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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Aaronson, Daniel (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago); Davis, Jonathan (University of Chicago); Schulze, Karl (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago) |
| Abstract: | Between 1907 and 1914, the “Galveston Movement,” a philanthropic effort spearheaded by Jacob Schiff, fostered the immigration of approximately 10,000 Russian Jews through the Port of Galveston, Texas. Upon arrival, households were given train tickets to pre-selected locations west of the Mississippi River where a job awaited. Despite the program’s stated purpose to locate new Russian Jewish immigrants to the Western part of the U.S., we find that almost 90 percent of the prime age male participants ultimately moved east of the Mississippi, typically to large Northeastern and Midwestern cities. We use a standard framework for modeling location decisions to show destination assignments made cities more desirable, but this effect was overwhelmed by the attraction of religious and country of origin enclaves. By contrast, there is no economically or statistically significant effect of a place having a larger base of immigrants from other areas of the world and economic conditions appear to be of secondary importance, especially for participants near the bottom of the skill distribution. Our paper also introduces two novel adjustments for matching historical data – using an objective measure of match quality to fine tune our match scores and a deferred acceptance algorithm to avoid multiple matching. |
| Keywords: | Immigrants; Moving to Opportunity (MTO) |
| JEL: | J1 J6 J61 |
| Date: | 2018–02–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-2018-04&r=lab |
| By: | Giovanni Dosi; Marcelo C. Pereira; Andrea Roventini; Maria Enrica Virgillito |
| Abstract: | In this work we develop a set of labour market and fiscal policy experiments upon the labour and credit augmented “Schumpeter meeting Keynes" agent-based model. The labour market is declined under two institutional variants, the “Fordist" and the “Competitive" setups meant to capture the historical transition from the Fordist toward the post “Thatcher-Reagan" period. Inside these two regimes, we study the different effects of supply-side active labour market policies (ALMPs) vs. demand-management passive labour market ones (PLMPs). In particular, we analyse the effects of ALMPs aimed at promoting job search, and at providing training to unemployed people. Next, we compare the effects of these policies with unemployment benefits simply meant to sustain income and therefore aggregate demand. Considering the burden of unemployment benefits in terms of public budget, we link such provision with the objectives of the European Stability and Growth Pact. Our results show that (i) an appropriate level of skills is not enough to sustain growth when workers face adverse labour demand; (ii) supply-side policies are not able to reverse the perverse interaction between exibility and austerity; (iii) PLMPs outperform ALMPs in reducing unemployment and workers' skills deterioration; and (iv) demand-management policies are better suited to mitigate inequality and to improve and sustain long-run growth. |
| Keywords: | Industrial-relation Regimes, Flexibility, Active Labour Market Policies, Austerity, Agent-based models |
| JEL: | C63 E24 H53 J88 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ast:wpaper:0031&r=lab |
| By: | Marco Faillo; Luigi Mittone; Costanza Piovanelli |
| Abstract: | Our paper reproduces the cash posters framework à la Homans (1953, 1954) in a laboratory setting with a twofold aim: first of all, it explores the gift-exchange between employers and employees, both in terms of wage- effort and in terms of effort-potential leniency in punishment; secondly, it investigates whether employees’ behavior is driven also by solidarity concerns towards their unlucky peers. We propose a novel experimental design with a modified version of the gift-exchange game with real effort, punishment, and multiple rounds (Fehr et al., 1997): each employer is matched with two employees and she has the possibility to punish each of them if their individual production is lower than that asked. Each employee’s production risks to be reduced by a random intervention and, in our treatment, each employee has the possibility to renounce to a part of his production to give it to his coworker in need. Our data support the well-known relation between wage and effort, but suggest that employers are not willing to overlook employees non-compliance, neither when employees exerted high effort in the past, nor when their coworkers exert high effort. In our treatment, employees not only exploit the possibility to help their needy peers, but they tend also to exert higher effort towards their employers. Consequently, the employers are those who earn more from employees’ solidarity, and the gap in earnings between employers and employees becomes even greater in our treatment. |
| Keywords: | Solidarity, Gift-exchange, Reciprocity, Experiment |
| JEL: | C91 M52 D91 D81 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trn:utwpce:1801&r=lab |
| By: | Dewit, Gerda; Görg, Holger; Temouri, Yama |
