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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Elizabeth Washbrook |
| Abstract: | This paper draws on the economics literature on market labour supply and the sociology literature on domestic labour supply. Each literature has explored the factors underlying male specialisation in market work and female specialisation in domestic work, but has tended to focus on labour supply to one sector (market or domestic) in isolation from supply to the other. This paper uses data from the UK Time Use Survey 2000 on a matched sample of spouses to estimate household labour supplies to both sectors as a function of the spouses’ earnings capacities. The estimation procedure is a simulated maximum likelihood technique that allows for unobserved household-level random effects. In order to allow for non-participation, we estimate an available market wage for both the employed and non-employed individuals in the sample by combining the time use data with wage data from the Labour Force Survey. We use the estimated parameters from the labour supply equations to conduct a decomposition of two measures of the degree of gender specialisation within the household – the average gender gaps in weekly hours of market and domestic work. Our method allows us to decompose these gaps into a component that can be explained by spousal differences in earnings capacity and a residual gender effect. Our results suggest that the roles played by spouses within the household are responsive to economic incentives, but that the way in which men and women respond to those incentives is highly asymmetric. We conclude that a gender-neutral model of family decision-making cannot capture important features of the processes by which family members allocate time to different uses. |
| Keywords: | gender wage gap, household labour, time allocation, division of labour |
| JEL: | D13 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2007–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:cmpowp:07/174&r=lab |
| By: | Melvyn Coles; Ken Burdett |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates equilibria in a labor market where heterogeneous firms post wage/tenure contracts and risk-averse workers, both employed and unemployed, search for new job opportunities. Different firms, even those with the same productivity, typically offer different contracts. Equilibrium finds workers never quit from higher productivity firms to lower productivity firms, but turnover is inefficiently low as employees with large tenures at low productivity firms may reject job offers from more productive firms. A worker who quits to a more productive firm may take a wage cut in anticipation of better wage promotion prospects. Wages within a firm might also increase by a discrete amount at the end of an initial "probationary" spell. |
| Date: | 2007–11–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esx:essedp:649&r=lab |
| By: | Krug, Gerhard (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]) |
| Abstract: | "By financially supplementing low wages, in-work benefits are an instrument of active labor market policy to encourage labor market integration of low skilled and long-term unemployed persons. The hypothesis of this paper is that the financial benefit from the state, even though increasing the overall wage, is interpreted by the employee as a signal that employers are not willing to behave according to the norm of reciprocity and lowers wage satisfaction. This leads to negative side effects on employment stability foiling positive effects on labor market integration. This hypothesis is tested using a survey of in-work benefit recipients and of nonrecipients as a comparison group. The method of propensity score matching is applied to eliminate all compositional differences between benefit recipients and nonrecipients except for the source of their income. It is shown that in-work benefits reduce wage satisfaction (as an indicator of perceived violations of reciprocity) by 14 percentage points. However, whether this explains why in-work benefits are not successful in promoting employment stability remains an open question." (author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) |
| JEL: | J48 C1 C41 D63 |
| Date: | 2007–11–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabdpa:200728&r=lab |
| By: | Christian Keuschnigg (University of St. Gallen (IFF-HSG), CEPR and CESifo); Evelyn Ribi (University of St. Gallen (IFF-HSG)) |
| Abstract: | Outsourcing of labor intensive activities challenges the welfare state and undermines the protection of low-skilled workers. The stylized facts are that profits are concentrated among the high-skilled, involuntary unemployment is mostly among the low-skilled, and private unemployment insurance is missing. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of redistribution and insurance policies when heterogeneous firms can outsource labor intensive components to low-wage economies. The main results are: (i) Social insurance props up wages, leading to more outsourcing and unskilled unemployment. (ii) Redistribution from the skilled to the working poor acts as a wage subsidy to unskilled workers, thereby reducing gross wages, outsourcing and unemployment. (iii) A trend to outsourcing, induced by lower transport costs of imported components, depresses low-skilled wages, raises unemployment, and boosts profits. The resulting polarization of society and the increased income risk of unskilled workers emphasizes the social gains from redistribution and insurance and thus calls for a more active role of the welfare state in more open economies. |
| Keywords: | Outsourcing, unemployment, social insurance, redistribution |
| JEL: | F23 H21 J64 J65 L23 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:btx:wpaper:0720&r=lab |
| By: | Jörg Lingens; Klaus Wälde |
| Abstract: | CWe investigate how continental European unemployment can be reduced without reducing unemployment benefits and without reducing the net income of lowwage earners. Lower unemployment replacement rates reduce unemployment, the net wage and unemployment benefits. A lower tax on labour increases net wages and unemployment benefits. Combining these two policies allows to reduce unemployment without reducing net income of workers or of the unemployed. Such a policy becomes self-financing under realistic parameter constellations when taxes are reduced only for low-income workers. |
