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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Mette Foged; Giovanni Peri |
| Abstract: | Using a database that includes the universe of individuals and establishments in Denmark over the period 1991-2008 we analyze the effect of a large inflow of non-European (EU) immigrants on Danish workers. We first identify a sharp and sustained supply-driven increase in the inflow of non-EU immigrants in Denmark, beginning in 1995 and driven by a sequence of international events such as the Bosnian, Somalian and Iraqi crises. We then look at the response of occupational complexity, job upgrading and downgrading, wage and employment of natives in the short and long run. We find that the increased supply of non-EU low skilled immigrants pushed native workers to pursue more complex occupations. This reallocation happened mainly through movement across firms. Immigration increased mobility of natives across firms and across municipalities but it did not increase their probability of unemployment. We also observe a significant shift in the native labor force towards complex service industries in locations receiving more immigrants. Those mechanisms protected individual wages from immigrants competition and enhanced their wage outcomes. While the highly educated experienced wage gains already in the short-run, the gains of the less educated built up over time as they moved towards jobs that were complementary to those held by the non-EU immigrants. |
| JEL: | F22 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19315&r=lab |
| By: | George J. Borjas; Kirk B. Doran |
| Abstract: | Knowledge generation is key to economic growth, and scientific prizes are designed to encourage it. But how does winning a prestigious prize affect future output? We compare the productivity of Fields medalists (winners of the top mathematics prize) to that of similarly brilliant contenders. The two groups have similar publication rates until the award year, after which the winners’ productivity declines. The medalists begin to “play the field,” studying unfamiliar topics at the expense of writing papers. It appears that tournaments can have large post-prize effects on the effort allocation of knowledge producers. |
| JEL: | J22 J24 J33 O31 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19445&r=lab |
| By: | Görlich, Dennis; Snower, Dennis J. |
| Abstract: | This paper sheds light on how changes in the organization of work can help to understand increasing wage inequality. We present a theoretical model in which workers with a wider span of competence (higher level of multitasking) earn a wage premium. Since abilities and opportunities to expand the span of competence are distributed unequally among workers across and within education groups, our theory helps to explain (1) rising wage inequality between groups, and (2) rising wage inequality within groups. Under certain assumptions, it also helps to explain (3) the polarization of the income distribution. Using a rich German data set covering a 20-year period from 1986 to 2006, we provide empirical support for our model. |
| Keywords: | multitasking; organizational change; tasks; wage inequality |
| JEL: | J24 J31 L23 |
| Date: | 2013–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9455&r=lab |
| By: | Klasen, Stephan (University of Göttingen); Pieters, Janneke (IZA) |
| Abstract: | We study the surprisingly low level and stagnation of female labor force participation rates in urban India between 1987 and 2009. Despite rising growth, fertility decline, and rising wages and education levels, women's labor force participation stagnated at around 18%. Using five large cross-sectional micro surveys, we find that a combination of supply and demand effects have contributed to this stagnation. The main supply side factors were rising household incomes, husband's education, stigmas against educated women engaging in menial work, and falling selectivity of highly educated women. On the demand side, employment in sectors appropriate for educated women grew less than the supply of educated workers, leading many women to withdraw from the labor force. |
| Keywords: | female labor force participation, education, India |
| JEL: | J20 J16 I25 O15 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7597&r=lab |
| By: | Ben Shepherd; Susan Stone |
| Abstract: | This paper provides evidence of the links between Global Value Chains (GVCs) and labour market outcomes, focusing on developing economies. The literature generally indicates that firms with international linkages—which we use here as a proxy for GVC involvement—tend to employ more workers, pay higher wages, and employ more skilled workers than firms that deal exclusively with the domestic market. Our results are consistent with existing evidence found in developed economies, with internationalised firms tending to hire more workers and pay higher wages in developing economies as well. We also find a positive significant relationship between the number of skilled workers and firms with international linkages but not in certain key economies. However, this comes more from firms who are importers, exporters and foreign affiliates rather than engaging in any of these activities individually. We attribute this finding to the predominance of assembly work performed in many of the economies under consideration, where unskilled workers tend to dominate. Finally, we see a strong, positive association between shares of female workers and firms with international linkages. Engaging in international activity is shown to provide greater opportunities for women to enter the formal labour market. |
