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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Daniel Albalate ((GIM-IREA). Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics. Observatory of Analysis and Evaluation of Public Policies (OAP-UB). Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics. Universitat de Barcelona); Germà Bel ((GIM-IREA). Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics. Observatory of Analysis and Evaluation of Public Policies (OAP-UB). Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics. Universitat de Barcelona); Lídia Farré ((GIM-IREA). Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics. Observatory of Analysis and Evaluation of Public Policies (OAP-UB). Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics. Universitat de Barcelona; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Economics and Business) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines an active and personalized job search program led by private entities called Feina amb Cor, which started in Barcelona in 2013 as an alternative to government-led employment services. The program aimed at helping long-term unemployed under high exclusion risk to find a job. Our findings, based on data obtained from subsequent interviews to participants before and after passing through the six-month program, suggest that changes in the job search technology seem to contribute to the high employability rate among participants. Also, we find some evidence about their improved well-being due to the program, what may have boosted their employment prospects. However, the program seems to offer jobs of short duration and working hours, what is consistent with the literature evaluating these kinds of programs. Thus, the paper offers new insights on the potential success of programs in order to contribute to the necessary debate about the role and design of job search services run by governments in Spain. |
| Keywords: | Unemployment, Job search, Social exclusion JEL classification: J08, J64, J68 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ira:wpaper:202002&r=all |
| By: | Courtney Brell; Christian Dustmann; Ian Preston |
| Abstract: | We provide an overview of the integration of refugees into the labor markets of a number of high-income countries. Discussing the ways in which refugees and economic migrants are differently selected and so might be expected to perform differently in a host country’s labor market, we examine employment and wages for these groups over time after arrival. There is significant heterogeneity between host countries, but in general refugees experience persistently worse outcomes than other migrants. While the gaps between the groups can be seen to decrease on a timescale of a decade or two, this is more pronounced in employment rates than it is in wages. We also discuss how refugees are distinct in terms of other factors affecting integration, including health, language skills and social networks. We provide a discussion of insights for public policy in receiving countries, concluding that supporting refugees in early labor market attachment is crucial. |
| Keywords: | immigration, refugee migration, assimilation |
| JEL: | J01 J61 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8050&r=all |
| By: | Edoardo FERRUCCI; Francesco LISSONI; Ernest MIGUELEZ |
| Abstract: | Based on an original dataset spanning over 20 years of patenting at the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), we identify the gender, residence, and nationality of inventors, based on which we also identify migrants and natives in the United States, as well as stayers (non-migrants) in the migrants’ countries of origin. We find that the share of women over the total number of US-resident inventors (or WIR: Women Inventor Rate) is generally higher for migrants than for US natives, so that the former have contributed significantly to the increase of WIR in the US over the past quarter century. At the same time, the WIR for migrants is higher than that of stayers, which suggests that migration to the US represents an opportunity for high-skilled women to undertake a career in R&D, notwithstanding the obstacles they may face, and irrespective of their country of origin. This intuition is reinforced by an analysis of women inventors’ technological specialization, which reveals that female migrants are better represented than natives and stayers in men-dominated fields. |
| Keywords: | STEM migrants; High-skilled migrants; Inventors; Gender |
| JEL: | J16 F22 O15 O30 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:bdxewp:2020-01&r=all |
| By: | Raj Chetty; John N. Friedman; Emmanuel Saez; Nicholas Turner; Danny Yagan |
| Abstract: | We analyze how changes in the allocation of students to colleges would affect segregation by parental income across colleges and intergenerational mobility in the United States. We do so by linking data from tax records on parents' incomes and students' earnings outcomes for each college to data on students' SAT and ACT scores. We find that equalizing application, admission, and matriculation rates across parental income groups conditional on test scores would reduce segregation substantially, primarily by increasing the representation of middle-class students at more selective colleges. However, it would have little impact on the fraction of low-income students at elite private colleges because there are relatively few students from low-income families with sufficiently high SAT/ACT scores. Differences in parental income distributions across colleges could be eliminated by giving low and middle-income students a sliding-scale preference in the application and admissions process similar to that implicitly given to legacy students at elite private colleges. Assuming that 80% of observational differences in students' earnings conditional on test scores, race, and parental income are due to colleges' causal effects — a strong assumption, but one consistent with prior work — such changes could reduce intergenerational income persistence among college students by about 25%. We conclude that changing how students are allocated to colleges could substantially reduce segregation and increase intergenerational mobility, even without changing colleges' educational programs. |
| JEL: | J0 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26748&r=all |
| By: | Gordon B. Dahl; Christina Felfe; Paul Frijters; Helmut Rainer |
