|
on Labour Economics |
| By: | Shivani Taneja (University of Essex) |
| Abstract: | Patterns of work have changed over the years in Britain and increasing flexibility in the labour market has been introduced. The implementation of the European Union directives in 2002 and the introduction of the Minimum Wage in 1999 as well as the New Deal programme have contributed to changes in the labour market. And growth in non-standard work has resulted in choices available to the workforce and workers can choose to work full-time or part-time, maximising their utility subject to their constraints. This is likely to have an impact on the trends in job satisfaction of the workers. Thus, using data from the British Household Panel Survey from 1991-2008, this paper addresses the following questions: are patterns of weekly working hours contributing to the narrowing gender gap in satisfaction from work of British workers? Are changes in employment profiles i.e. switching from full-time hours into part-time hours in two consecutive years or changes in economic activity, such as switching from unemployment into part-time hours or switching from unemployment into full-time jobs enhancing welfare of workers? Using logistic regression techniques, the results show that men?s hours of work are steadily declining whereas smaller variations are seen among female workers. This decline in working hours as well its negative correlation with job satisfaction suggests that hours of work play a role in narrowing gender gap in current job satisfaction of British workers. And transitions in economic activity and employment profiles affect satisfaction from work. |
| Keywords: | Part-time hours, National Minimum Wage, Unemployment |
| JEL: | J28 J16 I31 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:9912075&r=all |
| By: | Jason Fletcher; Jinho Kim; Jenna Nobles; Stephen Ross; Irina Shaorshadze |
| Abstract: | The multi-decade growth and spatial dispersion of immigrant families in the United States has shifted the composition of US schools, reshaping the group of peers with whom students age through adolescence. US-born students are more likely to have foreign-born peers and foreign-born students are more likely to be educated outside of enclaves. This study examines the short-term and long-term impact of being educated with immigrant peers, for both US-born and foreign-born students. We leverage a quasi-experimental research design that uses across-grade, within-school variation in cohort composition for students in the Add Health study. We describe effects on a broad set of education, social, and health outcomes. For US-born students, we find little evidence that having immigrant peers affects a wide array of outcomes, either in adolescence or in adulthood. For foreign-born students, attending school with other immigrant students is protective against risky health behaviors and social isolation, relative to native born students. However, foreign-born students’ language skills measured with Picture-Vocabulary Test scores are negatively affected by attending school with a larger share of other immigrant students. The negative effect on vocabulary scores persists through young adulthood but does not translate into reductions in most longer-run socioeconomic outcomes, including earnings or the economic status of their residential neighborhoods. |
| Keywords: | immigration, adolescents, health behaviors, social isolation |
| JEL: | J61 I24 I14 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2019-082&r=all |
| By: | Maczulskij, Terhi; Böckerman, Petri |
| Abstract: | Abstract We examine the economic determinants of interregional mobility. Using plant closures and mass lay-offs for identification, we show that there are obstacles in the labor market that prevent a more efficient reallocation of unemployed individuals and jobs. We find that displacement increases the migration probability by ~80 percent. Displaced workers mostly make migration decisions based on economic (dis)incentives, i.e., higher expected wages and lower expected housing prices outside the origin home location increase the probability of moving after a job loss. In contrast, proximity to family, home ownership and poorly functioning housing markets constitute severe constraints for migration. This outcome is concerning for employment prospects, as, among displaced workers, migration is positively linked to a strong attachment to the labor market. |
| Keywords: | Displacement, Internal migration, Housing markets, Expected income, Social capital, Labor market outcomes |
| JEL: | J31 J61 J63 |
| Date: | 2019–12–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rif:wpaper:75&r=all |
| By: | Simon Jäger; Benjamin Schoefer; Jörg Heining |
| Abstract: | We estimate the effects of a mandate allocating a third of corporate board seats to workers (shared governance). We study a reform in Germany that abruptly abolished this mandate for certain firms incorporated after August 1994 but locked it in for the older cohorts. In sharp contrast to the canonical hold-up hypothesis – that increasing labor’s power reduces owners’ capital investment –we find that granting formal control rights to workers raises capital formation. The capital stock, the capital-labor ratio, and the capital share all increase. Shared governance does not raise wage premia or rent sharing. It lowers outsourcing, while moderately shifting employment to skilled labor. Shared governance has no clear effect on profitability, leverage, or costs of debt. Overall, the evidence is consistent with richer models of industrial relations whereby shared governance raises capital by permitting workers to bargain over investment or by institutionalizing communication and repeated interactions between labor and capital. |
