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We reconsider the identification and estimation of Gorman‐Lancaster‐style hedonic models of demand for differentiated products in the spirit of Sherwin Rosen. We generalize Rosen’s first stage to account for product characteristics that are not observed and to allow the hedonic pricing function to have a general nonseparable form. We take an alternative semiparametric approach to Rosen’s second stage in which we assume that the parametric form of utility is known, but we place no restrictions on the aggregate distribution of utility parameters. If there are only a small number of products, we show how to construct bounds on individuals’ utility parameters, as well as other economic objects such as aggregate demand and consumer surplus. We apply our methods to estimating the demand for personal computers.

From his first publication to his last in 2001, Sherwin Rosen (1938-2001) published 80 journal articles and book chapters. In his collected scientific writings, they would cover 1750 pages. Although opinions differ, the papers have defined important research areas that drew wide attention. Rosen's contributions to the field of labor economics are discussed in detail.

The U.S. took in more than a million immigrants per year in the late 1990s, more than at any other time in history. For humanitarian and many other reasons, this may be good news. But as George Borjas shows inHeaven's Door, it's decidedly mixed news for the American economy--and positively bad news for the country's poorest citizens. Widely regarded as the country's leading immigration economist, Borjas presents the most comprehensive, accessible, and up-to-date account yet of the economic impact of recent immigration on America. He reveals that the benefits of immigration have been greatly exaggerated and that, if we allow immigration to continue unabated and unmodified, we are supporting an astonishing transfer of wealth from the poorest people in the country, who are disproportionately minorities, to the richest. In the course of the book, Borjas carefully analyzes immigrants' skills, national origins, welfare use, economic mobility, and impact on the labor market, and he makes groundbreaking use of new data to trace current trends in ethnic segregation. He also evaluates the implications of the evidence for the type of immigration policy the that U.S. should pursue. Some of his findings are dramatic: Despite estimates that range into hundreds of billions of dollars, net annual gains from immigration are only about $8 billion. In dragging down wages, immigration currently shifts about $160 billion per year from workers to employers and users of immigrants' services. Immigrants today are less skilled than their predecessors, more likely to re-quire public assistance, and far more likely to have children who remain in poor, segregated communities. Borjas considers the moral arguments against restricting immigration and writes eloquently about his own past as an immigrant from Cuba. But he concludes that in the current economic climate--which is less conducive to mass immigration of unskilled labor than past eras--it would be fair and wise to return immigration to the levels of the 1970s (roughly 500,000 per year) and institute policies to favor more skilled immigrants.

Every so often a news story comes along whose main function appears to be to elicit a collective gasp of surprise. Into this category fall skyscrapers that melt cars, anything to do with mating pandas, and footballers' transfer prices. Which must make this week's closure of the transfer window gasp-central. Marouane Fellaini (and his highly promising hair) off to Old Trafford for pounds 27.5m! Mesut Ozil moving to the Emirates for pounds 42m! And, most of all, Gareth Bale relocating to Real Madrid for euros 100m, or around pounds 86m. When it comes to the 24-year-old former Spurs winger, the superlative sums just flow: pay of pounds 256,000 a week and the likely prospect of pounds 40m in sponsorship deals.

''The real test of whether you make a big contribution in economics is how much you affect the research in the field,'' said Gary S. Becker, the Nobel economist at the University of Chicago who was a longtime friend and colleague of Professor Rosen. ''And on that one, there is no question he affected the research of quite a few people.'' Professor Becker said that Professor Rosen also did groundbreaking work in the late 1960's by using statistics to show that physically risky occupations rewarded workers with premium wages. Professor Rosen was born in Chicago. He graduated from Purdue University in 1960 with a Bachelor of Science. He subsequently studied economics at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate in 1966.

\"He made clear, for instance, that the very large salaries that star athletes are able to make are not capricious acts of society, but rather something that is a predictable outcome of [economic] forces,\" said Ed Lazear, an economics professor at Stanford University who worked with Mr. Rosen at the U. of C. Graduate School of Business.

