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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Emily Murphy ; Daniel Oesch |
| Abstract: | In the last four decades, women have made major inroads into occupations previously dominated by men. This paper examines whether occupational feminization is accompanied by a decline in wages: Do workers suffer a wage penalty if they remain in, or move into, feminizing occupations? We analzye this question over the 1990s and 2000s in Britain, Germany and Switzerland, using longitudinal panel data to estimate individual fixed effects for men and women. Moving from an entirely male to an entirely female occupation entails a loss in individual earnings of twelve percent in Britain, six percent in Switzerland and three percent in Germany. The impact of occupational feminization on wages is not linear, but sets apart occupations holding less than 50 percent of women from those with more than 60 percent of women. Only moving into the latter incurs a wage penalty. Contrary to the prevailing idea in economics, differences in productivity – human capital, job-specific skill requirements and time investment – do not fully explain the wage gap between male and female occupations. Moreover, the wage penalty associated with working in a female occupation is much larger where employer discretion is large -the private sector – than where wage setting is guided by formal rules – the public sector. These findings suggests that wage disparities across male and female occupations are due to gender devaluation. |
| Keywords: | occupations, gender, wages, discrimination, sex-segregation |
| JEL: | J16 J21 J23 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp731&r=lab |
| By: | Vallizadeh, Ehsan (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany] ); Muysken, Joan ; Ziesemer, Thomas |
| Abstract: | "We examine the effects of endogenous offshoring on cost-efficiency, wages and unemployment in a task-assignment model with skill heterogeneity. Exact conditions for the following insights are derived. The distributional effect of offshoring (high-) low-skill-intensive tasks is similar to (unskilled-) skill-biased technology changes, while offshoring medium-skillintensive tasks induces wage polarization. Offshoring improves cost-efficiency through international task reallocation and puts a downward pressure on all wages through domestic skill-task reallocation. If elasticities of task substitution are low (high), the downward pressure on wages in neighboring skill segments is low (high) with a net effect of higher (lower) wages and employment." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) |
| JEL: | F16 J21 J24 J64 |
| Date: | 2015–02–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabdpa:201507&r=lab |
| By: | Alan L. Gustman ; Thomas L. Steinmeier ; Nahid Tabatabai |
| Abstract: | This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study to examine retirement and related labor market outcomes for the Early Boomer cohort, those in their mid-fifties at the onset of the Great Recession. Outcomes are then compared with older cohorts at the same age. The Great Recession increased their probability of being laid off and the length of time it took to find other full-time employment. Differences in layoffs between those affected by the recession and members of older cohorts in turn accounted for almost the entire difference between cohorts in employment change with age. The Great Recession does not appear, however, to have depressed the wages in subsequent jobs for those who experienced a layoff. In 2010, 17 percent of the Early Boomers were Not Working and Not Retired or Partially Retired, and 6 percent were unemployed, leaving at least 9 percent who were not working and not unemployed but not retired or only partially retired. At the recession’s peak, half of those who experienced a layoff ended up in the Not Retired or Partially Retired, Not Working category. But only a quarter of those who declared themselves to be Not Retired or Partially Retired, and were Not Working, had experienced a layoff. Most of the jump in Not Retired or Partially Retired, Not Working appears to reflect a change in expectations about the potential or need for future work, a change that is not the result of an actual job loss. |
| JEL: | E24 E32 J11 J14 J21 J26 J4 J6 J63 J64 J82 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20960&r=lab |
| By: | Maurer-Fazio, Margaret (Bates College ); Connelly, Rachel (Bowdoin College ); Thi Tran, Ngoc-Han (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva ) |
| Abstract: | China's linguistic and geographic diversity leads many Chinese individuals to identify themselves and others not simply as Chinese, but rather by their native place and provincial origin. Negative personality traits are often attributed to people from specific areas. People from Henan, in particular, appear to be singled out as possessing a host of negative traits. Such prejudice does not necessarily lead to wage discrimination. Whether or not it does depends on the nature of the local labor markets. This chapter uses data from the 2008 and 2009 migrant surveys of the Rural-Urban Migration in China Project (RUMiC) to explore whether native-place wage discrimination affects migrant workers in China's urban labor markets. We analyze the question of wage discrimination among migrants by estimating wage equations for men and women, controlling for human capital characteristics, province of origin, and destination city. Of key interest here are the variables representing provinces of origin. We find no systemic differences by province of origin in the hourly wages of male and female migrants. However, in a few specific cases, we find that migrants from a particular province earn significantly less than those from local areas. Male migrants from Henan in Shanghai are paid much less than their fellow migrants from Anhui. In the Jiangsu cities of Nanjing and Wuxi, female migrants from nearby Anhui are paid much less than intra-provincial Jiangsu migrants. |
