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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Altmann, Steffen; Falk, Armin; Jäger, Simon; Zimmermann, Florian |
| Abstract: | We conduct a large-scale field experiment in the German labor market to investigate how information provision affects job seekers’ employment prospects and labor market outcomes. Individuals assigned to the treatment group of our experiment received a brochure that informed them about job search strategies and the consequences of unemployment, and motivated them to actively look for new employment. We study the causal impact of the brochure by comparing labor market outcomes of treated and untreated job seekers in administrative data containing comprehensive information on individuals’ employment status and earnings. While our treatment yields overall positive effects, these tend to be concentrated among job seekers who are at risk of being unemployed for an extended period of time. Specifically, the treatment effects in our overall sample are moderately positive but mostly insignificant. At the same time, we do observe pronounced and statistically significant effects for individuals who exhibit an increased risk of long-term unemployment. For this group, the brochure increases employment and earnings in the year after the intervention by roughly 4%. Given the low cost of the intervention, our findings indicate that targeted information provision can be a highly effective policy tool in the labor market. |
| Keywords: | Field Experiment; Job Search; Unemployment |
| JEL: | D8 J64 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10621&r=lab |
| By: | Keisuke Kawata (Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation, Hiroshima University); Mizuki Komura (Nagoya University) |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a model combining marriage and the job search, including marital bargaining and wage posting. It considers two types of jobs, full-time and part-time, and workers, male and female. After job-worker matching, male and female individuals find one another in the marriage market. This model has multiple equilibria in terms of gender divisions of labor, and the equilibrium market tightness is socially inefficient because of externalities arising from the expected gains from marriage. |
| Keywords: | data cleaning; |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hir:idecdp:5-1&r=lab |
| By: | Saglio, Sophie; lopez-villavicencio, antonia |
| Abstract: | This paper tests the reduced form New Keynesian Wage Phillips Curve in several advanced countries for the 1985-2014 period. Based on this approach, we estimate wage rigidity at the aggregate level. We document that rigidity is heterogenous among our sample of countries: nominal wage rigidities are more important in the United States, while wage indexation is dominant in European Countries. We also present evidence that wage rigidity is not linked to the institutional environment at the macroeconomic level. Finally, we show that there is significant time variation in the estimated coefficients on the implied equation that is usually not taken into account in the theoretical literature. |
| Keywords: | wage rigidity, European Union, New keynesian Wage Phillips Curve |
| JEL: | C32 E24 J3 J30 |
| Date: | 2015–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:64725&r=lab |
| By: | Christine de la Maisonneuve |
| Abstract: | Colombia is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America. The high level of informality in the labour market and many characteristics of the pension system leave many elderly in poverty. Only formal-sector employees earning more than the relatively high minimum wage are covered. Linking benefits to at least the minimum wage makes the system costly and reduces the provision of annuities by insurance companies as it is difficult to insure against changes in the minimum wage. The Government has recently introduced a matching-contribution scheme (BEPS) for informal workers and vulnerable retiring aged people who have not contributed enough to be entitled to a pension. Moreover, the coverage of the old-age minimum income support has been extended but at the cost of lowering the already modest benefits. More reforms in the pension system are needed to extend coverage while eligibility to the BEPS and the minimum income support should be expanded to guarantee old-age income for more Colombians. In the medium term an in-depth pension reform is required. This Working Paper relates to the 2014 OECD Economic Survey of Colombia. (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-colombia.htm)<P>Réformer le système de retraite colombien pour en augmenter la couverture et l'équité<BR>La Colombie est l'un des pays les plus inégalitaires d'Amérique latine. Le caractère très informel du marché du travail, ajouté à de multiples particularités du système de retraite, laisse bon nombre de personnes âgées dans la