| Keywords: | Inequality, Unemployment, Taxation, Policy reform |
| JEL: | J38 J51 H23 E60 |
| Date: | 2007–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gla:glaewp:2007_34&r=lab |
| By: | Francesco Serti (Scuola Superiore S. Anna, Pisa); Chiara Tomasi (Scuola Superiore S. Anna, Pisa & Università di Urbino); Antonello zanfei (Istituto di Scienze Economiche, Università degli Studi di Urbino "Carlo Bo") |
| Abstract: | How do trade activities affect firms’ employment and wages structures? Using firm level data on Italian manufacturing firms, this paper adds to the existing literature, by assessing how the degree of involvement in international trade impacts on workforce composition, earning levels and wage inequality. We differentiate firms involved in both trading activities - namely two-way traders - from firms that only export, and from those that only import. We show that two-way traders have a higher propensity to employ non-production workers, exhibit significant wage gaps, but also pay higher wages for both production and non production workers, relative to non internationalized firms and to firms which are involved only in either export or import. The paper also looks at how the wages and the skill structure of the trading firms change with the country of destination and origin and with the firms’ sectoral and geographical diversification. |
| Keywords: | heterogeneous firms; exports; imports; wage inequality; skills. |
| JEL: | F10 F16 J21 |
| Date: | 2007–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:urb:wpaper:07_13&r=lab |
| By: | Luigi Guiso; Luigi Pistaferri; Fabiano Schivardi |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the costs of adjusting employment, distinguishing between firms’ firing and workers’ mobility costs. We construct a simple dynamic general equilibrium model of labor demand and supply and show that only the joint response of employment and wages to firm level shocks can discriminate between the two types of costs. We use matched employer-employees data for Italy to estimate the model and find that both types of costs are present, that they are sizeable (in the range of 19,000 euros in total) and that firing costs account for almost 90 percent of total adjustment costs. |
| Keywords: | Adjustment costs, mobility costs, matched employer-employees data |
| JEL: | C33 D21 J63 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eui:euiwps:eco2007/44&r=lab |
| By: | Adda, Jérôme (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Costa Dias, Mònica (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Meghir, Costas (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Sianesi, Barbara (Institute for Fiscal Studies) |
| Abstract: | This paper assesses the impact of Swedish welfare-to-work programmes on labour market performance including wages, labour market status, unemployment duration and future welfare-to-work participation. We develop a structural dynamic model of labour supply which incorporates detailed institutional features of these policies and allows for selection on observables and unobservables. We estimate the model from a rich administrative panel data set and show that training programmes - which account for a large proportion of programmes - have a little effect on future outcomes, whereas job experience programmes have a beneficial effect. |
| Keywords: | Labour market programmes; labour market outcomes |
| JEL: | J65 |
| Date: | 2007–10–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2007_027&r=lab |
| By: | Jain, Varinder |
| Abstract: | ‘What has been the quality of jobs generated by Punjab’s urban unorganised establishments in an era of globalisation?’ is the central question addressed in this paper. It is argued that the unorganised establishments’ growth, under the conditions of exogenous technology, may be due to intensive and extensive usage of hired labour. Through secondary and primary data analysis, it is concluded that these unorganised establishments have generated a sufficiently large number of such jobs that may be characterized as of poor quality in terms of low earnings, limited upward mobility, unjust wage setting, uninformed job termination and low job satisfaction. |
| Keywords: | Unorganised Manufacturing; Unorganised Industry; Small Scale Industry; Hired Workers; Labour; Quality Employment; Punjab; India |
| JEL: | J71 L6 |
| Date: | 2007–11–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:5756&r=lab |
| By: | Behncke, Stefanie; Frölich, Markus; Lechner, Michael |
| Abstract: | In many countries, caseworkers in a public employment office have the dual roles of counselling and monitoring unemployed persons. These roles often conflict with each other leading to important case-worker heterogeneity: Some consider providing services to their clients and satisfying their demands as their primary task. Others may however pursue their strategies even against the will of the unemployed person. They may assign job assignments and labour market programmes without consent of the unemployed person. Based on a very detailed linked jobseeker-caseworker dataset, we investigate the effects of caseworkers' cooperativeness on the employment probabilities of their clients. Modified statistical matching methods reveal that caseworkers who place less emphasis on a cooperative and harmonic relationship with their clients increase their employment chances in the short and medium term. |
| Keywords: | Public employment services; statistical matching methods; unemployment |
| JEL: | C31 J68 |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6558&r=lab |
| By: | Pasquale Tridico (Department of economics, University of Roma Tre (Italy)) |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to explore, through a review of the literature, the wage theory and the institutions of the labor market, in the thought of some classical, institutional, keynesian and marginal economists, whose contribution has been fundamental for the economic theory and for the analysis of the labor market in particular. The objective is to show that, except for the marginal economists, the economic system does not converge spontaneously towards the equilibrium of the labor market, and unemployment positions and rigid wages are empirically prevailing and theoretically justified phenomena. Moreover, the flexibility of the labor market, with respect to both wages and permanent adjustments of labor to firms, does not seem the most appropriate policy which guarantees full employment and greater productivity. On the contrary, such a relation is strongly questioned at theoretical and empirical level. |
