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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Vikström, Johan (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Söderström, Martin (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Cederlöf, Jonas (University of Edinburgh,) |
| Abstract: | How do caseworkers affect job finding and what characterizes a productive caseworker? To answer these questions we exploit variation coming from the fact that many local employment offices in Sweden assign job seekers to caseworkers based on their date of birth. We couple this identification strategy with fine-grained administrative data on both caseworkers and job seekers. Estimation of caseworker fixed effects reveals sizable variation in overall caseworker value-added. Female caseworkers perform better than male caseworkers and caseworkers with two years of experience outperform caseworkers with less experience. Cognitive ability and personal experience of unemployment are not related to caseworker performance. Based on the actions taken by the caseworkers we show that caseworker strategies are important. Analyses of caseworker–job seeker matching show that matching based on previous labor market experiences or gender leads to better outcomes. |
| Keywords: | unemployed workers; labor market policy; caseworkers |
| JEL: | J64 J68 |
| Date: | 2021–06–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2021_009&r= |
| By: | Simon Jäger; Shakked Noy; Benjamin Schoefer |
| Abstract: | We provide a comprehensive overview of codetermination, i.e., worker representation in firms’ governance and management. We cover the institution’s history, implementation, and the best available evidence on its economic impacts. We argue that existing quasi-experimental estimates suggest that codetermination has zero or very small positive effects on worker and firm outcomes at the partial-equilibrium firm level. In addition, we test for general-equilibrium effects of codetermination laws using novel cross-country event studies exploiting a series of codetermination reforms between the 1960s and 2010s, and find no evidence that codetermination laws shift aggregate economic outcomes or the quality of industrial relations. We offer three potential explanations of the institution’s limited impact. First, existing codetermination laws convey relatively little authority to workers. Second, countries with codetermination laws have high baseline levels of informal worker involvement in decision-making, independently of formal codetermination. Third, codetermination laws may interact with other labor market institutions, such as union representation and collective bargaining. We close by discussing implications of these facts for recent codetermination proposals in the United States. |
| Keywords: | codetermination, unions, worker representation, wages, GDP |
| JEL: | J08 K31 M10 M50 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9156&r= |
| By: | Albert Jan Hummel (University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies optimal income taxation in an environment where matching frictions generate a trade-off for workers between high wages and low unemployment risk. A higher marginal tax rate shifts the trade-off in favor of low unemployment risk, whereas a higher tax burden or unemployment benefit has the opposite effect. Changes in unemployment generate fiscal externalities, which modify optimal tax formulas. I show that optimal employment subsidies (such as the EITC) phase in with income and that the provision of unemployment insurance justifies a positive marginal tax rate even without income heterogeneity. A calibration exercise to the US economy suggests that optimal transfers for low-income individuals are larger if unemployment risk is taken into account. |
| Keywords: | directed search, optimal taxation, unemployment insurance |
| JEL: | H21 J64 J65 J68 |
| Date: | 2021–07–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20210061&r= |
| By: | Bedaso, Fenet |
| Abstract: | Using the panel data from 1995 to 2019, this paper investigates the labor market integration of non-EU immigrants in Germany. The existing evidence shows that the economic outcomes of migrants are far behind natives. However, immigrants are a heterogeneous group in terms of their motives for migration and skills composition. In this paper, I disentangle immigrants into refugees and other migrants and compare the employment probability gap between refugees, other migrants, and natives. I also examine whether refugees have a lower employment outcome than other migrants and to what extent the level of education, language proficiency, health status, years since migration, and cohort effects explain the employment gap between the refugees and other migrants. The result confirms that refugees and other migrants are less likely to be employed than natives and the employment gap is much higher for refugees. I also find evidence of heterogeneity across gender. Other migrant men do not significantly differ from native men in the probability of being employed. In contrast, refugee women have an economic disadvantage than other migrant women and native women. I find no evidence that health status differences attribute to the employment gap between refugees, other migrants, and natives. Finally, this paper highlights the importance of the migration category when assessing the integration of immigrants into the labor market. |
| Keywords: | Employment,Refugees,other Migrants,Labor Market,Integration |
| JEL: | J15 J21 J61 F22 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:884&r= |
| By: | Bratsberg, Bernt (Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research); Kotsadam, Andreas (Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research); Walther, Selma |
