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Value --- Capitalism --- Law and economics

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We identify three separate stages in the post-World War II history of applied microeconomic research: A generally non-mathematical period; a period of consensus (from the 1960s through the early 1990s) characterized by the use of mathematical models, optimization and equilibrium to generate and test hypotheses about economic behavior; and (from the late 1990s) a partial abandonment of economic theory in applied work in the "experimentalist paradigm." We document the changes implied by the changing paradigms in the profession by coding the content of all applied micro articles published in the "Top 5 journals" in 1951-55, 1974-75 and 2007-08. We also show that, despite the partial abandonment of theory by applied microeconomists, the labor market for economists still pays a wage premium to theorists.

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Sleep must be considered subject to choice and affected by the same economic variables that affect other uses of time. Using aggregated data for 12 countries, a cross-section of microeconomic data, and a panel of households, we demonstrate that increases in time spent in the labor market reduce sleep time. Each additional hour of market work reduces sleep by roughly 10 minutes (and waking nonmarket time by 50 minutes). The total time available for work and leisure is thus itself subject to choice. Interestingly too, otherwise identical women sleep significantly less than men (even though the average Woman sleeps slightly more). We develop a theory of the demand for sleep that differs from standard models by its assumption that sleep affects wages through its impact on labor-market productivity. Estimates of a system of demand equations demonstrate that higher wage rates reduce sleep time among men, an effect that is entirely offset by their positive effect on waking nonmarket time. Among Women the wage effect on waking nonmarket time is negative and small, but the effect on sleep is negative and quite large. These results, and the model they are based on, allow a more s subtle interpretation of standard results in the labor supply literature.

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We develop a theory of sorting across occupations based on looks and derive its implications for testing for the source of earnings differentials related to looks. These differentials are examined using the 1977 Quality of Employment, the 1971 Quality of American Life, and the 1981 Canadian Quality of Life surveys, all of which contain interviewers' ratings of the respondents' physical appearance. Holding constant demographic and labor-market characteristics, plain people earn less than people of average looks, who earn less than the good-looking. The penalty for plainness is 5 to 10 percent, slightly larger than the premium for beauty. The effects are slightly larger for men than women; but unattractive women are less likely than others to participate in the labor force and are more likely to be married to men with unexpectedly low human capital. Better-looking people sort into occupations where beauty is likely to be more productive; but the impact of individuals' looks on their earnings is mostly independent of occupation.