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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Adams-Prassl, Abigail (University of Oxford); Boneva, Teodora (University of Bonn); Golin, Marta (University of Zurich); Rauh, Christopher (University of Cambridge) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we provide the first evidence on workers' perceptions of the returns to job search effort. The perceived job finding probability is nearly linear in hours searched and only slightly concave for most respondents. While workers are over-optimistic about the probability of receiving a job offer conditional on any search, they perceive the marginal return to additional search hours as positive but comparably low. Job seekers receiving an offer update their perceived returns upwards, while others' beliefs regress towards the direction of the mean. We find little evidence that the novel aspects of the pandemic recession have fundamentally changed workers' motivations for job search: that an existing job is expected to end or has unsatisfactory pay are the primary motives for on-the-job search. On the contrary, workers' ability to do their tasks from home is not a strong predictor of job search nor a significant motive for switching occupations. |
| Keywords: | job search, perceived returns, working from home, COVID-19, subjective beliefs, reservation wage |
| JEL: | J62 J64 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15307&r= |
| By: | Dutta, Nabamita (University of Wisconsin, La Crosse); Kar, Saibal (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta) |
| Abstract: | India experienced one of the strictest lockdowns during COVID-19 and sections of the workforce seemed overwhelmingly disadvantaged. Given substantial poverty still, marginalized daily wage labor and gendered outcomes in the context of India, economic shocks are expected to have disparate implications. Employing World Bank data for rural areas in six states of India, we investigate the probability of female employment during the lockdown period between March and May 2020. Based on marginal estimates of logit specifications, our results show that females, in general, were 8 percent less likely to be employed as compared to males. Females belonging to marginalized castes experienced higher likelihood of being unemployed – between 9 and 14%. Return migrants generally suffered less in terms of finding alternative jobs at the source, but being a female return migrant, the probability of joblessness rises to about 17%. For female return migrants belonging to marginalized castes, the probability of joblessness is about 10%. Lockdown is expected to have raised the economic inequality by gender and needs commensurate interventions. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19, lockdown, gender, unemployment, return migrants, India |
| JEL: | J16 F22 E24 C33 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15270&r= |
| By: | Mitra, Devashish (Syracuse University); Pham, Hoang (Oregon State University); Ural Marchand, Beyza (University of Alberta) |
| Abstract: | Using eight rounds of the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys (VHLSSs) spanning 16 years and exploiting the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) in 2001 as a large export shock, we investigate the impact of this shock on intergenerational occupational mobility in Vietnam employing a difference-in-differences research design. Our analysis suggests that the BTA has led to substantial upward occupational mobility, allowing both sons and daughters to have better occupations than their parents, with the effects being larger for daughter-mother pairs. The effect is larger in the long-run compared to the short-run. We find evidence that the driving force is an increase in skill demand via gender-biased expansion in export volumes. The effects are largely driven by intersectoral resource reallocation rather than within-sector upgrades. In addition, the BTA induced a higher likelihood of college education for both sons and daughters, but of vocational training only for sons. Overall, the BTA shock accounts for 36% of the overall increase in mobility for both genders. Our results control for Vietnam's own tariff reductions, which do not seem to have any statistically significant impact on mobility. |
| Keywords: | international trade, export market access, intergenerational mobility |
| JEL: | F13 F16 F66 J62 O19 |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15243&r= |
| By: | Dubois, Corinne (Department of Economics); Lambertini, Luisa (EPFL); Wu, Yu (EPFL) |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of the pandemic on gender gaps in labor market outcomes in Switzerland. Using the Swiss labor force survey data, we document a significant increase in the gender gap in labor market participation. We find no evidence of a worsening of unemployment gender gap during the pandemic but we find a large gender gap in being on STW, a government policy that subsidizes wage payments for employees whose hours are cut at companies in temporary distress. Unlike the United States, the presence of children in the household did not worsen labor gender gaps. Sector and occupation, however, play an important role in explaining gender gaps. In particular, we document substantial heterogeneity in the effect of the pandemic on participation, STW, hours worked, and wage outcomes depending on the availability of telework in the respondent’s occupation. |
