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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Alberto Alesina; Michele Battisti; Joseph Zeira |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that different labor market policies can lead to differences in technology across sectors in a model of labor saving technologies. Labor market regulations reduce the skill premium and as a result, if technologies are labor saving, countries with more stringent labor regulation, which are binding for low skilled workers, become less technologically advanced in their high-skilled sectors, and more technologically advanced in their low-skilled sectors. We then present data on capital output ratios, on estimated productivity levels and on patent creation, which support the predictions of our model. |
| JEL: | J31 J50 O33 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20841&r=lab |
| By: | Etienne Lalé |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the secular employment experience of older workers on both sides of the Atlantic, using a common framework to characterize changes in the macro-economy. We embed Ljungqvist and Sargent (1998, 2008)’s turbulence story into a general equilibrium environment with an operative labor supply margin. The model can jointly explain (i) the fall in (male) labor force participation in the United States, (ii) the similar but more pronounced decline in Europe along with rising unemployment rates and (iii) the concentration of these adverse employment outcomes on older workers. We use this framework to discuss the labor market effects of early retirement benefits. These benefits generate significant incentives to retire earlier, which in turn raises tax pressure and discourages job creation. We find that these effects are more pronounced in a turbulent economic environment, and especially so under stringent employment protection legislation. |
| Keywords: | Job-Search, Turbulence, European Unemployment, Labor Force Participation. |
| JEL: | E24 J21 J64 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:uobdis:15/652&r=lab |
| By: | Katerina Sherstyuka (University of Hawaii at Manoa); Dolgorsuren Dorjb (University of Hawaii at Manoa); Gerard Russo (University of Hawaii at Manoa) |
| Abstract: | Most individuals who have health insurance in the U.S. obtain it through their employer. In some states the government mandates employers to provide insurance to certain types of workers. We use experimental laboratory to study how employer mandates affect labor market efficiency and the level and structure of employment in the presence of wage rigidities such as minimum wage laws. We find that a binding minimum wage reduces labor market efficiency and decreases, and may fully eliminate, voluntary provision of health insurance by firms to low wage workers. Mandating health insurance for all workers guarantees insurance coverage for those employed, but reduces firms’ demand for workers and thus leads to unemployment. |
| Keywords: | Labor market, health insurance, minimum wages |
| JEL: | C92 I18 J20 J3 |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hai:wpaper:201427&r=lab |
| By: | Kim, Hyeon-Kyeong (Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs); Skott, Peter (The University of Massachusetts at Amherst) |
| Abstract: | Temporary workers make up a sizeable part of the labor force in many countries and typically receive wages that are significantly lower than their permanent counterparts. This paper uses an efficiency wage model to explain the wage gap between temporary and permanent workers. High-performing temporary workers may gain promotion to permanent status, and a high wage to permanent workers therefore serves a dual purpose: it affects the effort of both permanent and temporary workers. Applying the model to the Korean experience, we discuss the effects of the labor market reforms in 1998 on inequality. |
| Keywords: | Temporary workers, inequality, deregulation, efficiency wages,Korea. |
| JEL: | J31 D33 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ums:papers:2014-13&r=lab |
| By: | Chletsos, Michael; Giotis, Georgios P. |
| Abstract: | The impact of minimum wage on employment has been a field of conflicts among economists in labor economics. This divergence of views usually takes the form of conflicting empirical studies. However, in our research we managed to find only one study on the employment effect of minimum wages during economic recessions using cross-country evidence. In this paper we try to investigate this issue using a sample of 17 OECD countries with data for the period 1985-2008. We also try to account for institutional and other policy related differences that might have an impact on employment other than the minimum wage. Our empirical analysis points a positive effect of minimum wage on employment and labor force participation rate for teenagers, young adults and youth, but negative effect for the prime-aged and those who belong in the age group 55-64 years old. Regarding the economic circle, we find that, generally in economic downturns our initial results for all age groups do not change significantly. |
| Keywords: | Minimum wage, Employment, Economic downturn, Minimum wage systems, Labor market institutions and policies. |
| JEL: | E32 J21 J31 J38 J88 |
| Date: | 2015–01–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:61323&r=lab |
| By: | Manuel Hidalgo-Pérez (Department of Economics, Universidad Pablo de Olavide); Benedetto Molinari (Department of Economics, Universidad Pablo de Olavide) |
