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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Paola Bertoli; Veronica Grembi; Judit Vall-Castello |
| Abstract: | We investigate the consequences of Ramadan on the incidence of work accidents. Using daily observations from 2003 to 2016, we exploit the solar rotation of Ramadan days (11 days backward each year) to assess the impact of Ramadan on accidents involving Muslim workers in Spain, estimating a decrease in injuries for these workers with no spillover effects on non Muslim workers (mainly South Americans and Romanians). We explain our results as mainly driven by adjustments at both the extensive and intensive margin in the labor market. We show that the effect is stronger where Ramadan is harsher (longer duration of the fasting day based on latitude), and in provinces where there is a higher concentration of naturalized Muslims. Based on our results, policies supporting religious diversity and reconciling religious practices with the working schedule might decrease health costs related to occupational injuries. |
| Keywords: | workplace accidents; Ramadan; religious accommodations; Immigrant workers;Classification-JEL: I12, J28, J61, J81 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp655&r=all |
| By: | Najeeb,Fatima; Morales,Matias; Lopez-Acevedo,Gladys C. |
| Abstract: | This paper studies employment patterns and trends in South Asia to shed light on determinants of extremely low female employment rates in the region. After a comprehensive literature review, the authors use employment data from about one hundred censuses and surveys from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka to compare employment trends across countries over time. They work through data inconsistencies to standardize definitions of variables to compare demographic and labor market determinants: age, sector, contract type, location, and education. The paper finds that (i) overall since 2001, women's employment participation across South Asian countries has been low and broadly unchanged; (ii) the gender employment gap emerges more clearly in middle age brackets; (iii) rural female employment is higher than urban; (iv) agriculture is the economic sector accounting for the greatest share of female employment, although this is slowly changing in some countries, and; (v) women with mid-level education tend to have lower employment rates than those with both lower and higher education. |
| Date: | 2020–02–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9157&r=all |
| By: | Lorenz, Svenja; Pfister, Mona; Zwick, Thomas |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that increasing the normal retirement age and introducing pension deductions for retirement before normal retirement age in Germany did not prolong employment of older men. The reason for this surprising result is that employers encouraged their employees to use the bridge options unemployment or partial retirement instead of the early retirement option for the long-term insured. Bridge options allowed employers to terminate employment considerably earlier than the pension for long-term insured. Employers however had to compensate their employees for the substantially higher costs of the bridge options. Therefore mainly employers with high employment adaption costs induced employees to use a bridge option during the implementation phase of the pension reform. |
| Keywords: | cohort-specific pension reform,early retirement,partial retirement,unemployment,labor supply,labor demand |
| JEL: | J14 J18 J22 J26 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:20007&r=all |
| By: | Carlo Pizzinelli (International Monetary Fund); Konstantinos Theodoridis (Cardiff Business School, European Stability Mechanism); Francesco Zanetti (University of Oxford) |
| Abstract: | This paper documents state dependence in labor market fluctuations. Using a Threshold Vector Autoregression model (TVAR), we establish that the unemployment rate, the job separation rate, and the job finding rate exhibit a larger response to productivity shocks during periods with low aggregate productivity. A Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model with endogenous job separation and on-the-job search replicates these empirical regularities well. We calibrate the model to match the standard deviation of the job-transition rates explained by productivity shocks in the TVAR, and show that the model explains 88 percent of the state dependence in the unemployment rate, 76 percent for the separation rate and 36 percent for the job finding rate. The key channel underpinning state dependence in both job separation and job finding rates is the interaction of the _rm's reservation productivity level and the distribution of match-specific idiosyncratic productivity. Results are robust across several variations to the baseline model. |
| JEL: | E24 E32 J64 C11 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bbk:bbkcam:2001&r=all |
