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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Raul Ramos (AQR-IREA, Universitat de Barcelona); Esteban Sanromá (Universitat de Barcelona & Institut d’Economia de Barcelona (IEB)); Hipólito Simón (Universidad de Alicante & Institut d’Economia de Barcelona (IEB)) |
| Abstract: | This research examines wage differentials associated to different collective bargaining regimes in Spain and their evolution over time based on matched employer-employee microdata. The primary objective is to analyse the wage differentials associated to the presence of a firm-level agreement and how they have evolved, taking into account the changes in the economic cycle and the recent labour reform of 2012. The second objective of the study is to examine the impact on wages of an absence of a collective agreement. This regime has become more prevalent due to the regulatory changes associated to the labour reform. From the evidence obtained it may be concluded that, although the higher wages observed in company-level agreements are systematically explained by the better characteristics of firms with labour agreements, there is a positive wage premium that favours workers mostly in the middle and upper-middle end of the wage distribution. This premium has remained relatively stable over time and does not seem to have been affected by the reform, although a degree of cyclical evolution cannot be ruled out. With respect to the impact on wages of the absence of a collective agreement, the results suggest that this level of bargaining, which is still fairly scarce, despite displaying an increasing trend, is associated, on average, to comparatively low wages, and, consequently, to higher wage flexibility. The principal explanatory cause for this wage differential is the existence of a negative wage premium for workers of firms covered by sectoral agreements, particularly those at the lower end of the distribution. |
| Keywords: | Collective bargaining, wage differentials, decomposition methods, economic cycle |
| JEL: | J31 J51 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2018-23&r=all |
| By: | Burns, Kalee (Georgia State University); Hotchkiss, Julie L. (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta) |
| Abstract: | Using the Current Population Survey between 1996 and 2018, this paper investigates the role constraints to migration might play in explaining racial/ethnic disparities in the labor market. The Delta Index of dissimilarity is used to illustrate a greater distributional mismatch between race/education specific workers and jobs among minorities relative to white non-Hispanics. Regression analysis then shows that this mismatch is consistent with minorities being less responsive to changes in the distribution of job opportunities. However, minorities are more responsive when the growing job opportunities are located in areas with greater same-racial/ethnic representation, suggesting that social constraints might play a role in the observed distributional mismatch. The analysis focuses on 25–54 year old men. |
| Keywords: | racial labor market disparities; migration costs; Delta Index; social costs; place-based; people-based; mismatch |
| JEL: | J15 J18 J61 |
| Date: | 2019–02–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedawp:2019-01&r=all |
| By: | Jacob Funk Kirkegaard (Peterson Institute for International Economics); Gonzalo Huertas (Peterson Institute for International Economics) |
| Abstract: | The Hispanic community in the United States has contributed significantly to US economic growth in recent decades and will continue to do so over the next 10 to 20 years, adding more to US growth than some past immigrant communities at similar stages of integration and time following their arrival on American shores. This contribution derives partially from demographic vitality: the fact that Hispanics are the youngest and largest minority group in America and are on a path toward becoming an increasingly large share of the US labor force. Higher fertility rates, net immigration, and growing labor force participation rates will reinforce this trend. This paper presents evidence showing that Hispanic educational attainments are now rapidly converging to the US average. The Hispanic community now exhibits significantly higher levels of opportunity-driven entrepreneurship than does the rest of the US population. These factors position the Hispanic community to increase its contribution to the US economy in coming decades, with significant positive effects on the overall economic growth rate. The data underlying this analysis are available at https://piie.com/system/files/documents/ wp19-3.zip. |
| Keywords: | geographic labor mobility, immigrant workers, demographic trends, macroeconomic effects, forecasts, international migration |
| JEL: | J61 J11 F22 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp19-3&r=all |
| By: | Krolikowski, Pawel (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland) |
| Abstract: | This paper disciplines a model with search over match quality using microeconomic evidence on worker mobility patterns and wage dynamics. In addition to capturing these individual data, the model provides an explanation for aggregate labor market patterns. Poor match quality among first jobs implies large fluctuations in unemployment due to a responsive job destruction margin. Endogenous job destruction generates a burst of layoffs at the onset of a recession and, together with on-the-job search, generates a negative comovement between unemployment and vacancies. A significant job ladder, consistent with the empirical wage dispersion, provides ample scope for the propagation of vacancies and unemployment. |
| Keywords: | Unemployment; job destruction; amplification; match-quality; |
| JEL: | E24 E32 J63 J64 |
| Date: | 2019–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwq:190400&r=all |
| By: | Guimarães, Luis; Gil, Pedro |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we build a theoretical model to study the effects of automation and labor market institutions on the labor share. In our model, firms choose between two technologies: an automated technology and a manual technology. In this context, the labor share reflects both the average wage level (versus output) and the distribution of firms between the two technologies. Our model offers three main insights. First, automation-augmenting shocks reduce the labor share but increase employment and wages. Second, labor market institutions (relative to automation) play an almost insignificant role in explaining the labor share. Third, our model suggests that the US labor share only (clearly) falls after the late 1980’s because of a contemporaneous acceleration of automation’s productivity. |
| Keywords: | Automation; Labor Share; Technology Choice; Employment; Labor-Market Frictions |
| JEL: | E24 J64 L11 O33 |
| Date: | 2019–01–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:92062&r=all |
| By: | Heinrich Ursprung |
| Abstract: | I model the strategic interaction between scientists aiming for promotion and a research institution that seeks a highly productive faculty by setting a maternity allowance in the form of a minimum promotion standard. The model shows that maternity allowances need not derive from moral justice arguments but can emerge endogenously from efficiency considerations. The underlying mechanism rests on the assumption that exceptionally productive female professionals are also exceptionally productive if they choose to become mothers. Even though motherhood temporarily handicaps their productivity, it is exactly this cost of motherhood that signals the mothers’ intrinsic high productivity. I explicitly refer to the academic labor market and use empirical evidence from academia to justify the model’s specification, but the conclusions carry over to promotion decisions at the executive level in most professional lines of occupation. |