| Keywords: | migrants, discrimination, wages, China, stereotypes, native-place, labor markets |
| JEL: | J71 J23 J61 J31 O15 O53 P36 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8842&r=lab |
| By: | Lebon, Isabelle (University of Caen ); Rebiere, Therese (CNAM, Paris ) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies optimal taxation schemes for education in a search-matching model where the labor market is divided between a high-skill and a low-skill sector. Two public policy targets – maximizing the global employment level and optimizing the social surplus – are studied according to three different public taxation strategies. We calibrate our model using evidence from fourteen European countries, and compare our results with the target from the Europe 2020 Agenda for achievement in higher education. We show that, with current labor market characteristics, the target set by governments seems compatible with the social surplus maximization objective in some countries, while being too high for other countries. For all countries, maximizing employment would imply higher educational spending than that required for the social surplus to reach its maximum. |
| Keywords: | educational policy, job search, matching model, optimal taxation |
| JEL: | H21 H52 J21 J64 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8854&r=lab |
| By: | Harris, Matthew |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the relationship between individuals' weight and their employment decisions over the life cycle. I estimate a dynamic stochastic model of individuals' annual joint decisions of occupation, hours worked, and schooling. The model allows body weight to affect non-monetary costs, switching costs, and distribution of wages for each occupation; and also allows individuals' employment decisions to affect body weight. I use conditional density estimation to formulate the distributions of wages and body weight evolution. I find that heavier individuals face higher switching costs when transitioning into white collar occupations, earn lower returns to experience in white-collar occupations, and earn lower wages in socially intensive jobs. Simulating the model with estimated parameters, decreased occupational mobility accounts for 10 percent of the obesity wage gap. While contemporaneous wage penalties for body weight are small, the cost over the life cycle is substantial. An exogenous increase in initial body mass by 20 percent leads to a 10 percent decrease in wages over the life course. |
| Keywords: | Labor, occupational choice, obesity, dynamic discrete choice, productivity, switching costs |
| JEL: | D91 I14 J24 J3 J31 |
| Date: | 2015–01–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:61924&r=lab |
| By: | Michele Raitano (Sapienza University of Rome ); Francesco Vona (OFCE ) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the influence of parental education on the returns to experience of Italian men using a new longitudinal dataset that contains detailed information on individual working histories. Our favourite panel estimates indicate that an additional year of parental education increases sons' weekly wages by 11.7% after twenty years of experience and that 71% of this effect emerges during the career. We show that this effect holds irrespective of individual abilities, and it appears the result of both a glass ceiling effect, due to the complementarity between parental education and son’s abilities, and a parachute effect, associated with family labour market connections. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational inequality; parental education; experience -earnings profiles |
| JEL: | J62 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/1vv4tl36f973o2k8aljdj1kll&r=lab |
| By: | Javier Ortega ; Gregory Verdugo |
| Abstract: | Using a large administrative French panel data set for 1976-2007, we examine how low- educated immigration affects the wages, employment, occupations and locations of blue-collar native workers. The natives in the sample are initially in occupations heterogeneous in the presence of immigrants, which might reflect a different degree of competition with low-educated immigrants. We first show that larger immigration inflows into locations are accompanied by larger outflows of negatively selected natives from these locations. At the same time, larger immigrant inflows into occupations come with larger outflows of positively selected natives towards occupations with less routine tasks. While we find no negative impact on employment, there is substantial evidence that immigration lowers the median annual wages of natives. The estimated negative effects are also much larger in cross-section than in estimates controlling for composition effect, which is consistent with the idea that endogenous changes in occupation and location attenuate the impact of immigration on natives' wages. We also find much larger wage decreases for workers initially in non-tradable sectors and more particularly in the construction sector, which are much less likely to upgrade their occupation or change location in response to immigration inflows. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, wages, employment |
| JEL: | J15 J31 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1333&r=lab |
| By: | Robert E. Hall ; Sam Schulhofer-Wohl |