| Abstract: | This paper presents novel evidence regarding the relationship between technological progress, occupational tasks and wage inequality. By applying a counterfactual quantile regression analysis to historic U.S. data, we show that the evolution of wage inequality in the lower echelon of the wage distribution was due entirely to a reduction of within-group wage inequality, which was determined, in turn, by more homogeneous remuneration paid to workers performing routine tasks. Changes in the differential between the remuneration paid to technology-complementary and technology-substitute tasks had only a negligible impact on wage inequality among low-wage workers, which casts some doubt on the validity of basing a theory of wage inequality on routinization-biased technical change operating through a labor demand channel. To reconcile the routinization hypothesis with the data, we develop a model in which skill-heterogeneous workers face endogenous occupational choices and learning costs in connection with operating a new technology. Even in the absence of changes in wage differentials, the model argues that technical change can generate an empirically consistent non-monotone effect on wage inequality by affecting the average level of skills within different groups of workers. |
| Keywords: | Residual Wage Inequality, Wage Polarization, Price and Composition Effects, Routinization hypothesis, Skill Biased Technical Change, Occupational Tasks, Job Polarization. |
| JEL: | J24 J31 O33 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pab:wpaper:15.01&r=lab |
| By: | Andréasson, Hannes (The Ratio institute) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses how decentralised wage bargaining affects wage levels and the structure of wages as well as the impact on firm performance. By using unique employer-employee matched data for Sweden 2007 and 2010, the paper presents new evidence on the collective bargaining premium in Sweden and the linkages between decentralised bargaining and firm performance. By differentiating between decentralised, two-tiered and centralised collective wage bargaining the methodologies of Card and De La Rica (2006); Dahl, le Maire, and Munch (2013); Guertzgen (2014); Gürtzgen (2007); Jakubson (1991) are adopted and adjusted using pooled OLS, first difference OLS, and quantile regressions. Variation in individual worker’s bargaining regime is exploited for identification of the effect of decentralisation. Results indicate that a large share of the wage premium associated with decentralised and two-tiered bargaining is due to systematic selection/sorting into those regimes. Models that take into account individual and firm unobserved heterogeneity indicate that the wage premium associated with decentralised wage bargaining is around 5-7.5% and 0.7-4.1% for two-tiered bargaining. When examining the effect on the wage structure, results indicate that decentralised and two-tiered bargaining compresses the wage structure by awarding relatively higher wage premiums to low-wage earners, in particular in decentralised regimes. At the same time, no evidence is found of higher returns to education in either regime, but both regimes are associated with higher returns to experience than centralised bargaining. Lastly, unique evidence is found of a positive linkage between the level of decentralisation at the firmlevel and value added per employee and firm productivity. This is a novel contribution to the literature that has not yet considered the impact of decentralised wage bargaining on firm performance. Thus there is evidence that the level at which bargaining takes place influences both wage levels and wage structure as well as firm performance. |
| Keywords: | Collective bargaining; Union wage premium; Wage structure; Firm productivity |
| JEL: | D24 J31 J41 J51 |
| Date: | 2014–12–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0241&r=lab |
| By: | Aleksandra Majchrowska (University of Lodz); Paweł Strawiński (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw); Karolina Konopczak (Warsaw School of Economics); Agnieszka Skierska (University of Warsaw) |
| Abstract: | Despite decades of anti-discriminatory legislation, wage discrimination against women is believed to be a major source of social inequality in the developed economies. In the present study we investigate the issue of gender wage gap in Poland. The analysis is carried out both with regard to the labour market as a whole and in different occupational groups. We control for potential occupational segregation by including only groups with nearly balanced males-to-females ratio (0.4-0.6). The raw wage data suggest that in the case of most occupations women in Poland earn less than men. What is more, when controlling for individual and job characteristics relevant from the perspective of the labour market, the gender pay gap increases. Lower wages received by females cannot be, therefore, justified by lower productivity potential. On the contrary, despite better qualifications than in the case of men, women earn on average less, which points to the existence of gender discrimination in the Polish labour market. |
| Keywords: | wage inequality, Mincer wage equation, Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition, gender wage gap, Poland |
| JEL: | C21 J31 J71 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2014-31&r=lab |
| By: | Anders Akerman; Ingvil Gaarder; Magne Mogstad |
