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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Thomas Liebig (OECD) |
| Abstract: | 45% of refugees in Europe are women, yet little is known on their integration outcomes and the specific challenges they face. This report summarises prior research on the integration of refugee women, both compared with refugee men and other immigrant women. It also provides new comparative evidence from selected European and non-European OECD countries. Refugee women face a number of particular integration challenges associated with poorer health and lower education and labour market outcomes compared to refugee men, who are already disadvantaged in comparison with other migrant groups. They also show a peak in fertility in the year after arrival. A large fraction has come from countries where gender inequality is high and employment of women tends to be low. However, there is little correlation between indicators such gender differences in participation and employment in the origin and in the host country, suggesting that the integration issues can be addressed by host-country employment and education policy instruments. The report also finds that building basic skills in terms of educational attainment and host-country language training bears a high return in terms of improving labour market outcomes. It also provides intergenerational pay-off for their children. Against this backdrop, structured integration programmes such as the ones in the Scandinavian countries seem to be a worthwhile investment. |
| Keywords: | Gender, Immigrants, Integration, Refugees, Women |
| JEL: | F22 J15 J16 |
| Date: | 2018–08–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:elsaab:216-en&r=lab |
| By: | Naufal, George S (Texas A&M University); Malit, Jr., Froilan T. (Cornell University) |
| Abstract: | The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries host at least 2.4 million foreign domestic workers, who are legally excluded from national labor laws and regulations, thus placing them in precarious social, legal, and economic conditions in the GCC labor markets. Despite the recent growth of academic scholarship on domestic work in the GCC and beyond, little attention has been paid to absconding foreign domestic workers and the complex role abuse plays in determining their future decision to migrate. This paper examines the likelihood that Filipina domestic workers will migrate after absconding from their previous employer. Applying a unique dataset of absconding Filipina domestic workers collected at the Philippine Labor Office (POLO) in Qatar between 2013 - 2015, we find that abuse and poor working conditions do not act as deterrents for future migration. Paradoxically, absconding domestic workers who have been financially abused are more likely to want to return and seek employment abroad. This study offers empirical and theoretical insights into the connection between migrant exploitation and domestic workers' desire to migrate once again. |
| Keywords: | migration, absconding, domestic workers, GCC countries, abuse, mobility |
| JEL: | J61 J68 O15 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11677&r=lab |
| By: | Artmann, Elisabeth (VU University Amsterdam, Department of Economics); Ketel, Nadine (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University); Oosterbeck, Hessel (University of Amsterdam, School of Economics); van der Klaauw, Bas (VU University Amsterdam, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses administrative data from 16 cohorts of the Dutch population to study the relationship between field of study and family outcomes. We first document considerable variation by field of study for a range of family outcomes. To get to causal effects, we use admission lotteries that were conducted in the Netherlands to allocate seats for four substantially oversubscribed studies. We find that field of study matters for partner choice, which for women also implies an effect on partners' earnings. Fertility of women is not affected and evidence for men is mixed, but we find evidence for intergenerational effects on children's education. This means that field of study does not only affect individual labor market outcomes but also causally influences other important dimensions of a person's life. |
| Keywords: | Higher education; study choice; returns to education; assortative matching intergenerational mobility |
| JEL: | J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0736&r=lab |
| By: | Bolhaar, Jonneke (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Ketel, Nadine (University of Gothenburg); van der Klaauw, Bas (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we focus on the role of caseworkers in the assignment and take-up of welfare-to-work programs. We conduct a field experiment that generates exogenous variation in the assignment to different policy regimes to caseworkers. The experiment allows us to provide evidence on the effectiveness of welfare-to-work programs and to study how caseworkers exploit their discretion in assigning these programs to welfare recipients. We find substantial heterogeneity in how caseworkers assign welfare-to-work programs. Participation in the experiment and learning about the effectiveness of the different programs does not induce caseworkers to focus more on the effective programs. This implies that obtaining knowledge about welfare-to-work programs is not enough to improve policy, also effort on implementation is required. |
| Keywords: | field experiment, welfare-to-work, caseworkers |
| JEL: | C93 I38 J64 J08 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11666&r=lab |
| By: | Cahuc, Pierre (Ecole Polytechnique, Paris); Kramarz, Francis (CREST (ENSAE)); Nevoux, Sandra (CREST (ENSAE)) |