| Abstract: | We examine the determinants of the decision to relocate activities abroad for firms located in OECD countries. We argue that particular firm-specific features play a crucial role for the link between employment protection and relocation. Stricter employment protection laws in the current production location discourage firms' relocation abroad. While larger, more productive firms and firms with higher labour intensities have, ceteris paribus, higher propensities to relocate, they also face higher exit barriers if the country from which they consider relocating has strict employment protection laws. Our predictions are supported empirically, using firm level data for 28 OECD countries. |
| Keywords: | Employment Protection,Relocation,Multinational Enterprises |
| JEL: | F23 L23 J88 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2102&r=lab |
| By: | Leila Agha; Keith Marzilli Ericson; Kimberley H. Geissler; James B. Rebitzer |
| Abstract: | How does team structure affect productivity? We address this question with an application to healthcare by examining the teams that primary care physicians (PCPs) assemble when they refer patients to specialists. Our theoretical model analyzes how PCPs trade off costly coordination against beneficial specialization, predicting that coordination improves when PCPs concentrate their referrals within a smaller set of specialists. Empirically we find that patients of PCPs with concentrated referrals have lower healthcare costs. This effect exists for commercially insured and Medicare populations; is statistically and economically significant; and holds under identification strategies that account for unobserved patient and physician characteristics. |
| JEL: | D85 I10 I11 L2 M5 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24338&r=lab |
| By: | Armanda Cetrulo; Valeria Cirillo; Dario Guarascio |
| Abstract: | In the last decades, labour flexibility has been introduced all across Europe with the aim of spurring jobs and productivity. This work explores the link between the use of temporary employment and the propensity to introduce product innovations by firms. The analysis performed at the sectoral level combines information on innovation, economic performance and employment for five major European economies observed over the period 1998-2012. Taking into account the variety of technological patterns, the authors find that industries using temporary employment more intensively are characterized by a weak product innovation propensity. The negative correlation between temporary employment and innovation is stronger in medium and high-tech sectors identified alternatively by Peneder classification and by the concentration of firms’ intangible assets proxing different Schumpeterian regimes of accumulation. |
| Date: | 2018–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ast:wpaper:0032&r=lab |
| By: | Kevin Fawcett; Shouyong Shi |
| Abstract: | When workers have incomplete information about their ability, they can learn about this ability by searching for jobs, both while employed and unemployed. Search outcomes yield information for updating the belief about the ability which affects optimal search decisions in the future. Firms respond to updated beliefs by altering vacancy creation and optimal wage contracts. To study equilibrium interactions between learning and search, this paper integrates learning into a search equilibrium with on-the-job search and wage-tenure contracts. The model generates results that shed light on a number of empirical facts, such as wage cuts in job-to-job transition, wage growth over tenure, true duration dependence of unemployment, and frictional wage inequality. We calibrate the model to quantify the extent to which learning and on-the-job search explain these empirical facts. |
| Keywords: | Learning; On-the-job search; Contracts; Inequality |
| JEL: | E21 E24 J60 |
| Date: | 2018–03–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-597&r=lab |
| By: | Marcos Diaz Ramirez (OECD); Thomas Liebig (OECD); Cécile Thoreau; Paolo Veneri (OECD) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides an assessment of the presence of migrants, their characteristics and integration outcomes across OECD regions, based on a new OECD database on immigrant integration at the regional level. It reveals the wide diversity of the presence of migrants within countries, as well as the specific patterns observed in the way migrants locate and integrate in society across regions. For example, migrants tend to be more spatially concentrated in capital-city and metropolitan regions than the native-born population. What is more, highly-educated migrants are more likely to locate in the same regions where the highly-educated natives concentrate, a trend that is not observed for the low-educated foreign-born. Integration outcomes of migrants, relative to the native-born, are measured through a variety of labour market and housing indicators. The paper also provides preliminary findings on public attitudes towards migrants across regions, which suggest that attitudes tend to be more positive in regions with larger shares of foreign-born population. |
| Keywords: | Integration, Migration, Regions |
| JEL: | F22 R10 |
| Date: | 2018–03–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:govaab:2018/01-en&r=lab |