| Abstract: | Does adoption of broadband internet in firms enhance labor productivity and increase wages? And is this technological change skill biased or factor neutral? We exploit rich Norwegian data to answer these questions. A public program with limited funding rolled out broadband access points, and provides plausibly exogenous variation in the availability and adoption of broadband internet in firms. Our results suggest that broadband internet improves (worsens) the labor outcomes and productivity of skilled (unskilled) workers. We explore several possible explanations for the skill complementarity of broadband internet. We find suggestive evidence that broadband adoption in firms complements skilled workers in executing nonroutine abstract tasks, and substitutes for unskilled workers in performing routine tasks. Taken together, our findings have important implications for the ongoing policy debate over government investment in broadband infrastructure to encourage productivity and wage growth. |
| JEL: | J23 J24 J31 O33 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20826&r=lab |
| By: | Semih Tumen; Tugba Zeydanli |
| Abstract: | The literature documents that job satisfaction is positively correlated with worker performance and pro- ductivity. We examine whether aggregate job satisfaction in a certain labor market environment can have an impact on individual-level job satisfaction. If the answer is yes, then policies targeted to increase job satisfaction can increase productivity not only directly, but through spillover externalities too. We seek an answer to this question using two different data sets from the United Kingdom characterizing two different labor market environments: Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) at the workplace level (i.e., narrowly defined worker groups) and British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) at the local labor market level (i.e., larger worker groups defined in industry x region cells). Implementing an original empirical strategy to identify spillover effects, we find that one standard deviation increase in aggregate job satisfac- tion leads to a 0.42 standard deviation increase in individual-level job satisfaction at the workplace level and 0.15 standard deviation increase in individual-level job satisfaction at the local labor market level. These social interactions effects are sizable and should not be ignored in assessing the effectiveness of the policies designed to improve job satisfaction. |
| Keywords: | Job satisfaction; social interactions; spillovers; hierarchical model; WERS; BHPS. |
| JEL: | C31 D62 J28 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cca:wpaper:378&r=lab |
| By: | Rita Pető; Balázs Reizer |
| Abstract: | It is well-known that men and women segregate by occupation, but less is known about how they segregate by task within occupation. We show that the tasks performed by women are less skill intensive on the average than those performed by men having the same occupation. Neither demographic composition nor differences in cognitive and social skills can explain this pattern. In contrast, the fact that women use cognitive skills less often at home can explain one third of the differences in skill use at the workplace. As we control for work environment and the ability to use cognitive skills the remaining females' penalty in skill use suggest the possibility of labor market discrimination against women. Although skill use at the workplace has a significant wage premium, females' penalty in skill use cannot explain the gender wage gap. |
| Date: | 2015–01–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ceu:econwp:2015_1&r=lab |
| By: | Raimond Maurer (Goethe University of Frankfurt); Olivia S. Mitchell (The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania); Ralph Rogalla (Goethe University of Frankfurt); Tatjana Schimetschek (Goethe University of Frankfurt) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether exchanging the Social Security delayed retirement credit, currently paid as an increase in lifetime annuity benefits, for a lump sum would induce later claiming and additional work. We show that people would voluntarily claim about half a year later if the lump sum were paid for claiming any time after the Early Retirement Age, and about two-thirds of a year later if the lump sum were paid only for those claiming after their Full Retirement Age. Overall, people will work one-third to one-half of the additional months, compared to the status quo. Those who would currently claim at the youngest ages are likely to be most responsive to the offer of a lump sum benefit |
| Date: | 2014–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mrr:papers:wp308&r=lab |
| By: | Lars J. Kirkebøen; Edwin Leuven; Magne Mogstad (Statistics Norway) |
