|
on Labour Economics |
| By: | Webber, Douglas A. (Temple University) |
| Abstract: | Using a dynamic labor supply model and linked employer-employee data, I find evidence of substantial search frictions, with females facing a higher level of frictions than males. However, the majority of the gender gap in labor supply elasticities is driven by across firm sorting rather than within firm differences, a feature predicted in the search theory literature, but which has not been previously documented. The gender differential in supply elasticities leads to 3.3% lower earnings for women. Roughly 60% of the elasticity differential can be explained by marriage and children penalties faced by women but not men. |
| Keywords: | monopsony, discrimination |
| JEL: | J42 J71 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7343&r=lab |
| By: | Rebérioux, Antoine; Caroli, Eve; Breda, Thomas; Bassanini, Andrea |
| Abstract: | Nous étudions les systèmes de rémunérations en vigueur dans les entreprises familiales. Sur la base de données employeurs-salariés appariées portant sur un échantillon d'établissements français dans les années 2000, nous montrons dans un premier temps que les entreprises familiales versent des salaires plus faibles que les entreprises non familiales. Cet écart de salaires est robuste à l'introduction d'une série de contrôles portant sur les caractéristiques des établissements et des salariés. De plus, il n'apparaît pas dû à l'écart de productivité existant entre entreprises familiales et non familiales, ni à une éventuelle hétérogénéité inobservée entre établissements ou salariés. Par ailleurs, l'écart de salaires entre entreprises familiales et non familiales est relativement homogène entre hommes et femmes et entre salariés ayant des niveaux d'éducation différents. En revanche, il est plus important pour les CSP inférieures (ouvriers et employés) que pour les CSP supérieures (techniciens, contremaîtres et cadres) pour lesquelles il n'est par ailleurs pas significatif. Dans un second temps, nous nous interrogeons sur les raisons pour lesquelles les salariés restent dans les entreprises familiales si les salaires y sont plus faibles. Nous montrons que la sécurité de l'emploi y est plus élevée. Le taux de licenciement apparaît ainsi plus faible dans les entreprises familiales que dans les non familiales. Nous montrons également que les entreprises familiales ont moins recours aux licenciements et plus aux réductions d'emploi quand elles font face à un choc négatif sur leur niveau d'emploi. Ces résultats sont confirmés par ceux que l'on obtient sur données subjectives : le risque de licenciement perçu par les salariés est plus faible dans les entreprises familiales que dans les non familiales. Nous conjecturons que nos résultats sont compatibles avec deux types d'explications : un modèle de différences compensatrices de salaires et un modèle dans lequel les salariés s'auto-sélectionnent dans les entreprises familiales ou non sur la base de leurs préférences. |
| Abstract: | We study the compensation package offered by family firms. Using matched employer-employee data for a sample of French establishments in the 2000s, we first show that family firms pay on average lower wages to their workers. This family/non-family wage gap is robust to controlling for several establishment and individual characteristics and does not appear to be due either to the differential of productivity between family and non-family firms or to unobserved establishment and individual heterogeneity. Moreover, it is relatively homogeneous across workers with different gender, educational attainment and age. By contrast, the family/non-family wage gap is found to be larger for clerks and blue-collar workers than for managers, supervisors and technicians, for whom we find no significant wage gap. As a second step, we investigate why workers stay in family firms while being paid less. We show that these firms offer greater job security. We find evidence that the rate of dismissal is lower in family than in non-family firms. We also show that family firms rely less on dismissals and more on hiring reductions when they downsize. These results are confirmed by subjective data : the perceived risk of dismissal is significantly lower in family firms than in non-family ones. We speculate that our results can be explained either by a compensating wage differential story or by a model in which workers sort in different firms according to their preferences. |
| Keywords: | Family firms; wages; job security; linked employer-employee data; |
| JEL: | G34 J31 J33 J63 L26 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ner:dauphi:urn:hdl:123456789/7244&r=lab |
| By: | David Brown; Serife Genc; Julie Hothckiss; Myriam Quispe-Agnoli |
| Abstract: | Using matched employer-employee data from the state of Georgia, this paper investigates how employment of undocumented workers varies along the business cycle and how it differs from the adjustment in employment of documented workers. The cyclical component of undocumented employment is found to be significantly more volatile than the cyclical component of documented employment. Simulation results indicate that complementarities between documented workers and capital account for almost 90 percent of the difference in measured volatility between documented and undocumented employment. |