| Abstract: | We document new facts on the distribution of male fertility and its relationship with men's labor market outcomes. Using Norwegian registry data on all births since 1967, we show that rates of male childlessness in recent cohorts are 72% among the lowest five percent of earners but only 11% among the highest earners, and that this gap widened by almost 20 percentage points over the last thirty cohort years. There has been a compression in the fertility distribution, with a substantial share of men being "left behind" and fewer men experiencing a larger share of the population's new births. We use firm bankruptcies as a source of variation in job loss and earnings to provide robust evidence that men experiencing negative labor market shocks are less likely to experience the birth of a child, transition out of childlessness, and be partnered, and that these effects are persistent up to 15 years after the event. We conclude by documenting that men's fertility penalty to job loss has increased markedly over the last three decades. |
| Keywords: | male fertility, unemployment, inequality |
| JEL: | J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14506&r= |
| By: | Holmberg, Johan (Department of Economics, Umeå University) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we present a model of earnings dynamics that includes transitions in and out of employment as well as business cycle fluctuations. The model is estimated using the method of indirect inference and a mix of Swedish register, survey, and macro data. We find that the business cycle has a larger effect on transitions from unemployment to employment than on the risk of becoming unemployed. By simulating data from the model, we find that the business cycle has a relatively small impact on earnings inequality in Sweden and that women’s labor market outcomes are less sensitive to business cycle fluctuations compared to men’s. Finally, we find that economic crises have a more severe impact on young workers. |
| Keywords: | Earning dynamics; Unemployment; Business cycles; Inequality |
| JEL: | D31 E32 J24 J64 |
| Date: | 2021–06–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:umnees:0991&r= |
| By: | Chaturvedi, Sugat (Indian Statistical Institute); Mahajan, Kanika (Ashoka University); Siddique, Zahra (University of Bristol) |
| Abstract: | We examine employer preferences for hiring men vs women using 160,000 job ads posted on an online job portal in India, linked with more than 6 million applications. We apply machine learning algorithms on text contained in job ads to predict an employer's gender preference. We find that advertised wages are lowest in jobs where employers prefer women, even when this preference is implicitly retrieved through the text analysis, and that these jobs also attract a larger share of female applicants. We then systematically uncover what lies beneath these relationships by retrieving words that are predictive of an explicit gender preference, or gendered words, and assigning them to the categories of hard and soft-skills, personality traits, and flexibility. We find that skills related female-gendered words have low returns but attract a higher share of female applicants while male-gendered words indicating decreased flexibility (e.g., frequent travel or unusual working hours) have high returns but result in a smaller share of female applicants. This contributes to a gender earnings gap. Our findings illustrate how gender preferences are partly driven by stereotypes and statistical discrimination. |
| Keywords: | gender, job portal, machine learning |
| JEL: | J16 J63 J71 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14497&r= |
| By: | Alessandra Casarico; Salvatore Lattanzio |
| Abstract: | We study the short- and long-run impact of motherhood on labour market outcomes and explore the individual and firm-level factors that influence it. Using matched employer-employee data for Italy over 1985-2018, through an event study methodology around childbirth, we show that the long-run child penalty in annual earnings is 57 log points and it largely depends on the change in labour supply along the intensive margin. The birth of a child increases the probability of transition to non-employment, reduces the likelihood of having executive roles and increases that of working in firms with lower productivity, sales, capital and wages, providing evidence of sorting into worse firms after childbirth. In the heterogeneity analysis, we find that the child penalty is higher for young, low-wage mothers and those taking longer leaves. It is larger in firms with less generous pay, worse peers, in more gender-conservative regions and where childcare services are scarcer. |
| Keywords: | child penalty, motherhood, labour-supply, heterogeneous effects, matched employer-employee data |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J31 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9155&r= |
| By: | Abdurrahman B. Aydemir (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabancı University); Erkan Duman (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabancı University) |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates effects of birth place migration networks and other location attributes on destination choices of internal migrants conditional on migration. We also study heterogeneity in the role of these factors for migrant types who differ by skill group, age at migration, and reason of migration. We use data on male migrants from three rounds of Turkish censuses 1985, 1990 and 2000 who choose among 67 provinces. We find that migrants are drawn to provinces with larger networks, relatively better economic conditions, and distance is a significant deterrent for migration. There are, however, significant heterogeneities across migrant types. More educated and those migrating for employment reasons rely less on networks for destination choice. More educated move longer distances and labor market conditions play a significant role only in choices of migrants moving for employment reasons. Importance of labor market conditions increases and the effect of distance decreases with age. |