pauvreté. Ce dernier, en effet, ne couvre que les employés du secteur formel qui gagnent plus que le salaire minimum, relativement élevé. Le montant des prestations doit s’aligner au moins sur le salaire minimum ce qui rend le système coûteux et réduit le volume des rentes payées par les compagnies d'assurance car il est difficile d’assurer une protection contre les variations du salaire minimum. Le gouvernement a récemment mis en place un régime contributif d’épargne-retraite abondé par l’État (BEPS), destiné aux travailleurs du secteur informel et aux personnes vulnérables prenant leur retraite et n’ayant pas suffisamment cotisé pour avoir droit à une pension. La couverture du revenu minimum vieillesse a été étendue, mais au prix d'une réduction de cette prestation, déjà modeste. De nouvelles réformes du régime de retraite sont nécessaires pour en étendre la couverture, mais il convient également d’élargir les critères d'admissibilité au BEPS et aux prestations du revenu minimum pour garantir un revenu à un plus grand nombre de personnes âgées en Colombie. À moyen terme, une réforme approfondie des retraites va s’imposer. Ce document de travail se rapporte à l’Étude économique 2014 de l’OCDE sur la Colombie. (www.oecd.org/fr/eco/etudes/etude-econom ique-colombie.htm). |
| Keywords: | minimum wage, coverage, inequality, pension system, retirement age, elderly poverty, minimum income support, âge du départ en retraite, Couverture, pauvreté des personnes âgées, système de retraite, salaire minimum, inégalité, revenu minimum |
| JEL: | H55 I30 J14 J26 J32 |
| Date: | 2015–05–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1235-en&r=lab |
| By: | Regina T. Riphahn; Christoph Wunder |
| Abstract: | We study state dependence in welfare receipt and investigate whether welfare transitions changed after a welfare reform. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we apply dynamic multinomial logit estimators and find that state dependence in welfare receipt is not a central feature of the German welfare system. We find that welfare transitions changed after the reform: transitions from welfare to employment became more likely and persistence in welfare and inactivity declined. We observe a large relative increase in transitions from employment to welfare. Immigrants’ responsiveness to the labor market situation increased after the reform. |
| Keywords: | Social assistance, state dependence, unemployment benefit II, immigration, dynamic multinomial logit |
| JEL: | I38 J61 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp758&r=lab |
| By: | Roxana Sandu (European Economic Studies Department, College of Europe) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of social security benefits that jobseekers, nationals of other Member State, residing in another Member States are in title to, as well as the economic implications of free movement of persons and labour market access. Consequently, it aims to disentangle between labour mobility welfare effects and “benefit tourism” looking in particular at the United Kingdom social security system and analysing the policy framework currently in place that governs the free movement of people across the European Union Member States. |
| Keywords: | Free Movement of Persons, Labour Mobility Welfare Effects, Social Security, Benefit Tourism |
| JEL: | H31 H55 H77 I31 J01 J15 J78 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:coe:wpbeer:34&r=lab |
| By: | Thieme, Paula; Dittrich, Dennis Alexis Valin |
| Abstract: | The German population is ageing due to decreasing birth rates and increasing life expectancy. To sustain the German pension system, legal retirement age is increased step by step to 67 years. This raises questions about how to enable and motivate older individuals to work that long. Hence, it is important to understand whether they represent a homogeneous group that can be addressed through specific measures and instruments. Life-span theory points to systematic changes as well as increased heterogeneity with age. For example, work motivation does not generally decline with age but becomes increasingly task-specific, depending on changing life goals and individual adaptation processes in adult development. In this empirical study we analyse age heterogeneity with regard to current life satisfaction and life satisfaction domains (measured as satisfaction with work, income, family and health) that represent personal utilities individuals strive for. For our analysis we use data collected as part of a representative German longitudinal data study (SOEP1). We find increasing heterogeneity in current life satisfaction, satisfaction with work, family life, and health with age. Thus, common mean level analyses on age effects yield only limited informative value. The heterogeneity of older adults should be taken into account when motivating and developing older workers. |
| Keywords: | Life satisfaction, heterogeneity, life-span, older workers, ageing |
