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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Leora Friedberg (University of Virginia); Richard M. Hynes (University of Virginia School of Law); Nathaniel Pattison (Southern Methodist University) |
| Abstract: | Eleven states limit employers’ use of credit reports, and prominent politicians have proposed a national ban. This paper evaluates the success of these credit check bans in helping financially distressed individuals find employment. In the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we identify those likely to directly benefit from credit check bans – unemployed individuals with recent financial trouble. Exploiting the staggered passage of state bans, we find that banning credit checks increases the likelihood of finding a job by twenty-five percent among people who have had trouble meeting their expenses. We find a small and statistically insignificant change in job-finding rates among people who have not had recent financial trouble and a statistically insignificant impact on minorities overall. |
| Keywords: | Credit Reports, Unemployment, Labor Market |
| JEL: | G28 J64 J70 M50 K31 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smu:ecowpa:1704&r=lab |
| By: | Alexander M. Bell; Raj Chetty; Xavier Jaravel; Neviana Petkova; John Van Reenen |
| Abstract: | We characterize the factors that determine who becomes an inventor in America by using de-identified data on 1.2 million inventors from patent records linked to tax records. We establish three sets of results. First, children from high-income (top 1%) families are ten times as likely to become inventors as those from below-median income families. There are similarly large gaps by race and gender. Differences in innate ability, as measured by test scores in early childhood, explain relatively little of these gaps. Second, exposure to innovation during childhood has significant causal effects on children's propensities to become inventors. Growing up in a neighborhood or family with a high innovation rate in a specific technology class leads to a higher probability of patenting in exactly the same technology class. These exposure effects are gender-specific: girls are more likely to become inventors in a particular technology class if they grow up in an area with more female inventors in that technology class. Third, the financial returns to inventions are extremely skewed and highly correlated with their scientific impact, as measured by citations. Consistent with the importance of exposure effects and contrary to standard models of career selection, women and disadvantaged youth are as under-represented among high-impact inventors as they are among inventors as a whole. We develop a simple model of inventors' careers that matches these empirical results. The model implies that increasing exposure to innovation in childhood may have larger impacts on innovation than increasing the financial incentives to innovate, for instance by cutting tax rates. In particular, there are many “lost Einsteins” — individuals who would have had highly impactful inventions had they been exposed to innovation. |
| JEL: | E0 H0 J0 O3 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24062&r=lab |
| By: | Luciana Méndez (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía) |
| Abstract: | This study analyzes the extent to which Uruguayan youths’ economic dissatisfaction drives intention to migrate by exploring those factors that can affect people's economic satisfaction. Causality is explored using instrumental variable analysis and conditional mixed process estimations. The findings of this study point to a causal negative relationship from economic satisfaction to youths’ desires to migrate. Also, results highlight the importance of subjective and objective income, individuals’ perceptions of the opportunities available in the country regarding social mobility, job access, housing, and adequate income, in shaping youths’ reported economic satisfaction and therefore their desire to migrate. |
| Keywords: | Subjective well-being, intention to migrate, Uruguay |
| JEL: | F22 I31 J10 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-12-17&r=lab |
| By: | Martha J. Bailey; Olga Malkova; Zoë M. McLaren |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the relationship between parents’ access to family planning and the economic resources of their children. Using the county-level introduction of U.S. family planning programs between 1964 and 1973, we find that children born after programs began had 2.8% higher household incomes. They were also 7% less likely to live in poverty and 12% less likely to live in households receiving public assistance. After accounting for selection, the direct effects of family planning programs on parents’ incomes account for roughly two thirds of these gains. |
| JEL: | I3 J13 J18 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23971&r=lab |
| By: | Rita Ginja (Uppsala Universitet); Jenny Jans (Uppsala University); Arizo Karimi (Uppsala University) |
| Abstract: | We study how parental resources early in life affect children’s health and education exploiting the so-called speed premium (SP) in the Swedish parental leave system. The SP grants mothers higher parental leave benefits for the subsequent child without re-establishing eligibility through pre-birth market work if the two births occur within a pre-specified interval. This allow us to use a Regression Discontinuity framework. We find that the SP improves the educational outcomes of the first-born child, but not of the second-born. Impacts are driven by a combination of a positive income shock, and substitution from informal care to maternal time. |