| Abstract: | Why do individuals choose different types of post-secondary education, and what are the labor market consequences of those choices? We show that answering these questions is difficult because individuals choose between several unordered alternatives. Even with a valid instrument for every type of education, instrumental variables estimation of the payoffs require information about individuals' ranking of education types or strong additional assumptions, like constant effects or restrictive preferences. These identification results motivate and guide our empirical analysis of the choice of and payoff to field of study. Our context is Norway's post-secondary education system where a centralized admission process covers almost all universities and colleges. This process creates credible instruments from discontinuities which effectively randomize applicants near unpredictable admission cutoffs into different fields of study. At the same time, it provides us with strategy-proof measures of individuals' ranking of fields. Taken together, this allows us to estimate the payoffs to different fields while correcting for selection bias and keeping the next-best alternatives as measured at the time of application fixed. We find that different fields have widely different payoffs, even after accounting for institutional differences and quality of peer groups. For many fields the payoffs rival the college wage premiums, suggesting the choice of field is potentially as important as the decision to enroll in college. The estimated payoffs are consistent with individuals choosing fields in which they have comparative advantage. We also test and reject assumptions of constant effects or restrictive preferences, suggesting that information on next-best alternatives is essential to identify payoffs to field of study. |
| Keywords: | Field of study; earnings; self-selection; treatment effects; unordered choice |
| JEL: | J24 J31 C31 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssb:dispap:794&r=lab |
| By: | Günter Schucher (GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies) |
| Abstract: | China’s leadership currently seems to be extremely worried about unemployment, and particularly youth unemployment, even though the country’s official unemployment rate is rather low. Possible reasons for this are that (1) the youth unemployment rate is actually higher than stated; (2) the inadequate employment situation faced by many young people is actually worse than the incomplete measurements of unemployment indicate; (3) particularly graduates of tertiary education institutions face a job reality below their expectations; (4) the Chinese population is highly concerned about the labor market’s development; and, (5) the state fears that frustration and discontent might trigger protests, as was recently the case in the Arab world and other countries. This paper analyzes the different dimensions of the inadequate employment situation of Chinese youth and provides evidence to support all five of these assumptions, although indications of direct actions being undertaken by unemployed young people in China in response are rather scarce. But aside from that, there are other forms of youth resistance as well. Many young people in the country vent their frustration over the internet, and opting out and cynicism can also threaten social harmony. Tertiary-sector graduates make up approximately half of all young people entering the Chinese labor market every year and are the ones most affected by the currently unsatisfying job prospects. Though the unemployment of graduates is only short term in nature, a lack of job opportunities combined with declining opportunities for upward mobility carry strong potential to generate further uneasiness and disorder in China. |
| Keywords: | China, youth unemployment, inadequate employment, social unrest |
| Date: | 2014–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gig:wpaper:258&r=lab |
| By: | Consoli,Davide; Rentocchini,Francesco |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes an empirical study of the skill repertoires of 290 sectors in the United States over the period 2002-2011. We use information on employment structures and job content of occupations to flesh out structural characteristics of industry-specific know-how. The exercise of mapping the skills structures embedded in the workforce yields a taxonomy that discloses novel nuances on the organization of industry. In so doing we also take an initial step towards the integration of labour and employment in the area of innovation studies. |
| Keywords: | Industry dynamics, Skills, Taxonomy |
| JEL: | C38 L0 J24 O33 |
| Date: | 2015–01–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ing:wpaper:201501&r=lab |
| By: | Klara Kaliskova |
| Abstract: | This study contributes to the female labor supply responsiveness literature by measuring the eect of tax-benefit policies on female labor supply based on a broad sample of 26 European countries in 2005-2010. The tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD is used to calculate the measure of extensive margin work incentives - the participation tax rate, which is then used as the main explanatory variable in a female participation equation. This allows me to deal with the endogeneity of income in a new way by a simulated instrumental variable based on a fixed EU-wide sample of women. Results suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in the participation tax rate decreases the female employment probability by 2 percentage points. The effect is higher for single mothers, for women in the middle of the skills distribution, and in countries that have lower rates of female participation. |
| Keywords: | female labor supply; tax and benefit system; Europe; instrumental variable; |
| JEL: | C25 H24 H31 J22 |
| Date: | 2014–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp524&r=lab |
| By: | Kari Hämäläinen; Juha Tuomala; Ulla Hämäläinen |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the youth guarantee programme introduced in Finland 2005. The reform consisted of early intervention, monitoring and individualized job search plans that guarantee activation measures for unemployed young persons. Using the age threshold set at 25 years, we find that the youth guarantee moderately increased unsubsidized employment while having a negligible impact on unemployment in the age range of 23-24. We also show that the positive impacts of the youth guarantee only materialize among unemployed young persons with a vocational education. There are no signs that the guarantee improved the labour market prospects of young uneducated people. |