| Keywords: | maternity, job market signaling, fertility, research productivity, highly skilled labor, economics of science, scientometrics |
| JEL: | C72 D82 J13 J16 M14 M51 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7490&r=all |
| By: | Robert J. Shiller |
| Abstract: | Concerns that technological progress degrades job opportunities have been expressed over much of the last two centuries by both professional economists and the general public. These concerns can be seen in narratives both in scholarly publications and in the news media. Part of the expressed concern about jobs has been about the potential for increased economic inequality. But another part of the concern has been about a perceived decline in job quality in terms of its effects on monotony vs creativity of work, individual sense of identity, power to act independently, and meaning of life. Public policy should take account of both of these concerns, inequality and job quality. |
| JEL: | B0 E02 J0 N3 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25536&r=all |
| By: | Eric Gould; Avi Simhon; Bruce A. Weinberg |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the transmission of human capital from parents to children using variation in parental influence due to parental death, divorce, and the increasing specialization of parental roles in larger families. All three sources of variation yield strikingly similar patterns which show that the strong parent-child correlation in human capital is largely causal. In each case, the parent-child correlation in education is stronger with the parent that spends more time with the child, and weaker with the parent that spends relatively less time parenting. These findings help us understand why educated parents spend more time with their children. |
| JEL: | I21 J13 J24 |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25495&r=all |
| By: | Dhaval M. Dave; Hope Corman; Ariel Kalil; Ofira Schwartz-Soicher; Nancy Reichman |
| Abstract: | This study exploits variations in the timing of welfare reform implementation in the U.S. in the 1990s to identify plausibly causal effects of welfare reform on a range of social behaviors of the next generation as they transition to adulthood. We focus on behaviors that are important for socioeconomic and health trajectories, estimate effects by gender, and explore potentially mediating factors. Welfare reform had no favorable effects on any of the youth behaviors examined and led to decreased volunteering among girls, increases in skipping school, damaging property, and fighting among boys, and increases in smoking and drug use among both boys and girls, with larger effects for boys (e.g., ~6% for boys compared to 4% for girls for any substance use). Maternal employment, supervision, and child’s employment explain little of the effects. Overall, the intergenerational effects of welfare reform on adolescent behaviors were unfavorable, particularly for boys, and do not support longstanding arguments that limiting cash assistance leads to responsible behavior in the next generation. As such, the favorable effects of welfare reform for women may have come at a cost to the next generation, particularly to boys who have been falling behind girls in high school completion for decades. |
| JEL: | H53 I12 I31 I38 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25527&r=all |
| By: | Samuel Bentolila; Juan Jose Dolado; Juan F. Jimeno |
| Abstract: | This paper provides an overview of recent research on dual labour markets. Theoretical and empirical contributions on the labour-market effects of dual employment protection legislation are revisited, as well as factors behind its resilience and policies geared towards correcting its negative consequences. The topics covered include the stepping-stone or dead-end nature of temporary contracts, their effects on employment, unemployment, churn, training, productivity growth, wages, and labour market inflows and outflows. The paper reviews both theoretical advances and relevant policy discussions, in particular in several countries that had very poor employment performance during the recent global economic and financial crisis. |
| Keywords: | dual labour markets, employment protection, temporary contracts, job creation, job destruction, churn |
| JEL: | J23 J32 J63 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7479&r=all |
| By: | Alberto Alesina; Sebastian Hohmann; Stelios Michalopoulos; Elias Papaioannou |
| Abstract: | We examine intergenerational mobility (IM) in educational attainment in Africa since independence, using census data from 26 countries. First, we map and characterize the geography of IM. There is substantial variation both across and within countries with differences in literacy of the old generation being the strongest correlate of IM. Inertia is stronger for rural, as compared to urban, households and present for both boys and girls. Second, we explore the correlates of mobility across more than 2,800 regions. Colonial investments in the transportation network and missionary activity are associated with upward mobility. IM is also higher in regions close to the coast and national capitals as well as in rugged areas without malaria. Upward mobility is higher and downward mobility is lower in regions that were more developed at independence, with higher urbanization and employment in services and manufacturing. Third, we identify the effects of regions on educational mobility by exploiting within-family variation from children whose families moved during primary school age. While sorting is sizable, there are considerable regional exposure effects. |
| JEL: | I24 J62 P16 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25534&r=all |
| By: | Aalto, Aino-Maija (UCLS, Uppsala Universitet); Mörk, Eva (Uppsala universitet); Sjögren, Anna (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Svaleryd, Helena (Uppsala universitet) |
| Abstract: | We analyze how access to childcare affects the health outcomes of children with unemployed parents using a reform that increased childcare access in some Swedish municipalities. While we find no effects of childcare access on hospitalization for 2- to 3-year-olds, our results suggest that 4- to 5-year-olds were more likely to be hospitalized due to infections when they first gained access to childcare. Children aged 10 to 11 years who had access to childcare earlier in their childhood, while their parents were unemployed, were less likely to be prescribed medication for respiratory conditions and allergies. Taken together, our results suggest that the immediate health consequences of childcare access for children of unemployed parents are limited. Our findings support previous evidence that the greater exposure to microorganisms induced by childcare attendance may reduce the risk of developing allergies and asthma. |
| Keywords: | Childcare; Child health; Unemployment; Quasi-experiment |
| JEL: | I14 J13 |
| Date: | 2019–02–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2019_001&r=all |