| Keywords: | Covid-19; labor market inequality; labor market policies; gender gaps. |
| JEL: | E24 J01 J08 J21 |
| Date: | 2022–05–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fri:fribow:fribow00525&r= |
| By: | Frank Neffke; Ljubica Nedelkoska; Simon Wiederhold |
| Abstract: | When workers are displaced from their jobs in mass layoffs or firm closures, they experience lasting adverse labor market consequences. We study how these consequences vary with the amount of skill mismatch that workers experience when returning to the labor market. Using novel measures of skill redundancy and skill shortage, we analyze individuals' work histories in Germany between 1975 and 2010. We estimate difference-in-differences models, using a sample in which we match displaced workers to statistically similar non-displaced workers. We find that displacements increase the probability of occupational change eleven fold, and that the type of skill mismatch after displacement is strongly associated with the magnitude of post-displacement earnings losses. Whereas skill shortages are associated with relatively quick returns to the counterfactual earnings trajectories that displaced workers would have experienced absent displacement, skill redundancy sets displaced workers on paths with permanently lower earnings. |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9703&r= |
| By: | Aedin Doris (Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting, Maynooth University.); Donal O'Neill (Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting, Maynooth University.); Olive Sweetman (Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting, Maynooth University.) |
| Abstract: | TThis paper uses a rich set of administrative data to examine the dynamics of the gender earnings gap for college graduates from 2010-2020 in Ireland. We focus on the dynamics of the gap in the first 10 years of the working career, what this looks like, what determines it and what can explain the patterns. We examine the extent to which changes in job mobility after childbirth can explain the dynamics of the gender earnings gap across fields of study. Our findings suggest that the fact that men experience much higher earnings gains than women, particularly within jobs, is the key driver behind the observed earnings divergence. This is particularly evident among women who have studied Business or Law in University. Changes in job mobility after childbirth are not a major contributor to the divergence in earnings but analysis of household survey data suggests that reductions in hours of work following childbirth explains approximately 60% of the initial decline in female weekly earnings and much of the male-female earnings gap in the years after childbirth. |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:may:mayecw:n315-22.pdf&r= |
| By: | Agostino Consolo (European Central Bank); Filippos Petroulakis (Bank of Greece) |
| Abstract: | Recent research has argued that the COVID-19 shock has also brought about a real- location shock. We examine the evidence for such an occurrence in the United States, taking a broad perspective. We first consider micro data from CPS and JOLTS; there is no noticeable uptick in occupation or sector switches, nor churn, either at the aggregate level or the cross-section, or when broken down by firms’ size. We then examine whether mismatch unemployment has risen as a result of the pandemic; using an off-the-shelf multisector search and matching model, there is little evidence for an important role for mismatch in driving the elevated unemployment rate. Finally, we employ a novel Bayesian SVAR framework with sign restrictions to identify a reallocation shock; we find that it has played a relatively minor role in explaining labor market patterns in the pandemic, at least relative to its importance in earlier episodes. |
| Keywords: | Reallocation; COVID-19; mismatch |
| JEL: | E24 J63 |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bog:wpaper:295&r= |
| By: | Immervoll, Herwig (OECD); Fernandez, Rodrigo (OECD); Hyee, Raphaela (Queen Mary, University of London); Lee, Jongmi (OECD); Pacifico, Daniele (OECD) |
| Abstract: | Social protection systems play a key stabilising role for individuals and societies, especially in the recent context of heightened uncertainties. Income stabilisation and related social policy objectives hinge on the extent to which social protection is accessible for those requiring support. This paper proposes a new empirical approach for quantifying the accessibility and value of income transfers following an earnings loss. It first presents a methodology for assessing support levels for jobless individuals in specific circumstances that allows for comparisons across countries and over time. It then illustrates the approach using longitudinal survey data in 16 OECD countries. The illustration focusses on differences in entitlements between people who were in "standard" and "non-standard" employment prior to joblessness. Results show that, prior to the COVID pandemic, income support gaps between standard and non-standard workers were often sizeable. For instance, in Korea, job losers with prior standard employment were nearly twice as likely to receive income support as otherwise similar individuals with a history of non-standard work. Gaps were also large in Italy and Portugal. By contrast, gaps were statistically insignificant in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United Kingdom. As these latter countries follow very different social protection strategies, results suggest that limiting support gaps for non-standard workers is achievable with different policy designs and targeting mechanisms. |
