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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Fredriksson, Peter (IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation); Holmlund, Bertil (Uppsala University) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses crucial design features of unemployment insurance (UI) policies. We examine three different means of improving the efficiency of UI: the duration of benefit payments, monitoring in conjunction with sanctions, and workfare. To that end we develop a quantitative model of equilibrium unemployment. The model features worker heterogeneity in preferences for leisure. The numerical analysis suggests that a system with monitoring and sanctions restores search incentives most effectively, since it brings additional incentives to search actively so as to avoid the sanction. Therefore, the UI provider can offer a more generous UI replacement rate in a system with monitoring and sanctions than in the other two systems. Workfare appears to be inferior to the other two systems. |
| Keywords: | Unemployment insurance; search equilibrium; time limits; monitoring and sanctions; workfare |
| JEL: | J64 J68 |
| Date: | 2005–05–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2005_013&r=lab |
| By: | Andrew E. Clark (CNRS, PSE and IZA Bonn) |
| Abstract: | Job quality may usefully be thought of as depending on both job values (how much workers care about different job outcomes) and the job outcomes themselves. Here both crosssection and panel data are used to examine changes in job quality in OECD countries over the 1990s. Despite rising wages and falling hours, overall job satisfaction is either stable or declining. These movements are not due to changes in the type of workers, nor to changes in their job values. A number of pieces of evidence point to stress and hard work as being strong candidates for what has gone wrong with employees’ jobs. We find evidence of increasing inequality in a number of job outcomes. Some groups of workers have done better than others: the young and the higher-educated have been insulated against downward movements in job quality, and there is tentative evidence that trade unions may have protected their members against adverse job outcomes. |
| Keywords: | job values, job outcomes, job satisfaction, effort |
| JEL: | J28 J3 J81 |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1610&r=lab |
| By: | John Ekberg (SOFI, Stockholm University); Rickard Eriksson (SOFI, Stockholm University); Guido Friebel (University of Toulouse (EHESS and IDEI), CEPR and IZA Bonn) |
| Abstract: | Many countries are trying to incentivize fathers to increase their share in parental leave and in household work to improve female labor market opportunities. Our unique data set stems from a natural experiment in Sweden. The data comprises all children born before (control group) and after the reform (treatment group) in cohorts of up to 27,000 newborns, mothers and fathers. We find strong short term effects of incentives on male parental leave. However, we find no learning-by doing, or specialization, effects: fathers in the treatment group do not have larger shares in the leave taken for care of sick children, which is our measure for household work. |
| Keywords: | natural experiment, family benefits, gender and labor, incentives |
| JEL: | J48 J13 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1617&r=lab |
| By: | Gilles Saint-Paul (University of Toulouse 1, CEPR and IZA Bonn) |
| Abstract: | Trade liberalization is often met with sharp opposition. Recent examples include the so-called "Bolkestein" directive, which allows service providers from a given EU member to temporarily work in another member country. One way to view such a reform is that it simply widens the range of goods that are tradeable. This kind of reform is analyzed in a two-country Dornbusch-Fischer-Samuelson style model, where labor cannot relocate to another sector upon a non expected increase in the range of goods that can be traded. The effect of liberalization on the terms of trade tends to favor the poorer country (the "East"), if (as assumed) the most sophisticated goods are tradeable before reform. Second, under ex-post liberalization, there exists a class of workers in the West who are harmed because they face competition from Eastern workers and cannot relocate to other activities. But if the East's economy is relatively small, their wage losses are not very large. Things are different, however, if there exist asymmetries in labor market institutions, such that upon reform, labor can relocate in the East but not in the West. Some workers in the West can then experience very large wage losses. Thus, rigid labor markets in the West magnify opposition to reform there. |
| Keywords: | trade liberalization, European integration, Bolkestein directive, labor mobility, labor market institutions, comparative advantage, terms of trade |
| JEL: | F16 F11 F13 |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp1618&r=lab |
| By: | Anton Nivorozhkin (Goteberg University); Eugene Nivorozhkin (University of Groningen) |
| Abstract: | The study estimates the employment effect of vocational training programs for the unemployed in urban Russia. The results of propensity score matching indicate that training programs had a non-negative overall effect on the program participants relative to non-participants. |
| Keywords: | Unemployment, transition economies, active labour market programs, evaluation, propensity score |
| JEL: | J24 J64 J68 C14 |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upj:weupjo:05-115&r=lab |
| By: | Jason S. Seligman (University of Georgia) |
| Abstract: | Current debate on the Social Security Administrations long-term finance of benefits includes proposals for independent private investment via individual accounts. The author first investigates what implications disability might have for equity savings account balances. In light of results, incentives to exit the workforce ahead of retirement age are considered when a defined benefit program for disability insurance continues to be available. Included simulation uses historic wage series, equity market performance, and current OASDI regulations for cohorts retiring over the period of 1929 - 2003. |
| Keywords: | Seligman, SSA, individual, accounts |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upj:weupjo:05-116&r=lab |
| By: | Matthias Benz |
| Abstract: | It is typically assumed that people engage in entrepreneurship because there are profits to be made. In contrast to this view, this paper argues that entrepreneurship is more adequately characterized as a non-profit-seeking activity. Evidence from a broad range of authors and academic fields is discussed showing that entrepreneurship does quite generally not pay in monetary terms. Being an entrepreneur seems to be rather rewarding because it entails substantial non-monetary benefits, like greater autonomy, broader skill utilization, and the possibility to pursue one’s own ideas. It is shown how incorporating these non-monetary benefits into economic models of entrepreneurship can lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon. |
| Keywords: | entrepreneurship, self-employment, wage and return differentials, non-monetary work benefits, job satisfaction |
| JEL: | M13 J23 J31 J32 M54 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:iewwpx:243&r=lab |
| By: | Patricia Justino (Poverty Research Unit at Sussex, Department of Economics, University of Sussex) |
| Abstract: | This paper analysis the impact of collective action and political participation on the economic development of the south Indian state of Kerala over the last three decades. Despite its low economic basis, Kerala’s successive governments have implemented a large redistributive programme that resulted in impressive levels of social development. Kerala’s success has been largely attributed to the actions of organised collective movements, both in the formal and informal sectors, in the form of militant peasants associations and labour unions. Collective actions have, however, also contributed towards political instability, increase in the risk of investment and uncertainty in labour productivity. This paper examines the effects of collective actions on Kerala’s economic growth during the last three decades using time-series analysis techniques, considering in turn collective action and redistributive policies to be external and then endogenous variables to the process of economic growth in Kerala. The results show that while some forms of collective action can contribute towards the decrease of poverty and increase in state income, other forms harm economic growth. We compare these results with those obtained for a panel of 14 major Indian states. |
| Keywords: | Redistribution, industrial disputes, collective action, participation, social development, economic growth, Kerala, India |
| JEL: | O1 O5 |
| Date: | 2003–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pru:wpaper:19&r=lab |
| By: | Juan Antonio Lacomba (Department of Economic Theory and Economic History, University of Granada); Francisco Miguel Lagos (Department of Economic Theory and Economic History, University of Granada) |
| Abstract: | We use a lifecycle model in which individuals di ffer by age and by wage in order to analyze a pairwise majority voting process on the legal retirement age. We consider two di fferent retirement regimes. In the first one the retirees do not return to the labor market, regardless the new retirement age. In the second one, they have to return if this age is higher than her own age. We show that the final outcome of the voting process will crucially depend on the retirement regime as well as on the parameters of the Social Security, that is, the redistributive character of the system and the present legal retirement age. |
| Date: | 2005–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gra:wpaper:05/10&r=lab |