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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Mika Maliranta; Pekka Ilmakunnas |
| Keywords: | employer-employee data, labor productivity, productivity decomposition, wage determination, worker turnover |
| Date: | 2005–11–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rif:dpaper:993&r=lab |
| By: | Ana I Moro-Egido; Santiago Budría |
| Abstract: | In this paper we use the European Community Household Panel to explore the connection between education, over-education, and wage inequality in Spain for the period 1994-2001. Our central approach is based on quantile regression. We find that higher education is associated with higher wage dispersion. This indicates that an educational expansion towards higher education is expected, ceteris paribus, to increase overall wage inequality. We find that over-education contributes to enlarge wage differentials within university graduates. Still, over-education itself can not account for the positive association between higher education and wage dispersion. Finally, we show that over the last years the wage distribution of over-educated workers with university education became more dispersed. This process, together with an increasing proportion of over-educated workers, contributed to rise overall wage inequality through the within dimension. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fda:fdaeee:211&r=lab |
| By: | Naércio Aquino Menezes Filho; Marc Andreas Mündler; Garey Ramey |
| Abstract: | We employ a comprehensive matched employer-employee data set for Brazil to analyze wage determinants and compare results to Abowd, Kramarz, Margolis and Troske (2001) for French and U.S. manufacturing. Returns to education and experience in Brazilian manufacturing exceed those of the other countries, while occupation differentials are similar. The gender differential in Brazilian and U.S. manufacturing coincides, and is considerably smaller than in France. Estimates are unaffected by selectivity of Brazilian workers into formal employment. The links between firm performance and wage components in Brazil resemble those of France. Worker characteristics have comparable explanatory power for manufacturing wage variability in the three countries but establishment-fixed effects explain relatively less of the Brazilian wage variation. Despite the inclusion of establishment effects, regressors predict at most sixty percent of wage variability in any Brazilian sector, suggesting that explanations for earnings variability ought to focus on worker characteristics, not establishment wage policies. |
| Keywords: | wage structure, wage inequality, matched employer-employee data, formal and informal employment, selectivity, Brazil |
| JEL: | D21 J31 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1643&r=lab |
| By: | Draca, Mirko; Machin, Steve; Van Reenen, John |
| Abstract: | Although there is a large literature on the economic effects of minimum wages on labour market outcomes (especially employment), there is hardly any evidence on their impact on firm performance. This is surprising: minimum wages appear to have a significant impact on wages, but only a limited impact on jobs, so it is natural to imagine there must be a stronger impact on other aspects of firm behaviour. In this paper we consider the impact of minimum wages on firm profitability by exploiting the introduction of a minimum wage to the UK labour market in 1999. We use pre-policy information on the distribution of wages to construct treatment and comparison groups and implement a difference in differences approach. We show evidence that firm profitability was significantly reduced (and wages significantly raised) by the minimum wage introduction. This emerges from separate analyses of two distinct types of firm level panel data (one on firms in a very low wage sector, UK residential care homes, and a second on firms across all sectors). Interestingly, we find no evidence that the profitability reductions resulted in increases in firm exit, so our findings may be consistent with redistribution of quasi-rents towards low wage employees. |
| Keywords: | exit; minimum wage; profitability |
| JEL: | J23 L25 |
| Date: | 2006–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5456&r=lab |
| By: | Edvard Johansson |
| Keywords: | job satisfaction, quits, part-time work, on-the-job training |
| JEL: | J22 J24 J28 |
| Date: | 2004–12–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rif:dpaper:958&r=lab |
| By: | Booth, Alison L; van Ours, Jan C |
| Abstract: | Taking into account inter-dependence within the family, we investigate the relationship between part-time work and happiness. We use panel data from the new Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia Survey. Our analysis indicates that part-time women are more satisfied with working hours than full-time women. Partnered women's life satisfaction is increased if their partners work full-time. Male partners' life satisfaction is unaffected by their partners' market hours but is increased if they themselves are working full-time. This finding is consistent with the gender identity hypothesis of Akerlof and Kranton (2000). |
| Keywords: | gender identity; happiness; part-time work |
| JEL: | I31 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2006–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5438&r=lab |
| By: | Sami Napari |
| Keywords: | occupational segregation, education, work experience |
| JEL: | J11 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2005–04–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rif:dpaper:976&r=lab |
| By: | Calvó-Armengol, Antoni; Verdier, Thierry; Zenou, Yves |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the interplay between social structure and information exchange in two competing activities, crime and labour. We consider a dynamic model in which individuals belong to mutually exclusive two-person groups, referred to as dyads. There are multiple equilibria. If jobs are badly paid and/or crime is profitable, unemployment benefits have to be low enough to prevent workers for staying too long in the unemployment status because they are vulnerable to crime activities. If, instead, jobs are well paid and/or crime is not profitable, unemployment benefits have to be high enough to induce workers to stay unemployed rather to commit crime because they are less vulnerable to crime activities. Also, in segregated neighbourhoods characterized by high interactions between peers, a policy only based on punishment and arrest will not be efficient in reducing crime. It has to be accompanied by other types of policies that take into account social interactions. |
| Keywords: | crime; forward-looking agents; labour market; social interaction |
