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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Michael A. Clemens; Jennifer Hunt |
| Abstract: | An influential strand of research has tested for the effects of immigration on natives’ wages and employment using exogenous refugee supply shocks as natural experiments. Several studies have reached conflicting conclusions about the effects of noted refugee waves such as the Mariel Boatlift in Miami and post-Soviet refugees to Israel. We show that conflicting findings on the effects of the Mariel Boatlift can be explained by a sudden change in the race composition of the Current Population Survey extracts in 1980, specific to Miami but unrelated to the Boatlift. We also show that conflicting findings on the labor-market effects of other important refugee waves can be produced by spurious correlation between the instrument and the endogenous variable introduced by applying a common divisor to both. As a whole, the evidence from refugee waves reinforces the existing consensus that the impact of immigration on average native-born workers is small, and fails to substantiate claims of large detrimental impacts on workers with less than high school. |
| JEL: | C36 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23433&r=lab |
| By: | Danzer, Natalia; Halla, Martin; Schneeweis, Nicole; Zweimüller, Martina |
| Abstract: | We provide a novel interpretation of the estimated treatment effects from evaluations of parental leave reforms. Accounting for the counterfactual mode of care is crucial in the analysis of child outcomes and potential mediators. We evaluate a large and generous parental leave extension in Austria exploiting a sharp birthday cutoff-based discontinuity in the eligibility for extended parental leave and geographical variation in formal childcare. We find that estimated treatment effects on long-term child outcomes differ substantially according to the availability of formal childcare and the mother's counterfactual work behavior. We show that extending parental leave has significant positive effects on children's health and human capital outcomes only if the reform induces a replacement of informal childcare with maternal care. We conclude that care provided by mothers (or formal institutions) is superior to informal care-arrangements. |
| Keywords: | child development; fertility.; formal childcare; informal childcare; maternal labor supply; parental leave |
| JEL: | H52 I38 J12 J13 J22 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12064&r=lab |
| By: | Ronchi, Maddalena; di Mauro, Filippo |
| Abstract: | The paper aims at investigating to what extent wage negotiation set-ups have shaped up firms’ response to the Great Recession, taking a firm-level cross-country perspective. We contribute to the literature by building a new micro-distributed database which merges data related to wage bargaining institutions (Wage Dynamic Network, WDN) with data on firm productivity and other relevant firm characteristics (CompNet). We use the database to study how firms reacted to the Great Recession in terms of variation in profits, wages, and employment. The paper shows that, in line with the theoretical predictions, centralized bargaining systems – as opposed to decentralized/firm level based ones – were accompanied by stronger downward wage rigidity, as well as cuts in employment and profits. |
| Keywords: | productivity,wage bargaining,firm level analysis,global financial crisis |
| JEL: | D22 D61 J30 J50 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iwhcom:12017&r=lab |
| By: | Yosuke Jin (OECD); Aida Caldera Sánchez (OECD); Pilar Garcia Perea (OECD) |
| Abstract: | The Spanish economy is growing strongly, but there is a risk that many people are being left behind. Unemployment, especially among young people and the low-skilled, remains very high. About half of all the unemployed have been unemployed for over a year and one third for more than two years. A quarter of all those who are employed are on temporary jobs. Since the global economic crisis, poverty and inequality have increased. An immediate priority is to ensure adequate income support for those most in need. Getting more people into better jobs is crucial to raise living standards and to reduce poverty. In terms of structural policies, this requires continuing to improve activation policies, such as training and job placement, re-skilling and up-skilling the unemployed, preventing youth from leaving the education system under-qualified and better on-the-job-training. More can be done to foster the creation of better quality jobs by reducing barriers to hiring and addressing labour market duality. |
| Keywords: | education and skills,, income inequality, Job quality, labour market reform, poverty, social benefits |
| JEL: | E24 I20 I30 J30 J60 |
| Date: | 2017–05–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1386-en&r=lab |
| By: | Francisco M. Gonzalez (Department of Economics, University of Waterloo); Yu Chen (University of Calgary); Matthew Doyle (Department of Economics, University of Waterloo) |
| JEL: | D8 C78 E24 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wat:wpaper:1702&r=lab |
| By: | Monica Hernandez (Department of Economics, New School for Social Research) |
| Abstract: | This research examines the ideas about labor unions found in William Stanley Jevons's works. I focus on the collaborative role Jevons envisioned for these organizations as part of a broader cooperative vision between workers and capitalists. Even though Jevons was not a supporter of labor unions and regarded them as monopolies with limited power to increase wages, on the one hand, and with great potential for generating dead losses of wages due strikes, on the other, he did not consider indispensable their elimination as long as they were guided to co-operate with business. This study concludes that there is more than one form of co-operation in Jevons’s thought. One explicit, from capitalist to workers, via profit sharing, and a second one, implicit, through the collaboration of workers to capitalists via their participation in labor organizations different than traditional labor unions. A major implication of this scheme is that both forms of co-operation have to be present for it to be beneficial for both classes. The latter, however, would not ensure that they are equally beneficiated. |
| Keywords: | William Stanley Jevons, trade unions, profit sharing, co-operation |