| Keywords: | international trade, employment, wages, global value chains, skills, gender |
| JEL: | F14 F16 F23 |
| Date: | 2013–05–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:traaab:154-en&r=lab |
| By: | Kramarz, Francis; Nordström Skans, Oskar |
| Abstract: | The conditions under which young workers find their first real post-graduation jobs are both very important for the young’ future careers and insufficiently documented given their potential importance for young workers welfare. To study these conditions, and in particular the role played by social ties, we use a Swedish population-wide linked employer-employee data set of graduates from all levels of schooling which includes detailed information on family ties, neighborhoods, schools, class composition, and parents’ and children’ employers over a period covering years with both high and low unemployment, together with measures of firm performance. We find that strong social ties (parents) are an important determinant for where young workers find their first job. The effects are larger if the graduate’s position is “weak” (low education, bad grades), during high unemployment years, and when information on potential openings are likely to be scarce. On the hiring side, by contrast, the effects are larger if the parent’s position is “strong” (long tenure, high wage) and if the parent’s plant is more productive. The youths appear to benefit from the use of strong social ties through faster access to jobs and by better labor market outcomes as measured a few years after entry. In particular, workers finding their entry jobs through strong social ties are considerably more likely to remain in this job, while experiencing better wage growth than other entrants in the same plant. Firms also appear to benefit from these wage costs (relative to comparable entrants) starting at a lower base. They also benefit on the parents’ side; parents’ wage growth drops dramatically exactly at the entry of one of their children in the plant, although this is a moment when firm profits tend to be growing. Indeed, the firm-side benefits appear large enough for (at least small) firms to increase job creation at the entry level in years when a child of one of their employees graduates. |
| Keywords: | network; strong tie; youth employment |
| JEL: | J30 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9620&r=lab |
| By: | Joan Llull |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the effect of immigration on wages taking into account human capital and labor supply adjustments. Using U.S. micro-data for 1967-2007, I estimate a labor market equilibrium model that includes endogenous decisions on education, participation, and occupation, and allows for skill-biased technical change. Results suggest important labor market adjustments that mitigate the effect of immigration on wages. These adjustments include career switches, labor market detachment and changes in schooling decisions, and are heterogeneous across the workforce. The adjustments generate substantial self-selection biases at the lower tail of the wage distribution that are corrected by the estimated model. |
| Keywords: | immigration, wages, human capital, labor supply, dynamic discrete choice, labor market equilibrium |
| JEL: | J2 J31 J61 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:711&r=lab |
| By: | Martin Huber; Michael Lechner; Conny Wunsch (University of Basel) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we assess the impact of firms introducing part-time work schemes for gradual labour market exit of elderly workers on their employees’ labour market outcomes. The analysis is based on unique linked employer-employee data that combine high-quality survey and administrative data. Our results suggest that partial or gradual retirement options offered by firms are an important tool to alleviate the negative effects of low labour market attachment of elderly workers in ageing societies. |
| Keywords: | part-time work, elderly employees, treatment effects, matching |
| JEL: | J14 J26 C21 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2013/12&r=lab |
| By: | Albanesi, Stefania; Sahin, Aysegul |
| Abstract: | The unemployment gender gap, defined as the difference between female and male unemployment rates, was positive until 1980. This gap virtually disappeared after 1980, except during recessions when men's unemployment rate always exceeds women's. We study the evolution of these gender differences in unemployment from a long-run perspective and over the business cycle. Using a calibrated three-state search model of the labor market, we show that the rise in female labor force attachment and the decline in male attachment can mostly account for the closing of the gender unemployment gap. Evidence from nineteen OECD countries also supports the notion that convergence in attachment is associated with a decline in the gender unemployment gap. At the cyclical frequency, we find that gender differences in industry composition are important in recessions, especially the most recent, but they do not explain gender differences in employment growth during recoveries. |
| Keywords: | gender differences in unemployment; labor force participation; labor market flows |
| JEL: | E24 J64 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9448&r=lab |
| By: | Bartolucci, Cristian (Collegio Carlo Alberto); Devicienti, Francesco (University of Turin) |