| Keywords: | mercato del lavoro, produttività, istituzioni economiche. |
| JEL: | J08 J24 B52 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rcr:wpaper:07_06&r=lab |
| By: | Stephanie von Hinke Kessler Scholder |
| Abstract: | Recent literature has shown consistent evidence of a positive relationship between maternal employment and children’s excess body weight. These studies have largely focused on the effect of average weekly work hours over the child’s life on its overweight status. The aim of this paper is to explore the importance of the timing of employment. Timing of maternal absences has been shown to matter for child cognitive and behavioral outcomes. This paper explores whether this timing effect also exists with respect to children’s excess body weight. Data on a nationally representative British birth cohort are used to examine this, permitting a detailed exploration of the potential endogeneity of mother’s employment. The results show a significant positive correlation between full-time maternal employment during mid-childhood and the probability of being overweight at age 16. There is no evidence that part-time or full-time employment at earlier or later ages leads to a higher probability of being overweight at age 16. Subgroup analysis suggests this effect is driven by lower socio-economic groups. Various econometric techniques are used to explore whether employed mothers are systematically different from non-employed mothers, but there is no evidence that this unobserved heterogeneity biases the estimates. |
| Keywords: | Childhood obesity; Maternal Employment; Timing of Employment; Overweight |
| JEL: | I12 J22 |
| Date: | 2007–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:cmpowp:07/180&r=lab |
| By: | Takahiro Ito; Takashi Kurosak |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the effects of weather risk on the off-farm labor supply of agricultural households in a developing country. Faced with the uninsurable risk of output and food price fluctuations, poor farmers in developing countries may diversify labor allocation across activities in order to smooth income in real terms.A key feature of this paper is that it distinguishes different types of off-farm labor markets: agriculture and nonagriculture on the one hand, and, wages paid in cash and wages paid in kind on the other. We develop a theoretical model of household optimization, which predicts that when farmers are faced with more production risk in their farm production, they find it more attractive to engage in nonagricultural work as a means of risk diversification, but the agricultural wage sector becomes more attractive when food security is an important issue for the farmers and agricultural wages are paid in kind. To test this prediction, we estimate a multivariate twolimit tobit model of labor allocation using household data from rural areas of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India. The regression results show that the share of the off-farm labor supply increases with weather risk, the increase is much larger in the case of nonagricultural work than in the case of agricultural wage work, and the increase is much larger in the case of agricultural wages paid in kind than in the cash wage case. Simulation results based on the regression estimates show that the sectoral difference is substantial, implying that empirical and theoretical studies on farmers' labor supply response to risk should distinguish between the types of off-farm work involved. |
| Keywords: | covariate risk, non-farm employment, self-employment, food security, India |
| JEL: | Q12 O15 J22 |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hst:hstdps:d07-226&r=lab |
| By: | Edward C Norton; Euna Han |
| Abstract: | Economists have argued that obesity may lead to worse labor market outcomes, especially for women. Empirical methods to test this hypothesis have not thus far adequately controlled for the endogeneity of obesity. We use variation in genotype to predict variation in phenotype (obesity). Genetic information from specific genes linked to obesity in the biomedical literature provide strong exogenous variation in the body mass index, and thus can be used as instrumental variables. These genes predict swings in weight of between 5 and 20 pounds for persons between five and six feet tall. We use additional genetic information to control for omitted variables correlated with both obesity and labor market outcomes. We analyzed data from the third wave of the Add Health data set, when respondents are in their mid-twenties. Results from our preferred models show no effect of obesity on the probability of employment or on wages, for either men or women. This paper shows the potential of using genetic information in social sciences. |
| Keywords: | Obesity, genetics, labor market outcomes, employment, wages, Add Health |
| Date: | 2007–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:07/15&r=lab |
| By: | Pavlina R. Tcherneva; L. Randall Wray |
| Abstract: | In 2002, Argentina implemented a large-scale public employment program to deal with the latest economic crisis and the ensuing massive unemployment and poverty. The program, known as Plan Jefes, offered part-time work for unemployed heads of households, and yet more than 70 percent of the people who turned up for work were women. The present paper evaluates the operation of this program, its macroeconomic effects, and its impact on program participants. We report findings from our 2005 meetings with policymakers and visits to different project sites. We find that Jefes addresses many important community problems, is well received by participants, and serves the needs of women particularly well. Some of the benefits women report are working in mother-friendly jobs, getting needed training and education, helping the community, and finding dignity and empowerment through work. |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_519&r=lab |