| By: | De Paola, Maria (University of Calabria); Nistico, Roberto (University of Naples Federico II); Scoppa, Vincenzo (University of Calabria) |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of a reduction in employment protection on fertility decisions. Using data from the Italian Labor Force Survey for the years 2013-2018, we analyze how the propensity to have a child has been affected by the 2015 Labor Market Reform, the so-called "Jobs Act", which has essentially reduced the employment protection for large-firm employees and leaved largely unchanged that for small-firm ones. We employ a Difference-in-Differences identification strategy and compare the average change over time in fertility decisions of women employed in large firms with the average change experienced by women employed in small firms. We find that women exposed to the reduction in employment protection have a 1.4 percentage point lower probability of having a child than unexposed women. A battery of robustness checks confirms this finding. We document large heterogeneous effects by marital status, parity, geographic areas as well as by the level of education and wage. Our findings help understand the potential unintended consequences that reforms introducing more labor market flexibility have on fertility decisions by increasing insecurity on career prospects. |
| Keywords: | fertility, employment protection legislation, labor market reform, difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | J13 J65 J41 M51 C31 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12991&r=all |
| By: | Seema Jayachandran; |
| Abstract: | This article reviews the recent literature in economics on small-scale entrepreneurship (“microentrepreneurship”) in low-income countries. Major themes in the literature include the determinants and consequences of joining the formal sector; the impacts of access to credit and other financial services; the impacts of business training; barriers to hiring; and the distinction between self-employment by necessity and self-employment as a calling. The article devotes special attention to unique issues that arise with female entrepreneurship. |
| JEL: | L26 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8086&r=all |
| By: | van Rens, Thijs (University of Warwick and Centre for Macroeconomics); Vukotic, Marija (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | Estimated impulse responses of investment and hiring typically peak well after the impact of a shock. Standard models with adjustment costs in capital and labor do not exhibit such delayed adjustment, but we argue that it arises naturally when we relax the assumption that the production technology is separable over time. This result holds for both non-convex and convex cost functions, and for reasonable parameter values the e⁄ect is strong enough to match the persistence observed in the data. We discuss some evidence for our explanation and ways to test the model. |
| Keywords: | persistence ; adjustment costs ; organizational capital JEL codes: E24 ; J61 ; J62 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1245&r=all |
| By: | David K. Evans (Center for Global Development); Maryam Akmal (Center for Global Development); Pamela Jakiela (Center for Global Development; BREAD; IZA) |
| Abstract: | Many countries remain far from achieving gender equality in the classroom. Using data from 126 countries between 1960 and 2010, we document four facts. First, women are more educated today than fifty years ago in every country in the world. Second, they remain less educated than men in the vast majority of countries. Third, in many countries with low levels of education for both men and women in 1960, gender gaps widened as more boys went to school, then narrowed as girls enrolled; thus, gender gaps got worse before they got better. Fourth, gender gaps rarely persist in countries where boys are attaining high levels of education. Most countries with large, current gender gaps have low levels of male educational attainment. Many also perform poorly on other measures of development such as life expectancy and GDP per capita. Improving girls’ education is an important goal in its own right, but closing gender gaps in education will not be sufficient to close critical gaps in adult life outcomes. The order of author names was randomly assigned using the American Economic Association’s author randomization tool. |
| Keywords: | education, inequality, gender, economic development |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J16 O1 |
| Date: | 2020–01–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:wpaper:523&r=all |
| By: | James Berry; Rebecca Dizon-Ross; Maulik Jagnani |
| Abstract: | We conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment to identify parents' preferences for investing in their children. The experiment exogenously varied the short-run returns to educational investments to identify how much parents care about maximizing total household earnings, minimizing cross-sibling inequality in "outcomes" (child-level earnings), and minimizing cross-sibling inequality in "inputs" (child-level investments). We show that while parents place some weight on maximizing earnings, they also display a strong preference for equality in inputs, forgoing roughly 40% of their potential earnings or 90% of a day’s wage to equalize inputs. We find no evidence that parents care about equalizing outcomes. |
| JEL: | I20 J13 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26732&r=all |
| By: | Emilia Simeonova; Niels Skipper; Peter R. Thingholm |
