|
on Labour Economics |
| By: | Elisa Borghi (CESPRI, Università Bocconi, Milano, Italy) |
| Abstract: | This article analyses the effect of trade openness, implemented in Chile after 1974, on wage inequality. In the first part, this study analyses inequality and wage distribution in Chile. Workers are grouped in three categories, according to the educational level reached, in order to discriminate between skilled and unskilled labor and calculate the wage gap. The wage gap between workers with a university degree and laborers that completed the secondary school increased during the period analyzed. The wage gap between workers with secondary education completed and laborers that completed the first cycle of education decreased in the period. The second part of this article investigates the relationship between wage inequality dynamics of different groups of workers and trade openness. The empirical results suggest that trade liberalization increased wage differences between workers with a university degree and workers with a high school degree, while it did not affect the decreasing wage gap between laborers with secondary school completed and laborers with primary school completed. This paper is made up of six sections. Section I introduces the analysis. Section II describes briefly the trade liberalization process. Section III analyses the wage distribution in Chile and a measure of the wage gap between more educated and less educated workers is obtained. Section IV presents some theoretical aspects. Section V analyses the effects of the trade liberalization on the wage gap, considering different groups of workers, according to the educational level. Section VI concludes. |
| Keywords: | Trade openness; Inequality; Skill premium |
| JEL: | J31 F16 |
| Date: | 2005–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cri:cespri:wp173&r=lab |
| By: | Luís Delfim Santos (CEMPRE, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto); José Varejão (CETE, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto) |
| Abstract: | Using a large administrative matched employer-employee dataset we analyse the gender wage gap in the Portuguese tourism labour market. As background, employment and pay in the tourism industry is thoroughly characterized. Using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of the gender wage gap, we find that 45 percent of the gap is due to differences in attributes of male and female workers in tourism. Our estimate of the coefficient of discrimination in the tourism industry (8.4 percent) puts it well below the non-tourism average (15.8). |
| Keywords: | tourism, labour market, gender discrimination |
| JEL: | L83 J71 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:por:fepwps:205&r=lab |
| By: | Damien Gaumont; Randall Wright; Martin Schindler |
| Keywords: | Wages , Labor markets , Economic models , |
| Date: | 2006–01–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:06/19&r=lab |
| By: | Linda Loury |
| Abstract: | Understanding the role of informal contacts in job search can be important given that roughly half of workers find employment through such sources. Some previous research finds that informal contacts improve labor market outcomes. Other work shows that individuals who found their jobs through friends and relatives had lower wages and less job satisfaction than those who used other methods. In light of the varying effects, the purpose of this paper is to uncover why individuals differ in the types of contacts used to find the jobs that they hold. |
| Keywords: | Job search, Informal contacts |
| JEL: | J64 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tuf:tuftec:0604&r=lab |
| By: | Antonio Ciccone (ICREA and Universitat Pompeu Fabra); Federico Cingano (Bank of Italy); Piero Cipollone (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | We estimate the private (individual) and social return to schooling in Italy and four macro regions. Our estimates take into account the effects of schooling on employment and wages as well as the key features of the Italian tax and social insurance system. We find that the individual return to schooling compares favorably to the return to financial assets (especially in the South). At the social level, the available infrastructure-capital data indicates that the return to schooling exceeds that to infrastructures in the South. |
| Keywords: | Education, Regional Development, Wages, Employment probability |
| JEL: | I2 J31 O18 R11 |
| Date: | 2006–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_569_06&r=lab |
| By: | Mohamed Jellal (Université Mohammed V, Rabat, Conseils-Eco, Toulouse); Christophe Nordman (DIAL, IRD, Paris); François-Charles Wolff (wolff@sc-eco.univ-nantes.fr) |
| Abstract: | (english) In this paper, we investigate the glass ceiling hypothesis according to which there exists larger gender wage gaps at the upper tail of the wage distribution. We demonstrate that in some circumstances, more qualified women may be offered lower wages than men at the equilibrium. This occurs for instance in a competitive model of wage determination where employers face gender-specific probabilities concerning the stability of their employees in their firms. Then, we focus on the relevance and the magnitude of the glass ceiling effect in France using a representative matched worker-firm data set in 1992 of about 130,000 employees and 14,000 employers. We estimate quantile regressions and use a principal component analysis to summarize information specific to the firms. Our different results show that accounting for firm-related characteristics, in particular firm-specific wage policies, reduces the gender earnings gap at the top of the distribution, but the latter still remains much higher at the top than at the bottom. _________________________________ (français) Nous analysons l’existence du phénomène de “plafond de verre” selon lequel il existerait des écarts salariaux selon le genre plus importants dans le haut de la distribution des revenus. Nous montrons dans un modèle compétitif de détermination des salaires que, sous certaines hypothèses et à l’équilibre, les femmes les plus qualifiées reçoivent des salaires plus faibles que ceux des hommes de même niveau de qualification. Cela se produit si les employeurs apprécient différemment selon le sexe des employés la stabilité des travailleurs dans leur entreprise. Nous examinons ensuite la pertinence de cette hypothèse et l’étendue de l’effet de plafond de verre à l’aide de données représentatives de l’industrie privée française en 1992 liant quelque 130.000 employés à plus de 14.000 établissements. Nous estimons des régressions de quantiles et utilisons une analyse factorielle pour résumer les informations spécifiques à chaque établissement. Nos différents résultats montrent que prendre en compte les caractéristiques des établissements, en particulier leur politique salariale spécifique, réduit l’estimation de l’écart de revenus entre sexes en haut de la distribution, mais celui-ci n’en demeure pas moins beaucoup plus important en haut qu’en bas de cette distribution des revenus. |
