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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Isaac Swensen ⓡ; Jason M. Lindo ⓡ; Krishna Regmi |
| Abstract: | We document the effect of unemployment insurance generosity on divorce and fertility, using an identification strategy that leverages state-level changes in maximum benefits over time and comparisons across workers who have been laid off and those that have not been laid off. The results indicate that higher benefit levels reduce the probability of divorce and increase the probability of having children for laid-off men. In contrast, for laid-off women we find little evidence of effects of unemployment insurance generosity on divorce and we find suggestive evidence that it reduces their fertility. |
| JEL: | H53 I38 J12 J13 J16 J65 |
| Date: | 2020–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27753&r=all |
| By: | Bastian Schulz; Fabian Siuda |
| Abstract: | Marriage and divorce decisions are influenced by the institutional environment they are made in. One example is the social insurance system, which acts as a substitute for within-household insurance against economic shocks. In this paper, we quantify the importance of household-level insurance for marriage and divorce by exploiting an exogenous increase in the need for risk sharing: in January 2003, a German labor market reform sharply reduced means-testing exemptions in the unemployment insurance system and thereby increased the extent to which spouses have to insure each other against unemployment. Using social security register data, we show that the extent to which (potential) spouses were affected by this reform varies with nationality. We them follow a differences-in-differences identification strategy and use data on all marriages and divorces in Germany between 1997 and 2013 to show that increased means testing made the formation of interethnic marriages significantly less attractive. At the same time, the reform increased the stability of newly-formed interethnic marriages. |
| Keywords: | marriage, divorce, interethnic marriage, risk sharing, unemployment insurance, labor market reforms, EU expansion |
| JEL: | J10 J12 J15 J64 J65 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8508&r=all |
| By: | Chen, Shuai |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how economic insecurity and cultural anxiety have triggered different dimensions of the current populism in the United States. Specifically, I exploit two quasi-natural experiments, the Great Recession and the 2014 Northern Triangle immigrant in ux, to investigate the effects of unemployment and unauthorized immigration on attitudes related to populism and populist voting in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. I discover that recent unemployment during the Great Recession, rather than existing unemployment from before the recession, increased the probability of attitudes forming against wealthy elites by 15 percentage points. Such attitudes are connected with left-wing populism. I identify perceived economic unfairness as a mechanism through which recent unemployment drove left-wing populism. However, cultural anxiety rather than economic insecurity more likely led to the over 10 percentage points rise in the probability of anti-immigration attitudes developing. These attitudes are related to right-wing populism. Furthermore, I obtain evidence that cohorts economically suffering the aftermath of the Great Recession were associated with 40 percentage points higher likelihood of supporting left-wing populist Bernie Sanders, while cohorts residing in regions most intensely impacted by the immigrant in ux were associated with 10 percentage points higher possibility to vote for right-wing populist Donald Trump. This study attempts to link distinct economic and cultural driving forces to different types of populism and to contribute to the understanding on the potential interactions of the economic and cultural triggers of the currently surging populism. |
| Keywords: | Populism,Unemployment,Immigration,Great Recession,Voting |
| JEL: | A13 D31 J01 J64 P16 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:652&r=all |
| By: | Haefke, Christian; Reiter, Michael |
| Abstract: | We reassess the role of vacancies in a Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides style search and matching model. In the absence of free entry long lived vacancies and endogenous separations give rise to a vacancy depletion channel which we identify via joint unemployment and vacancy dynamics. We show conditions for constrained efficiency and discuss important implications of vacancy longevity for modeling and calibration, in particular regarding match cyclicality and wages. When calibrated to the postwar US economy, the model explains not only standard deviations and autocorrelations of labor market variables, but also their dynamic correlations with only one shock. |
| Keywords: | Beveridge Curve,Business Cycles,Job Destruction,Random Matching,Separations,Unemployment Volatility,Wage Determination |
| JEL: | E24 E32 J63 J64 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:654&r=all |
| By: | Emran, M.; Ferreira, Francisco; Jiang, Yajing; Sun, Yan |
| Abstract: | This paper extends the Becker-Tomes model of intergenerational educational mobility to a rural economy characterized by farm-nonfarm occupational dualism and provide a comparative analysis of rural China and rural India. The model provides a micro-foundation for the widely used linear-in-levels estimating equation. Returns to education for parents and productivity of financial investment in children's education determine relative mobility, as measured by the slope, while the intercept depends, among other factors, on the degree of persistence in nonfarm occupations. Unlike many existing studies based on coresident samples, the estimates do not suffer from truncation bias. The sons in rural India faced lower educational mobility compared with the sons in rural China in the 1970s to 1990s. To understand the role of genetic inheritance, Altonji et al. (2005) sensitivity analysis is combined with the evidence on intergenerational correlation in cognitive ability in economics and behavioral genetics literature. The observed persistence can be due solely to genetic correlations in China, but not in India. Fathers' nonfarm occupation and education were complementary in determining a sons' schooling in India, but separable in China. There is evidence of emerging complementarity for the younger cohorts in rural China. Structural change in favor of the nonfarm sector contributed to educational inequality in rural India. Evidence from supplementary data on economic mechanisms suggests that the model provides plausible explanations for the contrasting roles of occupational dualism in intergenerational educational mobility in rural India and rural China. |