| By: | Roy Wada; Erdal Tekin |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effect of body composition on wages. We develop measures of body composition – body fat (BF) and fat-free mass (FFM) – using data on bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) that are available in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III and estimate wage models for respondents in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. Our results indicate that increased body fat is unambiguously associated with decreased wages for both males and females. This result is in contrast to the mixed and sometimes inconsistent results from the previous research using body mass index (BMI). We also find new evidence indicating that a higher level of fat-free body mass is consistently associated with increased hourly wages. We present further evidence that these results are not the artifacts of unobserved heterogeneity. Our findings are robust to numerous specification checks and to a large number of alternative BIA prediction equations from which the body composition measures are derived. Our work addresses an important limitation of the current literature on the economics of obesity. Previous research relied on body weight or BMI for measuring obesity despite the growing agreement in the medical literature that they represent misleading measures of obesity because of their inability to distinguish between body fat and fat-free body mass. Body composition measures used in this paper represent significant improvements over the previously used measures because they allow for the effects of fat and fat free components of body composition to be separately identified. Our work also contributes to the growing literature on the role of non-cognitive characteristics on wage determination. |
| JEL: | I1 J3 |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13595&r=lab |
| By: | Hugo Ñopo (Inter-American Development Bank); Jaime Saavedra-Chanduvi (World Bank); Miguel Robles (University of California) |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses program evaluation for ProJoven, the Peruvian youth labor training program. Complementing detailed fieldwork, the econometric work implements a two-stage matching procedure on propensity scores, gender and labor income. This allows identification of differentiated program impacts on males and females and attacks the problem of Ashenfelter’s Dips. The evaluation shows substantial differences in ProJoven’s impact for males and females. Eighteen months after participation in the program, employment rates for females improve by about 15 percent (while employment for males reduces by 11 percent), gender occupational segregation reduces by 30 percent, and females’ labor income improves by 93 percent (while males’ earnings increase by 11 percent). Nonetheless, gender equality promotion represents only 1.5 percent of ProJoven’s budget. These results suggest that labor-training programs that promote equal gender participation have disproportionately positive effects on outcomes for women trainees in a labor market with substantial gender differences. |
| Date: | 2007–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:wpaper:1068&r=lab |
| By: | Francis Vella (Georgetown University); Lídia Farré (Universidad de Alicante) |
| Abstract: | Using a sample of mother-child pairs from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 we explore the intergenerational transmission of a social norm regarding women¿s roles and examine its implications for the labor market behavior of females. We find that a mother¿s attitudes towards working women have a statistically significant effect on those of her children. Furthermore we find that the component of this social norm that is correlated with the individual¿s mother¿s work behavior during that individual¿s youth not only affects the labor market force participation decision of a female individual, but also has an equally strong association with that of the wife of a male individual. The findings indicate that cultural transmission contributes to the intergenerational similarity in the work behavior of females. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational cultural transmission, gender role attitudes, female labor force participation. |
| JEL: | J12 J62 D1 Z1 |
| Date: | 2007–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2007-23&r=lab |
| By: | Gary D. Hansen; Selo Imrohoroglu |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of on-the-job skill accumulation on average hours worked by age and the volatility of hours over the life cycle in a calibrated general equilibrium model. Two forms of skill accumulation are considered: learning by doing and on-the-job training. In our economy with learning by doing, individuals supply more labor early in the life cycle and less as they approach retirement than they do in an economy without this feature. The impact of this feature on the volatility of hours over the life cycle depends on the value of the intertemporal elasticity of labor supply. When individuals accumulate skills by on-the-job training, there are only weak effects on both the steady-state labor supply and its volatility over the life cycle. |
| JEL: | E32 J22 J24 |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13603&r=lab |
| By: | Gregg Huff; Giovanni Caggiano |
| Abstract: | This article uses new data sets to analyze labor market integration between 1882 and 1936 in an area of Asia stretching from South India to Southeastern China and encompassing the three Southeast Asian countries of Burma, Malaya and Thailand. We find that by the late nineteenth century, globalization, of which a principal feature was the mass migration of Indians and Chinese to Southeast Asia, gave rise to both an integrated Asian labor market and a period of real wage convergence. Integration did not, however, extend beyond Asia to include core industrial countries. Asian and core areas, in contrast to globally integrated commodity markets, showed divergent trends in unskilled real wages |
| Keywords: | Globalization; Labor market integration; Migration; Southeast Asia; Terms of trade, real wage convergence |
| JEL: | F15 F22 J31 N35 O15 |
| Date: | 2007–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gla:glaewp:2007_14&r=lab |
| By: | Edith Sand; Assaf Razin |