| Keywords: | Gender wage gap; Glass ceiling; Quantile regressions; Matched worker-firm data, Écart salarial selon le genre; Plafond de verre; Régressions de quantiles; Données appariées employeurs-employés. |
| JEL: | J16 J31 D80 |
| Date: | 2006–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dia:wpaper:dt200603&r=lab |
| By: | Mandana, Hajj; Panizza, Ugo |
| Abstract: | This paper uses individual-level data and a differences in differences estimation strategy to test whether the education gender gap of Muslims is different from that of Christians. In particular, the paper uses data for young Lebanese and shows that, other things equal, girls (both Muslim and Christian) tend to receive more education than boys and that there is no difference between the education gender gap of Muslims and Christians. Therefore, the paper finds no support for the hypothesis that Muslims discriminate against female education. |
| Keywords: | Religion, Islam, Education, Gender Gap |
| JEL: | Z12 I20 O53 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uca:ucapdv:64&r=lab |
| By: | Sabrina Di Addario (Bank of Italy, Economic Research Department); Eleonora Patacchini (University of Rome La Sapienza) |
| Abstract: | We analyze empirically the impact of urban agglomeration on Italian wages. Using micro-data from the Bank of Italy's Survey of Household Income and Wealth for the years 1995, 1998, 2000 and 2002 on more than 22,000 employees distributed in 242 randomly drawn local labor markets (30 percent of the total), we test whether the structure of wages varies with urban scale. We find that every additional 100 employees per square kilometer (100,000 inhabitants) in the local labor market raises earnings by 0.4-0.6 percent (0.1 percent) and that employees working in large cities earn, on average, 2-3 percent higher wages than those in the rest of the economy. The application of spatial data analysis techniques enables us to state that this effect is present only in the large cities surrounded by low-populated areas. We also find that urbanization does not affect returns to experience and that it reduces returns to education and to tenure with current firm, while providing a premium to managers, worker supervisors, and office workers. |
| Keywords: | Wage Differentials, Urbanization, Agglomeration Externalities, Population Clustering, Spatial Autocorrelation |
| JEL: | R12 J31 |
| Date: | 2006–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_570_06&r=lab |
| By: | Loboguerrero, Ana Maria; Panizza, Ugo |
| Abstract: | Inflation can “grease” the wheels of the labor market by relaxing downward wage rigidity but it can also increase uncertainty and have a negative “sand” effect. This paper studies the grease effect of inflation by looking at whether the interaction between inflation and labor market regulations affects how employment responds to changes in output. The results show that in industrial countries with highly regulated labor markets, the grease effect of inflation dominates the sand effect. In the case of developing countries, we rarely find a significant effect of inflation or labor market regulations and provide evidence indicating that this could be due to the presence of a large informal sector and limited enforcement of de jure labor market regulations. |
| Keywords: | Employment; Unemployment; Flexibility; Inflation; Deflation; Job Security |
| JEL: | E24 E31 E52 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uca:ucapdv:63&r=lab |
| By: | Prachi Mishra |
| Keywords: | Labor mobility , Caribbean , Skilled labor , Immigration , OECD , Economic models , |
| Date: | 2006–02–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:06/25&r=lab |
| By: | Stephen Bell (University of Queensland); John Quiggin (Department of Economics, University of Queensland) |
| Date: | 2005–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rsm:pubpol:p05_2&r=lab |
| By: | J. David Brown (Heriot-Watt University and CEU Labor Project); John S. Earle (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and Central European University); Vladimir Vakhitov (University of Kentucky and Kyiv-Mohyla School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the effects of privatization on worker separations and wages using retrospective data from a national probability sample of Ukrainian households. Detailed worker characteristics are used to control for compositional differences and to assess types of observable "winners" and "losers" from privatization. Preprivatization worker-firm matches are used to control for unobservables in worker and firm selection. The results imply that privatization reduces wages by 5 percent and cuts the layoff probability in half. Outside investor ownership reduces separations but leaves wages unaffected. Winners from privatization tend to be higher skilled employees of larger firms, but there is no discernable relationship with gender, education, or experience. |
| Keywords: | privatization, layoffs, wages, Ukraine |
| JEL: | D21 G34 J23 J31 L33 P23 P31 |
| Date: | 2006–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upj:weupjo:06-126&r=lab |
| By: | Boschini, Anne (Stockholm University); Sjögren, Anna (The Research Institute of Industrial Economics) |
| Abstract: | We investigate if voluntary team formation is gender neutral. To this end, we model team formation as a random matching process influenced by the agents' preferences for team size and gender composition and derive how team formation depends on the gender ratio in the population of prospective team mates. We then test if the coauthorship pattern in articles published 1991-2002 in three top Economics journals is gender neutral, exploiting the variation in female presence across subfields of Economics. Our main finding is that gender sorting in coauthorship increases in the presence of women. In particular, we find that the gender gap in the propensity to coauthor with a woman increases in the presence of women in the subfield. We also find that women single author significantly more than men. These findings allow us to reject gender neutrality in team formation. |
| Keywords: | Team Formation; Gender Sorting; Coauthorship Patterns |
| JEL: | A14 J16 J41 M50 |
| Date: | 2006–01–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0658&r=lab |