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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Philipp Ager (Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark); Casper Worm Hansen (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen) |
| Abstract: | The introduction of immigration quotas in the 1920s fundamentally changed U.S. immigration policy. We exploit this policy change to estimate the economic consequences of immigration restrictions for the U.S. economy. The implementation of the quota system led to a long-lasting relative decline in population growth in areas with larger pre-existing immigrant communities of affected nationalities. This effect was largely driven by the policy-restricted supply of immigrants from quota-affected nationalities and lower fertility of first- and second-generation immigrant women. In the more affected areas labor productivity growth in manufacturing declined substantially and native workers were pushed into lower-wage occupations. While native white workers faced sizable earnings losses, black workers benefited from the quota system and improved their relative economic status within the more affected areas. |
| Keywords: | Immigration restrictions, productivity growth, local labor markets, racial wage gap |
| JEL: | J31 J61 N31 O15 |
| Date: | 2017–10–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kud:kuiedp:1722&r=lab |
| By: | Matthias Heinz (University of Cologne and CEPR); Sabrina Jeworrek (Halle Institute for Economic Research and Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg); Vanessa Mertins (University of Vechta); Heiner Schumacher (KU Leuven); Matthias Sutter (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods) |
| Abstract: | We present a field experiment in which we set up a call-center to study how the productivity of workers is affected if managers treat their co-workers in an unfair way. This question cannot be studied in long-lived organizations since workers may change their career expectations (and hence effort) when managers behave unfairly towards co-workers. In order to rule out such confounds and to measure productivity changes of unaffected workers in a clean way, we create an environment where employees work for two shifts. In one treatment, we lay off parts of the workforce before the second shift. Compared to two different control treatments, we find that, in the layoff treatment, the productivity of the remaining, unaffected workers drops by 12 percent. We show that this result is not driven by peer effects or altered beliefs about the job or the managers’ competence, but rather related to the workers’ perception of unfair behavior of employers towards co-workers. The latter interpretation is confirmed in a survey among professional HR managers. We also show that the effect of unfair behavior on the productivity of unaffected workers is close to the upper bound of the direct effects of wage cuts on the productivity of affected workers. This suggests that the price of an employer’s unfair behavior goes well beyond the potential tit-for-tat of directly affected workers. |
| Keywords: | Gift exchange, Layoffs, Labor Markets, Fairness, Field Experiment |
| JEL: | C93 J50 J63 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2017_22&r=lab |
| By: | Victor Gay |
| Abstract: | I explore the pathways underlying the diffusion of women's participation in the labor force across generations at the individual level. I rely on a severe exogenous shock to the adult sex ratio, World War I military fatalities in France, which generated a short-run upward shift in female labor force participation. I find that this shock to female labor transmitted across generations: women residing under the same institutional conditions but born in locations exposed to higher military death rates were more likely to be in the labor force from 1962 to 2012. Three primary mechanisms account for the long-run impact of World War I military fatalities on women's working behavior: vertical intergenerational transmission (from mothers and fathers to daughters), transmission through marriage (from husbands to wives, and from mothers in-law to daughters in-law), and oblique intergenerational transmission (from migrants to non-migrants). Consistent with theories of intergenerational diffusion of female labor force participation, I provide supporting evidence that WWI military fatalities altered preferences and beliefs about female labor in the long run. |
| JEL: | J16 J22 N34 Z13 |
| Date: | 2017–11–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jmp:jm2017:pga905&r=lab |
| By: | DELOGU Marco; DOCQUIER Frédéric; MACHADO Joël |
| Abstract: | We develop a dynamic model of the world economy that jointly endogenizes individual decisions about fertility, education and migration. We then use it to compare the shortand long-term effects of immigration restrictions on the world distribution of income. Our calibration strategy replicates the economic and demographic characteristics of the world, and allows us to proxy bilateral migration costs and visa costs for two classes of workers and for each pair of countries. In our benchmark simulations, the world average level of income per worker increases by 12% in the short term and by approximately 52% after one century. These results are highly robust to our identifying strategy and technological assumptions. Sizable differences are obtained when our baseline (pre-liberalization) trajectory involves a rapid income convergence between countries or when we adjust visa costs for a possible upward bias. Our quantitative analysis reveals that the effects of liberalizing migration on human capital accumulation and income are gradual and cumulative. Whatever is the size of the short-term gain, the long-run impact is 4 to 5 times greater (except under a rapid convergence in income). |
| Keywords: | Migration; Migration policy; Liberalization; Growth; Human Capital; Fertility; Inequality |
| JEL: | F22 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irs:cepswp:2017-16&r=lab |
| By: | Christa N. Brunnschweiler (University of East Anglia); Pietro F. Peretto (Duke University); Simone Valente (University of East Anglia) |
| Abstract: | Wealth creation driven by R&D investment and wealth dilution caused by disconnected generations interact with households' fertility decisions, delivering a theory of sustained endogenous output growth with a constant endogenous population level in the long run. Unlike traditional theories, our model fully abstracts from Malthusian mechanisms and provides a demography-based view of the long run where the ratios of key macroeconomic variables - consumption, labor incomes and financial assets - are determined by demography and preferences, not by technology. Calibrating the model parameters on OECD data, we show that negative demographic shocks induced by barriers to immigration or increased reproduction costs may raise growth in the very long run, but reduce the welfare of a long sequence of generations by causing permanent reductions in the mass of firms and in labor income shares, as well as prolonged stagnation during the transition. |
| Keywords: | R&D-based growth, overlapping generations, endogenous fertility, population level, wealth dilution |
| JEL: | O41 J11 E25 |
| Date: | 2017–10–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uea:ueaeco:2017_04&r=lab |
| By: | Grimm, Michael |
| Abstract: | I analyze whether variation in rainfall risk played a role for the speed of the demographic transition among American settlers. The underlying hypothesis is that children constituted a buffer stock of labor that could be mobilized in response to income shocks. Identification relies on fertility differences between farm and non-farm households within counties and over time. The results suggest that in areas with a high variance in rainfall the fertility differential between farm households and non-farm households was significantly higher than in areas with a low variance in rainfall. This channel is robust to other relevant forces such as income, education and children’s survival as well as the spatial correlation in fertility levels. The analysis also shows that this effect was reduced and finally disappeared as irrigation systems and agricultural machinery emerged. Hence, access to risk-mitigating devices significantly contributed to the demographic transition in the US. These findings also have potentially important implications for Sub-Saharan Africa, especially for those areas where income risks are a major threat to households and where fertility is still high and only slowly declining or not declining at all. |
| Keywords: | demographic transition,fertility,rainfall risk,insurance |
| JEL: | J13 N31 N32 O12 Q12 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:718&r=lab |