| Abstract: | In the political-economy debate people express the idea that immigrants are good because they can help pay for the old, thus help sustaining the social security system. In addition, the median voter whose income derives from wages will wish to keep out the immigrants who will depress his/her wage. Therefore the decisive voter will keep migrants out. The paper addresses these two accepted propositions. For this purpose we develop an OLG political economy model of social security and migration to explore how migration policy and a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) social security system are jointly determined. The sub-game perfect Markov , depends on the different patterns of fertility rates among native born and migrants. Our analysis demonstrates that a social security system may change the first proposition significantly because the median voter may opt to bring in migrants to help him/her during retirement. As for the second proposition we get a significantly nuanced version. Not always immigration helps sustain the social security. |
| JEL: | E6 H1 |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13598&r=lab |
| By: | Adriana Sánchez Hugalde (Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB); Universitat de Barcelona (UB)) |
| Abstract: | This empirical work studies the influence of immigrant students on individuals’ school choice in one of the most populated regions in Spain: Catalonia. It has estimated, following the Poisson model, the probability that a certain school, which immigrant students are already attending, may be chosen by natives as well as by immigrants, respectively. The information provided by the Catalonia School Department presents school characteristics of all the primary and secondary schools in Catalonia during the 2001/02 and 2002/03 school years. The results obtained support the evidence that Catalonia native families avoid schools attended by immigrants. Natives certainly prefer not to interact with immigrants. Private schools are more successful in avoiding immigrants. Finally, the main reason for non-natives’ choice is the presence of other non-natives in the same school. |
| Keywords: | School Choice, Immigration |
| JEL: | I21 J15 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ieb:wpaper:2007/11/doc2007-4&r=lab |
| By: | Eugenio Zucchelli; Anthony Harris; Nigel Rice; Andrew M. Jones |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the causal relationship between ill-health and retirement among older working individuals. We represent the transition to retirement as a discrete-time hazard model using a stock-sample from the first five waves (2001- 2005) of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. Our results show that health plays an important role in individual retirement decisions and that negative shocks to health greatly increase the hazard of retirement, especially for men. This is true for both a measure of health limitations and a measure of latent health obtained using pooled ordered probit models, as well as for three alternative health shock measures. We also consider the effects of partners’ health and labour market status on an individual’s retirement decision. Our estimates suggest that partners’ characteristics do not significantly influence individual retirement choices. |
| Keywords: | health, health shocks, discrete-time hazard model, retirement. |
| Date: | 2007–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:07/19&r=lab |
| By: | Raouf Boucekkine; Rodolphe Desbordes; Hélène Latzer |
| Abstract: | This paper is concerned with the impact of epidemics on economic behavior, and in particular on fertility and schooling. Special attention is paid to the fertility eect, which has been at the heart of a recent controversy around the AIDS crisis. An illustrative model is proposed where agents choose labor supply, life-cycle consumption and the number of children. We show that the optimal response in terms of fertility and labor supply to an epidemic shock depends on the relative strength of two forces at work, deriving from: (i) the induced decrease in the survival probability, and (ii) the impact of epidemics on wages. A comprehensive empirical study is then proposed to disentangle the latter eects in the HIV/AIDS and malaria cases. Using data from 69 developing countries over the period 1980-2004, we nd that HIV/AIDS has a robust negative eect on fertility and a robust positive eect on education, while opposite results are found in the case of malaria. We argue that this discrepancy can be attributed to a sizeable wage eect in the AIDS case while such an eect is rather negligible under malaria at least in the short term, as higher malaria prevalence depresses wages in the long term. |
| Date: | 2007–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gla:glaewp:2007_25&r=lab |
| By: | Christopher Bruce; Daniel Gordon |
| Date: | 2007–10–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:clg:wpaper:2007-11&r=lab |
| By: | Djavad Salehi-Isfahani; Daniel Egel |
| Abstract: | Youth Exclusion in Iran: The State of Education, Employment and Family Formation |
| Keywords: | Youth Exclusion in Iran: The State of Education, Employment and Family Formation |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vpi:wpaper:e07-2&r=lab |
| By: | Richard Layte (Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)); Hannah McGee (Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland) |
| Abstract: | Objective: To examine how age at first vaginal intercourse is related to the circumstances of sex and specifically to the nature of the relationship between the partners, levels of autonomy, planning and regret. To quantify the contribution of age at first sex relative to the context and circumstances of sex. Design: Cross-sectional survey of sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of the Irish population carried out by telephone in 2005/6. Participants: A nationally representative sample of the population of the Republic of Ireland aged 18 to 64 years (n=7441:3188 men and 4253 women). Results: The median age of first vaginal sex was 18 for men and 19 for women. Median age at first sex had decreased by 4 years for men and 5 years for women over the last five decades. Sex was a ‘spur of the moment’ decision for 39% of men and 29% of women who had vaginal sex for the first time when they were aged 20+ compared to 74% of men and 56% of women who had sex at age 15 or less. Less