| Abstract: | What happens when immigrant girls are given increased opportunities to integrate into the workplace and society, but their parents value more traditional cultural outcomes? Building on Akerlof and Kranton's identity framework (2000), we construct a simple theoretical model which shows how expanding opportunities for immigrant girls can have the unintended consequence of reducing their well-being, since identity-concerned parents will constrain their daughter's choices. The model can explain the otherwise puzzling findings from a reform which granted automatic birthright citizenship to eligible immigrant children born in Germany after January 1, 2000. Using survey data we collected in 57 German schools and comparing those born in the months before versus after the reform, we find that birthright citizenship lowers measures of life satisfaction and self-esteem for immigrant girls. This is especially true for Muslims, where traditional cultural identity is particularly salient. Birthright citizenship results in disillusionment where immigrant Muslim girls believe their chances of achieving their educational goals are lower and the perceived odds of having to forgo a career for family rise. Consistent with the model, immigrant Muslim parents invest less in their daughters' schooling and have a lower probability of speaking German with their daughters if they are born after the reform. We further find that immigrant Muslim girls granted birthright citizenship are less likely to self-identify as German and are more socially isolated. In contrast, immigrant boys experience, if anything, an improvement in well-being and other outcomes we examine. Taken together, the findings point towards immigrant girls being pushed by parents to conform to a role within traditional culture, whereas boys are allowed to take advantage of the opportunities that come with citizenship. Alternative models can explain some of the findings in isolation, but are not consistent more generally. |
| Keywords: | identity, citizenship, immigration, integration |
| JEL: | Z10 J15 J16 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8045&r=all |
| By: | Oleksandr Faryna (National Bank of Ukraine); Tho Pham (University of Reading); Oleksandr Talavera (University of Birmingham); Andriy Tsapin (National Bank of Ukraine) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the relationship between labour market conditions and wage dynamics by exploiting a unique dataset of 0.8 million online job vacancies. We find a weak trade-off between aggregated national-level wage inflation and unemployment. This link becomes more evident when wage inflation is disaggregated at sectoral and occupational levels. Using exogenous variations in local market unemployment as the main identification strategy, a negative correlation between vacancy-level wage and unemployment is also established. The correlation magnitude, however, is different across regions and skill segments. Our findings suggest the importance of micro data's unique dimensions in examining wage setting – unemployment relationship. |
| Keywords: | Phillips curve, wage curve, heterogeneity, micro data, online vacancies. |
| JEL: | C55 E24 E31 E32 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bir:birmec:20-03&r=all |
| By: | Francesco Zanetti; Carlo Pizzinelli; Konstantinos Theodoridis |
| Abstract: | This paper documents state dependence in labor market fluctuations. Using a Threshold Vector Autoregression model (TVAR), we establish that the unemployment rate, the job separation rate, and the job finding rate exhibit a larger response to productivity shocks during periods with low aggregate productivity. A Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model with endogenous job separation and on-the-job search replicates these empirical regularities well. We calibrate the model to match the standard deviation of the job-transition rates explained by productivity shocks in the TVAR, and show that the model explains 88 percent of the state dependence in the unemployment rate, 76 percent for the separation rate and 36 percent for the job finding rate. The key channel underpinning state dependence in both job separation and job finding rates is the interaction of the firm’s reservation productivity level and the distribution of match-specific idiosyncratic productivity. Results are robust across several variations to the baseline model. |
| Keywords: | Search and Matching Models, State Dependence in Business Cycles, Threshold Vector Autoregression |
| JEL: | E24 E32 J64 C11 |
| Date: | 2020–02–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:902&r=all |
| By: | Chen, Ying |
| Abstract: | Air quality is an important amenity that affects the labor supply to a local economy while regulations aiming at improving it can be costly and consequently reduce the local labor demand. This article studies how air quality and its regulation respectively and jointly affect the local economy through these two channels by exploiting China's first national air pollution regulation and migration reform as natural experiments. I propose an instrumental variable for local pollution levels by applying rich remote-sensing data to the engineering considerations of power plant construction. The estimation results suggest that heavy air pollution has driven out high-skilled workers when migration costs fall, while the regulation to curb pollution has led to a reduction in manufacturing employment in targeted locations and sectors. Additional results show relatively slower firm and wage growth in more regulated prefectures and sectors, and a modest local employment reallocation from heavy-to light-polluting industries. |
| Keywords: | Environmental regulations, Air pollution, Local economic growth |
| JEL: | J61 Q52 Q53 R11 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:98535&r=all |
| By: | David de la Croix (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)); Marc Goni (Department of Economics, University of Vienna) |
| Abstract: | We propose a new methodology to disentangle two determinants of intergenerational persistence: inherited human capital vs. nepotism. This requires jointly addressing measurement error in human-capital proxies and the selection bias inherent to nepotism. We do so by exploiting standard multi-generation correlations together with distributional differences across generations in the same occupation. These two moments identify the structural parameters of a first-order Markov process of human-capital endowments' transmission, extended to account for nepotism. We apply our method to a newly built database of more than one thousand scholar lineages in higher education institutions over the period 1000-1800. Our results show that 14 percent of scholar's sons were nepotic scholars. Nepotism declined during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, was more prominent in Catholic than in Protestant institutions, and was higher in law than in sciences. Human-capital endowments were inherited with an intergenerational elasticity of 0.59, higher than suggested by parent-child elasticities in observed outcomes (publications), yet lower than recent estimates in the literature (0.75) which do not account for nepotism. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational mobility, human capital transmission, nepotism, university scholars, upper-tail human capital, pre-industrial Europe |