| Keywords: | Youth unemployment, social exclusion, activation, youth guarantee, difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | J64 J68 C41 C21 |
| Date: | 2014–12–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fer:wpaper:60&r=lab |
| By: | Gil S. Epstein (Bar-Ilan University); Dalit Gafni (The College of Management, Israel); Erez Siniver (The College of Management, Israel) |
| Abstract: | Economic outcomes are compared for university graduates in Israel belonging to four different ethnic groups. A unique dataset is used that includes all individuals who graduated with a first degree from universities and colleges in Israel between the years 1995 and 2008 and which tracks them for up to 10 years from the year they graduated. The main finding is that education and experience appear to have a strong effect on earnings in the long run and that an ethnic group can improve its position relative to specific groups while it has no effects relative to other groups. |
| Keywords: | wage differences, immigrants, discrimination |
| JEL: | J15 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:1501&r=lab |
| By: | Maasoumi, Esfandiar (Emory University); Pitts, M. Melinda (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta); Wu, Ke (Emory University) |
| Abstract: | We examine the cardinal gap between wage distributions of the incumbents and newly hired workers based on entropic distances that are well-defined welfare theoretic measures. Decomposition of several effects is achieved by identifying several counterfactual distributions of different groups. These go beyond the usual Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions at the (linear) conditional means. Much like quantiles, these entropic distances are well defined inferential objects and functions whose statistical properties have recently been developed. Going beyond these strong rankings and distances, we consider weak uniform ranking of these wage outcomes based on statistical tests for stochastic dominance. We focus the empirical analysis on employees with at least 35 hours of work in the 1996–2012 monthly Current Population Survey. Among other findings, we find incumbent workers enjoy a better distribution of wages, but the attribution of the gap to wage inequality and human capital characteristics varies between quantiles. For instance, highly paid new workers are mainly due to human capital components and, in some years, even better wage structure. |
| Keywords: | wage gap; metric entropy distance; stochastic dominance; wage distributions; counterfactual analysis; human capital; inequality; labor markets |
| JEL: | C43 I31 |
| Date: | 2014–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedawp:2014-22&r=lab |
| By: | Drakopoulos, Stavros A.; Grimani, Katerina |
| Abstract: | One of the main economic outcomes of the recent great recession was the decrease of labour earnings in many countries. The relevant literature indicates that earnings and other socioeconomic predictors can influence psychological well-being. The same holds true for job satisfaction. This chapter tests the effect of pay cuts on the psychological well-being and job satisfaction. The data used in this chapter was drawn from the 5th European Survey on Working Conditions which focuses on European countries. The methodological tools for analyzing the data are the ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression, the Probit regression, and the marginal effects method. The results point to a negative statistical significant effect of pay cuts (decrease labour earnings) on psychological well-being. The results also indicate that pay cuts have a negative statistical significant impact on job satisfaction. |
| Keywords: | Pay cuts, job satisfaction, psychological well-being |
| JEL: | I31 J30 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:61195&r=lab |
| By: | Alessandro Fedele (Free University of Bolzano‐Bozen, Faculty of Economics and Management) |
| Abstract: | Some recent health economics papers suggest that increasing wage in the nursing labor market with the aim of reducing shortage may yield a negative effect on the average productivity and/or the average motivation of applicants attracted. Some feminist economics papers criticize this inefficiency wage result on the grounds that nurses' motivation is modeled in an overly simplistic way. The current paper aims to address this criticism by considering explicitly determinants of work motivation. Relying on introductory concepts from organizational psychology and management literatures, the inefficiency wage result is shown to disappear. A pay raise turns out to have no negative effect both on the average productivity and the average motivation of applicants attracted. |
| Keywords: | Nurses' wage, nursing shortage, nurses' productivity, nurses' motivation, inefficiency wage result, determinants of work motivation |
| JEL: | I11 J32 B54 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bzn:wpaper:bemps24&r=lab |
