference. Since unemployment incidence is primarily responsible for group differences, the analysis focuses on labor mobility.
Bibliography Citation
Leighton, Linda S. "Structure and Determinants of Youth Unemployment: An Empirical Analysis of Black-White, Male-Female Differences." Final Report, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, 1980.
4. Leighton, Linda S.
Unemployment over the Work History: Structure, Determinants, and Consequences
Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1978
Cohort(s): Older Men, Young Men
Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning
Keyword(s): Job Turnover; Unemployment; Unemployment Compensation; Unemployment Duration

This dissertation investigates differential patterns of unemployment over the work history. Particular attention is paid to the role of traditional human capital variables in reducing employment instability. Comparisons are made for four race age groups among male labor force participants. This research extends previous studies of differential unemployment in four important ways: (1) the unemployment rate is segmented into its underlying components: incidence, average duration per spell, and number of spells; (2) unemployment is studied over progressively wider time spans, thus reducing the selectivity bias inherent in short period analyses; (3) the relationship between turnover and unemployment is examined; (4) detailed information on the reason for unemployment is utilized. The unemployment rate for job holders is separated first into a quit and a layoff related unemployment rate, and then each is segmented further into a turnover rate, a conditional probability of unemployment, and an associated duration of unemployment. Estimates of these basic measures are calculated for each demographic group and examined by skill levels for at least two periods. Three general observations emerged for all groups: (1) a high proportion of quitters became unemployed; (2) layoff did not necessarily imply unemployment; (3) job change did not mean unemployment nor was unemployment synonymous with job change. For white youths, the immediate effect of an incidence of unemployment was to reduce wage growth. In contrast, unemployment had no adverse consequences on the wage gains of black youth, suggesting little on the job investment. For workers approaching retirement, unemployment also had minimal impact on relative wage growth.
Bibliography Citation
Leighton, Linda S. Unemployment over the Work History: Structure, Determinants, and Consequences. Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1978.
5. Leighton, Linda S.
Mincer, Jacob
Effects of Minimum Wages on Human Capital Formation
In: Economics of Legal Minimum Wages. S. Rattenberg, ed. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1981
Cohort(s): Young Men
Publisher: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Keyword(s): Human Capital Theory; Income Dynamics/Shocks; Job Tenure; Job Training; Job Turnover; Minimum Wage; Schooling; Vocational Education

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The hypothesis that minimum wages tend to discourage on-the-job training is largely supported by our empirical analysis. Direct effects on reported job training and corollary effects on wage growth as estimated in microdata of the NLS of Young Men and Michigan Income Dynamics (MID) are consistently negative and stronger at lower education levels. Apart from a single exception, no effects are observable among the higher wage group whose education exceeds high school. The effects on job turnover are: a decrease in turnover among young NLS whites, but an increase among young NLS blacks and MID whites. Whether these apparently conflicting findings on turnover reflect a distinction between short and long run adjustments in jobs is a question that requires further testing.
Bibliography Citation
Leighton, Linda S. and Jacob Mincer. "Effects of Minimum Wages on Human Capital Formation" In: Economics of Legal Minimum Wages. S. Rattenberg, ed. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1981
6. Leighton, Linda S.
Mincer, Jacob
Labor Turnover and Youth Unemployment
In: The Youth Labor Market Problem: its Nature, Causes, and Consequences. RB Freeman, et al., eds. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982
Cohort(s): Older Men, Young Men
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Keyword(s): Behavior; Black Youth; Human Capital Theory; Labor Turnover; Learning Hypothesis; Modeling; Racial Differences; Unemployment Rate; Unemployment, Youth

Public concern about youth employment problems in the U.S. derives from three facts: (1) the unemployment rate of young people is high in absolute numbers, in relation to adult unemployment, and in comparision with other countries; (2) unemployment rates of black youths are much higher; (3) youth unemployment rates have increased in recent years. Data from the two panels of men in the NLS and Michigan Income dynamics are used in several analyses that attempt to illustrate the structure of unemployment and to address the more permanent problem of high youth unemployment. Why is it so high? Are there criteria by which we can judge that it is too high? Why does it decline with age in a particular fashion? Models used suggest that the search for a determination of the operative mechanism in the human capital theory may not be the appropriate focus. The theory's primary insight relating to turnover is the importance of specific as opposed to general learning. This distinction plays a pivotal role in pure sorting and adaptive behavior models as well as in analyses of actual training processes.
Bibliography Citation
Leighton, Linda S. and Jacob Mincer. "Labor Turnover and Youth Unemployment" In: The Youth Labor Market Problem: its Nature, Causes, and Consequences. RB Freeman, et al., eds. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982