| Abstract: | We propose a simple test that uses information on workers' mobility, wages and firms' profits to identify the sign and strength of assortative matching. The basic intuition underlying our empirical strategy is that, in the presence of positive (negative) assortative matching, good workers are more (less) likely to move to better firms than bad workers. Assuming that agents' payoffs are increasing in their own types, our test exploits within-firm variation on wages to rank workers by their types and firm profits to rank firms. We use a panel data set that combines social security earnings records for workers in the Veneto region of Italy with detailed balance-sheet data for firms. We find robust evidence that positive assortative matching is pervasive in the labor market. This result is in contrast with what we find from correlating the worker and firm fixed effects in standard Mincerian wage equations. |
| Keywords: | assortative matching, worker mobility, wages, profits, matched employer-employee data |
| JEL: | J6 J31 L2 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7601&r=lab |
| By: | Kohei Kawamura (University of Edinburgh) and Jozsef Sakovics (University of Edinburgh) |
| Abstract: | We analyse a labour matching model with wage posting, where ?re?flecting institutional constraints - ?fi?rms cannot differentiate their wage offers within certain subsets of workers. Inter alia, we fi?nd that the presence of impersonal wage offers leads to wage compression, which propagates to the wages for high productivity workers who receive personalised offers. |
| Date: | 2013–09–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:edn:esedps:221&r=lab |
| By: | Aurora Galego (University of Évora, Department of Economics and CEFAGE-UE); João Pereira (University of Évora, Department of Economics and CEFAGE-UE) |
| Abstract: | Unlike previous studies, in this paper we estimate the contribution of covariates for the regional wage decomposition components along the wage distribution employing Firpo et al. (2009) method. We consider the case of Portugal, a country with persistent and large regional wage gaps. We find that education, occupation and firm size are the most important factors to explain the growing importance of the composition effect. The wage structure effect, in turn, is mainly determined by differences in rewards to experience and tenure. Moreover, we conclude that the importance of these covariates for both effects is not equal along the wage distribution. |
| Keywords: | Regions; Wage differentials; Wage decompositions; Unconditional quantile regression; Recentered influence function. |
| JEL: | J31 J38 C21 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cfe:wpcefa:2013_16&r=lab |
| By: | Erhan Artuç (WORLD BANK); Daniel Lederman (WORLD BANK); Guido Porto (Universidad Nacional de La Plata) |
| Abstract: | Estimates of labor mobility costs are needed to assess the responses of employment and wages to a trade shock when factor adjustment is costly. Available methods to estimate those costs rely on panel data, which are seldom available in developing countries. In this paper, we propose a method to estimate mobility costs using data that is more easily obtainable worldwide. Our estimator matches observed employment flows with those flows predicted by a model of costly labor adjustment. We estimate a mapping of labor mobility costs for the developing world and we use those estimates to explore the response of labor markets (wages and employment) to trade policy. |
| JEL: | F16 D58 J2 J6 |
| Date: | 2013–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dls:wpaper:0146&r=lab |
| By: | Hall, Caroline (Uppsala Center for Labor Studies) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether more general education reduces the risk of future un-employment by examining individuals’ labor market experiences during the “Great Re¬cession” (2008–2010). To estimate the causal impact of differences in educational con¬tent, I exploit a reform in Sweden in the 1990s which prolonged vocational programs in upper secondary school and gave them a considerably larger general content. The re¬search design takes advantage of variation across regions and over time in the imple¬mentation of a large-scale pilot which preceded the reform. I find no evidence that having attended a longer and more general program reduced the risk of experiencing unemployment during the 2008–2010 recession. Among students with low GPAs from compulsory school, attending a pilot program seems instead to have led to an increased risk of unemployment. This pattern is strongest among male students and the effect is likely to be explained by the increased dropout rate which resulted from the change of the programs. |
| Keywords: | vocational education; upper secondary school curriculum; unemployment |
| JEL: | I21 I28 |
| Date: | 2013–06–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:uulswp:2013_010&r=lab |
| By: | Elish Kelly; Seamus McGuinness; Philip O’Connell; David Haugh; Alberto González Pandiella |
| Abstract: | Young people have been hit hard by unemployment during the Irish recession. While much research has been undertaken to study the effects of the recession on overall labour market dynamics, little is known about the specific effects on youth unemployment and the associated challenges. This paper attempts to fill this gap by comparing the profile of transitions to work before the recession (2006) and as the economy emerged from the recession (2011). The results indicate that the rate of transition of the youth from unemployment to employment fell dramatically. The fall is not due to changes in the composition or the characteristics of the unemployed group but to changes in the external environment, which implied that the impact of certain individual characteristics changed over the course of the recession. In particular, for youth, education and nationality have become more important for