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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Kyyrä, Tomi (VATT, Helsinki); Pesola, Hanna (VATT, Helsinki) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the long-term effects of extended unemployment benefits that older unemployed can collect until retirement in Finland. We consider a reform that increased the age threshold of this scheme from 55 to 57 for people born in 1950 or later. Our regression discontinuity estimates show that postponing eligibility by two years increased employment over the remaining working career by seven months. Despite the corresponding reduction in unemployment, we find no evidence of significant effects on mortality or receipt of disability and sickness benefits, nor on the spouse's labor supply. We also compute the fiscal impact of the reform taking into account income taxes and social security contributions paid and benefits received. The reform increased net income transfers by 15,000 Euros over the 10-year period for an average individual. |
| Keywords: | unemployment insurance, early retirement, layoffs |
| JEL: | J26 J63 J64 J65 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10839&r=lab |
| By: | Jesse Rothstein; Robert G. Valletta |
| Abstract: | Many Unemployment Insurance (UI) recipients do not find new jobs before exhausting their benefits, even when benefits are extended during recessions. Using SIPP panel data covering the 2001 and 2007-09 recessions and their aftermaths, we identify individuals whose jobless spells outlasted their UI benefits (exhaustees) and examine household income, program participation, and health-related outcomes during the six months following UI exhaustion. For the average exhaustee, the loss of UI benefits is only slightly offset by increased participation in other safety net programs (e.g., food stamps), and family poverty rates rise substantially. Self-reported disability also rises following UI exhaustion. These patterns do not vary dramatically across the UI extension episodes, household demographic groups, or broad income level prior to job loss. The results highlight the unique, important role of UI in the U.S. social safety net. |
| JEL: | I38 J65 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23528&r=lab |
| By: | Fortin, Nicole M. (University of British Columbia, Vancouver); Bell, Brian (King's College London); Böhm, Michael Johannes (University of Bonn) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the consequences of the under-representation of women in top jobs for the overall gender pay gap. Using administrative annual earnings data from Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, it applies the approach used in the analysis of earnings inequality in top incomes, as well as reweighting techniques, to the analysis of the gender pay gap. The analysis is supplemented by classic O-B decompositions of hourly wages using data from the Canadian and U.K. Labour Force Surveys. The paper finds that recent increases in top earnings led to substantial "swimming upstream" effects, therefore accounting for differential progress in the gender pay gap across time periods and a growing share of the gap unexplained by traditional factors. |
| Keywords: | earnings inequality, top incomes, gender pay gap |
| JEL: | J15 J16 J70 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10829&r=lab |
| By: | Foster, Gigi (University of New South Wales); Stratton, Leslie S. (Virginia Commonwealth University) |
| Abstract: | We examine how men and women in mixed-gender unions change the time they allocate to housework in response to labor market promotions and terminations. Operating much like raises, such events have the potential to alter intra-household power dynamics. Using Australian panel data, we estimate couple-specific fixed effects models and find that female promotion has the strongest association with housework time allocation adjustments. These adjustments are in part attributable to concurrent changes in paid work time, but gender power relations also appear to play a role. Further results indicate that households holding more liberal gender role attitudes are more likely to adjust their housework time allocations after female promotion events. Power dynamics cannot, however, explain all the results. Supporting the sociological theory that partners may 'do gender', we find that in households with more traditional gender role attitudes, his housework time falls while hers rises when he is terminated. |
| Keywords: | intra-household allocation, time use, gender, housework |
| JEL: | D13 J10 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10831&r=lab |
| By: | Sam Friedman; Lindsey Macmillan |
