RECRUITING GOALS, REGIME SHIFTS, AND THE SUPPLY OF LABOR TO THE ARMY

This paper extends the existing literature on military-labor supply in three ways. First. using Current Population Survey (CPS) data, it dev elops a more accurate estimate of the alternative wage faced by young men. Second, it endogenizes the high-quality goal faced by recruiters. As the United States Army Recruiting Command became increasingly bett er at setting this goal during the 1980's, the assumption that the goa l was exogenous to the recruiting process became increasingly suspect. This paper presents evidence that the goal is indeed endogenous. Fina lly, it presents estimates based on a switching simultaneous-equations statistical specfication that allows behavior to vary across recruiti ng environments to reflect the asymmetric incentives faced by recruite rs. The findings show that the estimates of the parameters with the gr eatest policy content are sensitive to each of these specification iss ues.