| By: | Silvia Lübbecke (University of Paderborn); Wendelin Schnedler (University of Paderborn) |
| Abstract: | In large companies, supervisors are hired to control their subordinates’ performance and intervene with risky decisions in order to increase productivity. However, their decision to intervene may not always be profit-orientated. This paper studies whether the decision to intervene in a worker’s decision is influenced by psychological factors that are unrelated to the profitability of intervention. In particular, we examine the role of incidental moods and the anticipation of regret triggered by ex-post evaluation of the decision. Intervention behavior is analyzed in a factorial design controlling for two mood conditions (positive, negative) and the presence or absence of feedback on either the efficiency of intervention or on its social (dis)approval by the supervised worker. We observe that supervisors in the negative mood condition intervene less often (approx. 13%) than those in the positive mood condition. Further, when supervisors are later evaluated, they intervene less (approx. 16%). Our observations are consistent with the idea that supervisors’ decision are not only driven by payoff but also by incidental moods and regret anticipation. The effects, however, are not statistically significant. |
| Keywords: | intervention, incidental affects, anticipation of regret, decision under uncertainty, group decision-making |
| JEL: | C91 D81 D82 D83 D91 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pdn:dispap:35&r=lab |
| By: | Alan Benson; Danielle Li; Kelly Shue |
| Abstract: | The best worker is not always the best candidate for manager. In these cases, do firms promote the best potential manager or the best worker in her current job? Using microdata on the performance of sales workers at 214 firms, we find evidence consistent with the “Peter Principle,” which predicts that firms prioritize current job performance in promotion decisions at the expense of other observable characteristics that better predict managerial performance. We estimate that the costs of promoting workers with lower managerial potential are high, suggesting either that firms are making inefficient promotion decisions or that the benefits of promotion-based incentives are great enough to justify the costs of managerial mismatch. |
| JEL: | J01 M5 M51 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24343&r=lab |
| By: | Gordon Dahl; Andreas Kotsadam; Dan-Olof Rooth |
| Abstract: | We examine whether exposure of men to women in a traditionally male-dominated environment can change attitudes about mixed-gender productivity, gender roles and gender identity. Our context is the military in Norway, where we randomly assigned female recruits to some squads but not others during boot camp. We find that living and working with women for 8 weeks causes men to adopt more egalitarian attitudes. There is a 14 percentage point increase in the fraction of men who think mixed-gender teams perform as well or better than same-gender teams, an 8 percentage point increase in men who think household work should be shared equally and a 14 percentage point increase in men who do not completely disavow feminine traits. Contrary to the predictions of many policymakers, we find no evidence that integrating women into squads hurt male recruits' satisfaction with boot camp or their plans to continue in the military. These findings provide evidence that even in a highly gender-skewed environment, gender stereotypes are malleable and can be altered by integrating members of the opposite sex. |
| JEL: | J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24351&r=lab |
| By: | Davoine, Thomas (Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna) |
| Abstract: | Population aging challenges the financing of social security systems in developed economies, as the fraction of the population in working age declines. The resulting pressure on capital-labor ratios translates into a pressure on factor prices and production. While European countries all face this challenge, the speed at which their population ages differs, and thus the pressure on capital-labor ratios. If capital markets are integrated, differences in population aging may lead to cross-country spillovers, as investors freely seek the best returns on capital. Using a multi-country overlapping-generations model covering 14 European Union countries, I quantify spillovers and find that capital market integration leads to redistribution across countries over the long run. For instance, GDP per capita would on average be 2.9 %-points lower in Germany in each of the next 50 years if capital markets were perfectly integrated and public debts kept constants with increases in labor income taxes, compared to a closed economy case; by contrast, GDP per capita would on average be 2.1 %-points higher in France, whose population ages slower than in Germany. I also show that pension reforms can change the cross-country redistribution patterns, some countries losing from capital market integration without the reform but winning with it. |
| Keywords: | population aging, pension reforms, capital markets, cross-country spillovers, overlapping-generations modelling |
| JEL: | C68 E60 F41 J11 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ihs:ihsesp:337&r=lab |