| Abstract: | In this paper we explore for the first time regional differences in the patterning of occupational social mobility in the UK. Drawing on data from Understanding Society (US), supported by the Labour Force Survey (LFS), we examine how rates of absolute and relative intergenerational occupational mobility vary across 19 regions of England, Scotland and Wales. Our findings somewhat problematise the dominant policy narrative on regional social mobility, which presents London as the national ‘engine-room’ of social mobility. In contrast, we find that those currently living in Inner London have experienced the lowest regional rate of absolute upward mobility, the highest regional rate of downward mobility, and a comparatively low rate of relative upward mobility into professional and managerial occupations. This stands in stark contrast to Merseyside and particularly Tyne and Wear where rates of both absolute and relative upward mobility are high, and downward mobility is low. We then examine this Inner London effect further, finding that it is driven in part by two dimensions of migration. First, among international migrants, we find strikingly low rates of upward mobility and high rates of downward mobility. Second, among domestic migrants, we find a striking overrepresentation of those from professional and managerial backgrounds. These privileged domestic migrants, our results indicate, are less likely to experience downward mobility than those from similar backgrounds elsewhere in the country. This may be partly explained by higher educational qualifications, but may also be indicative of a glass floor or opportunity hoarding. |
| Keywords: | social mobility; regions; London; upward mobility; downward mobility; glass floor |
| JEL: | J61 P25 Z13 |
| Date: | 2017–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:80868&r=lab |
| By: | Bingley, Paul (SFI - The Danish National Centre for Social Research); Martinello, Alessandro (Department of Economics, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | Education and wealth are positively correlated for individuals approaching retirement, but the direction of the causal relationship is ambiguous in theory and has not been identified in practice. We combine administrative data on individual total wealth with a reform expanding access to lower secondary school in Denmark in the 1950s, finding that schooling increases pension annuity claims but reduces the non-pension wealth of men in their 50's. These effects grow stronger as normal retirement age approaches. Labour market mechanisms are key, with schooling increasing job mobility, reducing housing equity, increasing leverage, and improving occupational pension benefits. |
| Keywords: | Education; Wealth; Labour market mechanisms; Pensions; Housing equity; Portfolio composition; Instrumental variable |
| JEL: | D31 G11 I24 I26 |
| Date: | 2017–06–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2017_009&r=lab |
| By: | Jennifer Hunt |
| Abstract: | Using the National Survey of College Graduates, I investigate the degree to which holders of temporary work visas in the United States are mobile between employers. Holders of temporary work visas either have legal restrictions on their ability to change employers (particularly holders of intra-company transferee visas, L-1s) or may be reluctant to leave an employer who has sponsored them for permanent residence (particularly holders of specialty worker visas, H-1Bs). I find that the voluntary job changing rate is similar for temporary visa holders and natives with similar characteristics. For the minority of temporary workers who receive permanent residence, there is a considerable spike in voluntary moving upon receipt of permanent residence, suggesting mobility is reduced during the application period by about 20%. My analysis of reasons for moving suggests that applicants are prepared to pay a small but not large professional price for permanent access to the U.S. labor market. |
| JEL: | J61 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23529&r=lab |
| By: | Christophe André; Hugo Bourrousse |
| Abstract: | Sweden ranks among the best OECD countries in terms of gender equality. Women have a high employment rate, outperform men in education and are well represented in government and parliament. Nevertheless, without further policy measures, achieving parity is still a distant prospect in several areas. Wage differences between genders persist; women are under-represented on private company boards, in senior management positions, in many well-paid and influential professions and among entrepreneurs. Hence, there is scope to make further progress on gender equality. The share of the parental leave reserved for each parent should be increased further, as inequality in leave-taking and long parental leaves harm women’s career prospects. Fighting stereotypes in education is necessary to improve women’s access to professions where they are under-represented. Government programmes need to promote women’s entrepreneurship further. Special attention should also be paid to the integration of foreign-born women, whose employment rate is much lower than for their male counterparts. |
| Keywords: | Corporate governance, Discrimination, Economics of Gender, Education, Gender equality, Immigration, Parental leave, Public policy, Sociology of Economics, Welfare Economics |
| JEL: | A14 D63 G30 I24 J15 J16 J78 |
| Date: | 2017–06–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1395-en&r=lab |
| By: | KONDO Ayako |