| Abstract: | Short-time work programs were revived by the Great Recession. To understand their operating mechanisms, we first provide a model showing that short-time work may save jobs in firms hit by strong negative revenue shocks, but not in less severely-hit firms, where hours worked are reduced, without saving jobs. The cost of saving jobs is low because short-time work targets those at risk of being destroyed. Using extremely detailed data on the administration of the program covering the universe of French establishments, we devise a causal identification strategy based on the geography of the program that demonstrates that short-time work saved jobs in firms faced with large drops in their revenues during the Great Recession, in particular when highly levered, but only in these firms. The measured cost per saved job is shown to be very low relative to that of other employment policies. |
| Keywords: | short-time work, unemployment, employment |
| JEL: | E24 J22 J65 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11673&r=lab |
| By: | Nolan, Anne (ESRI, Dublin); Barrett, Alan (ESRI, Dublin) |
| Abstract: | Extending working lives is often proposed as one route through which the costs associated with population ageing can be managed. In that context, understanding who currently works for longer can help policymakers to design policies to facilitate longer working. In particular, it is important to know if longer working is a choice or a necessity, where necessity arises from a lack of pension income. In this paper, we use data from the first four waves of the Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing (TILDA), covering the period 2010-2016, to examine patterns of labour force participation among men and women aged 65+. We find that a lack of pension income is an important determinant of later-life working and that this applies for both men and women. Although older women are significantly less likely to work than older men, we find few differences in the pattern of determinants of longer working among older men and women. However, while women are significantly less likely to work than men, this effect is stronger among married women compared to single women. This suggests that older women without immediate access to family-provided financial support may need to work to support themselves. This adds to the picture of later life work being a necessity as opposed to a choice. However, an alternative explanation is that older married women may also have caring responsibilities that reduce their labour force participation. |
| Keywords: | retirement, pensions, older workers, Ireland |
| JEL: | D14 H55 J14 J26 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11664&r=lab |
| By: | Vladasel, Theodor (Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University) |
| Abstract: | Family background matters for entrepreneurship. The focus on factors making siblings similar rather than different, however, may understate the total importance of families for occupational choice by hiding important sources of within-family heterogeneity. I assess the differential effects of birth order, family size, and sibling sex composition on unincorporated and incorporated entrepreneurship in a set of causal exercises using Swedish register data. These factors appear to have a negligible impact. First, while later born men are more likely to become unincorporated entrepreneurs, this effect is largely explained by their lower education and poorer labor market prospects, pointing towards the subsistence nature of this type of entrepreneurship. Second, I find limited evidence of causal family size effects in linear and non-linear instrumental variable approaches, using instruments based on multiple births and sibling gender. Third, while I find no pure sibling sex composition effect, there is a small negative effect of having a brother on the father-daughter association in unincorporated entrepreneurship. Fourth, neither source of within-family heterogeneity exhibits a clear relationship with incorporated entrepreneurship, although children with more than four siblings are less likely to become incorporated business owners. Finally, accounting for within-family differences increases previously estimated sibling correlations by little. The results are consistent with the absence of adult sibling peer effects in entrepreneurship and confirm the role of families in generating sibling similarities, rather than differences in occupational choice. The importance of family background for entrepreneurship is therefore only marginally understated. |
| Keywords: | entrepreneurship; incorporation; self-employment; family background; birth order; family size; sibling sex composition |
| JEL: | D13 J62 L26 |
| Date: | 2018–08–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2018_008&r=lab |
| By: | Majbouri, Mahdi (Babson College) |
| Abstract: | Despite the remarkable increase in women's education levels and the rapid fall of their fertility rate in Iran, female labor force participation (FLFP) has remained low. Using the instrumental variable method, this paper estimates the causal impact of number of children on mothers' participation in the labor market. It finds that having an extra (unplanned) child would only reduce female participation rate for low educated mothers and mothers with young children, thus having no causal impact on most mothers' participation. This result explains why the rapid decline in fertility rates did not increase female participation; rather, other factors should be at play. It hence moves us a step forward in explaining the puzzle of female labor force participation in Iran. Policy implications are discussed. |
| Keywords: | female labor force participation, fertility, Iran, twins, instrumental variable |
| JEL: | J13 J22 O53 |
| Date: | 2018–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11638&r=lab |