finding a job in Ireland. Les transitions de périodes de chômage et emploi parmi les jeunes dans la récession irlandaise Les jeunes ont été durement frappés par le chômage pendant la récession irlandaise. Beaucoup de recherches ont été menées pour étudier les effets de la récession sur la dynamique globale du marché du travail, mais on sait peu de ses effets spécifiques sur le chômage des jeunes et les défis associés. Cet article tente de combler cette lacune en comparant le profil des transitions vers le travail avant la récession (2006) et au moment où l'économie a émergé de la récession (2011). Les résultats indiquent que le taux de transition des jeunes du chômage à l'emploi a diminué de façon spectaculaire. La chute n'est pas due à des changements dans la composition ou les caractéristiques du groupe des chômeurs, mais à des changements dans l'environnement externe, ce qui implique que l'impact de certaines caractéristiques individuelles a changé au cours de la récession. En particulier, pour les jeunes, l'éducation et la nationalité sont devenus plus importants pour trouver un emploi en Irlande. |
| Keywords: | Ireland, youth unemployment, Great recession, longitudinal data, transitions, decomposition techniques, techniques de décomposition, Grande récession, chômage des jeunes, transitions, données longitudinales |
| JEL: | E24 J21 J61 J64 |
| Date: | 2013–08–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1084-en&r=lab |
| By: | Fernandes, Ana; Ferreira, Priscila; Winters, L. Alan |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the effects of firm entry deregulation. We exploit a recent reform that simplified business entry in Portugal as a quasi-natural experiment. We use cross-municipality-year variation in the implementation of the reform for identification. Using matched employer-employee data for the universe of workers and firms, we find that the reform is associated with increased firm entry and competition within industries and regions. The returns to a university degree increased by 5% while the returns to skills increased by 3%. |
| Keywords: | Entry Deregulation; Product Market Competition; Returns to Education; Wage Structure |
| JEL: | J3 |
| Date: | 2013–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9550&r=lab |
| By: | Carpenter, Jeffrey P. (Middlebury College); Gong, Erick (Middlebury College) |
| Abstract: | Economic theory predicts that agents will work harder if they believe in the "mission" of the organization. Well-identified estimates of exactly how much harder they will work have been elusive, however, because agents select into jobs. We conduct a real effort experiment with participants who work directly for organizations with clear missions. Weeks before the experiment, we survey potential participants for their organizational preferences. At the experiment, we randomly assign workers to organizations, creating either mission matches or mismatches. We overlay performance incentives to test whether they can make up for the motivational deficit caused by a mismatch. Our estimates suggest that matched workers produce 72% more than mismatched workers and that performance pay can increase output by 35% compared to workers who only receive a base wage. Considering matches and mismatches separately, we find that performance pay has only a modest effect on matched workers (a 13% increase) while it has a large effect (a 86% increase) on mismatches, an effect that erodes much of the performance gap caused by the poor match. Our results have broad implications both for those organizations already with well-defined missions (i.e., compensation and screening policies) as well as for those organizations strategizing about strengthening or clarifying their missions. |
| Keywords: | principal-agent, mission, incentive, labor supply, experiment |
| JEL: | C91 J22 J33 M52 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7602&r=lab |
| By: | Jara Tamayo, Holguer Xavier |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to analyse the efect of job insecurity on labour supply. We propose an extension of traditional discrete choice models of labour supply in order to allow for the introduction of non-pecuniary job attributes in the analysis. In our extended model, the choice alternatives are characterised by bundles of income, hours of work and job insecurity. We compare the predictive power and labour supply elasticities obtained with our model to those of a traditional model where only income and discrete hours choices characterise a job. The results show that once job insecurity is included in the discrete choice alternatives, the predictive power of the model improves significantly. Labour supply elasticities are significantly higher than those obtained with a traditional model and increase with the level of job insecurity. Finally, a decrease of job insecurity at work has a positive and significant effect on participation. Policies aimed at improving working conditions could, in this sense, be useful to create incentives in labour market. |
| Date: | 2013–09–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:iserwp:2013-16&r=lab |
| By: | Brenzel, Hanna; Gartner, Hermann; Schnabel, Claus |
