Abstract
This paper examines the influence of economic factors on re-enlistment decisions in the U.S. Navy. The effect of civilian wage opportunities on re-enlistment behavior is of particular interest.
The study employs a unique longitudinal data base to track the actual civilian employment experiences of Navy personnel who enlisted between 1973–77. The data base was created by merging the records of the Defense Military Data Center and the U.S. Social Security Administration.
This data base is used to estimate the opportunity costs of re-enlisting and these estimates are then used in the two-step regression procedure to predict re-enlistment behavior.
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