| Keywords: | Educational Mobility, Rural Economy, Occupational Dualism, Farm-Nonfarm, Complementarity, Coresidency Bias, China, India |
| JEL: | J62 O1 |
| Date: | 2020–07–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:101559&r=all |
| By: | Furtado, Delia (University of Connecticut); Ortega, Francesc (Queens College, CUNY) |
| Abstract: | The growing healthcare needs of baby boomers require significant increases in the number or productivity of healthcare workers. This paper explores how immigrants may fill these gaps in nursing homes. First, we show that immigrant inflows are associated with reduced wages of lower skilled nurses along with increases in their employment. We then show that more immigrant labor leads to fewer falls among residents and improvements in other measures of quality of care. We also find that only in competitive nursing home markets is there a link between immigrant inflows and the quality of care provided in nursing homes. |
| Keywords: | immigration, nursing homes, monopoly power |
| JEL: | J61 J14 I11 L13 |
| Date: | 2020–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13552&r=all |
| By: | Davidson, Carl (Department of Economics; Michigan State University; East Lansing, MI 48824); Heyman, Fredrik (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)); Matusz, Steven (Department of Economics; Michigan State University; East Lansing, MI 48824); Sjöholm, Fredrik (Department of Economics, Lund University, and); Chun Zhu, Susan (Department of Economics; Michigan State University; East Lansing, MI 48824) |
| Abstract: | Previous research indicates that exporting firms are willing to pay a premium to poach workers from other exporting firms if experience working for an internationally engaged firm reduces trade costs. Since international experience is less valuable to non-exporters, we would expect to see differences in recruitments between firms that are internationally engaged and those that serve only their domestic market. Moreover, as emphasized in Davidson et al. (2020), increased openness might lead to higher job-to-job mobility if increased globalization increases both the share of exporters as well as the number of workers with skills that make them attractive for other exporters. Using linked Swedish employer-employee data for the period 1997-2013, we do find systematic differences between the way exporters and non-exporters recruit workers: exporters have a relatively high share of recruitments from other exporters as hypothesized. We also find that increased openness correlates positively (negatively) with upward (downward) mobility. The effects are strongest for professionals and managers. Hence, our findings provide empirical support for Davidson et al. (2020). |
| Keywords: | Globalization; Export; Job-Mobility; Recruitments |
| JEL: | F16 F66 J60 |
| Date: | 2020–09–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1354&r=all |
| By: | Robert Akerlof; Anik Ashraf; Rocco Macchiavello; Atonu Rabbani |
| Abstract: | Conflicts between management and workers are common and can have significant impacts on productivity. We study how workers in a large Bangladeshi sweater factory responded to management’s decision to lay off about a quarter of the workers following a period of labor unrest. Our main finding is that the mass layoff resulted in a large and persistent reduction in the productivity of surviving workers. Moreover, it is specifically the firing of peers with whom workers had social connections – friends - that matters. We also provide suggestive evidence of deliberate shading of performance by workers in order to punish the factory’s management, and a corresponding deliberate attempt by the factory to win the angry workers back by selectively giving them tasks that are more rewarding. By combining ethnographic and survey data on the socialization process with the factory’s internal records, the paper provides a rare glimpse into the aftermath of an episode of labor unrest. A portrait of the firm emerges as a web of interconnected relational agreements supported by social connections. |
| Keywords: | layoffs, productivity, morale, relational contracts |
| JEL: | J50 M50 O12 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8492&r=all |
| By: | Hérault, Nicolas; Vu, Ha; Wilkins, Roger |
| Abstract: | Many countries impose job search requirements as a condition of unemployment benefit receipt, but there is relatively little evidence on the efficacy of these requirements. Australian reforms in 1995 and 2003 saw groups of welfare recipients newly subjected to job search requirements, providing an opportunity to identify their effects on welfare receipt. Using this quasi-experimental design and administrative data, we find negative effects on welfare receipt for the mature-age partnered women targeted by the reforms. We also find large negative effects on welfare receipt of their partners, suggesting family labour supply decisions were considerably affected. |
| Keywords: | welfare receipt,unemployment benefit,job search requirements |
| JEL: | H31 D10 J65 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:646&r=all |
| By: | Philipp Ager; Francesco Cinnirella |