| JEL: | I10 I31 J14 J20 M50 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:64700&r=lab |
| By: | Beraja, Martin (University of Chicago); Fuster, Andreas (Federal Reserve Bank of New York); Hurst, Erik (University of Chicago); Vavra, Joseph (University of Chicago) |
| Abstract: | We study the implications of regional heterogeneity within a currency union for monetary policy. We ask, first, does monetary policy mitigate or exacerbate ex-post regional dispersion over the business cycle? And second, does ex-ante regional heterogeneity increase or dampen the aggregate effects of a given monetary policy? To help answer these questions, we use detailed U.S. micro data to explore the extent to which mortgage activity differed across local areas in response to the first round of Quantitative Easing (QE1), announced in November 2008. We document that QE1 increased both mortgage activity and real spending but that its effects were smaller in parts of the country with the largest employment declines. This heterogeneous regional effect is driven by the fact that collateral values were most depressed in the regions with the largest employment declines, reducing the extent to which borrowers were able to benefit from rate decreases. We explore the implications of our empirical results for theoretical monetary policymaking using an incomplete-markets, heterogeneous-agent model of a monetary union whereby monetary policy influences local spending through collateralized lending. Preliminary results suggest that both the distributional and aggregate consequences of monetary policy depend on the joint distribution of local shocks. We find that if regions with low relative income also have depressed collateral values (as in 2008), then expansionary mon |
| Keywords: | monetary policy; regional inequality; quantitative easing; mortgage refinancing |
| JEL: | E21 E52 G21 |
| Date: | 2015–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednsr:731&r=lab |
| By: | Bhaskar, Venkataraman |
| Abstract: | We present international evidence on the marriage market implications of cohort size growth, and set out a theoretical model of how marriage markets adjust to imbalances. Since men marry younger women, secular growth in cohort size worsens the position of women. This effect has been substantial in many Asian countries, and in sub-Saharan Africa. Secular decline in cohort sizes, as is happening in East Asia, improves the position of women. We show that the age gap at marriage will not adjust in order to equilibrate the marriage market in response to persistent imbalances, even though it accommodates transitory shocks. This is true under transferable utility even if age preferences are relatively minor, as well as under non-transferable utility. We examine the distributional consequences on the sexes, and on dowry payments. |
| Keywords: | dowry; marriage markets; marriage squeeze; sex ratio; stable matching |
| JEL: | J12 J13 J16 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10619&r=lab |
| By: | Elena Rusticelli; David Turner; Maria Chiara Cavalleri |
| Abstract: | Inflation has become much less sensitive to movements in unemployment in recent decades. A common explanation for this change is that inflation expectations have become better anchored as a consequence of credible inflation targeting by central banks. In order to evaluate this hypothesis, the paper compares two competing empirical specifications across all OECD economies, where competing specifications correspond to the ‘former’ and ‘new’ specification for deriving measures of the unemployment gap which underlie the OECD’s Economic Outlook projections. The former OECD specification can be characterised as a traditional ‘backward-looking’ Phillips curve, where current inflation is partly explained by an autoregressive distributed lag process of past inflation representing both inertia and inflation expectations formed on the basis of recent inflation outcomes. Conversely, the new approach adjusts this specification to incorporate the notion that inflation expectations are anchored around the central bank’s inflation objective. The main finding of the paper is that the latter approach systematically out-performs the former for an overwhelming majority of OECD countries over a recent sample period. Relative to the backward-looking specification, the anchored expectations approach also tends to imply larger unemployment gaps for those countries for which actual unemployment has increased the most. Moreover, the anchored expectations Phillips curve reduces real-time revisions to the unemployment gap, although these still remain uncomfortably large, in the case of countries where there have been large changes in unemployment.