| JEL: | B1 B19 B3 B31 J01 J08 J5 J51 J52 J53 J54 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1717&r=lab |
| By: | Holger Sieg; Yu Wang |
| Abstract: | We develop and estimate a dynamic model to study the impact of student debt on education, career, and marriage market choices of young female lawyers. Our model accounts for several important institutional features of the labor market for lawyers, including differences in the work hours across occupational tracks and learning about the prospects of promotion to partner. Some female students need to take on large amounts of student debt to finance their education and hence start their careers with large amounts of negative wealth. The empirical findings suggest that student debt has negative effects on marriage prospects, career prospects, and investments in educational quality of female lawyers. The analysis also provides new insights into the design of public policies that aim to increase public sector employment. We show that it is possible to design conditional wage or debt service subsidy programs that significantly increase public sector career choices at reasonable costs. |
| JEL: | J12 J24 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23453&r=lab |
| By: | Fischer, Georg (European Commission) |
| Abstract: | This paper describes the US Unemployment Insurance (UI) in particular the federal-state partnership in governance, funding and policy making. It discusses “national interest” as defined by the Federal authorities in relation to UI: income support, economic and employment stabilization and reemployment. The corresponding policy objectives might not be (fully) shared by the states and tensions and policy conflicts emerge. The paper assesses the capacity of the UI system to deliver on those nationwide defined objectives in particular during and after the Great Recession. The UI system had considerable anticyclical impact reinforce by federal intervention. The paper discusses the federal tools to influence state schemes and how they encourage the acceptance of national standards through conditional funding. During the great recession this proved to be temporarily successful for access to and duration of benefits. The often announced shift to more pro-active programs was seemingly more difficult to achieve. Recent policy proposals including those by the outgoing Obama Administration and by the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, are reviewed. The paper concludes with reflections on the relevance of the US experience for European level unemployment benefit or welfare schemes. Given the strong position of the EU member states the US Federal-State partnership could be a more pertinent reference than the highly centralised UI systems in other federal states. The relation between federation wide standards and incentives for the reform of state systems, for sustainable financing and shifts to more pro-active policies might be of interest. Finally strengthening the anti-cyclical impact through federal intervention including funding mirrors debates on the role of automatic stabilisation mechanisms in the Euro Area. |
| Keywords: | unemployment insurance, stabilization, adequacy, funding, federal-state partnership, USA, European Union |
| JEL: | J65 J68 H75 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izapps:pp129&r=lab |
| By: | Roland G. Fryer, Jr |
| Abstract: | This study examines the impact on student achievement of implementing management training for principals in traditional public schools in Houston, Texas, using a school-level randomized field experiment. Across two years, principals were provided 300 hours of training on lesson planning, data-driven instruction, and teacher observation and coaching. The findings show that offering management training to principals significantly increases student achievement in all subjects in year one and has an insignificant effect in year two. We argue that the results in year two are driven by principal turnover, coupled with the cumulative nature of the training. Schools with principals who are predicted to remain in their positions for both years of the experiment demonstrate large treatment effects in both years – particularly those with principals who are also predicted to implement the training with high fidelity – while those with principals that are predicted to leave have statistically insignificant effects in each year of treatment. |
| JEL: | I20 J0 M10 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23437&r=lab |
| By: | Dean Hyslop (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research); Wilbur Townsend (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the longer term impacts of involuntary job loss of workers subsequent employment, earnings, and income support in New Zealand. It uses data from the Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE) to identify job displacements over the period 2001–10, matched to administrative data from Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) covering the period 1999–2015, to facilitate at least five years of post-displacement observations. Following Dixon and Maré (2013), our analysis focuses on workers who had been employed for at least one year before their job displacement. Using both regression-adjustment and propensity score matching methods, we estimate that experiencing a job displacement substantially affected workers employment, earnings and income over the following five years. Compared to workers who did not lose their jobs, we estimate their employment rate was 20-25% lower in the year following displacement and, although their employment gradually improved, was still 8-12% lower five years later. Similarly, we estimate displaced workers’ conditional earnings and total income were 25-30% lower in the first year and 13-22% lower five years after being displaced. Such adverse effects are partly counterbalanced by higher levels of welfare benefit receipt and income support: benefit receipt was 6-11% and 3-4% higher after one and five years. We also find that the impacts were stronger for workers displaced from jobs during the great recession from 2008, with about 5% larger short and longer-term effects on employment, which were balanced by 3-5% higher rates of benefit receipt. |
| Keywords: | Displaced workers, matching, SoFIE, IDI |
| JEL: | J63 J64 J65 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mtu:wpaper:17_12&r=lab |