| By: | Moscone, Francesco; Tosetti, Elisa; Vittadini, Giorgio |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we investigate the impact of precarious employment on mental health using a unique dataset that matches information on mental health with labour characteristics for a set of employees in Italy. We examine the causal effect of temporary contracts, their duration and the number of contract changes during the year on psychotropic medication prescription. To this end, we estimate a dynamic probit model, and deal with the potential endogeneity of regressors by adopting a control function approach, recently advanced by Wooldridge (2014). Our results show that the probability of psychotropic medication prescription is higher for workers under temporary job contracts. More days of work under temporary contract as well as more changes in temporary contracts significantly increase the probability of being depressed. We also find that moving from permanent to temporary contracts increases depression; symmetrically, although with a smaller effect in absolute value, moving from temporary to permanent contracts tends to reduce it. An exploratory data analysis corroborates the hypothesis that depression developed after a movement to precarious employment may permanently affect future job trajectories. One lesson to learn from our empirical work is that policies aimed at enhancing the flexibility of the labour market to boost firms' competitiveness, if increasing the precariousness of employment, may also produce sides effects on the wellbeing and mental health of employees, ultimately having consequences on firms' productivity and health care costs. |
| Keywords: | Precarious employment, mental health, prescriptions. |
| JEL: | I1 I11 J0 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:61405&r=lab |
| By: | Cosmin Ilut; Matthias Kehrig; Martin Schneider |
| Abstract: | We study the distribution of employment growth when hiring responds more to bad shocks than to good shocks. Such a concave hiring rule endogenously generates higher moments observed in establishment-level Census data for both the cross section and the time series. In particular, both aggregate conditional volatility ("macro-volatility") and the cross-sectional dispersion of employment growth ("micro-volatility") are countercyclical. Moreover, employment growth is negatively skewed in the cross section and time series, while TFP is not. The estimated response of employment growth to TFP innovations is su ciently concave to induce signi cant skewness as well as movements in volatility of employment growth. |
| Keywords: | business cycles, time varying volatility, asymmetric adjustment, skewness |
| JEL: | D2 D8 E2 J2 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:15-02&r=lab |
| By: | Raquel Fonseca; Arie Kapteyn; Jinkook Lee; Gema Zamarro |
| Abstract: | Continued improvements in life expectancy and fiscal insolvency of public pensions have led to an increase in pension entitlement ages in several countries, but its consequences for subjective well-being are largely unknown. Financial consequences of retirement complicate the estimation of effects of retirement on subjective well-being as financial circumstances may influence subjective well-being, and therefore, the effects of retirement are likely to be confounded by the change in income. At the same time, unobservable determinants of income are probably related with unobservable determinants of subjective wellbeing, making income possibly endogenous if used as control in subjective wellbeing regressions. To address these issues, we estimate a simultaneous model of retirement, income, and subjective well-being while accounting for time effects and unobserved individual effects. Public pension arrangements (replacement rates, eligibility ru les for early and full retirement) serve as instrumental variables. We use data from HRS and SHARE for the period 2004-2010. We find that depressive symptoms are negatively related to retirement while life satisfaction is positively related. Remarkably, i ncome does not seem to have a significant effect on depression or life satisfaction. This is in contrast with the correlations in the raw data that show significant relations between income and depression and life satisfaction. This suggests that accounting for the endogeneity of income in equations explaining depression or life satisfaction is important. |
| Keywords: | Well-being, retirement, institutions, simultaneous equation approach |
| JEL: | I3 J26 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lvl:criacr:1409&r=lab |
| By: | Coral del Río; Olga Alonso-Villar |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is twofold: a) to explore the evolution of occupational segregation of women and men of different racial/ethnic groups in the U. S. during the period 1940- 2010 and b) to assess the consequences of segregation for each of them. For that purpose, this paper proposes a simple index that measures the monetary loss or gain of a group derived from its overrepresentation in some occupations and underrepresentation in others. This index has a clear economic interpretation. It represents the per capita advantage (if the index is positive) or disadvantage (if it is negative) of the group, derived from its segregation, as a proportion of the average wage of the economy. Our index is a helpful tool not only for academics but also for institutions concerned with inequalities among demographic groups because it makes it possible to rank them according to their segregation nature. |
| Keywords: | occupational segregation; local segregation; race; ethnicity; gender; wages; U.S. |
| JEL: | J15 J16 J71 D63 |
| Date: | 2014–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vig:wpaper:1405&r=lab |