| Keywords: | parental leave, Earnings, time investments, child outcomes |
| JEL: | J13 J22 J18 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2017-085&r=lab |
| By: | Astghik Mavisakalyan (Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre, Curtin University); Yashar Tarverdi (Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre, Curtin University) |
| Abstract: | In a seminal article, Ross (2008) reports a negative correlation between oil production and women’s representation in the labour force and politics across countries. This article re-examines these relationships exploiting variations in oil endowments to address endogeneity concerns. We confirm that oil production causes decline in women’s representation. Additionally we show that, consistent with Dutch disease effects, oil production decreases women’s employment in the traded sector. However, it also leads to an increase in women’s employment in the nontraded sector. We explore some social consequences of oil production and show that it results in women marrying earlier and having more children. |
| Keywords: | natural resources; female employment |
| JEL: | J16 J21 O13 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ozl:bcecwp:wp1706&r=lab |
| By: | Laura A. Harvey; Jochen O. Mierau; James Rockey |
| Abstract: | A society in which everybody is the same at the same stage of the life-cycle will exhibit substantial income and wealth inequality. We use this idea to empirically quantify natural inequality – the share of observed inequality attributable to life-cycle profiles of income and wealth. We document that recent increases in inequality in the United States and other developed countries are both larger than observed rates would suggest, and represent a distinct change from the period 1960-1980. Extrapolating our measures forward suggests that natural inequalities will fluctuate over the next 20 years before settling to a new higher level. |
| Keywords: | Income Inequality, Wealth Inequality, Demographic Structure |
| JEL: | D31 J10 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lis:lwswps:26&r=lab |
| By: | Dan Andrews; Muge Adalet McGowan; Valentine Millot |
| Abstract: | Policies that spur more efficient corporate restructuring can revive productivity growth by targeting three inter-related sources of labour productivity weakness: the survival of “zombie” firms (low productivity firms that would typically exit in a competitive market), capital misallocation and stalling technological diffusion. New OECD policy indicators show that there is much scope to improve the design of insolvency regimes in order to reduce the barriers to restructuring of weak firms and the personal costs associated with entrepreneurial failure. Insolvency regime reform can not only address the aforementioned sources of productivity weakness but also enhance the productivity impacts of reducing entry barriers in product markets. As the zombie firm problem may partly stem from bank forbearance, complementary reforms to insolvency regimes are essential to ensure that a more aggressive policy to resolve non-performing loans is effective. Distortions in the banking sector highlight the importance of market-based financing instruments for productivity growth with the inherent debt bias in corporate tax systems emerging as a key barrier to technological diffusion. Finally, well-designed job search and retraining policies are effective at returning workers displaced by firm exit to work, particularly in environments where barriers to firm entry are low. |
| Keywords: | banks, capital misallocation, firm exit, insolvency, Productivity, zombie firms |
| JEL: | D24 G21 G32 G33 G34 J63 J68 K35 L25 O16 O40 O43 O47 |
| Date: | 2017–12–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaab:21-en&r=lab |
| By: | Sabien Dobbelaere (VU Amsterdam; Tinbergen Institute, The Netherlands); Kozo Kiyota (Keio University; Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI), Japan) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the links between the internationalization mode of firms and market imperfections in product and labor markets. We develop a framework for modelling heterogeneity across firms in terms of (i) product market power (price-cost markups), (ii) labor market imperfections (workers' bargaining power during worker-firm negotiations or firm's degree of wage-setting power) and (iii) revenue productivity. We apply this framework to analyze whether the pricing behavior of firms in product and labor markets differs across firms that engage in different forms of internationalization. Engagement in international activities is found to matter for determining not only the type of imperfections in product and labor markets but also the degree of imperfections. Clear differences in behavior between firms that serve the foreign market either through exporting or through FDI are observed. Being an exporter introduces allocative inefficiencies in product as well as labor markets as we find export status to be positively correlated with both product market power (markups) and market power consolidated on the labor supply side (workers' bargaining power). But exporting firms where search frictions are inducing wages to vary with revenue are less able to exploit wage-setting power. Firms with foreign subsidiaries, on the other hand, seem to reduce price distortions in product and labor markets. In addition, we observe heterogeneous returns to being an exporter/MNE within an industry and also discern cross-industry differences. |
| Keywords: | Rent sharing; monopsony; price-cost mark-ups; productivity; exporting; multinational firms; panel data |
| JEL: | C23 D24 F14 F16 J50 L13 |
| Date: | 2017–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20170113&r=lab |