| JEL: | A14 J40 K42 |
| Date: | 2006–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5448&r=lab |
| By: | Torberg Falch; Bjarne Strøm |
| Abstract: | This paper analysis the link between political strength and public sector wages using a unique matched individual-employer data set for Norwegian local governments during the period 1990-1998. The results indicate that political strength, measured in several ways, has a positive effect on wages, while administrative strength, measured by the tenure of the chief executive, has a negative effect. The positive effect of political strength is consistent with a model in which the budgetary process is a multistage game and employment is determined in an interaction with interest groups prior to the wage bargain. |
| Keywords: | public sector labor market, wage bargaining, political strength, budgetary process |
| JEL: | D73 H72 J45 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1629&r=lab |
| By: | Antti Kauhanen; Hannu Piekkola |
| Date: | 2004–09–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rif:dpaper:929&r=lab |
| By: | Satu Nurmi |
| Keywords: | job flows, worker flows, internationalisation, manufacturing |
| JEL: | F16 J21 J23 L60 |
| Date: | 2004–12–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rif:dpaper:956&r=lab |
| By: | Edvard Johansson; Hannu Alho; Urpo Kiiskinen; Kari Poikolainen |
| Keywords: | alcoholism, abstinence, work probability |
| JEL: | I12 J69 |
| Date: | 2004–09–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rif:dpaper:931&r=lab |
| By: | Michiel Evers; Ruud de Mooij; Daniel J. van Vuuren |
| Abstract: | This paper performs a meta-analysis of empirical estimates of uncompensated labour supply elasticities. We find that much of the variation in elasticities can be explained by the variation in gender, participation rates, and country fixed effects. Country differences appear to be small though. There is no systematic impact of the model specification or marital status on reported elasticities. The decision to participate is more responsive than is the decision regarding hours worked. Even at the intensive margin, we find that the elasticity for women exceeds that for men. For men and women in the Netherlands, we predict an uncompensated labour supply elasticity of 0.1 and 0.5, respectively. These values are robust for alternative samples and specifications of the meta regression. |
| Keywords: | labour supply, meta-analysis, uncompensated elasticity |
| JEL: | H20 J22 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1633&r=lab |
| By: | Axel Anderson (Economics Department, Georgetown University); Lones Smith (Dept. of Economics, University of Michigan) |
| Abstract: | Consider Becker's classic 1963 matching model, with unobserved fixed types and stochastic publicly observed output. If types are complementary, then matching is assortative in the known Bayesian posteriors (the 'reputations'). We discover a robust failure of Becker's result in the simplest dynamic two type version of this world. Assortative matching is generally neither efficient nor an equilibrium for high discount factors. In a labor theoretic rationale, we show that assortative matching fails around the highest (lowest) reputation agents for 'low-skill (high-skill) concealing' technologies. We then find that as the number of production outcomes grows, almost all technologies are of either form. Our theory implies the dynamic result that high-skill matches eventually break up. It also reveals that the induced information rents create discontinuities in the wage profile. This in turn produces life-cycle effects: young workers are paid less than their static marginal product, and old workers more. |
| Keywords: | assortative matching, incomplete information, wages, Bayesian posterior, value function |
| JEL: | C78 J41 |
| Date: | 2006–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1553&r=lab |
| By: | Gielen, Anne; Kerkhofs, Marcel J M; van Ours, Jan C |
| Abstract: | This paper uses information from a panel of Dutch firms to investigate the labour productivity effects of performance related pay (PRP). We find that PRP increases labour productivity at the firm level with about 9%. |
| Keywords: | labour productivity; performance related pay |
| JEL: | C41 H55 J64 J65 |
| Date: | 2006–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5455&r=lab |
| By: | Kelchtermans, Stijn; Veugelers, Reinhilde |
| Abstract: | The paper contributes to the debate on cumulative advantage effects in academic research by examining top performance in research and its persistence over time, using a panel dataset comprising the publications of biomedical and exact scientists at the KU Leuven in the period 1992-2001. We study the selection of researchers into productivity categories and analyse how they switch between these categories over time. About 25% achieves top performance at least once, while 5% is persistently top. Analysing the hazard to first and subsequent top performance shows strong support for an accumulative process. Rank, gender, hierarchical position and past performance are highly significant explanatory factors. |
| Keywords: | economics of science; hazard models; research productivity |
| JEL: | J24 L31 O31 O32 |
| Date: | 2006–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5415&r=lab |
| By: | Panu Poutvaara |
| Abstract: | Katz and Rapoport (2005) conclude that with linear production technology and the possibility of unilateral migration, region-specific shocks may increase the average level of education. Previously, Poutvaara (2000) derived a corresponding result with Cobb-Douglas technology and migration which may go in both directions. This paper shows that the exit option may reduce human capital formation with a quadratic production technology. |
| Keywords: | human capital formation, migration, economic volatility |
| JEL: | F22 I21 J24 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1648&r=lab |
| By: | Sarah Smith; James Banks |
| Abstract: | Like other OECD countries, the UK experienced more than two decades of declining labour market activity among older men in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. A number of measures to reverse this trend that are currently under discussion, or have already been introduced, include, an increase in the state pension age, abolition of mandatory early retirement ages, tighter eligibility for disability benefits, and in-work benefits and training incentives for those aged 50+. This paper considers the nature and timing of retirement in the UK today and makes an assessment of the likely effect of these measures and likely future trends in retirement. |
| Keywords: | Retirement, pensions. |
| JEL: | J26 |
| Date: | 2006–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:cmpowp:05/140&r=lab |