| JEL: | C31 E24 J1 |
| Date: | 2020–02–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvir:2020006&r=all |
| By: | Koeniger, Winfried; Zanella, Carlo |
| Abstract: | We analyze inequality and mobility across generations in a dynastic economy. Nurture, in terms of bequests and the schooling investment into the next generation, is observable but the draw of nature in terms of ability is hidden, stochastic and persistent across generations. We calibrate the model to U.S. data to illustrate mechanisms through which nurture and nature affect mobility and the transmission of income inequality across generations, thus complementing the vast empirical literature. To provide a benchmark for the observed status quo, we solve for the social optimum in which the planner weighs dynasties equally and chooses optimal tax schedules subject to incentive compatibility. Analyzing the transition from the calibrated steady state to this social optimum, we find that insurance against intergenerational ability risk increases on the transition path by making welfare of family dynasties more dependent on nurture relative to nature. The insurance comes at the cost of less social mobility. We compare welfare in the social optimum and economies with a simple history-independent tax and subsidy system. |
| Keywords: | Human capital, schooling, bequests, asymmetric information, intergenerational mobility, inequality |
| JEL: | E24 H21 I24 J24 J62 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usg:econwp:2020:03&r=all |
| By: | James Berry (University of Delaware - Economics); Rebecca Dizon-Ross (University of Chicago); Maulik Jagnani (Yale University - Economic Growth Center) |
| Abstract: | We conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment to identify parents' preferences for investing in their children. The experiment exogenously varied the short-run returns to educational investments to identify how much parents care about maximizing total household earnings, minimizing cross- sibling inequality in "outcomes" (child-level earnings), and minimizing cross-sibling inequality in "inputs" (child-level investments). We show that while parents place some weight on maximizing earnings, they also display a strong preference for equality in inputs, forgoing roughly 40% of their potential earnings or 90% of a dayÕs wage to equalize inputs. We find no evidence that parents care about equalizing outcomes. |
| JEL: | I20 J13 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfi:wpaper:2020-06&r=all |
| By: | Bennett, Patrick (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Ravetti, Chiara (Polytechnic of Turin); Wong, Po Yin (Research Department, Hong Kong Monetary Authority) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the long-term labour market consequences of a positive economic shock, the first discovery of oil and gas in Norway. Existing studies focus on the short-term and men, while less is known about women and the persistence of such shocks. Oil discovery increased male earnings (by 7%), while female earnings declined (by 10%). These shifts persist for two decades. Labour force participation and occupational change account for the earnings divergence. Within married couples, wives’ earnings declined, but household earnings increased. However, women’s income loss in oil regions is transitory: younger cohorts catch up to women in non-oil regions. |
| Keywords: | Labour market; Fairness |
| JEL: | J00 |
| Date: | 2020–02–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2020_003&r=all |
| By: | Dennie van Dolder (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Martijn van Assem (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Thomas Buser (University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | We examine gender differences in competitiveness, using a TV game show where the winner of an elimination competition plays a game of chance worth hundreds of thousands of euros. At several stages of the competition, contestants face a choice between continuing to compete and opting out in exchange for a comparatively modest prize. When strategic considerations are absent, we observe the well-known pattern that women are less likely to compete than men, but this difference derives entirely from women avoiding competition against men. When the decision to compete is strategic and contestants should factor in the competitiveness of others, women again avoid competing against men. Men, in turn, seem to anticipate the lower competitiveness of female opponents, as evidenced by their greater tendency to compete against women. Ability differences are unlikely to explain these results. The findings underline the importance of the gender of competitors for the analysis of differences in willingness to compete, and shed new light on the persistent gender gap at the male-dominated higher rungs of the career ladder. |
| Keywords: | gender differences, competitiveness, willingness to compete, game show |
| JEL: | J16 D91 |
| Date: | 2020–02–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20200011&r=all |
| By: | Libertad González Luna; Sofia Trommlerová |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of a universal child benefit on fertility, identifying separately the effects driven by conceptions and abortions. We focus on a generous lump-sum maternity allowance that was introduced in Spain in 2007 and cancelled in 2010. Using administrative, population-level data, we create a panel data set of the 50 Spanish provinces, with monthly data on birth and abortion rates between 2000 and 2017. Our identification is based on the timing of the introduction and cancellation of the policy (both its announcement and implementation), from which we infer when the effects on abortions and births can be expected. We find that the introduction of the policy led to a 3% increase in birth rates, due to both a decrease in abortions and an increase in conceptions. The announcement of the cancellation of the policy led to a transitory increase in birth rates of 4% just before the cancellation was implemented, driven by a short-term drop in abortions. The cancellation then led to a 6% drop in birth rates. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the positive fertility effect of the benefit introduction was driven by high-skilled parents, while the negative impact of the cancellation was larger among low-skilled and out-of-labor-force parents, and in lower income, higher unemployment regions. We also find suggestive evidence that the child benefit had both a timing effect (“tempo†), so that some women had children earlier, and a level effect (“quantum†), where some women had more children than they would have had otherwise. |
| Keywords: | fertility, abortions, birth rates, policy evaluation, child benefit |
| JEL: | J13 J18 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upf:upfgen:1697&r=all |