|
on Labour Economics |
| By: | Maarten Goos; Jozef Konings |
| Abstract: | Past evidence on the incidence of payroll tax subsidies on employment and wages for disadvantaged workers has been quite mixed. Therefore, this paper makes use of a unique panel of firm level data and a natural experiment to analyze the incidence of wage subsidies on full-time manual workers and pre-tax wages. Using a number of straightforward evaluation estimators we find that employment subsidies increased full-time manual employment and pre-tax wages. Moreover, we find that employment subsidies have increased employment but not wages by more in low-wage exporting industries. This is line with a textbook description of labor markets where it is predicted that the incidence of employment subsidies on employment and wages is larger the more elastic is product and therefore labor demand and where the employment effect is larger and the wage effect is smaller the more elastic is labor supply because of a binding minimum wage. |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lic:licosd:17807&r=lab |
| By: | Machikita, Tomohiro |
| Abstract: | We utilize Thailand's the financial crisis in 1997 as a natural experiment which exogenously shifts labor demand. Convincing evidence from the Thailand Labor Force Survey support the hypothesis that both employment opportunities and wages shrunk for new entrants after the crisis. We find that workers who entered before the crisis experienced job losses and wage losses. But these losses were smaller than those of new entrants after the crisis. We also find that new entrants after the crisis experienced a 10% reduction in the overtime wages compared to new entrants before the crisis. |
| Keywords: | Crisis, Financial crises, Entry-Level labor Market, Job loss, Treatment Effects, Thailand, Labor market, Employment, Wages |
| JEL: | C21 D83 J63 J64 |
| Date: | 2007–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper83&r=lab |
| By: | Machikita, Tomohiro |
| Abstract: | Effects of localized personal networks on the choice of search methods are studied in this paper using evidence of displaced workers by establishment closure in Thailand Labor Force Survey, 2001. For the blocks/villages level, there is less significant evidence of local interactions between job-seekers and referrals in developing labor markets. The effects of localized personal networks do not play an important role in the probability of unemployed job-seekers seeking assistance from friends and relatives. Convincing evidence from the data supports the proposition that both self-selection of individual background-like professions and access to large markets determine the choice of job search method. |
| Keywords: | Local Interactions, Job Search Methods, Referrals, Asymmetric Information, Thailand, Unemployment, Labor market, Network |
| JEL: | C21 J63 J64 O18 |
| Date: | 2007–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper84&r=lab |
| By: | Stéphane Mahuteau (Department of Economics, Macquarie University) |
| Abstract: | We investigate to what extent reciprocity, exhibited by employers and employees, lead to stable gift exchange practices in the labour contract, giving rise to non-compensating wage differentials among industries and firms. We use the concept of Sequential Reciprocity Equilibrium (Dufwenberg and Kirchsteiger 1998, 2004) to incorporate players’ preferences for reciprocity in their utility function. We show that successful gift exchange practices may arise if both players actually care for reciprocity. We test the predictions of the model using a matched employer-employee French dataset. Our results show that French employers and employees’ decisions are influenced by reciprocity concerns. |
| Keywords: | reciprocity, fairness, sequential game, cheap-talk, efficiency wages |
| JEL: | C72 J33 J41 |
| Date: | 2006–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mac:wpaper:0609&r=lab |
| By: | GOBILLON Laurent; SELOD Harris |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we investigate how residential segregation and bad physical access to jobs contribute to urban unemployment in the Paris region. We first survey the general mechanisms according to which residential segregation and spatial mismatch can have adverse labor-market outcomes. We then discuss the extent of the problem with the help of relevant descriptive statistics computed from the 1999 Census of the Population and from the 2000 General Transport Survey. Finally, we estimate the effect of indices of segregation computed at the neighborhood and municipality levels, as well as job accessibility indices on the labor-market transitions out of unemployment using the 1990-2002 Labor Force Survey. Our results show that neighborhood segregation is a key factor that prevents unemployed workers from finding a job. These results are robust to potential location endogeneity biases. |
| Keywords: | residential segregation, spatial mismatch, urban unemployment, sensitivity analysis |
| JEL: | J64 R14 |
| Date: | 2007–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lea:leawpi:0702&r=lab |
| By: | Hirano, Katsumi |
| Keywords: | Employment, Unemployment, South Africa, Malaysia |
| Date: | 2006–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper6&r=lab |
| By: | Charles Beach (Queen's University); Ross Finnie (Queen's University and Statisics Canada); David Gray (University of Ottawa) |
| Keywords: | earnings inequality, earnings instability, long-run inequality |
| JEL: | D3 D6 J0 |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qed:wpaper:1116&r=lab |
| By: | GOBILLON Laurent; SELOD Harris; ZENOU Yves |