| By: | Sahoo, Soham (Indian Institute of Management Bangalore); Klasen, Stephan (University of Göttingen) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates gender-based segregation across different fields of study at the post-secondary level of schooling, and how that affects subsequent labour market outcomes of men and women. Using a nationally representative longitudinal data-set from India, we provide evidence that there is substantial intra-household gender disparity in the choice of study stream at the higher-secondary level of education. A household fixed effects regression shows that girls are 20 percentage points less likely than boys to study in technical streams, namely science (STEM) and commerce, vis-à-vis arts or humanities. This gender disparity is not driven by gender specific differences in mathematical ability, as the gap remains large and significant even after controlling for individuals' past test scores. Our further analysis on working-age individuals suggests that technical stream choice at higher-secondary level significantly affects the gender gap in labour market outcomes in adult life, including labour force participation, nature of employment, and earnings. Thus our findings reveal how gender disparity in economic outcomes at a later stage in the life-course is affected by gendered trajectories set earlier in life, especially at the school level. |
| Keywords: | post-secondary education, STEM, gender, labour market, India |
| JEL: | I20 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11660&r=lab |
| By: | Katherine Eriksson |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effect of ethnic enclaves on economic outcomes of Norwegian immigrants in 1910 and 1920, the later part of the Age of Mass Migration. Using different identification strategies, including county fixed effects and an instrumental variables strategy based on chain migration, I consistently find that Norwegians living in larger enclaves in the United States had lower occupational earnings, were more likely to be in farming occupations, and were less likely to be in white-collar occupations. Results are robust to matching method and choice of occupational score. This earnings disadvantage is partly passed on to the second generation. |
| JEL: | J61 N31 |
| Date: | 2018–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24763&r=lab |
| By: | Diether W. Beuermann; C. Kirabo Jackson |
| Abstract: | Recent studies document that, in many cases, sought after schools do not improve student test scores. Three explanations are that (i) existing studies identify local average treatment effects that do not generalize to the average student, (ii) parents cannot discern schools’ causal impacts, and (iii) parents value schools that improve outcomes not well measured by test scores. To shed light on this, we employ administrative and survey data from Barbados. Using discrete choice models, we document that most parents have strong preferences for the same schools. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we estimate the causal impact of attending a preferred school on a broad array of outcomes. As found in other settings, preferred schools have better peers, but do not improve short-run test scores. We implement a new statistical test and find that this null effect is not due to school impacts being different for marginal students than for the average student. Looking at longer-run outcomes, for girls, preferred schools reduce teen motherhood, increase educational attainment, increase earnings, and improve health. In contrast, for boys, the results are mixed. The pattern for girls is consistent with parents valuing school impacts on outcomes not well measured by test scores, while the pattern for boys is consistent with parents being unable to identify schools’ causal impacts. Our results indicate that impacts on test scores may be an incomplete measure of school quality. |
| JEL: | H0 I20 J0 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24920&r=lab |
| By: | Kuka, Elira (Southern Methodist University) |
| Abstract: | While the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program is one of the largest safety net program in the U.S., research on its benefits is limited. This paper exploits plausibly exogenous changes in state UI laws to empirically estimate whether UI generosity mitigates any of the previously documented negative health effects of job loss. The results show higher UI generosity increases health insurance coverage and utilization, and leads to improved self-reported health. Moreover, these effects are stronger during periods of high unemployment rates. Finally, I find no effects on risky behaviors nor on health conditions. |
| Keywords: | unemployment insurance, health |
| JEL: | I1 |
| Date: | 2018–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11629&r=lab |
| By: | Jesper Bagger (Royal Holloway and the Dale T. Mortensen Centre); Mads Hejlesen (Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University, Denmark); Kazuhiko Sumiya (Royal Holloway); Rune Vejlin (Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University, Denmark) |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of labor income taxation on workers' job search behavior and the implications it has for the equilibrium allocation of heterogenous workers across heterogenous firms. The analysis is conducted within a complete markets equilibrium on-the-job search model with two-sided heterogeneity, endogenous job search effort and hiring intensity, equilibrium wage formation, and firm entry and exit. In a nutshell, by appropriating part of the gain from finding a better paid job, income taxation reduces the return to job search effort, and distorts workers' job search effort, which, in turn, distorts the equilibrium allocation of labor. The model is estimated on Danish matched employer-employee data, and is used to evaluate a series of tax reforms in Denmark in the 1990s and 2000s, to provide new insights into the elasticity of taxable labor income, and to identify a Pareto optimal income tax reform. |
| Keywords: | Labor reallocation, Income taxation, Tax reforms, Worker heterogeneity, Firm heterogeneity, Matched employer-employee data |