| Abstract: | A host of different factors affect health and longevity, ranging from genetic endowments to public policy. Physicians have a substantial influence on patients’ health and health-related costs, but we know little about the extent of this influence beyond clinical decisions such as adequate diagnosis and treatment. This paper demonstrates that the health management styles of primary care physicians significantly affect the health outcomes of their patients. Using data on the population of statin users in Denmark and matching patients to their primary care physicians, we show that the physician’s ability to facilitate adherence with prescription medications has significant positive effects on patient outcomes and health costs even after controlling for observable and unobservable patient characteristics. Policy interventions aimed at improving this aspect of physicians’ health management styles have important implications for patient outcomes and health care costs. |
| JEL: | I1 I12 J18 J24 |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26735&r=all |
| By: | Schaubert, Marianna; Hänisch, Carsten |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates how parents who live apart from their children have responded to changes in the amount of the self-support reserves. Being financially able to pay maintenance is a precondition for the obligation to maintain children in Germany. Parents with incomes below the self-support reserve do not pay child support. In addition, the self-support reserve di ers for employed and unemployed parents. The difference between the two is considered to be a bonus for employment by competent courts, which they adjust over time. We exploited PASS panel data and individual fixed-effects models to observe parents' responses to these changes. We did not confirm the Higher Regional Courts' assertion that the increasing difference between the self-support reserves of employed and non-working parents is an incentive to work. Further, we found no evidence of any influence on attitudes towards the labor market or debt behavior. |
| Keywords: | Child support,low-income nonresidential fathers,child support guidelines,child support enforcement,labor supply,child support debt |
| JEL: | J08 J16 J18 K36 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:214624&r=all |
| By: | Tongtong Hao; Ruiqi Sun; Trevor Tombe; Xiaodong Zhu |
| Abstract: | Between 2000 and 2015, China's aggregate income quadrupled, its provincial income inequality fell by a third, and its share of employment in agriculture fell by half. Worker migration is central to this transformation, with almost 300 million workers living and working outside their area or sector of hukou registration by 2015. Combining rich individual-level data on worker migration with a spatial general equilibrium model of China's economy, we estimate the reductions in internal migration costs between 2000 and 2015, and quantify the contributions of these cost reductions to economic growth, structural change, and regional income convergence. We find that over the fifteen-year period China's internal migration costs fell by forty-five percent, with the cost of moving from agricultural rural areas to non-agricultural urban ones falling even more. In addition to contributing substantially to growth, these migration cost changes account for the majority of the reallocation of workers out of agriculture and the drop in regional inequality. We compare the effect of migration policy changes with other important economic factors, including changes in trade costs, capital market distortions, average cost of capital, and productivity. While each contributes meaningfully to growth, migration policy is central to China's structural change and regional income convergence. We also find the recent slow-down in aggregate economic growth between 2010 and 2015 is associated with smaller reduction in inter-provincial migration costs and a larger role of capital accumulation. |
| Keywords: | Migration, Structural Change, Regional Income Convergence, China |
| JEL: | E24 J61 O15 O41 O47 R12 R23 |
| Date: | 2020–02–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-659&r=all |
| By: | Laia Maynou (Department of Health Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK); Javier Ordóñez (IEI and Department of Economics, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain); José Ignacio Silva (Department of Economics, Universitat de Girona, Spain) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we study the convergence of the NEET rates (the rate of young people not in employment, education or training) across European regions between 2000 and 2015. First, we apply the Phillips and Sul (2007, 2009) convergence tests and identify the presence of four important clusters with different trends in the NEET rates. The first two clusters mainly include regions located in Western and Southern Europe and show an increase with respect to the average NEET but with different speed. The other two clusters mainly contain North and Central European regions showing constant NEET rates with respect but with different levels. Then, we use a spatial-temporal econometric model to confirm the presence of β–convergence in the NEET rates, identify their determinants in each cluster and calculate their long-run NEET rates. The young unemployment rate and the percentage of early leavers from education and training are the main determinants of the in all clusters. |
| Keywords: | convergence, European Union, youth unemployment, NEET |
| JEL: | C33 E23 J13 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jau:wpaper:2020/08&r=all |