| Keywords: | business cycles, illegal immigration, undocumented workers |
| JEL: | J J61 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tcb:wpaper:1319&r=lab |
| By: | Almut Balleer; Britta Gehrke; Wolfgang Lechthaler; Christian Merkl |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the effects of short-time work (i.e., government subsidized working time reductions) on unemployment and output fluctuations. The central question is whether the rule based component (i.e., the existence of the institution short-time work) and the discretionary component (i.e., rule changes) stabilize employment over the business cycle. In our baseline scenario the rule based component stabilizes unemployment fluctuations by 15% and output fluctuations by 7%. Given the small share of short-time work expenses in terms of GDP, the stabilization effects are large compared to other instruments such as the income tax system. By contrast, discretionary short-time work interventions do not have any statistically significant effect on unemployment. These effects are based on a structural VAR estimation which is identified using the output elasticity of short-time work estimated from German establishment paneldata. The model shows that non-effects of discretionary interventions may be due to their low persistence |
| Keywords: | Short-time work, fiscal policy, business cycles, search-and-matching, SVAR |
| JEL: | E24 E32 E62 J08 J63 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kie:kieliw:1832&r=lab |
| By: | Fukase, Emiko |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the differential impacts of foreign ownership on wages for different types of workers (in terms of educational background and gender) in Vietnam using the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys of 2002 and 2004. Whereas most previous studies have compared wage levels between foreign and domestic sectors using firm-level data (thus excluding the informal sector), one advantage of using the Living Standards Surveys in this paper is that the data allow wage comparison analyses to extend to the informal wage sector. A series of Mincerian earnings equations and worker-specific fixed effects models are estimated. Several findings emerge. First, foreign firms pay higher wages relative to their domestic counterparts after controlling for workers’ personal characteristics. Second, the higher the individual workers'levels of education, the larger on average are the wage premiums for those who work for foreign firms. Third, longer hours of work in foreign firm jobs relative to working in the informal wage sector are an important component of the wage premium. Finally, unskilled women experience a larger foreign wage premium than unskilled men, reflecting the low earning opportunities for women and a higher gender gap in the informal wage sector. |
| Keywords: | Labor Markets,Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Gender and Development,Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress |
| Date: | 2013–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6421&r=lab |
| By: | Garcia, Gustavo Adolfo (Autonomous University of Barcelona); Nicodemo, Catia (University of Oxford) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the relationship between social networks and the job search behaviour of individuals. Networking is not only based on friends and relatives but also on neighbourhood. The geographic closeness is associated to social interactions. Individuals who are in physical and social proximity share the same sources of information, because they divide individual characteristics or because they learn from one another's behaviour. Using data from Colombia in 2009 we explore how neighbourhoods have an effect on the channel used to search for a job (formal vs informal). People tend to opt for a formal or informal channel depending on the channel selected by employed people in their neighbourhood. In addition, we study the wage premium in using a formal or informal channel, exploring the inequality that can arise using a different job search method. Our results show that the neighbourhood affects the individual's job search method and referral workers earn less wage at the bottom of the wage distribution with respect to non-referred workers. At the top of the wage distribution the difference observed is due to different characteristics between the two groups. Colombia presents persistent high levels of informality and inequality. These features impose important social and economic costs such as low tax collection, low employee protection and deficiencies in the labour intermediation process with strong informational asymmetries in the job search. New policies to regulate the labour market are need. |
| Keywords: | neighborhood effects, formal and informal networks, job search, quantile regression |
| JEL: | J64 J31 J24 P23 J6 J7 J0 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7336&r=lab |
| By: | Webber, Douglas A. (Temple University) |
| Abstract: | Using linked employer-employee data, I compute firm-level measures of the labor supply elasticity facing each private non-farm firm in the US. I provide the first direct evidence of the positive relationship between a firm's labor supply elasticity and the earnings of its workers. I also contrast the dynamic model method employed by this paper with the more traditional use of concentration ratios to measure a firm's labor market power. Finally, I construct a counterfactual earnings distribution which allows the effects of firm market power to vary across the earnings distribution. |
