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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Albanese, Andrea; Nieto, Adrián; Tatsiramos, Konstantinos |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of childbirth on local and non-local employment dynamics for both men and women using Belgian social security and geo-location data. Applying an eventstudy design that accounts for treatment effect heterogeneity, we show that 75 percent of the effect of the birth of a first child on the overall gender gap in employment is accounted for by gender disparities in non-local employment, with mothers being more likely to give up non-local employment compared to fathers. This gender specialisation is mostly driven by opposing job location responses of men and women to individual, household and regional factors. On the one hand, men do not give up non-local employment after childbirth when they are employed in a high-paid job, have a partner who is not participating in the labour market or experience adverse local labour market conditions, suggesting that fathers trade off better employment opportunities with longer commutes. On the other hand, women give up non-local jobs regardless of their earnings level, their partner's labour market status and local economic conditions, which is consistent with mothers specialising in childcare provision compared to fathers. |
| Keywords: | gender gap,childbirth,job location,cross-border employment,specialisation |
| JEL: | J13 J16 J61 C21 C23 J22 R23 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1113&r= |
| By: | Marius Faber; Andrés P. Sarto; Marco Tabellini |
| Abstract: | Migration is a key mechanism through which local labor markets adjust to economic shocks. In this paper, we analyze the migration response of American workers to two of the most important shocks that hit US manufacturing since the 1990s: Chinese import competition and the introduction of industrial robots. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in exposure across US local labor markets over time, we establish a new fact. Even though both shocks drastically reduced employment in the manufacturing sector, only robots led to a sizable decline in population size. We provide evidence that negative employment spillovers outside manufacturing, caused by robots but not by Chinese imports, can explain the different migration responses. We interpret our findings through the lens of a model that highlights two mechanisms: the cost savings that each shock provides and the degree of complementarity between directly and indirectly exposed industries. |
| JEL: | J21 J23 J61 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30048&r= |
| By: | Schmutte, Ian M.; Skira, Meghan M. |
| Abstract: | We study how firms respond to predictable, but uncertain, worker absences arising from maternity and non-work-related sickness leave. Using administrative data on over 1.5 million spells of leave in Brazil, we identify the short-run effects of a leave spell starting on firms' employment, hiring, and separations. Firms respond immediately by increasing hiring, but the increase is substantially less than one-for-one replacement. Hiring responses are more pronounced for absences arising in occupations with more transferable skills and in firms operating in thicker labor markets. Overall, our results imply that using external markets is costly and firms manage absences through other channels. |
| JEL: | J23 J21 J63 J68 J13 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1101&r= |
| By: | Osea Giuntella; Lorenzo Rotunno; Luca Stella |
| Abstract: | Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we analyze the effects of exposure to globalization on the fertility and marital behavior in Germany, until recently a lowest-low fertility setting. We find that exposure to greater import competition from Eastern Europe led to worse labor market outcomes and lower fertility rates. In contrast, workers in industries that benefited from increased exports had better employment prospects and higher fertility. These effects are driven by low-educated, married men, and full-time workers and reflect changes in the likelihood of having any child (extensive margin). While there is evidence of some fertility postponement, we find significant effects on completed fertility. There is instead little evidence of any significant impact on marital behavior. |
| Keywords: | globalization, labor market outcomes, fertility, marriage |
| JEL: | F14 F16 J13 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9755&r= |
| By: | Filomena, Mattia; Giorgetti, Isabella; Picchio, Matteo |
| Abstract: | We estimate the effect of nonemployment experienced by Italian youth after leaving secondary school on subsequent labor market outcomes. We focus on the impact on earnings and labor market participation both in the short- and in the long-term, up to 25 years since school completion. By estimating a factor analytic model which controls for time-varying unobserved heterogeneity, we find that the negative effect of nonemployment on earnings is especially persistent, being sizeable and statistically significant up to 25 years after school completion, for both men and women. Penalties in terms of participation last instead shorter; they disappear by the 10th year after school completion. Hence, early nonemployment operates by persistently locking the youth who get off to a bad start into low-wage jobs. |
| Keywords: | youth nonemployment,scarring effects,earnings,labor market participation,factor analytic model |
| JEL: | J01 J08 J31 J64 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1116&r= |
| By: | Mohrenweiser, Jens |
| Abstract: | This chapter reviews the economic effects of employee representation with statutory consultation and information rights at the workplace, the works councils. The chapter summarises the international literature which is heavily skewed towards the German case. This review focuses, first, on the mechanisms that enable the productivity enhancing role of works councils. Second, the review discusses the context factors that hamper or facilitate the productivity enhancing role of works councils. The chapter will start discussing the economic consequences of German works councils and then review the evidence obtained from other countries. |
| Keywords: | works councils,codetermination,consultation,productivity,management practices |
| JEL: | J53 M54 J50 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1103&r= |
| By: | Gang Liu; Barbara M. Fraumeni; Shunsuke Managi |
| 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. |
| JEL: | E01 E24 J16 O57 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30035&r= |
| By: | Melissa Schettini Kearney |