| Keywords: | cash benefits, social insurance, redistribution, poverty, coverage, adequacy |
| JEL: | I38 J65 H55 H53 C31 C35 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15289&r= |
| By: | Lundberg, Shelly (University of California, Santa Barbara) |
| Abstract: | The economics literature on gender has expanded considerably in recent years, fueled in part by new sources of data, including from experimental studies of gender differences in preferences and other traits. At the same time, economists have been developing more realistic models of psychological and social influences on individual choices and the evolution of culture and social norms. Despite these innovations much of the economics of gender has been left behind, and still employs a reductive framing in which gender gaps in economic outcomes are either due to discrimination or to “choice.” I suggest here that the persistence of this approach is due to several distinctive economic habits of mind—strong priors driven by market bias and gender essentialism, a perspective that views the default economic agent as male, and an oft-noted tendency to avoid complex problems in favor of those that can be modeled simply. I also suggest some paths forward. |
| Keywords: | gender, culture, social norms, discrimination |
| JEL: | J16 |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15217&r= |
| By: | Liu, Gang (Statistics Norway); Fraumeni, Barbara M. (Central University of Finance and Economics); Managi, Shunsuke (Kyushu University) |
| Abstract: | Chapter 6 from the forthcoming Inclusive Wealth Report 2022 looks at human capital in greater detail, based on the latest human capital estimates from the Inclusive Wealth Report (IWR) project. In the chapter, which is repeated here, the growth of human capital and several of its constituent factors are broken down by gender and by region, and in some cases also by income, since apparently, human capital in the world is not evenly distributed across different regions or countries by income, or between educated males and females, although in almost all country cases total and per capita human capital have grown over time. The purpose is to identify the sources of human capital growth by region, gender, and various determining factors over the observed time period, 1990-2020. |
| Keywords: | country wealth, human capital, analysis by regions and country income, gender, analysis by regions and country income |
| JEL: | E24 J16 O57 E01 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15273&r= |
| By: | Sugata Marjit; Reza Oladi |
| Abstract: | We propose a competitive general equilibrium theory of gender discrimination in labor market where male and female workers are equally productive, but the female workers are deliberately paid less than the male due to subjective discrimination. Pioneering works of Becker (1957) and Arrow (1973), in terms of partial equilibrium models, have argued that the forces of competition would restrict subjective discrimination which leads to increasing cost for a firm and reduce the return to capital. In contrast, using a general equilibrium framework as in Jones (1965), we show that discrimination can perpetuate even in perfectly competitive markets. We also show that the return to capital can increase with discrimination if the capital intensive sector is also female worker dominated. If international trade policy, or any competitive price shock, reduces return to capital, increasing discrimination may be attempted to compensate the capital. Thus, policy intervention may be essential to contain discrimination in competitive markets. |
| Keywords: | gender discrimination |
| JEL: | J16 J70 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9705&r= |
| By: | Marco Caliendo (University of Potsdam, IZA Bonn, DIW Berlin, IAB Nuremberg); Daniel Graeber (DIW Berlin, University of Potsdam); Alexander S. Kritikos (DIW Berlin, University of Potsdam, IAB Nuremberg, IZA Bonn); Johannes Seebauer (DIW Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-employed people’s mental health. Using representative longitudinal survey data from Germany, we reveal differential effects by gender: whereas self-employed women experienced a substantial deterioration in their mental health, self-employed men displayed no significant changes up to early 2021. Financial losses are important in explaining these differences. In addition, we find larger mental health responses among self-employed women who were directly affected by government-imposed restrictions and bore an increased childcare burden due to school and daycare closures. We also find that self-employed individuals who are more resilient coped better with the crisis. |
| Keywords: | self-employment, COVID-19, mental health, gender, representative longitudinal survey data, PHQ-4 score, resilience |
| JEL: | L26 D31 I14 I18 J16 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pot:cepadp:46&r= |
| By: | Victor Hernandez Martinez; Kaixin Liu |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that the value of unemployment insurance (UI) can be decomposed into a liquidity component and an insurance component. While the liquidity component captures the value of relieving the cost to access liquidity during unemployment, the insurance component captures the value of protecting the worker against a potential permanent future income loss. We develop a novel sufficient statistics method to identify each component that requires only the labor supply responses to changes in the potential duration of UI and severance payment and implement it using Spanish administrative data. We find that the liquidity component represents half of the value of UI, while the insurance component captures the remaining half. However, the relevance of each component is highly heterogeneous across different groups of workers. Poorer and wealthier workers are both similarly liquidity-constrained, but poorer workers place a higher value on UI because the insurance component is significantly more important for them. On the other hand, wealthier workers and workers with more cash-on-hand value additional UI equally, but the wealthier value its liquidity, while those with more liquidity care about its insurance value. Finally, from a welfare perspective, we show that extending the potential duration of Spain’s UI would increase welfare. However, in our counterfactual case where UI is complemented with the provision of liquidity, the optimal potential duration of Spain's UI should be lower than its current level. |
| Keywords: | Unemployment Insurance; Liquidity Constraints; Consumption Smoothing |
| JEL: | H20 J64 J65 |
| Date: | 2022–05–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwq:94239&r= |
| By: | Zhu, Yu (University of Dundee); Xu, Lei (Bournemouth University) |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews and evaluates progress in recent research on the graduate premium in general as well as the differential graduate premiums by discipline, accounting for higher-education choice by individuals under substantial uncertainty. The contribution of this review, relative to previous reviews, is the collection of a wider variety of evidence that all bears on a relatively narrow issue, namely the graduate and discipline premiums, allowing for selection into undergraduate degree and degree subjects which include the option value of undertaking postgraduate degrees. The issue of subject-job match quality after graduation is only treated as a sensitivity check to the main results, due to concerns with self-selection. We emphasize that the sizes of the graduate and discipline premiums are context-specific, especially regarding how HE is structured and financed in a country, without going into details. Much higher weight is placed on the most up-to-date research that sheds light on the causal effects of higher-education and subject choice, and the conclusions are heavily driven by the best evidence rather than by consensus built around correlations. This paper ends with a short summary of the empirical evidence and a brief discussion of possible areas for future research. |
| Keywords: | graduate premium, discipline premiums, higher-education choice, subject-job match, causal effects |
| JEL: | I26 I23 I24 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15299&r= |
| By: | Sterkens, Philippe (Ghent University); Dalle, Axana (Ghent University); Wuyts, Joey (Ghent University); Pauwels, Ines (Ghent University); Durinck, Hellen (Ghent University); Baert, Stijn (Ghent University) |
| Abstract: | To explain the mixed findings on hiring discrimination against homosexual applicants, we explore the perceptual drivers behind employers' evaluations of gay men and lesbian women. Therefore, we conduct an extensive vignette experiment among 404 genuine recruiters, for which we test systematically-selected perceptions theoretically associated with homosexual job candidates in earlier studies. We find causal evidence for distinct effects of sexual identities on candidate perceptions and interview probabilities. In particular, interview probabilities are positively (negatively) associated with the perception of lesbian women (gay men) as being more (less) pleasant to work with compared to heterosexual candidates. In addition, interview chances are negatively associated with the perception of gay men and lesbian women as being more outspoken. Furthermore, our data align well with the idea of a concentrated discrimination account, whereby a minority of employers who privately hold negative attitudes towards homosexual individuals are responsible for most instances of hiring discrimination. |
| Keywords: | homosexuality, signalling, statistical discrimination, taste-based discrimination, hiring experiment |
| JEL: | C91 J15 J71 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15285&r= |
| By: | Chort, Isabelle (Université de Pau et des pays de l’Adour); Hotte, Rozenn; Marazyan, Karine (Université de Paris) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of income shocks and bride price on early marriage in Turkey. The practice of bride-price, still vivid in many regions of the country, may provide incentives for parents to marry their daughter earlier, when faced with a negative income shock. In addition, marriages precipitated by negative income shocks may present specific features (endogamy, age and education difference between spouses). Weather shocks provide an exogenous source of variation of household income through agricultural production. Data on weather shocks are merged with individual and household level data from the Turkish Demographic and Health Surveys 1998 to 2013. To study the role of payments to the bride's parents, we interact our measure of shocks with a province-level indicator of a high prevalence of bride-price. We find that girls living in provinces with a high practice of bride-price and exposed to a negative income shocks when aged 12-14 have a 28% higher probability to be married before the age of 15 than girls not exposed to shocks. This effect is specific to provinces with a high prevalence of bride price. Compared to women who experienced the same shock but lived in a province where bride price is infrequent, such women are also more likely to give birth to their first child before 18 and for those who married religiously first, the civil ceremony is delayed by 2 months on average. Our results suggest that girl marriage still participates to household strategies aimed at mitigating negative income shocks in contemporary Turkey. |