| Abstract: | Using a representative establishment dataset, this paper is the first to analyze the incidence of wage posting and wage bargaining in the matching process from the employer's side. We show that both modes of wage determination coexist in the German labor market, with about two-thirds of hirings being characterized by wage posting. Wage posting dominates in the public sector, in larger firms, in firms covered by collective agreements, and in part-time and fixed-term contracts. Job-seekers who are unemployed, out of the labor force or just finished their apprenticeship are also less likely to get a chance of negotiating. Wage bargaining is more likely for more-educated applicants and in jobs with special requirements as well as in tight regional labor markets. -- Dieser Aufsatz analysiert erstmals mit Hilfe einer repräsentativen Betriebsbefragung die Verbreitung von fixen Lohnangeboten der Arbeitgeber und von Lohnverhandlungen bei Neueinstellungen. Wir zeigen, dass sowohl individuelle Lohnverhandlungen als auch fixe Lohnangebote in Deutschland vorkommen, wobei bei rund zwei Drittel der Neueinstellungen ein fixer Lohn angeboten wird. Besonders häufig gibt es fixe Lohnangebote im öffentlichen Dienst, in tarifgebundenen Firmen und bei Teilzeit- oder befristeter Beschäftigung. Mit Personen, die vorher nicht erwerbstätig waren oder eine Ausbildung beendet haben, wird seltener über den Lohn verhandelt. Wahrscheinlicher ist eine Lohnverhandlung, wenn die eingestellte Person höher qualifiziert ist, wenn spezielle Qualifikationen verlangt werden oder wenn die regionale Arbeitslosigkeit gering ist. |
| Keywords: | wage posting,wage bargaining,hiring,matching,Germany |
| JEL: | E24 J30 J63 M51 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iwqwdp:082013&r=lab |
| By: | Eric V. Edmonds; Maheshwor Shrestha |
| Abstract: | Can efforts to promote education deter child labor? We report on the findings of a field experiment where a conditional transfer incentivized the schooling of children associated with carpet factories in Nepal. We find that schooling increases and child involvement in carpet weaving decreases when schooling is incentivized. As a simple static labor supply model would predict, we observe that treated children resort to their counterfactual level of school attendance and carpet weaving when schooling is no longer incentivized. From a child labor policy perspective, our findings imply that “You get what you pay for” when schooling incentives are used to combat hazardous child labor. |
| JEL: | J22 J88 O15 |
| Date: | 2013–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19279&r=lab |
| By: | Polat, Sezgin (Galatasaray University Economic Research Center) |
| Abstract: | In this article, I estimate the premium associated with fatal and non-fatal risk within broad industry categories, using official figures provided by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security and wage data from the 2010 and 2011 Household Labor Force Surveys. The results show only positive and significant fatal risk premiums in the manufacturing sector, whereas injury risk premiums exist in both the manufacturing and industry-wide samples. When wage heterogeneity is allowed, fatal risk compensation increases along the distribution, while that of injury risk follows an inverse-u pattern. Compared to similar country cases, the VSL and VSI estimates are relatively small and not significant for low wage earners. Industry averages show that longer working hours are correlated with accidents rates which implies the importance of firm heterogeneity and institutional factors on the high level and variance, particularly for Turkey. |
| Keywords: | Value of a statistical life; Value of a statistical injury; Hedonic wages; Quantile regression |
| JEL: | J17 J28 |
| Date: | 2013–09–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:giamwp:2013_011&r=lab |
| By: | Mónica Benito; Rosario Romera |
| Abstract: | OCDE publications in the early 1990s on Science-Technology-Economy alerted several member countries on the prediction of a future shortage of skilled researchers and its possible impact on the economy. Consequently, on the decade 1998-2009 the number of doctorates handed out in all OECD countries grew by 31%. Doctoral holders are not only the most qualified in terms of educational attainment, but also those who are specifically trained to conduct research. Although the unemployment rate for doctoral holders is stabilized around 3% since 2006, nowadays it is becoming more and more difficult for them to find a job corresponding to their qualification. The recruitment of PhD graduates in the private sector (business, industry) should be considered a key avenue in converting research into commercialized innovations, technological progress and productivity growth of the countries. Universities and R&D and innovation policy makers are committed in boosting the PhD labour market. This paper discusses the diagnosis of the situation of the PhD job market, the careers and mobility of doctorates holders along the OCDE countries. Having analyzed the employment of PhD holders in the private sector and bearing in mind that most of the doctoral programs conform to a classical old model, our interest is focused on exploring significant relationships between the intensity of graduate’s employment in private sector and new strategies implemented in recently upgraded doctoral systems. Conclusions relating recent reforms in the PhD system established in some OECD countries and their PhD labour market are stated out. In this study we make intensive use of the data collected through a collaborative project launched by the OECD with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and Eurostat (OECD/UIS/Eurostat project) aimed at developing internationally comparable indicators on the careers and mobility of doctorate holders in 2009, the CDH project |
| Keywords: | Career of doctorate holders, PhD, R&D and innovation, Reforms in Doctoral Education, University-governemnt-industry links Handle: RePEc:cte:wsrepe:ARELLENAR |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:wsrepe:ws132824&r=lab |
| By: | Alberto Behar; Junghwan Mok |