| Abstract: | Public educators and philanthropists in the late 19th century United States promoted the establishment of kindergartens in cities as a remedy for the social problems associated with industrialization and immigration. Between 1880 and 1910, more than seven thousand kindergartens opened their doors in the United States, serving both a social and educational function. We use newly collected city-level data on the roll-out of the first kindergartens to evaluate their impact on household outcomes. We find that in cities with a larger kindergarten exposure, families significantly reduced fertility, with the strongest decline appearing in families that were economically disadvantaged and with an immigrant background. Households reduced fertility because kindergarten attendance increased returns to education, but it also led to higher opportunity costs for raising children. Indeed, we show that children exposed to kindergartens were less likely to work during childhood and, instead, stayed longer in school, had more prestigious jobs, and earned higher wages as adults. Finally, we find that exposure to kindergartens particularly helped immigrant children from non-English-speaking countries to gain English proficiency. Their attendance also generated positive language spillover effects on their mothers, illustrating the importance of early childhood education for the integration of immigrant families. |
| Keywords: | kindergarten education, family size, fertility transition, returns to preschool education, quantity-quality trade-off |
| JEL: | N31 J13 I25 O15 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8504&r=all |
| By: | Manuela Angelucci; Marco Angrisani; Daniel M. Bennett; Arie Kapteyn; Simone G. Schaner |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment and respiratory health for remote workers (i.e. those who can work from home) and non-remote workers in the United States. Using a large, nationally-representative, high-frequency panel dataset from March through July of 2020, we show that job losses were up to three times as large for non-remote workers. This gap is larger than the differential job losses for women, African Americans, Hispanics, or workers without college degrees. Non-remote workers also experienced relatively worse respiratory health, which likely occurred because it was more difficult for non-remote workers to protect themselves. Grouping workers by pre-pandemic household income shows that job losses and, to a lesser extent, health losses were highest among non-remote workers from low-income households, exacerbating existing disparities. Finally, we show that lifting non-essential business closures did not substantially increase employment. |
| JEL: | I14 J01 |
| Date: | 2020–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27749&r=all |
| By: | Wang, Feicheng; Kis-Katos, Krisztina; Zhou, Minghai |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of import liberalization induced labor demand shocks on male and female employment in China. Combining data from population and firm censuses between 1990 and 2005, we relate prefecture-level employment by gender to the exposure to tariff reductions on locally imported products. Our empirical results show that increasing import competition has kept more females in the workforce, reducing an otherwise growing gender employment gap in the long run. These dynamics were present both in local economies as a whole and among formal private industrial firms. Examining channels through which tariff reductions differentially affect males and females, we find that trade-induced competitive pressures contributed to a general expansion of female-intensive industries, a shift in sectoral gender segregation, reductions in gender discrimination in the labor market, technological upgrading through computerization, and general income growth. |
| Keywords: | Trade liberalization,Import competition,Gender employment gap,China |
| JEL: | F13 F14 F16 F66 J16 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:638&r=all |
| By: | Kei Takakura (Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University) |
| Abstract: | In this study,we analyze how an improvement in child mortality affects fertility, childlabor,and investments in education.We consider an overlapping generations model,in which skilled and unskilled workers coexist.Improvement in child mortality has different effects on skilled workers and unskilled ones.We study three alternative policies for increasing the proportion of skilled workers in the economy:improvement in child mortality,a ban on child labor,and child education.The ban on child labor means that the government enforces a law that prohibits a household from supplying child labor.The model reveals that improvements in child mortality policy and a ban on child labor policy can decrease the proportion of skilled workers and the average income in the economy.On the other hand,the child education policy,which supports both skilled and unskilled workers' investments in the education of their children by building schools,increases the proportion of skilled workers and the average income in the economy. |
| Keywords: | Child mortality, Child labor, Fertility, Education, Health, Overlapping genera-tions model |
| JEL: | D1 I1 I2 J1 O1 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osk:wpaper:2013&r=all |
| By: | Amitabh Chandra; Courtney Coile; Corina Mommaerts |
| Abstract: | Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) affects one in ten people aged 65 or older and is the most expensive disease in the United States. We describe the central economic questions raised by AD. While there is overlap with the economics of aging, the defining features of the ‘economics of Alzheimer’s Disease’ is an emphasis on cognitive decline, choice by cognitively impaired patients, and a host of issues where dynamic contracts between patients and caregivers are hard to enforce. There is enormous scope for economists to contribute to our understanding of AD-related issues, including drug development, efficient care delivery, dynamic contracting within the family and with care providers, long-term care risk, financial decision-making, and public programs for AD. These topics overlap with many areas of economics -- labor economics, health economics, public finance, behavioral economics, experimental economics, family economics, mechanism design, and the economics of innovation -- suggesting the presence of a rich research program that should attract many economists. |
| JEL: | I11 I13 J14 J22 O31 |
| Date: | 2020–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27760&r=all |