| Abstract: | Matching efficiency is the productivity of the process for matching jobseekers to available jobs. Job-finding is the output; vacant jobs and active jobseekers are the inputs. Measurement of matching efficiency follows the same principles as measuring a Hicks-neutral index of productivity of production. We develop a framework for measuring matching productivity when the population of jobseekers is heterogeneous. The efficiency index for each type of jobseeker is the monthly job-finding rate for the type adjusted for the overall tightness of the labor market. We find that overall matching efficiency declined over the period, at just below its earlier downward trend. We develop a new approach to measuring matching rates that avoids counting short-duration jobs as successes. And we show that the outward shift in the Beveridge curve in the post-crisis period is the result of pre-crisis trends, not a downward shift in matching efficiency attributable to the crisis. |
| JEL: | E24 J63 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20939&r=lab |
| By: | Meyer, Brent (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta ); Tasci, Murat (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland ) |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the ability of autoregressive models, professional forecasters, and models that leverage unemployment flows to forecast the unemployment rate. We pay particular attention to flows-based approaches—the more reduced form approach of Barnichon and Nekarda (2012) and the more structural method in Tasci (2012)—to generalize whether data on unemployment flows is useful in forecasting the unemployment rate. We find that any approach that leverages unemployment inflow and outflow rates performs well in the near term. Over longer forecast horizons, Tasci (2012) appears to be a useful framework, even though it was designed to be mainly a tool to uncover long-run labor market dynamics such as the “natural” rate. Its usefulness is amplified at specific points in the business cycle when unemployment rate is away from the longer-run natural rate. Judgmental forecasts from professional economists tend to be the single best predictor of future unemployment rates. However, combining those guesses with flows based approaches yields significant gains in forecasting accuracy. |
| Keywords: | Unemployment Forecasting; Natural Rate; Unemployment Flows; Labor Market Search |
| JEL: | C53 E24 E32 J64 |
| Date: | 2015–02–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwp:1502&r=lab |
| By: | Olga Alonso-Villar (Universidade de Vigo, Spain ); Coral del Rio (Universidade de Vigo, Spain and EQUALITAS ) |
| Abstract: | This paper seeks to investigate the occupational segregation of white women in the U.S. at the local labor market level, exploring whether the segregation of this group is a homogeneous phenomenon across the country or there are important disparities in the opportunities that these women meet with across American urban areas. An important contribution of this paper is that, apart from quantifying the extent of segregation it also assesses the consequences of that segregation taking into account the ''quality'' of occupations that the group tends to fill or not to fill. The analysis shows that between 20% and 40% of white women working in a metropolitan area would have to shift occupations to achieve zero segregation in that area. Differences regarding the nature of that segregation are even stronger. In some metropolitan areas, the uneven distribution of white women across occupations brings them a per capita monetary gain of about 21% of the average wage of the area while in other metropolitan areas this group has a per capita loss of nearly 11%. |
| Keywords: | Occupational segregation, well-being, metropolitan areas, race, gender, U.S. |
| JEL: | R23 J15 J16 J71 D63 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2015-352&r=lab |
| By: | Schreiber, Philipp ; Weber, Martin |
| Abstract: | When entering retirement most people face the decision whether they would like their defined contribution account balance paid as a lump sum or to annuitize the amount. The fact that people tend to choose the lump sum even if economic reasons suggest not to is called the annuity puzzle. In a large online survey, we find that people behave time inconsistent: older people have a stronger tendency to choose the lump sum than younger people. This effect is considerably stronger for participants that answer simple time preference questions inconsistently. Our findings suggest to think about precommitment devices for the annuitization decision. |
| Keywords: | annuities; annuity puzzle; behavioral finance; insurance; longevity risk; survey study |
| JEL: | D14 D91 G02 H55 J14 J26 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10383&r=lab |
| By: | Bishop, James |
| Abstract: | This paper is the first to combine data from large nationwide surveys to investigate how commuting and work hours affect sleep. I estimate that 11-21\% of the marginal unit of time spent working and 22-30\% of the marginal unit of time spent commuting replace sleep. Controlling for these effects, commuting before 5 a.m. and after 9 a.m. each increase the likelihood of short sleep. I also find that time spent commuting and working and the prevalence of these strange commute times each contribute to unintentionally falling asleep at some time during the day, while early commuting in particular increases the likelihood of falling asleep while driving. Little of these effects are explained by reduced time spent sleeping, indicating that there are multiple biological channels through which commuting duration and timing impact road safety. None of these effects appear for non-workers as opposed to the employed, supporting the validity of the results. Overall, most of the effects are stronger for women than for men, though the prevalence of early commutes is particularly associated with less sleep among men. |
| Keywords: | Commuting; Sleep; Time Allocation; Gender |
| JEL: | I15 J16 R41 |
| Date: | 2015–02–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:62162&r=lab |
| By: | Bauer, Jan M. (University of Hohenheim ); Sousa-Poza, Alfonso (University of Hohenheim ) |