than 1% of men and women whose first experience of intercourse occurred over the age of 20+ were unwilling or forced. These figures were 8% of men and 27% of women among those whose first sex was at age 15 or younger. A substantial minority (14% of men and 19% of women) said they wished that they had waited longer before having their first sexual experience. This increased to 28% of men and 52% of women who had their first sex before the age of 17. Controlling for age of first sex, the context and circumstances remain important predictors of subsequent regret. Conclusions: Younger age at first sex was associated with weaker planning, lower autonomy, a less stable relationship with partner and higher levels of regret. However, regret after early sexual initiation was not universal and young age per se was not responsible for higher levels of regret. Instead, the lower knowledge and skills of early debutants and their impact on levels of planning, preparedness and willingness lead to later regret. |
| Keywords: | First sexual intercourse, willingness, planning, regret |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esr:wpaper:wp217&r=lab |
| By: | Nekby, Lena (Stockholm University Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies - SULCIS); Rödin, Magnus (Stockholm University Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies - SULCIS); Özcan, Gülay (Stockholm University Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies - SULCIS) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the identity formation of a cohort of students with immigrant backgrounds in Sweden and the consequences of identity for subsequent educational attainment. Unique for this study is that identity is defined according to a two-dimensional acculturation framework based on both strength of identity to the (ethnic) minority and to the (Swedish) majority culture. Results indicate that integrated men are associated with significantly higher levels of education than assimilated men. No differences in educational attainment are found between the assimilated and the integrated for women. These results put into question the premise of oppositional identities, i.e., a trade-off between ethnic identity and educational achievement, among immigrants in Sweden. |
| Keywords: | Ethnic Identity; Acculturation; Ethnic minorities; Education |
| JEL: | J15 J16 J21 Z13 |
| Date: | 2007–11–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sulcis:2007_006&r=lab |
| By: | Hugo Ñopo (Inter-American Development Bank) |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes an extension of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition from two to a continuum of comparison groups. The proposed decomposition is then estimated for the case of racial wage differences in urban Peru, exploiting a novel data set that allows the capturing of mestizaje (racial mixtures). |
| Keywords: | Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, Race, Gender, Informality |
| JEL: | J1 J7 O17 |
| Date: | 2007–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:wpaper:1074&r=lab |
| By: | Baalen, P.J. van; Karsten, L. (Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), RSM Erasmus University) |
| Abstract: | Management research and education are often characterized as being interdisciplinary. However, most discussions on what interdisciplinarity in management studies means have bogged down in ideological fixations. In this paper we alternatively take a historical perspective and analyze the evolution of the interdisciplinarity concept in management studies during the last decades in the Netherlands. We distinguish between two opposite versions of interdisciplinarity: a synoptic (conceptual) and an instrumental (pragmatic) one. Both versions resulted from different knowledge strategies (boundary-work) of competing and cooperating disciplines. We conclude that in the Netherlands instrumental versions of interdisciplinarity in management research and education prevailed. |
| Keywords: | Interdisciplinarity;disciplinarity;management science;management education;history of management education; |
| Date: | 2007–09–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:eureri:300011799&r=lab |
| By: | Ljungqvist, Lars; Sargent, Thomas J |
| Abstract: | An incomplete markets life-cycle model with indivisible labour makes career lengths and human capital accumulation respond to labour tax rates and government supplied non-employment benefits. We compare aggregate and individual outcomes in this individualistic incomplete markets model with those in a comparable collectivist representative family with employment lotteries and complete insurance markets. The incomplete and complete market structures assign leisure to different types of individuals who are distinguished by their human capital and age. These microeconomic differences distinguish the two models in terms of how macroeconomic aggregates respond to some types of government supplied non-employment benefits, but remarkably, not to labor tax changes. |
| Keywords: | benefits; career; complete markets; employment lotteries; human capital; incomplete markets; indivisible labour; labour supply elasticity; retirement; taxes |
| JEL: | E24 E62 J21 J26 |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6560&r=lab |
| By: | Paul Levine (University of Surrey); Emanuela Lotti (University of Surrey); Joseph Pearlman (London Metropolitan University); Richard Pierse (University of Surrey) |
| Abstract: | Using a calibrated two-bloc endogenous growth model of the European economy, we assess the growth and welfare impact of East-West European migration of different skill compositions. The East has a lower total factor productivity and a lower endowment of skilled labour. Migration can induce two growth-enhancing effects: an efficiency effect from the more e±cient use of labour in the West and a sectoral reallocation effect from a fall in the Western skilled-unskilled wage rates. Despite growth gains there are both winners (migrants, the representative Western non-migrant household) and losers (the representative Eastern household remaining). Remittances can see the latter group joining the winners. |
| Keywords: | migration, endogenous growth, welfare, immigration surplus, emigration |
| JEL: | F22 F43 O41 |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sur:surrec:1507&r=lab |