| Keywords: | monopsony |
| JEL: | J42 J21 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7342&r=lab |
| By: | Andrea Garnero; François Rycx |
| Abstract: | We estimate the impact of workforce diversity on productivity, wages and productivity-wage gaps (i.e. profits) using detailed Belgian linked employer-employee panel data. Findings, robust to a large set of covariates, specifications and econometric issues, show that educational (age) diversity is beneficial (harmful) for firm productivity and wages. The consequences of gender diversity are found to depend on the technological/knowledge environment of firms. While gender diversity generates significant gains in high-tech/knowledge intensive sectors, the opposite result is obtained in more traditional industries. Overall, findings do not point to sizeable productivity-wage gaps except for age diversity. |
| Keywords: | Labour diversity; productivity; wages; linked panel data;; GMM |
| JEL: | D24 J24 J31 M12 |
| Date: | 2013–04–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dul:wpaper:2013/143169&r=lab |
| By: | Marina Albanese; Cecilia Navarra; Ermanno Tortia |
| Abstract: | The standard explanation of wage rigidity in principal agent and in efficiency wage models is related to worker risk-aversion. However, these explanations do not consider at least two important classes of empirical evidence: (1) In worker cooperatives workers appear to behave in a less risk averse way than in for profit firms and to accept fluctuating wages; (2) The emerging experimental evidence on the employment contract shows that most workers prefer higher but more uncertain wages to lower fixed wages. Workers do not appear to express a preference for fixed wages in all situations and different ownership forms, in our case worker cooperatives and for-profit firms, behave in different ways when dealing with the trade-off between wage rigidity and employment fluctuations. More specifically, worker cooperatives are characterized, in relative terms, by fixed employment levels and fluctuating wages, while for-profit firms are characterized by fixed wages and fluctuating employment. Our paper reinterprets these stylized facts by focusing on the relationship between wage rigidity and worker risk aversion in light of the presence of employer post contractual opportunism. Contractual incompleteness and private information on the side of the employer can compound in favouring the pursuit of the employerÕs objectives, when they diverge from the employeeÕs ones. The idea of employer moral hazard is able to disentangle the observed behavioural differences in different ownership forms. By resorting to the standard efficiency wage framework, we show that, in the presence of employer moral hazard, employees in capitalistic firms generally prefer fixed wage, accepting this way a positive risk of lay-off. On the contrary, one of the main functions of fluctuating wages in worker cooperatives is to minimize the risk of lay-off. |
| Keywords: | risk aversion, employer contract, moral hazard, asymmetric information, hidden action, risk aversion, income insurance, employment insurance, worker cooperatives |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trn:utwpem:2013/02&r=lab |
| By: | Lukas Inderbitzin; Stefan Staubli; Josef Zweimüller |
| Abstract: | This paper explores how extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits targeted to older workers affect early retirement and social welfare. The trade-off of optimal UI between consumption smoothing and moral hazard requires accounting for the entire early retirement system, which often includes extended UI and relaxed access to disability insurance (DI). We argue that extended UI generates program complementarity (increased take-up of UI followed by DI and/or regular retirement benefits) and program substitution (increased take-up of UI instead of DI). Exploiting Austria’s regional extended benefit program, which extended regular UI benefits to up to 4 years, we find: (i) program complementarity is quantitatively important for workers aged 50+; and (ii) program substitution is quantitatively relevant for workers aged 55+. We derive a simple rule for optimal UI that accounts for program complementarity and program substitution. Using the sufficient statistics approach, we conclude that UI for older workers was too generous and the regional extended benefit program was a suboptimal policy. |
| Keywords: | Early retirement, unemployment, disability, policy reform, optimal benefits |
| JEL: | J14 J26 J65 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jku:nrnwps:2013_04&r=lab |
| By: | Kjell Erik Lommerud (Department of Economics, University of Bergen, Norway); Odd Rune Straume (Universidade do Minho - NIPE and University of Bergen (Health Economics Bergen, Department of Economics), Norway); Steinar Vagstad (Department of Economics, University of Bergen, Norway) |