| Abstract: | We quantify the extent to which public-sector employment crowds out private-sector employment using specially assembled datasets for a large cross-section of developing and advanced countries, and discuss the implications for countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Caucasus and Central Asia. These countries simultaneously display high unemployment rates, low private-sector employment rates and high proportions of government-sector employment. Regressions of either private-sector employment rates or unemployment rates on two measures of public-sector employment point to full crowding out. This means that high rates of public employment, which incur substantial fiscal costs, have a large negative impact on private employment rates and do not reduce overall unemployment rates. |
| Keywords: | Employment;Middle East;Central Asia;North Africa;Public sector;Private sector;Developing countries;Developed countries;Employment, Crowding out, Middle East and Central Asia |
| Date: | 2013–06–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:13/146&r=lab |
| By: | Facchini, Giovanni; Mayda, Anna Maria; Mendola, Mariapia |
| Abstract: | Using census data for 1996, 2001 and 2007 we study the labor market effect of immigration to South Africa. The paper contributes to a small but growing literature on the impact of South-South migration by looking at one of the most attractive destinations for migrant workers in Sub--Saharan Africa. We exploit the variation -- both at the district level and at the national one -- in the share of foreign--born male workers across schooling and experience groups over time. At the district level, we estimate that increased immigration has a negative and significant effect on natives' employment rates -- and that this effect is more negative for skilled and white South African native workers -- but not on total income. These results are robust to using an instrumental variable estimation strategy. At the national level, we find that increased immigration has a negative and significant effect on natives' total income but not on employment rates. Our results are consistent with outflows of natives to other districts as a consequence of migration, as in Borjas (2006). |
| Keywords: | Immigration; Labor market effects; South Africa |
| JEL: | F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9450&r=lab |
| By: | Tom Coupé; Hannah Vakhitova |
| Abstract: | Ukraine is a migration-intensive country, with an estimated 1.5-2 million labour migrants (about 5% of the working-age population). Slightly over a half of these migrants travel for work to the EU. This study discusses the impact of this large pool of migrants on both the sending and receiving countries. It also assesses how liberalisation of the EU visa regime, something that the EU is currently negotiating with Ukraine, will affect the stream of Ukrainian labour migrants to EU countries. Our study suggests that the number of tourists will increase substantially, whereas the increase in the number of labour migrants is unlikely to be very large. We also suggest that the number of legal migrants is likely to increase, but at the same time the numer of illegal migrants will decline because currently only a third of migrants from Ukraine have both residence and work permits in the EU, while about a quarter of them stay there illegally. |
| Keywords: | Labour Economics, Labour Markets, Labour Mobility, Ukraine |
| JEL: | D78 F22 F24 I25 J01 J15 J40 J61 J83 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sec:cnstan:0464&r=lab |
| By: | Garicano, Luis; Lelarge, Claire; Van Reenen, John |
| Abstract: | We show how size-contingent laws can be used to identify the equilibrium and welfare effects of labor regulation. Our framework incorporates such regulations into the Lucas (1978) model and applies this to France where many labor laws start to bind on firms with exactly 50 or more employees. Using data on the population of firms between 2002 and 2007 period, we structurally estimate the key parameters of our model to construct counterfactual size, productivity and welfare distributions. With flexible wages, the deadweight loss of the regulation is below 1% of GDP, but when wages are downwardly rigid welfare losses exceed 5%. We also show, regardless of wage flexibility, that the main losers from the regulation are workers (and to a lesser extent large firms) and the main winners are small firms. |
| Keywords: | firm size; labor regulation; power law; productivity |
| JEL: | J8 L11 L25 L51 |
| Date: | 2013–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9495&r=lab |
| By: | Gagik Makaryan; Mihran Galstyan |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this study is to explore and assess the costs and benefits of labour migration in Armenia and the potential of migration for contributing to the country’s development. We also examine how policy can be effectively formulated and implemented so that Armenia can get the most out of its migration experience. Lastly, we analyse how a phenomenon that emerged because of limited opportunities for employment – migration – evolved into a strategy towards development and prosperity. Based on this analysis, this paper makes a strong argument in favour of implementing programs in Armenia that involve the active collaboration of government institutions and the Armenian Diaspora, duly considering the unusual influence the latter has on Armenia’s economic and human development. |
| Keywords: | Labour Economics, Labour Markets, Labour Mobility, Armenia |
| JEL: | D78 F22 F24 I25 J01 J15 J40 J61 J83 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sec:cnstan:0461&r=lab |