Bryan
I am astounded that you would rate Card/Krueger's papers as high quality
work. If any one of us had submitted a paper to the AER (or other top
journal) where the relevant unregulated margins that Peter spoke of were not
properly controlled and where sloppy data collection over the telephone
occurred, the paper would be rejected out of hand. Natural experiment
approaches are an unoriginal way of dealing with ceteris paribus conditions
and the art of economics arises from the way economists have dealt with those
conditions in their empirical studies. Furthermore, their approach to theory
is treated in the next to last chapter in the book and while they use the
monopsonistic model, they do not develop the theory very well (there are many
problems with the monopsonistic model, none of which are elucidated in their
exposition).
George Berger
Economics Department
University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown
