|
on Labour Economics |
| By: | Moritz Kuhn; Iourii Manovskii; Xincheng Qiu |
| Abstract: | Spatial di erences in labor market performance are large and highly persistent. Using data from the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, we document striking similarities in spatial di erences in unemployment, vacancies, job nding, and job lling within each country. This robust set of facts guides and disciplines the development of a theory of local labor market performance. We nd that a spatial version of a Diamond- Mortensen-Pissarides model with endogenous separations and on-the-job search quanti- tatively accounts for all the documented empirical regularities. The model also quanti- tatively rationalizes why di erences in job-separation rates have primary importance in inducing di erences in unemployment across space while changes in the job- nding rate are the main driver in unemployment uctuations over the business cycle. |
| Keywords: | Local Labor Markets, Unemployment, Vacancies, Search and Matching |
| JEL: | J63 J64 E24 E32 R13 |
| Date: | 2021–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2021_321&r= |
| By: | Christopher L. Foote; Tyler Hounshell; William D. Nordhaus; Douglas Rivers; Pamela Torola |
| Abstract: | This report presents the results of a rapid, low-cost survey that collects labor market data for individuals in the United States. The Yale Labor Survey (YLS) used an online panel from YouGov to replicate statistics from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the government’s source of household labor market statistics. The YLS’s advantages include its timeliness, low cost, and ability to develop new questions quickly to study labor market patterns during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Although YLS estimates of unemployment and participation rates mirrored the broad trends in CPS data, YLS estimates of those two rates were less accurate than for employment. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19; labor market; Yale Labor Survey; online panels |
| JEL: | C80 C81 C83 J01 |
| Date: | 2021–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedbcq:93422&r= |
| By: | Eva Sierminska; Ronald Oaxaca |
| Abstract: | We model the process of field specialization choice among beginning economists within a multivariate logit framework that accommodates single and dual primary field specializations and incorporates correlations among field specialization choices. Conditioning on personal, economic, and institutional variables reveals that women graduate students are less likely to specialize in Labor/Health, Macro/Finance, Industrial Organization, Public Economics, and Development/Growth/International and are more likely to specialize in Agricultural/Resource/Environmental Economics. Field-specific gender faculty ratios and expected relative salaries as well as economics department rankings are significant factors for gender doctoral specialization dissimilarity. Preferences and characteristics contribute about equally to field specialization dissimilarity |
| Keywords: | gender; economics; specialization; salaries |
| JEL: | J08 J16 J31 |
| Date: | 2021–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irs:cepswp:2021-11&r= |
| By: | Tu Thi Ngoc Le; Ngoc Thi Bich Pham |
| Abstract: | This study seeks to determine the effect on the gender employment gap and women's employment of the extension of maternity leave from four months to six months in Viet Nam's 2012 Labor Code. To identify this effect, labour market outcomes of groups of women and men are compared. We use the national representative Viet Nam Household Living Standards Survey for 2008-16, with the difference-in-differences approach. The objective of this study is to provide evidence of the relationship between extensions of maternity leave and the gender employment gap in Viet Nam. |
| Keywords: | Gender gap, Women's work, Female labour force participation, Maternity |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2021-171&r= |
| By: | Kristin F. Butcher; Kelsey Moran; Tara Watson |
| Abstract: | The U.S. population is aging. We examine whether immigration causally affects the likelihood that the U.S.-born elderly live in institutional settings. Using a shift-share instrument to identify exogenous variation in immigration, we find that a 10 percentage point increase in the less-educated foreign-born labor force share in a local area reduces institutionalization among the elderly by 1.5 and 3.8 percentage points for those aged 65+ and 80+, a 26-29 percent effect relative to the mean. The estimates imply that a typical U.S-born individual over age 65 in the year 2000 was 0.5 percentage points (10 percent) less likely to be living in an institution than would have been the case if immigration had remained at 1980 levels. We show that immigration affects the availability and cost of home services, including those provided by home health aides, gardeners and housekeepers, and other less-educated workers, reducing the cost of aging in the community. |
| JEL: | I11 J14 J15 J61 |
| Date: | 2021–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29520&r= |
| By: | Piriu, Andreea Alexandra |
| Abstract: | As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, future health care expenditure is likely the discriminant between nations who will build resilience and those who will not. Despite costly labor-market adjustments due to increased international trade over the last two decades, the health effects of trade liberalization are underexplored, with potentially wide implications for public policy and national budgets. Given the remarkable increase in trade volumes between Germany and China following reunification, this paper studies the causal effects of Chinese import competition on the health outcomes of individuals working in the German manufacturing sector. Results in this reduced-form approach exploiting region-industry variation in imports over 22 years show that higher import competition from China increases the individual demand for healthcare and probability of developing chronic illness via job insecurity, job loss and occupational change, an increased reliance on social welfare, and wage reduction. I find that individuals increase their visits to the doctor by 14 per cent and are 18.4 to 20.6 per cent more likely to develop chronic illness, on average. Results are robust for alternative health outcomes and across different population subgroups. The paper calls for reshaping health policy such that it governs well-being, starting with prevention and adequate care for working individuals: amidst globalization and recent chronic disease management, it is fundamental that future sustainable health policy champions the idea that creating better jobs means avoiding preventable costs of care from increased healthcare utilization and hence more effective chronic care through the introduction of preventive primary care plans for vulnerable working population segments. |
| Keywords: | trade,labor,job insecurity,individual health,chronic illness,healthcare utilization |
| JEL: | F14 F16 I12 I15 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:992&r= |
| By: | Karim Bekhtiar; Benjamin Bittschi (Austrian Institute of Economic Research); Richard Sellner |
