The Effect of Salaries and Opportunity Costs on Duration in Teaching: Evidence from Michigan

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that salaries and opportunity costs have important influences on how long teachers stay in teaching. The empirical work is based on a new longitudinal dataset providing information on the careers of 7800 Michigan public school teachers. The generalized least squares estimation technique accommodates censored observations, time-varying covariates, and fixed effects. One implication of the result is that predictions from the current generation of teacher supply and demand models are likely to be misleading. Copyright 1989 by MIT Press.