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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Edward P. Lazear |
| Abstract: | Success, measured by earnings or education, of immigrants in the US varies dramatically by country of origin. For example, average educational attainment among immigrants ranges from 9 to 16 years, depending on source country. Perhaps surprisingly, immigrants from Algeria have higher educational attainment than those from Israel or Japan. Also true is that there is a strong inverse relation of attainment to number of immigrants from that country. These patterns result because in the US, immigrant slots are rationed. Selection from the top of the source country’s ability distribution is assumed and modeled. The main implications are that average immigrant attainment is inversely related to the number admitted from a source country and positively related to the population of that source country. The results are unequivocally supported by results from the American Community Survey. Additionally, a structural model that is more explicit in the assumptions and predictions fits the data well. |
| JEL: | F22 J01 J15 J61 M5 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23548&r=lab |
| By: | Ralsmark, Hilda (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University) |
| Abstract: | Despite major developments in gender equality, differences between men and women’s economic and social behaviors remain. Several studies demonstrate the importance of gender norms in explaining a significant part of the gender gap. But what shapes gender norms? I provide evidence on the role of education, considered to be a key factor to reach gender equality, in influencing attitudes on gender norms in two different domains: the labor market and household. Exploiting educational reforms in Europe, I find that mandatory education and years of education significantly reduces individuals’ level of agreement on the gender norm that the man should be the breadwinner but not on the gender norm that the woman should be the homemaker. The result is consistent with the hypothesis that part of the ”stalled revolution” in gender equality is because norms in the household are more rigid than in the labor market, and that educated women face a dilemma between a career and family, or a double burden where they continue to do the lion’s share of household work. |
| Keywords: | Gender equality; Education; Gender Norms; Labor market; Household Economics |
| JEL: | D10 I20 J16 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0702&r=lab |
| By: | Coles, Melvyn G; Francesconi, Marco |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a new equilibrium model of two-sided search where ex-ante heterogeneous 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: | Contraceptive pill; Female labor supply; Marriage; Two-sided search; Multiple attribute matching |
| JEL: | C6 J0 J1 N3 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12095&r=lab |
| By: | Eliason, Marcus (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Hensvik, Lena (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Kramarz, Francis (CREST, Ecole Polytechnique, CEPR); Nordström Skans, Oskar (Department of Economics, Uppsala University) |
| Abstract: | The paper studies how social connections affect firm-level hiring decisions and performance. We characterize the social connections of firms’ employees using register data and for causal identification we use job displacements, which create directed positive shocks towards connected firms by increasing these firms’ available supply of connected labor. We ascertain that our results are fully driven by these directed supply shocks. Our results show that firms appear to prefer to hire employed workers to whom they are connected over unconnected or unemployed workers. Employed and connected workers mostly go to high-productivity firms, whereas unemployed and unconnected workers tend to go to low-productivity firms. Strong connections – family, recent, durable, formed in small groups, between socially similar agents – matter the most. A displacement shock causes connected firms, in particular low-productive ones, to hire more of the connected workers, while leaving unconnected hires and separations essentially unaffected. Increases in the supply of connected labor, therefore, cause the creation of additional jobs at the firm level. By using these shocks, we can also show that hiring connected workers has a positive causal impact on firm performance. Our results are consistent with a stylized framework where connections reduce hiring frictions and where the firms’ ability to hire connected workers is a function of these workers’ outside options. |
| Keywords: | networks; job search; job displacement; job creation |
| JEL: | J23 J30 J60 |
| Date: | 2017–06–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2017_011&r=lab |
| By: | Marek Gora; Piotr Lewandowski; Maciej Lis |
| Abstract: | Between 2002 and 2015, temporary employment in Poland more than doubled. Poland became the country with the highest share of temporary jobs in the EU. In this paper we study this process from the job quality vs. job quantity perspective. We analyse gaps between temporary and permanent workers in six dimensions of jobs quality, adopting measures proposed by the OECD and Eurofound. The gaps in earnings quality, job security and work scheduling quality were the most pronounced. Job quality has improved for both groups of workers but the gaps have not closed completely. Firms in Poland prefer temporary contracts because of lower firing cost, tax wedge and wages. We use a stylised labour demand model to quantify the upper bound of a potential job creation effect due to lower labour costs incurred by temporary contracts. We find that this effect doesn’t exceed 4% of dependent employment in 2015. We cannot rule out that the net employment effect was 0. Our findings show that even if cheaper, temporary contracts might have induced some job creation, workers suffered from lower job quality in several dimensions. |
| Keywords: | job quality, temporary employment, segmentation |
| JEL: | J28 J41 J81 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ibt:wpaper:wp042017&r=lab |
| By: | Agnes Szabo-Morvai (Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and HETFA Institute); Anna Lovasz (Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and ELTE University) |
