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Author: Todd, Petra E.
Resulting in 4 citations.
1. Stern, Steven
Todd, Petra E.
Test of Lazear's Mandatory Retirement Model
In: Worker Well-Being, Research in Labor Economics, Volume 19. S.W. Polachek, ed. New York, NY: JAI Press, 2000: pp. 253-273
Cohort(s): Older Men
Publisher: JAI Press, Inc.
Keyword(s): Modeling, Mixed Effects; Retirement/Retirement Planning

Discusses several testable implications of Lazear's (1979) model of mandatory retirement and assesses whether they are consistent with data from a national survey. Two hypotheses are tested, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Men (NLS): mandatory retirement programs should include pension programs as part of the plan and they should be efficient; and workers subject to mandatory retirement should be no more likely to retire early than workers not subject to mandatory retirement. The NLS data set contains observations on 5,020 men aged 45-59 in 1966, who were followed from 1966 until 1983 with interviews conducted approximately every other year. Empirical evidence on the first hypothesis indicates a high positive correlation between the existence of pension plans and mandatory retirement programs, possibly lending support to this prediction of Lazear's model. However, data limitations precluded determining whether existing pension programs were efficient. In examining the second hypothesis, an econometric model for retirement behavior was estimated and used to contrast results for workers who were and were not subject to mandatory retirement programs. Results indicate that workers subject to mandatory retirement are more likely to retire early than those who are not, even at ages well before the mandatory retirement age. This evidence rejects an important prediction of Lazear's model and suggests that it does not capture the whole story in explaining the mandatory retirement phenomenon. (AR) (AgeLine Database, copyright 2002 AARP, all rights reserved)
Bibliography Citation
Stern, Steven and Petra E. Todd. "Test of Lazear's Mandatory Retirement Model" In: Worker Well-Being, Research in Labor Economics, Volume 19. S.W. Polachek, ed. New York, NY: JAI Press, 2000: pp. 253-273
2. Todd, Petra E.
The Production of Cognitive Achievement in Children: Home, School and Racial Test Score Gaps
Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, October 2005.
Also: http://ideas.repec.org/p/pen/papers/04-019.html
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Penn Institute for Economic Research (PIER)
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); Hispanics; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Maternal Employment; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Racial Differences; School Characteristics/Rating/Safety; Teachers/Faculty

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

This paper studies the determinants of children's scores on tests of cognitive achievement in math and reading. Using rich longitudinal data on test scores, home environments, and schools, we implement alternative specifications for the production function for achievement and test their assumptions. We do not find support for commonly used restrictive models that assume test scores depend only on contemporaneous inputs or that assume conditioning on a lagged score captures all the effects of past inputs. Instead, the results show that both contemporaneous and lagged inputs matter in the production of current achievement and that it is important to allow for unobserved child-specific endowment effects and endogeneity of inputs. Using a specification that incorporates these features, we study the sources of test score gaps between black, white and Hispanic children. The estimated model captures key patterns in the data, such as the widening of minority-white test score gaps with age and differences in the gap pattern between Hispanics and blacks and between boys and girls. We find that equalizing home inputs at the average levels of white children would close the black-white test score gap by about 25% and close the Hispanic-white gap by about 30%.
Bibliography Citation
Todd, Petra E. "The Production of Cognitive Achievement in Children: Home, School and Racial Test Score Gaps." Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, October 2005.
3. Todd, Petra E.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
The Production of Cognitive Achievement in Children: Home, School and Racial Test Score Gaps
Presented: Buffalo, NY, Human Capital Conference, 2006.
Also: http://athena.sas.upenn.edu/~petra/papers/revpaper.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); Hispanics; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Maternal Employment; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Racial Differences; School Characteristics/Rating/Safety; Teachers/Faculty

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

This paper studies the determinants of children's scores on tests of cognitive achievement in math and reading. Using rich longitudinal data on test scores, home environments, and schools, we implement alternative specifications for the cognitive achievement production function that allow achievement to depend on the entire history of lagged home and school inputs as well as on parents' ability and unobserved endowments. The empirical results show that both contemporaneous and lagged inputs matter in the production of current achievement and the importance of allowing for unobserved endowment effects. We use cross-validation methods to select among competing specifications and find support for a variant of a value-added model of the production function augmented to include information on lagged inputs. Using this specification, we study the sources of test score gaps between black, white and Hispanic children. The estimated model captures key patterns in the data, such as the widening of minority-white test score gaps with age and differences in the gap pattern between Hispanics and blacks. We find that differences in mother's ability (as measured by AFQT) accounts for about half of the test score gap. However, home inputs also account for a significant proportion. Equalizing home inputs at the average levels of white children would close the black-white and the Hispanic-white test score gaps in math and reading by about 10-20%.

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Columbia University and at the Institute for Research on Poverty conference in Madison, WI. An earlier version was presented at seminars at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Harris School of Public Policy (Chicago), UCLA, UCSD, Columbia University, University of Toulouse, University of Bergen, and a conference at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank.

Bibliography Citation
Todd, Petra E. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "The Production of Cognitive Achievement in Children: Home, School and Racial Test Score Gaps." Presented: Buffalo, NY, Human Capital Conference, 2006.
4. Todd, Petra E.
Wolpin, Kenneth I.
The Production of Cognitive Achievement in Children: Home, School, and Racial Test Score Gaps
Journal of Human Capital 1,1 (December 2007): 91-136.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1086/526401
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); Children; Cognitive Ability; Cognitive Development; Hispanics; Home Environment; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Racial Differences; School Characteristics/Rating/Safety; Teachers/Faculty; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT

This paper studies the determinants of children's scores on tests of cognitive achievement in math and reading. Using rich longitudinal data on test scores, home environments, and schools, we implement alternative specifications for the cognitive achievement production function that allow achievement to depend on the entire history of lagged home and school inputs as well as on parents' ability and unobserved endowments. We use cross-validation methods to select among competing specifications and find support for a variant of a value-added model of the production function augmented to include information on lagged inputs. Using this specification, we study the sources of test score gaps between black, white, and Hispanic children. The estimated model captures key patterns in the data, such as the widening of minority-white test score gaps with age and differences in the gap pattern between Hispanics and blacks. We find that differences in mother's "ability," as measured by AFQT, account for about half of the test score gap. Home inputs also account for a significant proportion. Equalizing home inputs at the average levels of white children would close the black-white and the Hispanic-white test score gaps in math and reading by about 10–20 percent.
Bibliography Citation
Todd, Petra E. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "The Production of Cognitive Achievement in Children: Home, School, and Racial Test Score Gaps." Journal of Human Capital 1,1 (December 2007): 91-136.