| By: | Vicente Cuñat; Maria Guadalupe |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effect of deregulation and increased product market competition on the compensation packages that firms offer to their executives. We use a panel of US executives in the nineties and exploit the deregulation episodes in the banking and financial sectors as quasi-natural experiments. We provide difference-in-differences estimates of their effect on (1) total pay, (2) estimated fixed pay and performance-pay sensitivities and (3) on the sensitivity of stock option grants. Our results indicate that the deregulations substantially changed the level and structure of compensation: the variable components of pay increased, performance-pay sensitivities grew and, at the same time, the fixed component of pay fell. The overall effect on total pay was small.JEL codes: M52, L1, J31Keywords: Executive compensation; performance related pay; incentives; product market competition; deregulation. |
| Date: | 2007–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fmg:fmgdps:dp598&r=lab |
| By: | Merike Darmody (Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)); Emer Smyth (Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)); Selina McCoy (Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the way in which truancy levels are structured by individual social class and the social mix of the school within the Republic of Ireland. Drawing on a national survey of young people, truancy levels are found to be higher among orking-class and Traveller students. Truancy is more prevalent in predominantly working-class schools, mainly because young people see them as less supportive and more disorderly environments. The mpirical analyses are situated within the context of the concepts of individual and nstitutional habitus as well as resistance theory. Our findings suggest the institutional habitus of the school is a strong factor in influencing truancy levels among young people. While truancy operates as a form of student resistance to the school system, it serves to reproduce social class inequalities since it is associated with more negative educational and labour market outcomes in the longer term. |
| Date: | 2007–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esr:wpaper:wp212&r=lab |
| By: | Alberto Chong (Inter-American Development Bank); José Galdo (McMaster University/IZA); Jaime Saavedra (World Bank) |
| Abstract: | Peru has one of the highest informality rates in Latin America, with almost 60 percent of the urban labor force working at the margins of labor market legislation or in microenterprises that lack basic labor market standards (Marcouiller, Ruiz de Castilla, and Woodruff, 1997). This paper identifies two factors that can explain the variation in informality rates in the 1990s. First, Peru experienced a steady increase in employment allocation in traditionally “informal†sectors—in particular, retail trade and transport. Second, there was a sharp increase in nonwage labor costs, despite a reduction in the average productivity of the economy. In addition, the paper illustrates the negative correlation between productivity and informality by evaluating the impacts of the PROJOVEN youth training program. |
| Date: | 2007–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:wpaper:1075&r=lab |
| By: | Joseph Kaboski; Trevon D. Logan |
| Abstract: | The existing literature on skill-biased technical change has not considered how the technological endowment itself plays a role in the returns to skill. This paper constructs a simple model of skill biased technical change which highlights the role that resource endowments play in the returns to education. The model predicts variation in returns to education with skill biased technological change if there is significant heterogeneity in resource endowments before the technological change. Using a variety of historical sources, we document the heterogeneous technology levels by region in the American past. We then estimate the returns to education of high school teachers in the early twentieth century using a new data source. a report from the U.S. Commissioner of Education in 1909. Overall, we find significant regional variation in the returns to education that match differences in resource endowments, with large (within-occupation) returns for the Midwest and Southwest (7%), but much lower returns in the South (3%) and West (0.5%). We also show that our results are generalizable to returns to education in the United States and that returns to education for teachers tracked quite closely with the overall returns to education from 1940 onward. |
| JEL: | I2 J2 J3 N3 |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13589&r=lab |
| By: | Kartseva Marina; Sinavskaya Oksana; Zakharov Sergey |
| Abstract: | Poor in Russia are mainly families with children mostly because of the unemployment or inactivity of a parent. This project is aimed at revealing typical models of demographic and labor market behavior and understanding how decisions regarding family formation and labor force participation are synchronized at the household level. |
| Date: | 2007–07–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eer:wpalle:04-916e&r=lab |
| By: | Teresa Bago d’Uva; Andrew M. Jones; Eddy van Doorslaer |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the effect of dental insurance on utilization of general dentist services by adult US population aged from 25 to 64 years. Our econometric framework accommdates endogeneity of insurance and the ordered nature of the measure of dental utilization. The study finds strong evidence of endogeneity of dental insurance to utilization and identifies interesting patterns of nonlinear dependencies between the dental insurance status and individual’s age and income. The calculated average treatment effect supports the claim of adverse selection into the treated (insured) state and indicates a strong positive incentives effect of dental insurance. |
| Keywords: | Inequality, inequity, health care utilisation, panel data, ECHP |
| Date: | 2007–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:07/17&r=lab |
| By: | IOSSA, Elisabetta; JULLIEN, Bruno |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ide:wpaper:7804&r=lab |
| By: | David T. Coe |