| Abstract: | Consider a model with two types of jobs. The profitability of promoting a worker to a fast-track job depends not only on his or her observable talent, but also on incontractible effort. We investigate whether self-fulfilling expectations may lead to higher promotion standards for women. If employers expect women to do more household work than men, thereby exerting less effort in their paid job, then women must be more talented to make promotion profitable. Moreover, specialization in the family will then result in women doing most of the household work. Such self-fulfilling prophecies can be defeated: both affirmative action and family policy can make women spend more effort in the market, which can lead the economy to a non-discriminatory equilibrium. However, we find that it is unlikely that temporary policy can move the economy to a symmetric equilibrium: policy must be made permanent. Anti-discrimination policy need not enhance efficiency, and from a distribution viewpoint this is a policy with both winners and losers. |
| Keywords: | self-fulfilling prophecies; gender discrimination; promotion |
| JEL: | D13 J16 J22 J71 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nip:nipewp:05/2013&r=lab |
| By: | Annette van den Berg; Yolanda Grift; Arjen van Witteloostuijn; Christophe Boone; Olivier Van der Brempt |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we contribute to the extant Industrial Relations literature, which is almost completely confined to estimating the effects of worker participation within a single country, by conducting a comparative multi-country study using unique data from the European Company Survey 2009. We compare representation regimes within the European Union. We categorize the EU Member States into five clusters with similar participation characteristics: the Germanic, French, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and transition cluster. Across these clusters, we first estimate the effects of the presence of what we refer to as an information and consultation body on firm performance, measured by economic performance of the establishment as assessed by managers-respondents. Second, we estimate the effects of managerial attitudes on performance, as we assume - and find - that only taking into account the mere presence of a worker representation is insufficient, as mutual understandings between management and employee representatives affect the functioning of the employee representation body, and hence firm performance. |
| Keywords: | employee representation, works councils, firm performance, international comparison, Europe, ECS2009 |
| JEL: | J53 M54 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:use:tkiwps:1305&r=lab |
| By: | Cappelen, Alexander W. (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Reme, Bjørn-Atle (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Sørensen, Erik Ø. (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Tungodden, Bertil (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) |
| Abstract: | We study whether compensating people who volunteer to be leaders in a public goods game creates a social crowding-out effect of moral motivation among the others in the group. We report from an experiment with four treatments, where the base treatment is a standard public goods game with simultaneous contribution decisions, while the three other treatments allowed participants to volunteer to be an “early contributor” in their group. In the three leader treatments, we manipulate the level of compensation given to the leader. Our main finding is that a moderate compensation to the leader is highly beneficial, it increases the average contribution by almost 80%. A high compensation, however, is detrimental to public good provision. We show that paying a moderate compensation to the leaders strikes the right balance between the need for recruiting leaders and avoiding a large social crowding-out effect. We argue that the main findings of the paper are important in many real life settings where we would like to use economic incentives to encourage people to lead by example. |
| Keywords: | Voluntariness; Group behavior; Public goods; Laoratory. |
| JEL: | C72 C92 H41 |
| Date: | 2013–04–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2013_010&r=lab |
| By: | Aronsson, Thomas (Department of Economics, Umeå School of Business and Economics); Granlund, David (Department of Economics, Umeå School of Business and Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper deals with optimal income taxation based on a model with households where men and women allocate their time between market work and household production, and where households differ depending on which spouse has comparative advantage in market work. The purpose is to analyze the tax policy implications of gender norms represented by a market-work norm for men and household-work norm for women. We also distinguish between a welfarist government that respects all aspects of household preferences, and a paternalist government that disregards the disutility to households of deviating from the norms. The results show how the welfarist government may use tax policy to internalize the externalities caused by these norms, and how the paternalist government may use tax policy to make the households behave as if the norms were absent. |
| Keywords: | Social norms; household production; optimal taxation; paternalism |
| JEL: | D03 D13 D60 D62 H21 |
| Date: | 2013–04–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:umnees:0857&r=lab |