nep-hrm New Economics Papers
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management
Issue of 2011‒02‒05
eight papers chosen by
Tommaso Reggiani
Universita' di Bologna

  1. Redistributive Taxation, Incentives, and the Intertemporal Evolution of Human Capital By Christian Ferreda; Matías Tapia
  2. Gender-Specific Occupational Segregation, Glass Ceiling Effects, and Earnings in Managerial Positions: Results of a Fixed Effects Model By Busch, Anne; Holst, Elke
  3. Child-related career interruptions and the gender wage gap in France By Dominique Meurs; Ariane Pailhé; Sophie Ponthieux
  4. Information and Communication Technologies and Skill Upgrading: the Role of Internal vs External Labour Markets By Luc Behaghel; Eve Caroli; Emmanuelle Walkowiak
  5. Workplace Performance, Worker Commitment and Loyalty By Brown, Sarah; McHardy, Jolian; McNabb, Robert; Taylor, Karl
  6. Labour Market Returns to Higher Education in Vietnam By Doan, Tinh
  7. The decreasing returns on working time: An empirical analysis on panel country data By Cette, G.; Chang, S.; Konte, M.
  8. Accountability and the fairness bias in the context of joint production: Effects of bonuses and opportunities By Alice Becker

  1. By: Christian Ferreda; Matías Tapia
    Abstract: This paper contributes to the literature on redistributive taxation and human capital dynamics by explicitly analyzing the role of incentives in the education market where human capital is produced. We introduce an explicit education market with heterogeneous private schools in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with overlapping generations and human capital accumulation. We use the model to simulate the effects of taxation on growth, intergenerational mobility, inequality, and welfare. Equalization in education expenditures reduces incentives for differentiation in the education market, with the distribution of education investments shifting towards the least productive schools. This has significant consequences on equilibrium outcomes, and highlights the importance of incorporating the role of intermediation when analyzing redistribution policies.
    Keywords: Human capital, school market, redistributive taxation, inequality, efficiency.
    JEL: E24 H21 I21
    Date: 2010
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ioe:doctra:390&r=hrm
  2. By: Busch, Anne (DIW Berlin); Holst, Elke (DIW Berlin)
    Abstract: The study analyses the gender pay gap in private-sector management positions based on the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) for the years 2001-2008. It focuses on occupational gender segregation, and on the effects of this inequality on earnings levels and gender wage differentials in management positions. Our paper is, to our knowledge, the first in Germany to use time-constant unobserved heterogeneity and gender-specific promotion probabilities to estimate wages and wage differentials for persons in managerial positions. The results of the fixed-effects model show that working in a more "female" job, as opposed to a more "male" job, affects only women's wages negatively. This result remains stable after controlling for human capital endowments and other effects. Mechanisms of the devaluation of jobs not primarily held by men also negatively affect pay in management positions (evaluative discrimination) and are even more severe for women (allocative discrimination). However, the effect is non-linear; the wage penalties for women occur only in "integrated" (more equally male/female) jobs as opposed to typically male jobs, and not in typically female jobs. The devaluation of occupations that are not primarily held by men becomes even more evident when promotion probabilities are taken into account. An Oaxaca/Blinder decomposition of the wage differential between men and women in management positions shows that the full model explains 65 percent of the gender pay gap. In other words: Thirty-five percent remain unexplained; this portion reflects, for example, time-varying social and cultural conditions, such as discriminatory policies and practices in the labor market.
    Keywords: gender pay gap, managerial positions, gender segregation, glass-ceiling effects, Oaxaca/Blinder decomposition, fixed effects, selection bias
    JEL: J31 J16 J24
    Date: 2011–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5448&r=hrm
  3. By: Dominique Meurs; Ariane Pailhé; Sophie Ponthieux
    Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the extent of the effects of children and child-related time out of the labor market on the gender wage gap in France, with special attention to its impact on the accumulation and composition of human capital. Measuring this impact requires detailed information on the individuals‟ activity history that is rarely available. The French survey "Families and Employers" (Ined, 2005) provides this information. We first look at men's and women's wage determinants, including the penalties associated with unemployment and time out of the labor market. We find that having controlled for the jobs' characteristics and selection into employment, there is a penalty attached to child-related time out of the labor market, which affects only women. We do not find any direct negative impact of children on women's current hourly wage at the mean. Then for a sub-sample of men and women aged from 39 to 49, we use a decomposition of the gender wage gap into an "interruption" wage gap between women and a gender wage gap between women who have never taken child-related time out and men; we find that the wage gap between men and women who have never interrupted their participation in the labor force is essentially "unexplained", while the wage gap between women who have had child-related interruptions and women who have not is essentially "explained".