| Abstract: | In a seminal paper Graetz and Michaels (2018) find that robots increase labor productivity and TFP, lower output prices and adversely affect the employment share of low-skilled labor. We demonstrate that these effects are heavily influenced by the sample composition and argue that focusing on manufacturing and mining sectors mitigates unobserved heterogeneity and is more coherent with an identification strategy that rests on instruments that do not vary by industries. In sum, this leads to more plausible results regarding the overall economic effects of robotization, whereby the focus on robotizing industries leads to a sizable drop of the productivity effects, halving the effect size for labor productivity and insignificant price effects. The most pronounced consequences from the sample choice occur for labor market outcomes, where significant negative employment effects become insignificant and positive wage effects are reversed into the opposite. We show that controlling for demographic workforce characteristics is essential for obtaining significant labor productivity effects and leads to the negative effects of robots on wages. Additionally, investigating only robotizing sectors does not corroborate skill-biased technological change due to robotization, but rather, indicates towards labor market polarization. Finally, we document a non-monotonicity in one of the instruments, which calls for caution in the use of that instrument. |
| Keywords: | Robots, Productivity, Technological change |
| Date: | 2021–12–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wfo:wpaper:y:2021:i:639&r= |
| By: | Riley Wilson (Brigham Young University) |
| Abstract: | I document a new empirical pattern of internal mobility in the United States. Namely, county-to-county migration and commuting drop off discretely at state borders. People are three times as likely to move to a county 15 miles away, but in the same state, than to move to an equally distant county in a different state. These gaps remain even among neighboring counties or counties in the same commuting zone. This pattern is not explained by differences in county characteristics, is not driven by any particular demographic group, and is not explained by pecuniary costs such as differences in state occupational licensing, taxes, or transfer program generosity. However, county-to-county social connectedness (as measured by the number of Facebook linkages) follows a similar pattern. Although the patterns in social networks would be consistent with information frictions, nonpecuniary psychic costs, or behavioral biases such as a sate identity or home bias, the data suggest that state identity and home bias play an outsized role. This empirical pattern has real economic impacts. Building on existing methods, I show that employment in border counties adjusts more slowly after local economic shocks relative to interior counties. These counties also exhibit less in-migration and in-commuting, suggesting the lack of mobility leads to slower labor market adjustment. |
| Keywords: | Internal migration, commuting, social networks, border discontinuities |
| JEL: | J6 R1 |
| Date: | 2021–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upj:weupjo:21-358&r= |
| By: | Drakopoulos, Stavros A.; Katselidis, Ioannis |
| Abstract: | The significant role of institutional and non-market factors in the functioning of an economic system was a core theme of the old institutional economists. They also criticised the narrow conception of economic welfare only in terms of efficiency and satisfaction of consumer interests. Instead, they focused on issues related to justice, human self-development and labourers’ welfare. Their conception of the labour market functions is an indicative example of the uniqueness of their approach. In contrast to the standard approach, labour market functioning does not depend only on the price mechanism, but is also affected by other key factors and parameters such as the social norms, several psychological factors and various labour institutions. This chapter seeks to examine and highlight the contribution of the old institutional economics towards labour market functions and policies. After presenting the origins and method of the School, it briefly compares old Institutionalism and early Neoclassical economics focusing on labour market issues. It also discusses the old institutional approach with respect to the collective action and labour market policy. The chapter concludes with Ross-Dunlop debate on labour unions and the case of minimum wages policy in order to emphasize the relevance of early institutional ideas in analysing contemporary labour market issues. |
| Keywords: | Institutional School; Economic Policy; Labour Policy; Labour Market Institutions |
| JEL: | B15 B25 J08 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:110794&r= |
| By: | OECD |
| Abstract: | Italy’s start-up visa aims to make the national start-up ecosystem more easily accessible to foreign talent, rich with knowledge and skills, and more integrated into global markets. Government reports show that the programme has not yet achieved a critical scale. The analysis of similar initiatives in Chile, France, Ireland and Portugal identifies five gateways for attracting more foreign entrepreneurs, such as an effective policy outreach, smooth inter-institutional co-operation across the migratory process, and the provision of sound support services for a “soft landing” of entrepreneurs upon arrival. These takeaways may also inform new talent attraction policies targeting remote workers, an expanding group in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. |
| Keywords: | capacity building, migrant entrepreneurship, start-up visa, talent attraction |
| JEL: | F20 J68 L26 M13 O38 |
| Date: | 2021–12–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:cfeaaa:2021/10-en&r= |
| By: | Yanina Domenella (The World Bank); Julian C. Jamison (Department of Economics, University of Exeter); Abla Safir (The World Bank); Bilal Zia (The World Bank) |
| Abstract: | COVID-19 was a major shock to youth entrepreneurs and their businesses in Kenya. We study the causal impact of grants—worth two months of baseline business revenue—and business development services as potential mitigation measures. Using multiple rounds of phone surveys up to seven months from the start of the pandemic, the analysis finds that youth who are assigned business grants or a combination of grants and business development services are significantly more likely to maintain a business, earn more revenue and profits, retain employees, and report higher confidence and satisfaction with life. There are no corresponding effects of business development services alone, although the follow-up period is extremely short for training effects to materialize. These results suggest that cash infusion for young entrepreneurs in times of an aggregate shock can be instrumental in moderating its immediate harmful impacts. |
| Keywords: | youth entrepreneurship, business grants, business development services, business training, COVID-19, pandemic relief |
| JEL: | O12 O17 J16 L26 M20 M53 |
| Date: | 2021–12–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:exe:wpaper:2110&r= |