| Abstract: | Globalisation is having important effects on labour markets in OECD countries. The global supply of labour has increased enormously with the emergence of China and India. At the same time technological advances have contributed to heightened income inequality and changed the nature of globalisation itself, most vividly demonstrated by the rapid growth of offshoring of business services that were previously nontradable. It is argued in this paper that these developments are best characterized as an intensification and broadening of the process of globalisation rather than a fundamental change in the nature of globalisation. They will, nevertheless, have long-lasting effects on OECD labour markets, increasing the urgency of implementing the labour market policies set out in the Restated OECD Job Strategy. The paper concludes that the most important implication of the emergence of China and India in the context of widespread perceptions of increasing economic inequality may be to reduce support for globalisation in OECD countries. <BR>La mondialisation a des effets importants sur les marchés du travail des pays de l’OCDE. L’offre mondiale de main-d'œuvre a augmenté considérablement avec l’émergence de la Chine et l’Inde. Dans le même temps, les progrès technologiques ont contribué à renforcer les inégalités de revenus et ont changé la nature même de la mondialisation, comme en témoigne la croissance rapide de la délocalisation des services aux entreprises, qui étaient auparavant non-échangeables. On fait valoir dans ce document que ces évolutions correspondent plus à une intensification et un élargissement du processus de mondialisation qu'à un changement fondamental de nature de la mondialisation. Elles auront, néanmoins, des effets durables sur les marchés du travail dans les pays de l'OCDE, et renforcent de ce fait l'urgence de mettre en œuvre les politiques du marché du travail identifiées dans «La stratégie de l'OCDE pour l'emploi révisée ». Le document conclut que, dans un contexte de perception accrue de croissance des inégalités économiques, la principale conséquence de l’émergence de la Chine et l’Inde peut être de réduire le soutien à la mondialisation dans les pays de l’OCDE. |
| JEL: | F13 F16 J08 |
| Date: | 2007–11–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:elsaab:63-en&r=lab |
| By: | Böckerman, Petri; Johansson, Edvard; Helakorpi, Satu; Uutela, Antti |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the relationship between relative income inequality and health in Finland, using individual microdata over the period 1993-2005. Our data allows us to analyse a large spectrum of health indicators. Overall, our results suggest that income inequality is not associated with increased morbidity in the population. The results for women differ to quite a large extent from those of men and the pooled sample. There is evidence that an increase in the Gini coefficient is negatively related to the probability of good physical health and no disability retirement. For men, relative income inequality is clearly not important for health. |
| Keywords: | Health; health behaviour; economic inequality; relative income inequality; relative deprivation; Gini coefficient |
| JEL: | I00 I32 |
| Date: | 2007–11–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:5640&r=lab |
| By: | Michael Graber; Andrey Launov; Klaus Wälde |
| Abstract: | Getting a tenured position in economics in Germany is viewed as a random outcome where the probability of tenure depends on the quantity and qual- ity of publications, age and years since PhD. We measure publications both in units of Top 5 journals and in units of the European Economic Review (EER). We find that the average age of a professor in the year of his rst appointment in Germany in the period of 1970 to 2005 is 38. This is ap- proximately 8 years after the PhD. He has 1.5 "standardized" Top 5 papers or 2.2 "standardized" EER papers, i.e. written with one coauthor and of 20 pages length. Results vary across subfields and over time. Someone aiming for a tenured job after 2010 should by then (average over all fields) have 3.3 standardized Top 5 papers or 5 standardized EER papers |
| Date: | 2007–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gla:glaewp:2007_32&r=lab |
| By: | Michael Dolega |
| Abstract: | The author attempts to track Canadian labour productivity over the past four decades using a multivariate dynamic factor model that, in addition to the labour productivity series, includes aggregate compensation and consumption information. Productivity is assumed to switch between two regimes (the high-growth state and the low-growth state) with different trend growth rates according to a first-order Markov process. The author finds that labour productivity in Canada fell from the high-growth to the low-growth state towards the end of the 1970s, and that it has not yet reverted to the high-growth state. In particular, the model primarily attributes the resurgence of labour productivity growth in the late nineties to transitory effects. |
| Keywords: | Productivity |
| JEL: | O4 O51 C32 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bca:bocadp:07-12&r=lab |
| By: | Ian McDonald |
| Abstract: | There is no abstract. |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mlb:wpaper:1011&r=lab |
| By: | Trevon D. Logan |
| Abstract: | College football fans, coaches, and observers have adopted a set of beliefs about how college football poll voters behave. I document three pieces of conventional wisdom in college football regarding the timing of wins and losses, the value of playing strong opponents, and the value of winning by wide margins. Using a unique data set with 25 years of AP poll results, I test college football's conventional wisdom. In particular, I test (1) whether it is better to lose early or late in the season, (2) whether teams benefit from playing stronger opponents, and (3) whether teams are rewarded for winning by large margins. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I find that (1) it is better to lose later in the season than earlier, (2) AP voters do not pay attention to the strength of a defeated opponent, and (3) the benefit of winning by a large margin is negligible. I conclude by noting how these results inform debates about a potential playoff in college football. |
| JEL: | C8 D7 |
| Date: | 2007–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13596&r=lab |