| Keywords: | migration, networks, destination choice, education, reason of migration, heterogeneous effects. |
| JEL: | J61 O15 R23 Z13 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:koc:wpaper:2109&r= |
| By: | Johnsen, Julian Vedeler (SNF); Willén, Alexander (Norwegian School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides novel evidence on the labor supply response to negative income shocks in retirement, exploiting an institutional feature that caused differential and unexpected income losses among otherwise identical individuals in a sharp regression discontinuity design. We conclude that retired pensioners do not return to work despite income losses of up to seven percent of their annual income. The paper further shows that the negative income shock had no impact on the health of pensioners. At the height of an ongoing global crisis in which public pension funds are rapidly losing value, these results may be particularly important. |
| Keywords: | Pension Policy; Retirement; Labor Supply; Health |
| JEL: | I38 J14 J26 |
| Date: | 2021–05–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2021_007&r= |
| By: | Parello, Carmelo Pierpaolo |
| Abstract: | This paper incorporates endogenous migration into a second-generation Schumpeterian growth model to study how migration, innovation and growth interact one another. I find that migration always enhances the rates of innovation and growth of the receiving economy, but also that the other way round is not true when the gap in technical knowledge between country is fixed over time. However, when the technology gap is allowed to adjusts endogenously, I find that implementing pro-innovation policies in the receiving economy shrinks immigration flows and reduces the across-country technology. |
| Keywords: | R&D-based Growth, Labor Migration, R&D policy, Technology Transfer |
| JEL: | J61 O3 O4 |
| Date: | 2021–06–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:108701&r= |
| By: | Nguyen, Ha Trong; Mitrou, Francis; Zubrick, Stephen R. |
| Abstract: | This paper provides the first causal evidence on the impact of retirement on housing choices. Our empirical strategy exploits the discontinuity in the eligibility ages for state pension as an instrument for the endogenous retirement decision and controls for time-invariant individual characteristics. The results show that retirement leads to a statistically significant and sizable increase in the probability of making a residential move or the likelihood of becoming outright homeowners. We also find that individuals downsize both physically and financially and tend to move to better neighbourhoods or closer to the coast upon retirement. We additionally discover that some housing adjustments take place up to 6 years before retirement. Moreover, our results reveal significant heterogeneity in the retirement impact by gender, marital status, education, housing tenue, income and wealth. Within couple households, housing mobility choices are primarily influenced by the wife’s retirement while housing downsizing decisions are only affected by the husband’s retirement. The results suggest that failing to address the endogeneity of retirement often under-states the retirement impact on such housing arrangements. |
| Keywords: | Retirement,Housing,Migration,Residential Mobility,Quality of Neighbourhood,Downsizing,Instrumental Variable |
| JEL: | J14 J26 J61 R21 R23 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:882&r= |
| By: | Eric Chyn; Lawrence F. Katz |
| Abstract: | How does one's place of residence affect individual behavior and long-run outcomes? Understanding neighborhood and place effects has been a leading question for social scientists during the past half-century. Recent empirical studies using experimental and quasi-experimental research designs have generated new insights on the importance of residential neighborhoods in childhood and adulthood. This paper summarizes the recent neighborhood effects literature and interprets the findings. Childhood neighborhoods affect long-run economic and educational outcomes in a manner consistent with exposure models of neighborhood effects. For adults, neighborhood environments matter for their health and well-being but have more ambiguous impacts on labor market outcomes. We discuss the evidence on the mechanisms behind the observed patterns and conclude by highlighting directions for future research. |
| JEL: | H75 I38 R23 R38 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28953&r= |
| By: | Nie, Peng (Xi’an Jiaotong University); Yan, Weibo (Zhongnan University of Economics and Law) |
| Abstract: | Using nationally representative data from the 2012 and 2014 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey, this paper investigates the effects of network types (kinship/non-kinship) and network resources (information/influence) on job attainment and match quality in China. We find a wage premium obtained through both kinship and non- kinship networks but shorter job duration only in jobs obtained through non-kinship networks. In regards to the different types of networks, resources embedded in the networks are not important. This conundrum can be reconciled if we take the structure of the network and the type of work unit into account. Kinship networks are more pervasive in the public sector, with better earnings and stable job positions. Non-kinship networks bring about a wage premium but lead to job dissatisfaction, especially in regards to promotion opportunities. This paper highlights the structure of the job market when studying networks and sheds new light on the types of networks that really matter in job attainment and those that result in the possible loss of match quality. |