| Abstract: | The Great East Japan Earthquake affected not only local workers employed by establishments that were directly damaged, but also those of their trading partners through supply chain disruptions. I estimate the effect of such indirect shocks to workers on their job separation, inter-industry mobility, geographical relocation, and employment status in the following years. I find that such shocks increased job separation in the study period. This increased job separation did not increase inter-industry mobility, but rather induced relocation to other prefectures. The effect on employment status was mixed. Although the self-reported indicator of being affected by the earthquake is significantly correlated with negative outcomes such as high unemployment, the proxy for the production decline at the prefecture-industry level is uncorrelated with employment status. This result implies that people who faced a negative employment shock may have attributed it to the exogenous event, which could cause substantial bias in the self-reported data on the effect of disasters. |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:17089&r=lab |
| By: | Shulamit Kahn; Donna Ginther |
| Abstract: | Researchers from economics, sociology, psychology, and other disciplines have studied the persistent under-representation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This chapter summarizes this research. We argue that women’s under-representation is concentrated in the math-intensive science fields of geosciences, engineering, economics, math/computer science and physical science. Our analysis concentrates on the environmental factors that influence ability, preferences, and the rewards for those choices. We examine how gendered stereotypes, culture, role models, competition, risk aversion, and interests contribute to gender STEM gap, starting at childhood, solidifying by middle school, and affecting women and men as they progress through school, higher education, and into the labor market. Our results are consistent with preferences and psychological explanations for the under-representation of women in math-intensive STEM fields. |
| JEL: | I24 J16 J24 J3 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23525&r=lab |
| By: | Cuéllar Martín, Jaime; Martín-Román, Ángel L.; Moral, Alfonso |
| Abstract: | The differences in the regional unemployment rates, as well as their formation mechanism and persistence, have given rise to a great number of papers in the last decades. This work contributes to that strand of literature from two different perspectives. In the first part of our work, we follow the methodological proposal established by Hofler and Murphy (1989) and Aysun et al. (2014). We make use of an estimation of a stochastic cost frontier to breakdown the Spanish provincial effective unemployment (NUTS-3) in two different components: first one associated with aggregate supply side factors, and the other one more related to the aggregate demand side factors. The second part of our research analyzes the existence of spatial dependence patterns among the Spanish provinces in the effective unemployment and in both above mentioned components. The decomposition performed in the first part of our research will let us know the margin that the policymakers have when they deal with unemployment reductions by means of aggregate supply and aggregate demand policies. Finally, the spatial analysis of the unemployment rates amongst the Spanish provinces can potentially have also significant implications from an economic policy viewpoint since we find that there are common formation patterns or clusters of unemployment. |
| Keywords: | Unemployment, Local labor markets, Spatial dependence |
| JEL: | E24 J64 R11 |
| Date: | 2017–06–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:79783&r=lab |
| By: | Brantly Callaway; William J. Collins |
| Abstract: | We study a novel dataset compiled from archival records, which includes information on men’s wages, union status, educational attainment, work history, and other background variables for several cities circa 1950. Such data are extremely rare for the early post-war period when U.S. unions were at their peak. After describing patterns of selection into unions, we measure the union wage premium using unconditional quantile methods. The wage premium was larger at the bottom of the income distribution than at the middle or higher, larger for African Americans than for whites, and larger for those with low levels of education. Counterfactuals are consistent with the view that unions substantially narrowed urban wage inequality at mid-century. |
| JEL: | J5 N12 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23516&r=lab |