`AT LEAST YOU SPELLED MY NAME RIGHT,\" SHERWIN ROSEN WROTE ME, MOCK- CRANKY, AFTER I DESCRIBED HIM A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO AS \"THE LAST CHICAGOAN.\" IT WAS CLEAR THAT HE WAS SECRETLY PLEASED. \"BY THE WAY, WHAT I'M `BEST-KNOWN' FOR IN PROFESSIONAL CIRCLES IS RATHER DIFFERENT THAN THE ONE PIECE I WROTE ABOUT POP CULTURE THAT SOME PEOPLE TALK ABOUT IN THE NEWSPAPERS.\" Last month I remembered the note - at his memorial service, of all places. Earlier this year, on St. Valentine's Day in fact, Rosen was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died five weeks later, at the age of 62. He had been serving as president of the American Economic Association. The answer, Rosen argued, had to to with the premium that accrued to those who became known as \"the best.\" The size of the reward depended on the extent of the market, and the market for the \"best tenor\" could be quite large - worldwide, in fact, thanks to changing technology. The recognition of such \"winner-take-all\" markets has become quite widespread, thanks partly to \"The Winner-Take-All Society,\" a 1995 book by Robert Frank and Philip Cook - and, of course, to regular magazine surveys of the best-paid corporate executives, engineers, and sports stars. But 20 years ago, the phenomenon was so little-noted that Rosen felt compelled to begin by noting that his topic was something other than conventional inflation.

[THE INCOME GAP RIDDLE Analysts find no easy explanations; TODAY'S KEY POINTS U.S. business productivity rose more than 90% between 1950 and 1973 and so did middle-class income. In the same length of time since '73, productivity has grown by less than a third, and most income gains have gone to the well-off. Demographic and social changes figure importantly in who wins and loses in today's economy. The increase in families headed by a single woman has bolstered the low end of the income scale. The high end, meanwhile, has grown in part because the wives of well-paid men are increasingly likely to work, and to be paid well themselves. Some of the growth in wage inequality stems from temporary not permanent changes in earnings. But the biggest increases in earnings volatility have occurred among less-educated, lower-income workers those least equipped to ride out an economic storm. Individuals increasingly bear the risks of economic ups and downs that formerly were borne by corporations. While many believe economic globalization has sent U.S. jobs to low-wage nations, it may be a small factor in the widening gap between haves and have-nots. Pay inequality has risen in industries largely immune to international competition, and the vast majority of U.S. trade is with nations whose wage scales mirror our own. Computers and other technological changes have made higher-skilled workers increasingly valuable. In the late '70s, male college graduates averaged a third more pay than their high school counterparts. By 1990, the difference was 60%. One study found that workers who use computers make 10% to 15% more than those who don't. Yet the computer revolution hasn't provided much boost to U.S. productivity a continuing puzzle. Series: Middle Class Lost: America Pulling Apart \\ Second of four parts] [THE INCOME GAP RIDDLE Analysts find no easy explanations; TODAY'S KEY POINTS U.S. business productivity rose more than 90% between 1950 and 1973 and so did middle-class income. In the same length of time since '73, productivity has grown by less than a third, and most income gains have gone to the well-off. Demographic and social changes figure importantly in who wins and loses in today's economy. The increase in families headed by a single woman has bolstered the low end of the income scale. The high end, meanwhile, has grown in part because the wives of well-paid men are increasingly likely to work, and to be paid well themselves. Some of the growth in wage inequality stems from temporary not permanent changes in earnings. But the biggest increases in earnings volatility have occurred among less-educated, lower-income workers those least equipped to ride out an economic storm. Individuals increasingly bear the risks of economic ups and downs that formerly were borne by corporations. While many believe economic globalization has sent U.S. jobs to low-wage nations, it may be a small factor in the widening gap between haves and have-nots. Pay inequality has risen in industries largely immune to international competition, and the vast majority of U.S. trade is with nations whose wage scales mirror our own. Computers and other technological changes have made higher-skilled workers increasingly valuable. In the late '70s, male college graduates averaged a third more pay than their high school counterparts. By 1990, the difference was 60%. One study found that workers who use computers make 10% to 15% more than those who don't. Yet the computer revolution hasn't provided much boost to U.S. productivity a continuing puzzle. Series: Middle Class Lost: America Pulling Apart \\ Second of four parts]

Thirteen years ago, when Andrei Shleifer was a 25-year-old assistant professor fresh out of graduate school, a postcard arrived one winter morning in his mail in Princeton. Last week Shleifer found himself in the news when, as expected, he won the John Bates Clark Medal, which is awarded every two years to the most distinguished US economist under 40. Shleifer is 39. He thus joined a long list of stars who have won the prize in the past quarter century: Kevin M. Murphy, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business; David Card, University of California at Berkeley; Lawrence Summers, US Treasury Department; Paul Krugman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; David Kreps, Stanford Graduate School of Business; Sanford Grossman, Wharton School of the University of Pennyslvania; Jerry Hausman, MIT; James Heckman, University of Chicago; Michael Spence, Stanford Graduate School of Business; Joseph Stiglitz, World Bank; and Martin Feldstein, Harvard University.