<P>Intégrer des anticipations ancrées d'inflation à la courbe de Phillips pour le calcul de mesures du chômage d'équilibre<BR>L'inflation est devenue beaucoup moins sensible aux fluctuations du chômage au cours des dernières décennies. Une explication couramment avancée à cet égard, est que l'ancrage des anticipations d'inflation s'est amélioré. Ni cette explication ni l'approche économétrique retenue ne sont nouvelles, mais un des apports de ce document tient au fait que nous y utilisons deux spécifications économétriques différentes pour l'ensemble des économies de l'OCDE, celles-ci correspondant à l'« ancienne » et à la « nouvelle » spécifications employées pour calculer les mesures de l'écart de chômage sur lesquelles reposent les prévisions des Perspectives économiques de l'OCDE. L'ancienne spécification employée par l'OCDE peut être caractérisée comme une courbe de Phillips « rétrospective » classique, suivant laquelle l'inflation est expliquée en partie à l'aide d'un modèle autorégressif à retards échelonnés appliqué à l'inflation antérieure, représentant à la fois l'inertie de l'inflation et les anticipations d'inflation formées sur la base des récents résultats d'inflation. Inversement, la nouvelle approche consiste à ajuster cette spécification de manière à intégrer la notion que les anticipations d'inflation sont ancrées aux alentours de l'objectif d'inflation de la banque centrale. La principale conclusion de ce document est que la nouvelle approche donne systématiquement de meilleurs résultats que l'ancienne pour une écrasante majorité de pays de l'OCDE sur une période d'observation récente. Par rapport à la spécification rétrospective, l'approche fondée sur les anticipations ancrées tend également à mettre en évidence des écarts de chômage plus importants pour les pays où le taux de chômage effectif a le plus augmenté. En outre, la courbe de Phillips fondée sur des anticipations ancrées réduit les révisions en temps réel de l'écart de chômage, même si celles-ci restent d'une ampleur préoccupante, dans le cas des pays où le chômage a fortement varié. |
| Keywords: | Phillips curve, equilibrium unemployment, Anchored expectations, real-time revisions, anticipations ancrées, révisions en temps réel, chômage d’équilibre, courbe de Phillips |
| JEL: | C22 E24 E31 J64 |
| Date: | 2015–05–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1231-en&r=lab |
| By: | Mark Duggan; Melissa S. Kearney; Stephanie Rennane |
| Abstract: | The SSI program provides cash assistance to some of the nation’s most vulnerable elderly, blind, and disabled residents. In this paper, we briefly summarize the history of the SSI program and present descriptive evidence on caseload composition and trends. We discuss relevant conceptual issues and empirical evidence focused on four key issues. First, we describe the advantages and disadvantages of categorical eligibility requirements and we show that the SSI caseload has become increasingly comprised of difficult-to-verify conditions, namely pain and mental disabilities. Second, we describe systematic disincentives to accumulate earnings and assets inherent in the SSI program design, but emphasize that the more relevant set of questions for the SSI population are related to the full disability requirement for eligibility. Third, we describe the questions and research about long-term benefits and costs to program participants, in terms of whether the program adequately and appropriately serves the needs of disabled individuals and their family members. And fourth, we present information and evidence about program spillovers, both across programs and across federal and state levels of government. Throughout the paper we make numerous explicit references to areas where further study is warranted and open research questions remain. SSI is an important part of the U.S. safety net, but particular features of the program raise questions about whether there is a more effective way to provide income support for individuals with work-limiting disabilities and families with disabled the children. Our goal for this paper is to systematically present the issues for scholars and policy-makers to consider and explore. |
| JEL: | H51 H53 J18 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21209&r=lab |
| By: | Hielke Buddelmeyer; Daniel S. Hamermesh; Mark Wooden |
| Abstract: | We use longitudinal data describing couples in Australia from 2001-12 and Germany from 2002-12 to examine how demographic events affect perceived time and financial stress. Consistent with the view of measures of stress as proxies for the Lagrangean multipliers in models of household production, we show that births increase time stress, especially among mothers, and that the effects last at least several years. Births generally also raise financial stress slightly. The monetary equivalent of the costs of the extra time stress is very large. While the departure of a child from the home reduces parents’ time stress, its negative impacts on the tightness of the time constraints are much smaller than the positive impacts of a birth. |
| JEL: | I31 J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21223&r=lab |