| Abstract: | As the aging population increases, the demand for informal caregiving is becoming an ever more important concern for researchers and policy-makers alike. To shed light on the implications of informal caregiving, this paper reviews current research on its impact on three areas of caregivers' lives: employment, health, and family. Because the literature is inherently interdisciplinary, the research designs, sampling procedures, and statistical methods used are heterogeneous. Nevertheless, we are still able to draw several conclusions: first, despite the prevalence of informal caregiving and its primary association with lower levels of employment, the affected labor force is seemingly small. Second, such caregiving tends to lower the quality of the caregiver's psychological health, which also has a negative impact on physical health outcomes. Third, the implications for family life remain under investigated. The research findings also differ strongly among subgroups, although they do suggest that female, spousal, and intense caregivers tend to be the most affected by caregiving. |
| Keywords: | informal care, employment, work hours, health, review |
| JEL: | E26 J14 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8851&r=lab |
| By: | Hamermesh, Daniel S. (University of Texas at Austin, Royal Holloway ) |
| Abstract: | The previously documented trend toward more co- and multi-authored research in economics is partly (perhaps 20 percent) due to different research styles of scholars in different birth cohorts (of different ages). Most of the trend reflects profession-wide changes in research style. Older scholars show greater variation in their research styles than younger ones, who use similar numbers of co-authors in each published paper; but there are no differences across cohorts in scholars' willingness to work with different coauthors. There are only small gender differences in the impacts of age on numbers of coauthors, but substantial differences on choice of coauthors. |
| Keywords: | sociology of economics, bibliometrics, rewards in economics |
| JEL: | A11 J01 B31 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8828&r=lab |
| By: | Kai Yuan Kuan ; Mark R. Cullen ; Sepideh Modrek |
| Abstract: | The wealth gap has reached record highs. At the same time there has been substantial proliferation of 401(k) savings accounts as the dominant retirement savings vehicle, and these accounts make up an increasing proportion of overall wealth. In this paper we examine 401(k) saving behavior of continuously employed workers over an eight-year period at a single, geographically diverse employer. We demonstrate substantial difference in 401(k) savings behavior by employee ethnicity even within a single employer 401(k) plan architecture. We show both African American and Hispanic employees are less likely to participate in the 401(k) plans. Moreover, conditional on participation African Americans contribute a lower proportion of their income to their 401(k) plan on average. We also show that African Americans and Hispanics tend to draw down on their 401(k) balances more often. Finally, we document that both African Americans and Hispanics favor safer assets within their plan options. Together these differences substantially impact the level of 401(k) balances accumulated and therefore overall wealth accumulation. |
| JEL: | D14 D31 I31 J11 J32 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20937&r=lab |
| By: | Clarke, Andrew (University of Melbourne ); Isphording, Ingo E. (IZA ) |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of language deficiency on the health production of childhood migrants to Australia. Our identification strategy relies on a quasi-experiment comparing immigrants arriving at different ages and from different linguistic origins by utilising a measure of differences along a continuous range of linguistic distances. Our main results indicate a large negative effect of English deficiency on physical health that is robust to a range of different specifications. In the presence of considerable non-classical measurement error in self-reported language proficiency, our results provide lower and upper bounds for the true effect of English deficiency on health of one half and a full standard deviation in the health score respectively. The empirical analysis is framed in terms of a Grossman model which indicates a twofold role of language skills in health production: language deficiency directly affects the efficiency of health production and indirectly affects access to health inputs. We provide some suggestive evidence on the relative importance of these distinct roles. |
| Keywords: | international migration, language skills, health |
| JEL: | F22 I12 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8846&r=lab |
| By: | Monras, Joan (Sciences Po, Paris ) |
| Abstract: | Previous literature shows that internal migration rates are strongly procyclical. This would seem to imply that geographic relocation does not help mitigate negative local economic shocks during recessions. This paper shows that this is not the case. I document that net in-migration rates decreased in areas more affected by the Great Recession. Using various IV strategies that rely on the importance of the construction sector and the indebtedness of households before the crisis, I conclude that internal migration might help to alleviate up to one third of the effects of the crisis on wages in the most affected locations. This is due to a disproportionate decrease in in-migration into those locations rather than an increase in out-migration. More generally, I show that differences in population growth rates across locations are mainly explained by differences in in-migration rates rather than in out-migration rates. I introduce a model to guide the empirical analysis and to quantify the spill-over effects caused by internal migration. |
| Keywords: | internal migration, local labor demand shocks |
| JEL: | J61 J20 J30 F22 J43 R23 R58 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8840&r=lab |