| Keywords: | cultural norms, child marriage, bride price, weather shocks, Turkey |
| JEL: | J1 J12 J13 O15 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15288&r= |
| By: | Can Xu; Andreas Steiner |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of public employment on household saving rates in China using representative household-level data. After controlling for a series of variables such as income, risk attitude, financial literacy, and demographic factors, we show that households headed by public employees have higher saving rates than other households. This positive association holds after controlling for self-selection bias. Public employees are more likely to save for their children and they have a higher saving capacity than non-public employees due to better social security. Our results contribute to a better understanding of Chinese household saving rates, which is of great importance given their extremely high level in international comparison. |
| Keywords: | public employment, household saving rates, Chinese economy |
| JEL: | D14 E24 H31 G51 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9741&r= |
| By: | Melissa Schettini Kearney; Phillip B. Levine |
| Abstract: | This paper documents how the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. affected birth rates. We review the economics of fertility, describing the evidence that would predict a COVID baby bust. We then use Vital Statistics birth data to estimate the size of that bust and its rebound, for the country as a whole and separately for each state, and relate those changes to state-level factors. The onset of the pandemic in the late winter and early spring of 2020 resulted in 62,000 fewer conceptions leading to a live birth. This baby bust was followed by a rebound of 51,000 conceptions later that year, leading to a small net reduction in births conceived in 2020. We also find that a larger increase in the aggregate unemployment rate, a larger reduction in household spending, and higher cumulative COVID caseloads were associated with larger baby busts in the first part of the year. Births rebounded more in states that saw a larger improvement in the labor market and household spending. COVID caseloads played a smaller role. We conclude the paper by observing that these changes pale in comparison to the large decline in US birth rates that has occurred over the past 15 years. |
| JEL: | J13 |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30000&r= |
| By: | Trude Lappegård; Tom Kornstad; Lars Dommermuth (Statistics Norway); Axel Peter Kristensen |
| Abstract: | This study examines the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on fertility in Norway at the individual level. Studies using data at the macro level have found a positive short-term effect of the pandemic on fertility level in Norway, but women’s fertility response to the pandemic may differ depending on their life situation. We use the first lockdown on March 12, 2020 as a marker of the pandemic and apply a regression discontinuity design to compare births of women that were conceived before the pandemic started with those conceived during the first eight months of the pandemic. The positive effect on women’s fertility in Norway was mainly driven by women in life phases that have generally high fertility rates (women aged 28–35 years and women who already have children). These groups are likely to be in an economic and socially secure and stable situation in which the restrictions due to the pandemic had limited influence. Besides two exceptions, we do not find differences in the effect of the pandemic on childbearing by women’s work situation. This is most likely related to the strong welfare state and the generous additional pandemic-related measures taken by the Norwegian government. |
| Keywords: | Fertility; Demography; COVID-19; Regression discontinuity design |
| JEL: | J13 J11 I24 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssb:dispap:979&r= |
| By: | Matthias Huber; Till Nikolka; Panu Poutvaara; Ann-Marie Sommerfeld; Silke Uebelmesser |
| Abstract: | We carried out two multinational surveys to analyze aspirations and intentions to emigrate, and how these are linked to each other. One survey covered language course participants in 14 countries, and another students in 6 countries. We identify two groups that have been largely neglected in previous research on migration aspirations and intentions: those who intend to migrate permanently without aspirations to do so and those who intend to migrate temporarily. Analyzing main motivations to emigrate shows that discrepancy among women is driven mainly by family, and among men by work and studies. |
| Keywords: | international migration, migration choice, temporary migration, permanent migration, aspirations, intentions, multinational survey |
| JEL: | F22 D91 J16 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9708&r= |