| JEL: | H20 J30 J64 J63 |
| Date: | 2018–08–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aah:aarhec:2018-06&r=lab |
| By: | Kato, Takao (Colgate University); Miyajima, Hideaki (Waseda University); Owan, Hideo (Waseda University) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides novel evidence on the effects of employee stock ownership (ESO), a prominent example of shared capitalism. In so doing, we take advantage of our access to new panel data on Japanese ESO plans for a highly representative sample of publicly-traded firms in Japan (covering more than 75% of all firms listed on Tokyo Stock Exchange) over 1989-2013. Unlike most prior studies, we focus on the effects of changes in varying attributes of existing ESO – the effects on the intensive margin. Our fixed effect estimates show that an increase in the strength of the existing ESO plans measured by stake per employee results in statistically significant productivity gains. Furthermore, such productivity gains are found to lead to profitability gains since wage gains from ESO plans are statistically significant yet rather modest. Our analysis of Tobin's Q suggests that the market tends to view such gains from ESO plans as permanent. We further find that increasing the stake of the existing core participants is more effective in boosting gains from ESO plans than bringing in more employees into the trust. We use unique instruments (the peer firm's matching grant rate and abnormal return) to account for possible endogeneity of our ESO variables, and show that the estimated positive gains from ESO plans are not biased upward and likely to be lower bounds. We also find evidence for complementarity between ESO plans aimed at incentivizing non-executive employees and stock option aimed at incentivizing executives. Finally the positive effects on productivity, profitability, wages and Tobin's Q are found to be larger when the proportion of powerful institutional investors and foreign investors are greater; and smaller for larger firms that are more subject to the free-rider problem. |
| Keywords: | employee stock ownership, shared capitalism, group incentive, productivity, Tobin's Q, managerial entrenchment |
| JEL: | J54 M52 G32 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11671&r=lab |
| By: | Conrad Miller |
| Abstract: | This paper presents evidence that job suburbanization caused significant declines in black employment from 1970 to 2000. I document that, conditional on detailed job characteristics, blacks are less likely than whites to work in suburban establishments, and this spatial segregation is stable over time despite widespread decentralization of population and jobs. This stable segregation suggests job suburbanization may have increased black-white labor market inequality. Exploiting variation across metropolitan areas, I find that job suburbanization is associated with substantial declines in black employment rates relative to white employment rates. Evidence from nationally planned highway infrastructure corroborates a causal interpretation. |
| JEL: | J60 R12 |
| Date: | 2018–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24728&r=lab |
| By: | Vincent Bignon; Cecilia Garcia-Peñalosa |
| Abstract: | This paper examines a novel negative impact of trade tariffs and the costs they induce by documenting how protectionism reversed the long-term improvements in education and the fertility transition that were well under way in late 19th-century France. The Méline tariff, a tariff on cereals introduced in 1892, was a major protectionist shock that shifted relative prices in favor of agriculture and away from industry. In a context in which the latter was more intensive in skills than agriculture, the tariff reduced the relative return to education, which in turn affected parents’ decisions about the quantity and quality of children. We use regional differences in the importance of cereal production in the local economy to estimate the impact of the tariff. Our findings indicate that the tariff reduced enrollment in primary education and increased birthrates and fertility. The magnitude of these effects was substantial. In regions with average shares of employment in cereal production, the tariff offset the (downward) trend in birthrates for 13 years; in those with the highest cereal employment shares, there was a delay of up to 22 years. |
| Keywords: | Education, fertility, protectionism, unified growth theory, France |
| JEL: | J13 N33 O15 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfr:banfra:690&r=lab |
| By: | Dosi, G.; Pereira, M. C.; Roventini, A.; Virgillito, M. E. |
| Abstract: | In this work we discuss the research findings from the labour-augmented Schumpeter meeting Keynes (K+S) agent-based model. It comprises comparative dynamics experiments on an artificial economy populated by heterogeneous, interacting agents, as workers, firms, banks and the government. The exercises are characterised by different degrees of labour flexibility, or by institutional shocks entailing labour market structural reforms, wherein the phenomenon of hysteresis is endogenous and pervasive. The K+S model constitutes a laboratory to evaluate the effects of new institutional arrangements as active/passive labour market policies, and fiscal austerity. In this perspective, the model allows mimicking many of the customary policy responses which the European Union and many Latin American countries have embraced in reaction to the recent economic crises. The obtained results seem to indicate, however, that most of the proposed policies are likely inadequate to tackle the short-term crises consequences, and even risk demoting the long-run economic prospects. More objectively, the conclusions offer a possible explanation to the negative path traversed by economies like Brazil, where many of the mentioned policies were applied in a short period, and hint about some risks ahead. |