| Abstract: | Evidence from single country studies suggests that the effect of subsidized childcare availability on maternal labor supply varies greatly by institutional context. We provide estimates of the childcare effect around age 3 of children for 7 EU countries, based on harmonized data and the same quasi-experimental methodology, and evaluate their cross-country variation in light of key institutional factors (leave policies, labor market characteristics, cultural norms). The identification of the childcare effect utilizes birthdate-based kindergarten eligibility cutoffs specific to each country in an instrumental variables approach. We combine data on mothers from the EU-LFS, eligibility cutoffs gathered from country experts and verified using further datasets, and country-level institutional characteristics from various sources. We discuss the role of the context, timing, and the point of estimation. The results suggest that the childcare effect is the highest in CEE countries, where at this child age, maternal participation is still relatively low compared to that of mothers with older children, and leaves with job protection are just ending. We find less evidence of an impact in Southern EU countries, where leaves end at a much earlier age, and maternal participation at older child ages is low. Western EU countries also show some impact, despite the already high maternal participation rates prior to this age. Specific policy implications are derived from the results in light of the EU Barcelona targets for childcare expansion under age 3. |
| Keywords: | subsidized childcare, maternal labor supply, institutional context |
| JEL: | H24 J13 J22 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:has:bworkp:1703&r=lab |
| By: | Kettemann, Andreas; Kramarz, Francis; Zweimüller, Josef |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the 2003 Austrian severance-pay reform, often advocated as a role model for structural reforms in countries plagued by inflexible labor markets and high unemployment. The reform replaced a system with tenure-based severance payments after a layoff (but not after a quit) by payments into pension accounts that accrue to workers after a layoff as well as after a quit. We identify the reform effects using a regression discontinuity (RD) design and find a substantial increase in job mobility in response to the reform. A search-and-matching model with on-the-job search and tenure-dependent severance payments is structurally estimated using the RD induced empirical moments. Counterfactual policy experiments suggest that flexicurity reforms spur job creation and can substantially reduce unemployment in countries where severance payments are initially high. |
| Keywords: | creative destruction; flexicurity; job creation; job mobility; Severance pay |
| JEL: | J63 J65 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12112&r=lab |
| By: | Gharad Bryan; Melanie Morten |
| Abstract: | We estimate the aggregate productivity gains from reducing barriers to internal labor migration in Indonesia, accounting for worker selection and spatial differences in human capital. We distinguish between movement costs, which mean workers will only move if they expect higher wages, and amenity differences, which mean some locations must pay more to attract workers. We find modest but important aggregate impacts. We estimate a 22% increase in labor productivity from removing all barriers. Reducing migration costs to the US level, a high mobility benchmark, leads to an 8% productivity boost. These figures hides substantial heterogeneity. The origin population that benefits most sees an 104% increase in average earnings from a complete barrier removal, or a 37% increase from moving to the US benchmark. |
| JEL: | J61 O18 O53 R12 R23 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23540&r=lab |
| By: | Izquierdo, Mario; Jimeno, Juan Francisco; Kosma, Theodora; Lamo, Ana; Millard, Stephen; Rõõm, Tairi; Viviano, Eliana |
| Abstract: | Against the backdrop of continuing adjustment in EU labour markets in response to the Great Recession and the sovereign debt crisis, the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) conducted the third wave of the Wage Dynamics Network (WDN) survey in 2014-15 as a follow-up to the two previous WDN waves carried out in 2007 and 2009. The WDN survey collected information on wage-setting practices at the firm level. This third wave sampled about 25,000 firms in 25 European countries with the aim of assessing how firms adjusted wages and employment in response to the various shocks and labour market reforms that took place in the European Union (EU) during the period 2010-13. This paper summarises the main results of WDN3 by identifying some patterns in firms’ adjustments and labour market reforms. It seeks to lay out the main lessons learnt from the survey in terms of both the general response of EU labour markets to the crisis and how these responses varied across the countries that took part in the survey. JEL Classification: E24, J30, J52, J68 |
| Keywords: | labour market adjustment, labour market reforms, survey data, wage dynamics network |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecb:ecbops:2017192&r=lab |
| By: | Wanger, Susanne (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]) |
| Abstract: | "Working time arrangements are key elements of working conditions and determine the possibilities for employees to balance work with their other life spheres. Therefore, this paper examines the level of working time satisfaction of employees and identifies the factors that may facilitate or impede satisfaction with working time using crosssectional data from the German BIBB/BAuA-Employment Survey. The analytical basis is a generalized ordered logistic regression model. The main results indicate that individual time-sovereignty is positively linked with a high level of working time satisfaction. Worker-friendly working time arrangements, which lead to less stress, insecurity and mental pressure, increase satisfaction levels, whereas atypical working time arrangements, such as unpaid overtime and working shifts, weekends and under high intensity, reduce satisfaction levels." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) |
| JEL: | J22 J28 J81 |
| Date: | 2017–06–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabdpa:201720&r=lab |
| By: | Christian A. L. Hilber; Teemu Lyytikäinen |
| Abstract: | We estimate the effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) - a transfer tax on the purchase price of property or land - on different types of household mobility using micro data. Exploiting a discontinuity in the tax schedule, we isolate the impact of the tax from other determinants of mobility. We compare homeowners with self-assessed house values on either sides of a cut-off value where the tax rate jumps from 1 to 3 percent. We find that a higher SDLT has a strong negative impact on housing-related and short distance moves but does not adversely affect job-induced or long distance mobility. Overall, our results suggest that transfer taxes may mainly distort housing rather than labor markets. |
| Keywords: | transfer taxes, stamp duty, transaction costs, homeownership, household mobility |
| JEL: | D23 H21 H27 J61 R21 R31 R38 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sercdp:0216&r=lab |