| By: | Hidalgo-Cabrillana, Ana. (Departamento de Análisis Económico (Teoría e Historia Económica). Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.); Kuehn, Zoë. (Departamento de Análisis Económico (Teoría e Historia Económica). Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.); López-Mayan, Cristina. (Euncet Business School, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | We carry out a classical development accounting exercise using data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies" (PIAAC). PIACC data, available for 30 upper-middle and high-income countries and nationally representative for the working-age population, allow us to construct a multi- dimensional measure for the stock of human capital in each country, taking into account years of schooling, job experience, cognitive skills, on-the-job-training, and health. Individual level PIAAC data for the US are then used to estimate the weight of each dimension in the human capital composite by running Mincerian wage regressions. We find that differences in physical capital together with our broad measure of human capital account for 41% of the variance in output per worker, compared to only 27% when proxying human capital by average years of schooling only. Differences in cognitive skills play the largest role while experience and health are of lesser importance. |
| Keywords: | development accounting, multi-dimensional human capital measure, PIAAC, Mincerian wage equation |
| JEL: | O11 O4 I25 J11 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uam:wpaper:201702&r=lab |
| By: | Ådne Cappelen; Torbjørn Eika (Statistics Norway) |
| Abstract: | The EU-enlargement in 2004 increased labour migration and affected the Norwegian labour market in particular. We study how this modified the Dutch disease effects during the resource boom 2004- 2013. In the Norwegian case the resource movement effect of the petroleum industry has historically dominated the spending effect. One reason is the introduction of the fiscal policy rule in 2001 that limited spending. We find that economic growth in Norway was roughly doubled during this period due to the resource boom while total population increased by 2 percent. Moreover, both the resource movement and spending effects on Mainland GDP were roughly unaffected by immigration while employment increased, real wages fell and so did productivity. |
| Keywords: | Dutch disease; Immigration |
| JEL: | B22 J11 Q33 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssb:dispap:860&r=lab |
| By: | Coles, Melvyn (University of Essex); Francesconi, Marco (University of Essex) |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a new equilibrium model of two-sided search where ex-ante heterogenous individuals have general payoff functions and vectors of attributes. The analysis applies to a large class of models, from the non-transferable utility case to the collective household case with bargaining. The approach is powerful for it identifies a simple algorithm which, in the empirical application, is found to rapidly converge to equilibrium. Using indirect inference, we identify the differential effects of women's ability and charm on female match incentives. We use these results to assess the separate impacts of the arrival of equal opportunities for women in the labor market and the advent of the contraceptive pill on female economic activity and matching. |
| Keywords: | two-sided search, multiple attribute matching, marriage, female labor supply, contraceptive pill |
| JEL: | C6 J0 J1 N3 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10827&r=lab |
| By: | Stockinger, Bastian (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]) |
| Abstract: | "This study investigates the effects of local broadband internet availability on establishment- level employment growth. The analysis uses data for Germany in the years 2005-2009, when broadband was introduced in rural regions of Western Germany and in large parts of Eastern Germany. Technical frictions in broadband rollout are exploited to obtain exogenous variation in local broadband availability. The results suggest that broadband expansion had a positive effect on employment growth in the Western German service sector and a negative effect in Western German manufacturing. This pattern of results is driven by pronounced positive effects in knowledge- and computer-intensive industries, suggesting that it is the actual use of broadband in the production process that leads to complementary hiring, respectively a slowdown of employment growth, in the respective sectors. For Eastern Germany, no significant employment growth effects are found." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) |
| JEL: | J63 O33 R23 |
| Date: | 2017–06–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabdpa:201719&r=lab |
| By: | Gerhards, Leonie (University of Hamburg); Kosfeld, Michael (Goethe University Frankfurt) |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of likability on female and male team behavior in a lab experiment. Extending a two-player public goods game and a minimum effort game by an additional pre-play stage that informs team members about their mutual likability we find that female teams lower their contribution to the public good in case of low likability, while male teams achieve high levels of cooperation irrespective of the level of mutual likability. In mixed sex teams, both females' and males' contributions depend on mutual likability. Similar results are found in the minimum effort game. Our results offer a new perspective on gender differences in labor market outcomes: mutual dislikability impedes team behavior, except in all-male teams. |
| Keywords: | gender differences, likability, experiment, team behavior |
| JEL: | C90 J16 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10825&r=lab |