Andrew Bibler

An increase of $1,000 in the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) affects women in the labor market differently than men, with women working fewer hours and men having increased employment opportunities in the three months after the PFD is distributed. The differing responses, however, nearly balance each other out with a relatively small decline in the number of hours worked on an annual basis, according to a new paper by ISER’s Andrew Bibler, Mouhcine Guettabi, and Matthew Reimer. 

Mouhcine Guettabi and Andrew Bibler, both assistant professors of economics at ISER, recently compared the paychecks of people in private and public sector jobs in Alaska. Using Alaska Department of Labor data from 2001 through 2016, they found:

• Average earnings are higher in the private than the public sector. That's because men earn more than women, and men make up a bigger share of private workers—55%, compared with 43% in the public sector.

• Men who work for state and local governments earn on average about $2,000 less per quarter than men working for private businesses. The reason why is that overall, men who take public-sector jobs start out at considerably lower wages—and their wages don't catch up over time, even though they increase somewhat faster than private wages.

• Women working for state and local governments earn on average about $500 more per quarter than women in private-industry jobs. That's because overall, the starting salaries for women in public and private jobs are similar, and salaries for women in public-sector jobs grow faster as they spend time in their jobs.

Download Public and Private Sector Earnings in Alaska, prepared for the Alaska Department of Administration, by Mouhcine Guettabi and Andrew Bibler. If you have questions, get in touch with Mouhcine Guettabi at mguettabi@alaska.edu or 907-786-5496 or Andrew Bibler at ajbibler@alaska.edu or 907-786-5452.

ISER is pleased to announce that Andrew Bibler is a new assistant professor and in UAA’s Economics Department. His research interests include the economics of education, especially nonstandard approaches to education. He is also interested in labor economics, public economics and applied econometrics.

He is currently working on a project that analyzes the impact of dual language programs on student achievement. The multiyear project has been tracking students from kindergarten to ninth grade in dual language programs and comparing their progress with students enrolled in single language schools.

Other projects are Household Composition and Gender Differences in Parental Time Investments and a coauthored paper, Precision for Policy: Calculating Standard Errors in Value Added Models.

He will begin teaching in the economics department in the spring semester. He’s taught previously at Michigan State University and Ohio University. He will receive his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in December. He holds an M.A. in economics from Ohio University and a B.S. in economics from Brigham Young University.

His office is located in the ISER offices at the Bragaw Building, #311. He can be reached at 786-5452, ajbibler@alaska.edu.

ISER has hired two new assistant professors of economics, Andrew Bibler and Kevin Berry. Andrew Bibler will receive a Ph.D. in economics from Michigan State University this spring, and will start work at ISER in August 2016. He has a strong background in applied econometrics, program evaluation, and education policy. Kevin Berry holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wyoming. He will arrive at ISER in January 2017, bringing experience in bioeconomic modeling and dynamic systems.

Resumes: Andrew Bibler (PDF, 135KB) • Kevin Berry (PDF, 127KB)