| Keywords: | industrial relations, corporate governance, codetermination, investment |
| JEL: | G00 J00 J53 J54 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7980&r=all |
| By: | Eric Chyn; Kareem Haggag |
| Abstract: | How does one's childhood neighborhood shape political engagement later in life? We leverage a natural experiment that moved children out of disadvantaged neighborhoods to study effects on their voting behavior more than a decade later. Using linked administrative data, we find that children who were displaced by public housing demolitions and moved using housing vouchers are 12 percent (3.3 percentage points) more likely to vote in adulthood, relative to their nondisplaced peers. We argue that this result is unlikely to be driven by changes in incarceration or in their parents' outcomes, but rather by improvements in education and labor market outcomes, and perhaps by socialization. These results suggest that, in addition to reducing economic inequality, housing assistance programs that improve one's childhood neighborhood may be a useful tool in reducing inequality in political participation. |
| Keywords: | political engagement, disadvantaged neighborhood, public housing demolitions, incarceration, Inequality |
| JEL: | D72 H75 I38 J13 R23 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2019-079&r=all |
| By: | Morgan Raux (Paris School of Economics & Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, EHESS, Ecole Centrale, AMSE, Marseille, France.) |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that firms' demand for high-skilled foreign workers partly results from their hiring difficulties. Relying on a within-firm identification strategy, I compare recruitment decisions made by a given employer for similar jobs differing in recruitment difficulties. I quantify how the time to fill a vacancy affects the employer's probability to look for recruiting a foreign worker. To identify this relationship, I have collected and assembled a new and original dataset at the job level. It matches online job postings to administrative data on H-1B visas applications in the US. I find that a standard deviation increase in job posting duration increases employers' probability to look for a foreign worker by 1.5 percentage points. This effect is mainly driven by firms sending only a few visa applications. It increases to 3 to 4 percentage points for architects, engineers and computer scientists. |
| Keywords: | H-1B work permit, hiring difficulties, web scraping |
| JEL: | J61 J2 C26 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1934&r=all |
| By: | Yixiao ZHOU (Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University); Rod TYERS (Business School, University of Western Australia; Research School of Economics and Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis (CAMA), Australian National University) |
| Abstract: | Relative wages and the share of total value added accruing to low-skill workers have declined during the past three decades, among both OECD countries and large developing countries. The primary beneficiary until recently has been skill, the supply of which has risen as education investment has increased. The rise in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven automation suggests that declines in value added shares accruing to low-skill workers will continue. Indeed, AI-driven automation creates an impulse for diminished labor market performance by low-skill workers throughout the world but most prominently in high-fertility, relatively youthful regions with comparatively strong growth in low-skill labor forces. The implied bias against such regions will therefore enhance emigration pressure. This paper offers a preliminary analysis of these effects. Central to the paper is a model of the global economy that includes general demography and real wage sensitive bilateral migration behavior, which is used to help quantify potential future growth in real wage disparities and the extent, direction and content of associated migration flows. Overall, global wage inequality is increased by expanded skilled migration, primarily because of large increases in skilled wage premia that arise in developing regions of origin. Inter-regional divergences in skilled wages are reduced, however, due to the additional skilled labour market arbitrage opportunities offered by more open migration policies. |
| Keywords: | Automation, demographic change, migration incentives, labor markets and economic growth |
| JEL: | C68 E22 E27 F21 F43 J11 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uwa:wpaper:19-19&r=all |
| By: | Zhang, Hanzhe (Michigan State University, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates how the marriage market affects risk-taking and career choices in a general equilibrium framework, and provides a marriage-market-based justification for risk-taking. Furthermore, by only assuming women's inability to reap the benefits of a risky career due to their shorter reproductive span, the paper predicts that compared with men, women (a) are less likely to choose a risky career when unmarried, (b) have lower within-gender income inequality, (c) marry earlier, and (d) are more likely to switch to a risky career when married. I provide evidence consistent with these predictions. |
| Keywords: | marriage market; risk-taking; college major choices; career choices; differential fecundity; gender differences |
