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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Thomas K. Bauer; Stefan Bender; Alfredo R. Paloyo; Christoph M. Schmidt |
| Abstract: | Compulsory military service typically drafts young men when they are at the height of their learning ability. Thus, it can be expected to depress the demand for higher education since skill atrophy and the delayed entry into the civilian labor market reduce the returns to human-capital investments. Attending university, however, might open the possibility to avoid the draft, leading to an increase in the demand for tertiary education. To estimate the causal eff ect of conscription on the probability to obtain a university degree, we use a regression-discontinuity design that employs special regulations associated with the introduction of conscription in Germany in 1956. We estimate conscription to increase the probability of having a university degree. |
| Keywords: | Regression discontinuity; conscription; career interruption; skill atrophy;TS2SLS |
| JEL: | I28 J24 |
| Date: | 2011–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0260&r=hrm |
| By: | Claudia Burgard; Katja Görlitz |
| Abstract: | Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), this paper analyzes the relationship between training and job satisfaction focusing in particular on gender diff erences. Controlling for a variety of socio-demographic, job and fi rm characteristics, we fi nd a diff erence between males and females in the correlation of training with job satisfaction which is positive for males but insignifi cant for females. This diff erence becomes even more pronounced when applying individual fi xed eff ects. To gain insights into the reasons for this diff erence, we further investigate training characteristics by gender. We fi nd that fi nancial support and career-orientation of courses only seems to matter for the job satisfaction of men but not of women. |
| Keywords: | Training; job satisfaction; gender differences; fixed effects |
| JEL: | I29 J24 J28 M53 |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0265&r=hrm |
| By: | Javier E. Báez; Adriana Camacho |
| Abstract: | Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) are programs under which poor families get a stipend provided they keep their children in school and take them for health checks. While there is significant evidence showing that they have positive impacts on school participation, little is known about their long-term impacts on human capital. In this paper we investigate whether cohorts of children from households that benefited up to nine years from Familias en Acción, a CCT in Colombia, attained more school and performed better in academic tests at the end of high school. Identification of program impacts is derived from two different strategies using matching techniques with household surveys, and regression discontinuity design using census of the poor and administrative records of the program. We show that, on average, participant children are 4 to 8 percentage points more likely than nonparticipant children to finish high school, particularly girls and beneficiaries in rural areas. Regarding long-term impact on tests scores, the analysis shows that program recipients who graduate from high school seem to perform at the same level as equally poor non-recipient graduates, even after correcting for possible selection bias when low-performing students enter school in the treatment group. Even though the positive impacts on high school graduation may improve the employment and earning prospects of participants, the lack of positive effects on the test scores raises the need to further explore policy actions to couple CCT’s objective of increasing human capital with enhanced learning. |
| Date: | 2011–05–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:008900&r=hrm |
| By: | Card, David (University of California, Berkeley); Cardoso, Ana Rute (IAE Barcelona (CSIC)) |
| Abstract: | Although the practice of military conscription was widespread during most of the past century, credible evidence on the effects of mandatory service is limited. Angrist (1990) showed that the Vietnam-era draft in the U.S. lowered the early-career wages of conscripts, a finding he attributed to the low value of military experience. More recent studies have found a mixed pattern of effects, with both negative (the Netherlands) and positive (in Sweden) earnings impacts. Even among Vietnam era draftees, Angrist and Chen (2011) find that the net effect on earnings by age 50 is close to zero. We provide new evidence on the long-term impacts of peacetime conscription in a "low education" labor market, using longitudinal data for Portuguese men born in 1967. These men were inducted at a relatively late age (21), allowing us to use pre- conscription wages as a control for potential ability differences between conscripts and non- conscripts. Our estimates of the average impact of military service for men who had entered the labor market by age 21 are slightly positive (1-2 percent) but not significantly different from zero throughout the period from 2 to 20 years after their service. These small average effects arise from a significantly positive later-life impact for men with only primary education, coupled with a zero-effect for men with higher education. The positive impacts for less-educated men suggest that mandatory service can be a valuable experience for poorly-educated men who might otherwise spend their careers in low-level jobs. |
| Keywords: | military conscription, longitudinal earnings, quasi-differences, sensitivity analysis |
| JEL: | J31 J24 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5915&r=hrm |
| By: | Longhi, Simonetta |