| Keywords: | network types, network resources, job attainment, match quality |
| JEL: | J30 J31 J64 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14504&r= |
| By: | Christoph Albert; Paula Bustos; Jacopo Ponticelli |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of climate change on labor and capital reallocation across regions, sectors and firms. We use newly digitized administrative reports on extreme weather events occurred in Brazil during the last two decades and a meteorological measure of excess dryness relative to historical averages to estimate the effects of droughts in the local economy of affected areas, on the magnitude of the labor and capital flows they generate and on factor allocation in destination regions. We document two main results. In the short run, local economies insure themselves against negative weather shocks via financial integration with other regions. However, in the long run, affected regions experience capital outflows driven by a reduction in loans, consistent with a permanent decrease in investment opportunities. Second, we find that abnormal dryness affects the structure of both the local economy and the economy of areas connected via migrant networks. Directly affected areas experience a sharp reduction in population and employment, concentrated in agriculture and services. While local manufacturing absorbs some of the displaced workers, these regions experience large out-migration flows. Regions receiving climate migrants expand employment in agriculture and services, but not in manufacturing. Using social security data, we provide evidence that labor market frictions direct migrants to firms connected to migrant social networks, which are mostly outside the manufacturing sector. This has implications for the composition of economic activity and the firm size distribution in destination regions. |
| JEL: | J61 O1 O16 Q54 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28995&r= |
| By: | Abby LeBlanc (Williams College); Stephen Sheppard (Williams College) |
| Abstract: | Women account for slightly more than half of persons who identify some version of visual artist (artist, graphic designer, or photographer) as their occupation in the US, and account for slightly less than half of the recipients of MFA degrees in the US. While there are no available statistics on values and sales of works by these artists in the primary market of galleries, studios and private dealers there is considerable evidence from the secondary auction market. In both our sample of more than 313 thousand works offered for sale by more than 1080 artists, and in the larger sample analyzed by Adams, et al. (2021), works by female artists constitute approximately 7% of the works offered for sale at global auction houses. The works sell for substantially lower prices, with unadjusted discounts generally in excess of 40%. Even adjusting for a variety of characteristics, the impacts of artist's gender remain persistently negative with effects disconcertingly close to, but slightly larger than, observed wage and earnings gaps in the wider labor market. Systematic differences in the auction prices of art works by women artist have been observed and discussed for more than 50 years, but have evolved little over time.As is the case with gender disparities in the wider labor market, the causes for these gaps can be difficult to determine with precision. This makes the identification of structural changes that could be effective in reducing the gap a challenge. In this paper we build on the published studies in this area and consider these challenges. We consider a variety of possible explanations including whether works by women artists are substantially different in characteristics or content than works by other artists, whether they are avoided by the premier auction houses, and whether they tend to fail to sell at auction more frequently. We consider alternative approaches to estimating the impact of artist's gender on the valuation of artworks. We compare the estimated impacts of gender to the estimated impacts of ethnicity and national origin of the artist. We combine the insights from this analysis to narrow down the range of possible explanations for why these differences continue to be observed. |
| Keywords: | Art markets, Gender, Discrimination, , , |
| JEL: | Z11 J15 J16 |
| Date: | 2021–07–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wil:wileco:2021-09&r= |
| By: | Alex Albright; Jeremy A. Cook; James J. Feigenbaum; Laura Kincaide; Jason Long; Nathan Nunn |
| Abstract: | The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre resulted in the looting, burning, and leveling of 35 square blocks of a once-thriving Black neighborhood. Not only did this lead to severe economic loss, but the massacre also sent a warning to Black individuals across the country that similar events were possible in their communities. We examine the economic consequences of the massacre for Black populations in Tulsa and across the United States. We find that for the Black population of Tulsa, in the two decades that followed, the massacre led to declines in home ownership and occupational status. Outside of Tulsa, we find that the massacre also reduced home ownership. These effects were strongest in communities that were more exposed to newspaper coverage of the massacre or communities that, like Tulsa, had high levels of racial segregation. Examining effects after 1940, we find that the direct negative effects of the massacre on the home ownership of Black Tulsans, as well as the spillover effects working through newspaper coverage, persist and actually widen in the second half of the 20th Century. |
| JEL: | J62 J69 N32 N42 N92 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28985&r= |