| Keywords: | Labour market,Policy evaluation,Agent-based model |
| JEL: | C63 E24 H53 J88 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:241&r=lab |
| By: | Marbach, Moritz; Hainmueller, Jens; Hangartner, Dominik |
| Abstract: | Many European countries impose employment bans that prevent asylum seekers from entering the local labor market for a certain waiting period upon arrival. We provide evidence on the long-term effects of such employment bans on the subsequent economic integration of refugees. We leverage a natural experiment in Germany, where a court ruling prompted a reduction in the length of the employment ban. We find that five years after the waiting period was reduced, employment rates were about 20 percentage points lower for refugees who, upon arrival, had to wait an additional seven months before they were allowed to enter the labor market. It took up to ten years for this employment gap to disappear. Our findings suggest that longer employment bans considerably slowed down the economic integration of refugees and reduced their motivation to integrate early on after arrival. A marginal social cost analysis for the study sample suggests that this employment ban cost German taxpayers about 40 million Euro per year on average in terms of welfare expenditures and forgone tax revenues from unemployed refugees. |
| Keywords: | asylum policy; refugee migration; economic integration; employment ban labor market |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2018–08–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:89809&r=lab |
| By: | Raphael Auer; Barthélémy Bonadio; Andrei A Levchenko |
| Abstract: | In a world economy interconnected by global value chains (GVCs), domestic productivity depends on the availability of imported inputs and the vast majority of workers stands to lose from protectionism. To exemplify this, we provide a quantitative assessment of the aggregate and distributional effects of one hypothetical protectionist measure - the case of revoking the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Using a multi-country, multi-sector, quantitative model of global production, we show that a full revocation extending to both tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers would result in a real annual GDP loss of US$ 37 billion in Canada, US$ 22 billion in Mexico, and US$ 40 billion in the USA. In contrast, annual combined losses would amount to less than US$ 5 billion if only tariff rates were to be increased. For both counterfactuals, the distributional impacts across sectors would be an order of magnitude larger than the aggregate effects. Combining these results with information on the geographic distribution of sectoral employment, we show that almost all regions in North America would record reductions in their average real wage. |
| Keywords: | NAFTA, quantitative trade models, distributional effects, protectionism |
| JEL: | F11 F13 F16 J62 R13 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:739&r=lab |
| By: | Ariel J. Binder; David Lam |
| Abstract: | Spousal characteristics such as age, height, and earnings are often used to infer social preferences. For example, a “male taller” norm has been inferred from the fact that fewer wives are taller than their husbands than would occur with random matching. The large proportion of husbands out-earning their wives has been cited as evidence for a “male breadwinner” norm. We show that it can be misleading to infer social preferences about an attribute from observed marital sorting on that attribute. We show that positive assortative matching on an attribute is consistent with a variety of underlying preferences. Given gender gaps in height and earnings, positive sorting implies it will be rare for women to be taller or richer than their husbands--even without an underlying preference for shorter or lower-earning wives. Simulations which sort couples positively on permanent earnings can largely replicate the observed distribution of spousal earnings differences in US Census data. Further, we show that an apparent sharp drop in the distribution function at the point where the wife out-earns the husband results from a mass of couples earning identical incomes, a mass which we argue is not evidence of a norm for higher-earning husbands. |
| JEL: | D10 J12 J16 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24907&r=lab |
| By: | DIARRA, Setou; LEBIHAN, Laetitia; MAO TAKONGMO, Charles Olivier |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we use the Demographic and Health Survey conducted in Mali to compare children in polygynous families and their counterparts in monogamous families. We also analyse the link between the mothers' order of marriage and their children's outcomes. We finally propose a theoretical model to rationalise our findings. Our results show that children in polygynous families are less enrolled in school, progress less at school and do less domestic household work compared to children from monogamous families. For polygynous families, we found that educational enrolment and progress of children of the first wife are higher than that of children of the second and subsequent wives. Moreover, weight-for-height and body mass index are both lower for children of first wives compared to children of second and subsequent wives. Children of first wives work more at home compared to children of second and subsequent wives. Our theoretical model predicts that if fathers discriminate against their first wives and if effort at school is positively correlated to the father's discrimination, then, on average, children of first wives will perform better at school but will consume less and will have a lower health outcomes compared to children of second wives |
| Keywords: | Family structure, Polygyny, Education, Health, Child labour, Mali. |
| JEL: | I14 J13 O12 O15 |
| Date: | 2018–08–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:88518&r=lab |