| Abstract: | This paper combines individual data from the British Household Panel Survey and yearly population estimates for England to analyse the impact of cultural diversity on individual wages and on different aspects of job satisfaction. Do people living in more diverse areas have higher wages and job satisfaction after controlling for other observable characteristics? The results show that cultural diversity is positively associated with wages, but only when cross-section data are used. Panel data estimations show that there is no impact of diversity. Using instrumental variables to account for endogeneity also show that diversity has no impact. |
| Date: | 2011–08–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:iserwp:2011-19&r=hrm |
| By: | David J. Cooper; Matthias Sutter |
| Abstract: | Team success relies on assigning team members to the right tasks. We use controlled experiments to study how roles are assigned within teams and how this affects team performance. Subjects play the takeover game in pairs consisting of a buyer and a seller. Understanding optimal play is very demanding for buyers and trivial for sellers. Teams perform better when roles are assigned endogenously or teammates are allowed to chat about their decisions, but the interaction effect between endogenous role assignment and chat unexpectedly worsens team performance. We argue that ego depletion provides a likely explanation for this surprising result. |
| Keywords: | Role selection in teams, team performance, takeover game, winner’s curse, communication, experiment |
| JEL: | C91 C92 |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2011-14&r=hrm |
| By: | Carlos Carrillo-Tudela (Department of Economics, University of Essex, United Kingdom); Leo Kaas (Department of Economics, University of Konstanz, Germany) |
| Abstract: | We consider a model of on-the-job search where firms offer long-term wage contracts to workers of different ability. Firms do not observe worker ability upon hiring but learn it gradually over time. With sufficiently strong information frictions, low-wage firms offer separating contracts and hire all types of workers in equilibrium, whereas high-wage firms offer pooling contracts designed to retain high-ability workers only. Low-ability workers have higher turnover rates, they are more often employed in low-wage firms and face an earnings distribution with a higher frictional component. Furthermore, positive sorting obtains in equilibrium. |
| Keywords: | Adverse Selection, On-the-job Search, Wage Dispersion, Sorting |
| JEL: | D82 J63 J64 |
| Date: | 2011–08–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:knz:dpteco:1129&r=hrm |
| By: | Alessandra Cataldi; Stephan K. S. Kampelmann; François Rycx |
| Abstract: | Using longitudinal matched employer-employee data for the period 1999-2006, we investigate the relationship between age, wage and productivity in the Belgian private sector. More precisely, we examine how changes in the proportions of young (16-29 years), middle-aged (30-49 years) and older (more than 49 years) workers affect the productivity of firms and test for the presence of productivity-wage gaps. Results (robust to various potential econometric issues, including unobserved firm heterogeneity, endogeneity and state dependence) suggest that workers older than 49 are significantly less productive than prime age and young workers. In contrast, the productivity of middle-age workers is not found to be significantly different compared to young workers. Findings further indicate that average hourly wages within firms increase significantly and monotonically with age. Overall, this leads to the conclusion that young workers are paid below their marginal productivity while older workers appear to be “overpaid” and lends empirical support to theories of deferred compensation over the life-cycle (Lazear, 1979). |
| Keywords: | Wages; productivity; aging; matched panel data |
| JEL: | J14 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2011–08–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dul:wpaper:2013/95816&r=hrm |
| By: | Tindara Addabbo; Marco Fuscaldo; Anna Maccagnan |
| Abstract: | Quality of work has been found to significantly affect health outcomes. In this paper we analyse the extent to which the quality of the work done in the past affects the health of the elderly in Italy. For this purpose, we use data drawn from the Italian sample of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and focus on individuals aged over 60. Using different types of factor analysis, we identify three dimensions of quality of work and five factors of health status. In particular, as regards the former, we distinguish among the physical dimension, the control dimension and the socioeconomic dimension of work quality. As regards health, using a nested factor model we obtain a factor of global health problems and four residual factors of cognitive problems, mobility problems, affective problems and motivational problems. These factors are then analysed by gender using a multivariate analysis. Our findings suggest that good quality of work in terms of the socioeconomic and control dimensions significantly decreases the probability of being globally unhealthy during the elder phase of one’s life cycle as well as of displaying motivational problems, the effect being similar in both genders. We also find that a higher level of control in men’s work increases their affective problems when they are older and have left the labour force, suggesting a loss in men’s social sphere after retirement from a rewarding job and a likely underdevelopment of their relational dimension outside their work activity. |
| Keywords: | Quality of work, health status, elderly. |
| JEL: | J14 J28 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mod:cappmo:0096&r=hrm |
| By: | Elias Albagli (USC Marshall); Christian Hellwig (Toulouse School of Economics); Aleh Tsyvinski (Dept. of Economics, Yale University) |