| Abstract: | The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis (SMH) argues that low-skilled minorities residing in US inner cities experience poor labor-market outcomes because they are disconnected from suburban job opportunities. This assumption gave rise to an abundant empirical literature, which is rather supportive of the SMH. Surprisingly, it is only recently that theoretical models have emerged, which probably explains why the mechanisms of spatial mismatch have long remained unclear and, as we believe, not properly tested. In this survey, we present relevant facts, review the theoretical models of spatial mismatch, confront their predictions with available empirical results, and indicate which mechanisms deserve further empirical tests. |
| Keywords: | ghettos, urban unemployment, segregation, discrimination |
| JEL: | J15 J41 R14 |
| Date: | 2007–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lea:leawpi:0701&r=lab |
| By: | Charles Beach (Queen's University); Alan G. Green (Queen's University); Christopher Worswick (Carleton University) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how changes in immigration policy levers actually affect the skill characteristics of immigrant arrivals using a unique Canadian immigrant landings database. We first review the Canadian experience with a point system as part of its immigrant policy. Section III of the paper describes some overall patterns of immigrant arrivals since 1980. Section IV identifies some relevant hypotheses on the possible effects on immigrant skill characteristics of the total immigration rate, the point system weights and immigrant class weights. The "skill" admissions examined are level of education, age, and fluency in either English or French. Regressions are then used to test the hypotheses from Canadian landings data. It is found that (i) the larger the inflow rate of immigrants the lower the average skill level of the arrivals; (ii) increasing the proportion of skill-evaluated immigrants raises average skill levels; (iii) increasing point system weights on a specific skill dimension indeed has the intended effect of raising average skill levels in this dimension among arriving principal applicants; and (iv) increasing the proportion of skill-evaluated immigrants appears to have the strongest effects among the immigration policy levers. |
| Keywords: | immigration policy, points system, Canadian immigration |
| JEL: | J0 J6 |
| Date: | 2006–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qed:wpaper:1115&r=lab |
| By: | Frenette, Marc |
| Abstract: | In this study, I explore the relationship between the presence of a local university in a city and university and college participation among local youth. The evidence is drawn from Census data, along with information on the creation of new university degree-granting institutions in Canada. Students who do not have access to a local university are far less likely to go on to university than students who grew up near a university, likely due to the added cost of moving away to attend, as opposed to differences in other factors (e.g., family income, parental education, academic achievement). When distant students are faced with a local option, however, their probability of attendance substantially increases. Specifically, the creation of a local degree-granting institution is associated with a 28.1% increase in university attendance among local youth, and large increases were registered in each city affected. However, the increase in university participation came at the expense of college participation in most cities. Furthermore, not everyone benefited equally from new universities. In particular, students from lower income families saw the largest increase in university participation, which is consistent with the notion that distance poses a financial barrier. Also, local aboriginal youth only saw a slight increase in university participation when faced with a local university option. |
| Keywords: | Education, training and learning, Outcomes of education |
| Date: | 2007–01–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp3e:2006283e&r=lab |
| By: | Fujita, Masahisa; Weber, Shlomo |
| Abstract: | In this paper we consider a model with two industrialized countries that face a flow of immigration from the "rest of the world." The countries differ in three characteristics: the labor complementarity between the "native" population and immigrants, the population size, and the magnitude of the cultural friction between the natives and immigrants. We consider a non-cooperative game between two countries' when their strategic instrument is the choice of an immigration quota and the world immigrant wages introduce the spill-over effect between two countries. We first show that the quota game admits unique pure strategies Nash equilibrium. We then compare the equilibrium choices of two countries and show that even though the larger country attracts more immigrants, it chooses lower quota than its smaller counterpart. It also turns out that higher degree of labor complementarity between natives and immigrants and a lower degree of cultural friction between two groups yield higher immigration quota. We also examine the welfare implications of countries choices' and argue that coordinated and harmonized immigration policies may improve the welfare of both countries. |
| Keywords: | Intra-Country Heterogeneity, Labor Complementarity, Immigration Quota, Policy Harmonization, Alien labor, Labor economics, Migrant labor, Migration, G World，others |
| JEL: | C72 F22 O3 R1 |
| Date: | 2006–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper8&r=lab |