| By: | Kerstenetzky, Celia Lessa |
| Abstract: | Motivated by a perceived lacuna in theoretical discussions on income inequality, this paper explores an approach based on the place in that inequality of economic rents. Although widely recognized as a subject to be considered in relation to inequality, rents are still failing to receive a conceptually and theoretically unified treatment. In fact, although accepted as an element in the distribution branch of economics, economic rents have been subject to a somewhat incomplete treatment, especially when it comes to understanding the origin in wealth ownership. This blind spot invites cross-disciplinary collaboration as a means of elucidation. So, in this paper, I review and systematize scattered conceptual and theoretical contributions on the subject drawn from the literatures of both economics and sociology. Briefly, while economics delineates the market phenomenon giving rise to rents, sociology sheds light on the influence of background social structure on both the supply and demand blades of the ‘market scissor’. This is to some extent reminiscent of Marx’s class struggle analysis; but Marx’s original view is amplified by the sociological perspectives I review here, as the latter identify and conceptualize rents earned by labour in addition to those earned by capital. Two ideas that sprang from my reading of the sociological perspectives should be placed at the very core of a rents-based approach to inequalities. The first is that the normal functioning of markets does not make economic rents disappear; the second is that all earnings are relative, so that rents, including negative rents, are a vital part of everyone’s remuneration in contemporary capitalist economies. An outline of a rents-based theory of inequality is proposed and normative and policy consequences of undertaking this move are hinted at. |
| Keywords: | inequality; economic rents; social structure; capital; social surplus |
| JEL: | J1 R14 J01 N0 |
| Date: | 2020–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:106533&r=all |
| By: | Lee, S-M. |
| Abstract: | Female representation in politics may be influenced by positive spillovers from the success of women in other professions. I exploit the timing of the Olympic games to isolate the spillover effect of female Olympic medallists on demand for female representation in US state elections a few months after the Olympics. I estimate that the female medals effect is around a 1 per cent increase in female candidate vote shares in the Olympian's state of birth. This is driven entirely by the 3.8 per cent increase for female Democrat candidates, exacerbating existing polarisation between parties. I do not find evidence of voters changing their attitudes about women in politics in response to female Olympic success, but find evidence consistent with female representation becoming a more important issue for Democrat voters. I estimate a 2.7 per cent decrease in female representation associated with the postponement of the 2020 Olympics. |
| Keywords: | Female Representation, Political Representation, Elections, Gender Inequality, Sport |
| JEL: | D72 D91 J16 |
| Date: | 2020–09–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:2082&r=all |
| By: | Nivorozhkin, Anton (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]); Promberger, Markus (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]) |
| Abstract: | "We discuss the design and examine the inflow of participants in two new subsidised employment programmes (§ 16 e/i German Social Code II) that aim to help long-term welfare recipients in Germany to find a job and increase their social participation. We describe the programmes in terms of goals and eligibility criteria and proceed to analyse recent inflows into the programmes using Latent Class (Cluster) Analysis in an exploratory manner. Our findings provide evidences on the considerable heterogeneity in the programmes' inflows. The resulting typology does not only connect individual biographical and socioeconomic characteristics with greater sociohistorical processes, but give strong hints towards different needs of the various participant groups which could be treated differently in the programmes. Keeping up and improving social integration through subsidized labour is a high priority treatment to be considered for some participant groups, while others should be considered more for improvements of education and professional training, even if their biographies so far show most distance to both. Our results provide first guidance on how to adjust programme's design to the needs and capabilities of heterogeneous groups of long-term unemployed and welfare benefit recipients." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) |
| JEL: | C38 J08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabdpa:202027&r=all |
| By: | Kerstin Grosch; Stephan Müller; Holger A. Rau; Lilia Zhurakhovska |
| Abstract: | Leaders often have to weigh ethical against monetary consequences. Such situations may evoke psychological costs from being dishonest and dismissing higher monetary benefits for others. In a within-subjects experiment, we analyze such a dilemma. We first measure individual dishonest behavior when subjects report the outcome of a die roll, which determines their payoffs. Subsequently, they act as leaders and report payoffs for a group including themselves. In our main treatment, subjects can apply for leadership, whereas in the control treatment, we assign leadership randomly. Results reveal that women behave more dishonestly as leaders while men behave similarly in both the individual and the group decision. For female leaders, we find that sorting into leadership is not related to individual honesty preferences. In the control we find that female leaders do not increase dishonesty. A follow-up study reveals that female leaders become more dishonest after assuming leadership, as they align dishonest behavior with their belief on group members’ honesty preferences. |
| Keywords: | leadership, decision for others, lab experiment, gender differences, dishonesty |
| JEL: | C91 H26 J16 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8514&r=all |