Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider how the level and structure of teacher salaries affect student outcomes and the possibility of improving student achievement in the USA. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis integrates an underlying economic model of the role of salaries in the teacher labor market with existing empirical results. Findings – Much of the current policy dis...

Estimating the salaries of professional athletes has received a substantial amount of attention both in the press and in academic journals. A statistical technique that can be used to obtain an estimate of a player’s salary with a given set of performance characteristics is the classical least squares regression analysis. This technique does not work well, however, if the data upon which the mo...

When teacher salaries are discussed, two very different pictures often emerge. The first of these portrays teachers as underpaid, overworked servants of the public good. The second paints a picture of an overpaid group of civil servants who spend very little time actually working. As we might expect, reality is somewhere between these two extremes. This report looks at Michigan teacher salaries...

Before July 2009, salaries of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were paid by their home country, and there were substantial salary differences between MEPs representing different countries. Starting in July 2009, salaries are pegged to 38.5% of a European Court judge’s salary, paid by the European Union. This created an exogenous change in salaries, the magnitude and direction of wh...

This paper provides evidence of a correlation between licensing exam di¢ culty and salaries in a regulated profession. Exam di¢ culty is positively correlated with salaries across states and over time, both at the aggregate and individual state levels. The magnitude of this correlation is substantial: a one percent increase in exam di¢ culty implies a 1.7 percent increase in median entry-level ...