    Keywords: Wages, Human capital, Children, Family pay gap, Statistical discrimination, Wage gap decomposition
    JEL: J13 J16 J24 J31
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2011-3&r=hrm
  4. By: Luc Behaghel; Eve Caroli; Emmanuelle Walkowiak
    Abstract: Following the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT), firms are likely to face increasing skill requirements. They may react either by training or hiring the new skills, or by a combination of both. We first show that ICT are indeed skill biased and we then assess the relative importance of external and internal labour market strategies. We show that skill upgrading following ICT adoption takes place mostly through internal labour markets adjustments. The introduction of ICT is associated with an upward shift in firms' occupational structure, of which one third is due to hiring and firing workers from and to the external labour market, whereas two-thirds are due to promotions. Moreover, we find no compelling evidence of external labour market strategies based on "excess turnover". In contrast, French firms heavily rely on training in order to upgrade the skill level of their workforce, even if this varies across industries.
    Keywords: Technical change, labour turnover, skill bias, training, internal labour markets
    JEL: J23 J24 J41
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2011-4&r=hrm
  5. By: Brown, Sarah (University of Sheffield); McHardy, Jolian (University of Sheffield); McNabb, Robert (Cardiff University); Taylor, Karl (University of Sheffield)
    Abstract: Using matched employer-employee level data drawn from the 2004 UK Workplace and Employee Relations Survey, we explore the determinants of a measure of worker commitment and loyalty (CLI) and whether CLI influences workplace performance. Factors influencing employee commitment and loyalty include age and gender, whilst workplace level characteristics of importance include human resource practices. With respect to the effects of employee commitment and loyalty upon the workplace, higher CLI is associated with enhanced workplace performance. Our findings that workplace human resources influence CLI suggest that employers may be able to exert some influence over the commitment and loyalty of its workforce, which, in turn, may affect workplace performance.
    Keywords: commitment, financial performance, labor productivity, loyalty
    JEL: J20 J50
    Date: 2011–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5447&r=hrm
  6. By: Doan, Tinh
    Abstract: This paper employs the Ordinary Least Squares, Instrumental Variables and Treatment Effect models to a new dataset from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) to estimate return to the four-year university education in 2008. Our estimates reveal that the return to university education is about 17% (annualized) and robust to the various estimators. The return to higher education has significantly increased since the economic reform in late 1980s.
    Keywords: economic transition; returns to higher education; IV model; Vietnam
    JEL: J31 O15 C31
    Date: 2011–01–26
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:28426&r=hrm
  7. By: Cette, G.; Chang, S.; Konte, M.
    Abstract: An empirical analysis is conducted on two panels of 18 OECD countries to test whether the elasticity of hourly productivity to working time is negative and decreasing with working time itself. If so, the decreasing returns on working time could be indicative of a fatigue effect that increases with working time. We find that the elasticity of productivity per hour to working time is negative and decreasing with working time, but its coefficient is not strongly significant. This study offers empirical support for the hypothesis of a fatigue effect that increases with working time, but with some reservations.
    Keywords: Productivity, Working time, decreasing returns.
    JEL: J24 F01 O11 O47
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfr:banfra:315&r=hrm
  8. By: Alice Becker (Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena)
    Abstract: According to the accountability principle a person's fair allocation takes into account the input-relevant variables she can influence, like effort, but not the variables she cannot influence, like a randomly assigned exogenous factor. This study is based on a real effort-task experiment, where the exogenous influence is twofold: it comes either as a production factor or as a bonus. We confirm that in a base treatment, i.e in absence of exogenous factors, subjects base their allocation decisions largely on effort. When exogenous differences are present behavior changes. Whereas bonuses are largely ignored and subjects still mostly base their decisions on effort, production factors render allocations more selfish. Furthermore, we study whether accountability holds for decisions over opportunities. We apply the so-called lottery-points-method, where a binary lottery in the last experimental stage allocates the whole amount to one of the workers. We find that subjects claim more for themselves when allocating opportunities in all treatments.
    Keywords: Distributive justice, real effort task, procedural fairness
    JEL: C72 C92
    Date: 2011–01–27
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2011-004&r=hrm

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