| By: | Aashima Sinha; Ashish Kumar Sedai |
| Abstract: | Using data from the Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS)-III-2010/11 this study examines the effect of unpaid care work on the capability of care providers to earn a living and to attain tertiary education. The conceptual model, motivated by the Capability Approach, delineates contemporaneous and compounding effects of undertaking unpaid care work on the caregiver and its wider intergenerational and societal effects. Using an instrumental variables approach, the empirical analysis identifies adverse gender-differentiated effects of time devoted to caregiving: While women and men experience commensurate declines in their weekly employment hours, likelihood of employment and tertiary education decreases for women only. The study is one of the few least developed-country studies that use time-use survey data to examine causal effects of unpaid work, and the first study for Nepal. It draws attention of policymakers to the adverse effects of care burden on individual well-being and its broader development outcomes in Nepal. |
| Keywords: | Unpaid Care, Women, Employment, Nepal, Gender inequality |
| JEL: | I31 J16 O15 |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:een:camaaa:2022-31&r= |
| By: | Colleen Carey; Nolan H. Miller; David Molitor |
| Abstract: | Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) awards rise in recessions and fall in expansions, especially for older adults. Using Medicare administrative data for DI entrants between 1991 and 2015, we provide new evidence on the health of DI recipients who enter at different ages and points in the business cycle. We find that each percentage point increase in unemployment at the time of application corresponds to 4.2% more awards and 0.4% lower Medicare spending among new entrants. We then investigate whether this relationship is driven by changes in health, with deteriorating economic conditions making individuals less healthy, or by changes in the cost of entering DI. To separate these two channels, we leverage a feature of the DI determination process that sharply relaxes the eligibility criteria at ages 50 and 55. We find that marginal DI entrants have similar spending regardless of whether they were induced to enter by poor economic conditions or by the age discontinuities in the eligibility criteria. The findings suggest that changes in entry costs can fully account for cyclical DI entry. |
| JEL: | H51 J14 J68 |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29988&r= |
| By: | Ginja, Rita (University of Bergen); Riise, Julie (University of Bergen); Willage, Barton (University of Colorado, Denver); Willén, Alexander (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) |
| Abstract: | We estimate doctor value-added and provide evidence on the distribution of physician quality in an entire country, combining rich population-wide register data with random assignment of patients to general practitioners (GPs). We show that there is substantial variation in the quality of physicians, as measured by patients’ post-assignment mortality, in the primary care sector. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in doctor quality is associated with a 12.2percentage point decline in a patient’s two-year mortality risk. While we find evidence of observable doctor characteristics and practice styles influencing a GP’s value-added, a standard decomposition exercise reveals that most of the quality variation is driven by unobserved differences across doctors. Finally, we show that patients are unable to identify who the highquality doctors are, and that patient-generated GP ratings are uncorrelated with GP value-added. Using a lower bound of the predicted value of an additional life year in Norway ($35,000), our results demonstrate that replacing the worst performing GPs (bottom 5 percent of the VA distribution) with GPs of average quality generates a social benefit of $27,417 per patient, $9.05 million per GP, or $934 million in total. At the same time, our results show that higher-quality GPs are associated with a lower per-patient cost. |
| Keywords: | Value-added; health behaviors; mortality rate |
| JEL: | H75 I11 I14 J18 |
| Date: | 2022–06–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2022_008&r= |
| By: | Jo Blanden; Matthias Doepke; Jan Stuhler |
| Abstract: | This chapter provides new evidence on educational inequality and reviews the literature on the causes and consequences of unequal education. We document large achievement gaps between children from different socio-economic backgrounds, show how patterns of educational inequality vary across countries, time, and generations, and establish a link between educational inequality and social mobility. We interpret this evidence from the perspective of economic models of skill acquisition and investment in human capital. The models account for different channels underlying unequal education and highlight how endogenous responses in parents' and children's educational investments generate a close link between economic inequality and educational inequality. Given concerns over the extended school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic, we also summarize early evidence on the impact of the pandemic on children's education and on possible long-run repercussions for educational inequality. |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J62 |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29979&r= |