| JEL: | C78 D31 J12 J16 |
| Date: | 2020–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:msuecw:2020_002&r=all |
| By: | Benito Arruñada |
| Abstract: | Experience is a major source of knowledge. Could institutions be improved by eliciting the additional knowledge held by experienced individuals? I show here that in several areas of the law experienced individuals are more critical of institutional quality than inexperienced individuals. Moreover, performance indexes built with experienced subsamples substantially alter country rankings. Assuming no unmeasured confounders, more knowledge arguably leads experienced individuals to revise the more benign view held by the general population, composed mostly of inexperienced individuals. Moreover, experience is a stronger driver than alternative sources of knowledge, including education, which might therefore be reinforcing milder and, arguably, incorrect assessments of institutional quality. After observing how this “experience effect” varies systematically across countries, I conclude by proposing that evaluations of institutional quality pay greater attention to experienced individuals and cautioning against basing inferences on assessments made by the general population. |
| Keywords: | institutions, experience, knowledge, perception, rule of law, measurement |
| JEL: | D02 D71 D83 K12 K14 K31 K32 K41 K42 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1139&r=all |
| By: | Ruolz Ariste; Ali Béjaoui |
| Abstract: | Wage has been identified as one of the determinants of labour supply. To avoid regional shortage, the economic theory of compensating wage differentials suggest having a pay structure that differs between regions, which is typical of a decentralized system. The purposes of this study are to determine to what extent 1) the wage setting process for nurses is centralized and 2) nurse hourly wage differs from one region to another. Two different surveys were designed. Then, we empirically test for standardized regional wage differentials (SRWD) by controlling for variables that reflect human capital and work-related characteristics. Before, nursing shortage in Canada was not addressed using a regional wage differential lens. Results indicate that the wage setting process is centralized, but the wage structure cannot be described as flat: the process generates differentials across regions. We argue that there is a trade-off between efficiency and equity that needs to be reconciled. |
| Keywords: | Regional Wage,Nursing Shortage,Collective Bargaining,Provinces,Canada, |
| JEL: | I11 I18 J08 J31 |
| Date: | 2019–12–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirwor:2019s-31&r=all |
| By: | Sangmin Aum; Dongya Koh; Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis |
| Abstract: | We describe the behavior of the labor share in the corporate sector for twenty OECD countries over the first 15 years of the XXI century. Our first finding is that the OECD labor share -a cross-country average- is trendless over this medium-run horizon after adjusting for the labor income generated from IPP rents as in Koh et al. (2017). Second, we find that the behavior of the labor share is largely heterogeneous across countries over this period. Indeed, the corporate labor share significantly increases for equally as many countries (e.g., France, Italy and the United Kingdom) as it decreases (e.g., Germany, Israel and the United States) over this period. Third, a decomposition of the corporate labor share behavior into that of its components shows that the cross-country differences in labor share trends are mainly driven by the differences in labor productivity growth and not wages. |
| Keywords: | labor share, intellectual property products, SNA revisions, cross-country, wages, Labor Productivity |
| JEL: | E01 E22 E25 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1135&r=all |
| By: | Antonio M. Conti (Bank of Italy); Elisa Guglielminetti (Bank of Italy); Marianna Riggi (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | We document that the feeble relation between wage growth and unemployment experienced by the euro area since the Global Financial Crisis has been coupled with a change in the response of labour productivity (output per worker) to an increase in employment, from nil up to 2009 (acyclical) to negative since then (countercyclical). We argue that both facts can be explained by the strong persistence of the last recession and of the subsequent recovery. The relevance of the duration of the cyclical phase can be rationalized in a theoretical model where firms use both the extensive and intensive margin of labour and face employment adjustment costs. When demand shocks are persistent firms adjust relatively more the extensive margin, leading to a countercyclical response of labour productivity and only to a small reaction of wages. We take the model to the data using a Bayesian VAR, where persistent demand shocks are identified exploiting the theoretical prediction which associates them with a countercyclical profile of labour productivity. We show that persistent demand shocks (i) induce a lower reaction of wages to employment and (ii) have been a non negligible driver of employment and wage dynamics in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. |
| Keywords: | missing wage growth, productivity, demand shocks, Bayesian VAR models, DSGE models. |
| JEL: | C32 E32 F34 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1257_19&r=all |
| By: | Shoshana Grossbard; Lucia Mangiavacchi; William Nilsson; Luca Piccoli |