| Abstract: | We study the interplay of share prices and firm decisions when share prices aggregate and convey noisy information about fundamentals to investors and managers. First, we show that the informational feedback between the firm's share price and its investment decisions leads to a systematic premium in the firm's share price relative to expected dividends. Noisy information aggregation leads to excess price volatility, over-valuation of shares in response to good news, and undervaluation in response to bad news. By optimally increasing its exposure to fundamental risks when the market price conveys good news, the firm shifts its dividend risk to the upside, which amplifies the overvaluation and explains the premium. Second, we argue that explicitly linking managerial compensation to share prices gives managers an incentive to manipulate the firm's decisions to their own benefit. The managers take advantage of shareholders by taking excessive investment risks when the market is optimistic, and investing too little when the market is pessimistic. The amplified upside exposure is rewarded by the market through a higher share price, but is inefficient from the perspective of dividend value. |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1816&r=hrm |
| By: | Elias Albagli; Christian Hellwig; Aleh Tsyvinski |
| Abstract: | We study the interplay of share prices and firm decisions when share prices aggregate and convey noisy information about fundamentals to investors and managers. First, we show that the informational feedback between the firm's share price and its investment decisions leads to a systematic premium in the firm's share price relative to expected dividends. Noisy information aggregation leads to excess price volatility, over-valuation of shares in response to good news, and undervaluation in response to bad news. By optimally increasing its exposure to fundamental risks when the market price conveys good news, the firm shifts its dividend risk to the upside, which amplifies the overvaluation and explains the premium. Second, we argue that explicitly linking managerial compensation to share prices gives managers an incentive to manipulate the firm's decisions to their own benefit. The managers take advantage of shareholders by taking excessive investment risks when the market is optimistic, and investing too little when the market is pessimistic. The amplified upside exposure is rewarded by the market through a higher share price, but is inefficient from the perspective of dividend value. |
| JEL: | G10 G12 G30 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17330&r=hrm |
| By: | Wennberg, Karl (The Ratio Institute and Stockholm School of Economics); Wiklund, Johan (Whitman School of Management); Hellerstedt, Karin (Jönköping International Business School); Nordqvist, Mattias (Jönköping International Business School) |
| Abstract: | We contrast the performance consequences of intra-family vs. external ownership transfers. Investigating a sample of all private family firms in Sweden that went through ownership transfers during ten years, we find family firms transferred to external owners outperforming those transferred within the family, but that survival is higher among intra-family transfers. We attribute these performance differences to the long-term orientation of family firms passed on to the next generation and to the entrepreneurial willingness of acquirers to bear uncertainty. Based on distinct ownership transition routes and theoretical mechanisms explaining performance differences, we outline implications for family business and entrepreneurship research. |
| Keywords: | long-term orientation; succession; ownership transfer; family firms; performance |
| JEL: | L26 M13 |
| Date: | 2011–08–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0172&r=hrm |
| By: | C. Bram Cadsby (Department of Economics and Finance, University of Guelph); Maros Servatka (Department of Economics and Finance, University of Canterbury); Fei Song (Ted Rogers School of Business Management, Ryerson University) |
| Abstract: | We develop and test experimentally the argument that gender/family and/or professional identities, activated through psychological priming, may influence preference for competition. We focus on female professionals for whom these identities may conflict and male professionals for whom they may be reinforcing. We primed MBA-student participants by administering questionnaires that concerned either gender/family or professional issues. Subsequently, participants undertook a real-effort task and chose between piece-rate and competitive-tournament compensation. Identity priming, moderated by gender, significantly affected preference for competitive pay. This relationship was partially mediated by beliefs about oneÕs performance ranking. The implications of our results are profound. The decision to avoid competition made by many female professionals may be driven not by lack of ability, but rather by the increased salience of gender/family identity, influenced by marriage and motherhood over time. Indeed, activation of internalized identities might not only drive the experimental results, but also have strong implications for career choices and job performance of women, thus contributing to the observed gender and motherhood wage gaps. |
| Keywords: | Experiment; Gender; Competitiveness; Identity; Priming; Family; Tournament |
| JEL: | C91 J16 J33 M52 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gue:guelph:2011-08.&r=hrm |
| By: | Carola Frydman; Raven Molloy |
| Abstract: | Executive pay fell during the 1940s, marking the last notable decrease in the past 70 years. We study this decline using a new panel dataset on the remuneration of top executives in 246 firms. We find that government regulation—including explicit salary restrictions and taxation—had, at best, a modest effect on executive pay. By contrast, a decline in the returns to firm size and an increase in the power of labor unions contributed greatly to the reduction in executive compensation relative to other workers’ earnings from 1940 to 1946. The continued decrease in relative executive pay remains largely unexplained. |
| JEL: | G3 J31 M50 N32 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17303&r=hrm |