| Abstract: | We analyze the association between spouses' incomes using a rank-rank specification that takes non-linearities along both spouses’ income distribution into account. We also document that the relationships between income and labor force participation and income and couple formation are non-linear. Using simulations, we then analyze how changes in spouses’ rank-dependence structure, labor force participation and couple formation contribute to the upsurge of income inequality in the U.S between 1973 and 2013. We find that an increased tendency towards positive sorting contributed substantially to the rise in inequality among dual-earner couples, but contributed little to overall inequality across households. When considering all households, the factor accounting most for the increased inequality during this period is an increased tendency for individual men and women to remain single. |
| Keywords: | income inequality, assortative mating, female labor supply, Marriage, fertility, rank dependence |
| JEL: | J12 J22 D31 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2019-076&r=all |
| By: | Baumgarten, Daniel; Felbermayr, Gabriel; Lehwald, Sybille |
| Abstract: | Using rich linked employer-employee data for (West) Germany between 1996 and 2014, we conduct a decomposition analysis based on recentered influence function (RIF) regressions to analyze the relative contributions of various plant and worker characteristics to the rise in German wage dispersion. Moreover, we separately investigate the sources of between-plant and within-plant wage dispersion. We find that industry effects and the collective bargaining regime contribute the most to rising wage inequality. In the case of collective bargaining, both the decline in collective bargaining coverage and the increase in wage dispersion among the group of covered plants have played important roles. |
| Keywords: | Wage inequality,Decomposition,RIF-regression,Linked employer-employee data |
| JEL: | J31 J51 C21 F16 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2144&r=all |
| By: | Alain Cohn; Michel André Maréchal; Frédéric Schneider; Roberto A. Weber |
| Abstract: | We study whether employment history provides information about a worker’s “work attitude,” i.e., the tendency to act cooperatively and reliably in the workplace. We conjecture that, holding all else equal, frequent job changes can indicate poor work attitude and that this information is transmitted through employment histories. We find support for this hypothesis across three studies that employ complementary lab, field, and survey experiments, as well as in labor market panel data. First, a tightly controlled laboratory labor market experiment demonstrates that prior employment information allows employers to screen for reliable and cooperative workers and that these workers obtain better employment outcomes. Second, we conduct a field experiment that varies the frequency of job changes in applicants’ resumes and find that those with fewer job changes receive substantially more callbacks from prospective employers. Third, a survey experiment with Human Resources professionals confirms that the resume manipulations in the field study create different perceptions of work attitude and that these largely account for the callback differences. Finally, we find evidence consistent with our hypothesized relationships in empirical labor market data. Our work highlights the potential importance of job history as a signal of work attitude in labor markets, and points to a potential cost of frequent job changes. |
| JEL: | C90 C93 J01 E24 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7976&r=all |
| By: | Carzaniga, Antonia Giulia; Dhillon, Ibadat S.; Magdeleine, Joscelyn; Xu, Lihui |
| Abstract: | Despite its substantial and increasing importance to health systems and inclusive economic growth, the relationship between international trade in services and health worker mobility has been largely unexplored. However, international health worker mobility and trade in services have both been increasing rapidly, and at a growing pace in recent years. Trade in services frameworks (global, regional, bilateral) are an important vehicle for health worker mobility. In this paper we analyse the commitments made in the context of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and regional and bilateral trade agreements that cover services. Although there is room for more and deeper commitments, undertakings related to health worker mobility are already made in many trade agreements, with commitments more numerous and deeper in the regional and bilateral agreements than in the context of GATS. In addition, trade in services frameworks contain flexibility to strengthen and advance ethical health worker mobility, in accordance with the principles and recommendations of the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel. A strengthened collaboration between health and trade stakeholders could therefore serve to significantly expand sustainable development worldwide. There is potential for health stakeholders to strategically leverage trade dialogue and agreements to meet health system needs. Building on available tools, trade in services could help address the concerns of the health sector by ensuring that health worker mobility can respond to worldwide demand, while explicitly addressing health systems concerns across countries. |
| Keywords: | health services,trade in services,health worker,worker mobility |
| JEL: | F13 F16 F22 F66 I11 J61 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wtowps:ersd201913&r=all |