| Abstract: | The share of children living in a two-parent family has declined sharply in the past 40 years, driven by a decline in marriage among parents without a four-year college degree. This paper presents a number of facts about these trends, drawing on US Census data, the Current Population Survey, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and US vital statistics birth data. First, there is a large gap in the share of children living with married parents (or two parents) that favors the children of college-educated mothers, both overall and within race and ethnic groups. Second, the decline in the share of children living in married parent families primarily reflects an increase in non-marital childbearing, not a rise in divorce. Third, the widening college gap in children’s family structure corresponds to a widening college gap in marriage rates, both overall and within race and ethnic groups. The paper briefly discusses evidence suggesting a causal link between the eroding economic position of men without a four-year college degree and their declining marriage rates. Fourth, the rise in the share of children living with an unpartnered mother has happened despite a sizable decrease in births to teens, women in their 20s, and women with less than a high school degree. Fifth, the college gap in family structure has contributed to the widening college gap in household income, accentuating widening earnings inequality. These trends have the potential to exacerbate class gaps in children’s outcomes and undermine social mobility. |
| JEL: | J12 J13 J15 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30078&r= |
| By: | Baranski, Andrzej; Geraldes, Diogo; Kovaliukaite, Ada; Tremewan, James |
| Abstract: | Women are underrepresented in political and business decision-making bodies across the world. To investigate the causal effect of gender representation on multilateral negotiations, we experimentally manipulate the composition of triads in a majoritarian, divide-the-dollar game. First, we find that inclusive splits and unanimous agreement rates are highest in all-female groups and lowest in all-male groups suggesting that female representation increases fairness. Second, we document a robust gender gap in earnings, driven largely by the exclusion of women from coalitions rather than differential shares within coalitions. Interestingly, we find that distinct bargaining dynamics can underlie the same inequitable outcomes: While gender-biased outcomes are sometimes caused by outright discrimination, they can also be driven by more complex dynamics related to gender differences in bargaining strategies. These different dynamics manifest in mixed-gender coalitions being less stable when the excluded party is male rather than female. |
| Keywords: | multilateral bargaining, gender gap, lab experiment |
| JEL: | C72 J16 J31 |
| Date: | 2022–04–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:113063&r= |
| By: | Bekhtiar, Karim (IHS, Vienna) |
| Abstract: | Internal migration flows from rural to urban areas have greatly contributed to population declines in many rural areas across both Europe and the US. At the same time there is mounting evidence for a tight connection between internal migration and shifts in labor demand, with the latter being heavily affected by the rise of automation technologies. Therefore this paper analyzes the effects industrial robotization has had on manufacturing employment and internal migration in Austria during the period 2003-2016, specifically focusing on rural-to-urban migration flows. The results show that robotization has caused significant declines in manufacturing employment to which populations reacted by increased out-migration. This migratory response takes the form of rural-to-urban migration, thereby contributing to population declines in many rural areas in Austria. These rural-to-urban movements are primarily driven by young and medium/low skilled individuals, i.e. those groups that bear the strongest shock incidence. |
| Keywords: | Employment, internal migration, robots, rural depopulation |
| JEL: | J21 J23 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ihs:ihswps:41&r= |
| By: | Diana Moreira; Santiago Pérez |
| Abstract: | Does screening applicants using exams help or hurt the chances of lower-SES candidates? Because individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds fare, on average, worse than those from richer backgrounds in standardized tests, a common concern with this "meritocratic" approach is that it might have a negative impact on the opportunities of lower-SES individuals. However, an alternative view is that, even if such applicants underperformed on exams, other (potentially more discretionary and less impersonal) selection criteria might put them at an even worse disadvantage. We investigate this question using evidence from the 1883 Pendleton Act, a landmark reform in American history which introduced competitive exams to select certain federal employees. Using newly assembled data on the socioeconomic backgrounds of government employees and a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that, although the reform increased the representation of "educated outsiders" (individuals with high education but limited connections), it reduced the share of lower-SES individuals. This decline was driven by a higher representation of the middle class, with little change in the representation of upper-class applicants. The drop in the representation of lower-SES workers was stronger among applicants from states with more unequal access to schooling as well as in offices that relied more heavily on connections prior to the reform. These findings suggest that, although using exams could help select more qualified candidates, these improvements can come with the cost of increased elitism. |
| JEL: | J15 J62 M5 N21 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30113&r= |
| By: | Oscar Claveria (AQR-IREA, Department of Econometrics and Statistics, University of Barcelona, Diagonal 690, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. Tel.: +34-934021825.) |
| Abstract: | Economic uncertainty is a driver of the business cycle. In a recent study, Claveria (2022) used a fixed-effects model to assess the impact of uncertainty on suicide rates worldwide. Using that same panel, in which global economic uncertainty is linked to the evolution of the suicide rates in 183 countries between 2000 and 2019, this work evaluates the dynamic interconnections between unemployment, economic growth, uncertainty and suicide using a dynamic panel model. Overall, the analysis suggests that increases in the growth of economic uncertainty and unemployment may lead to increases in suicide rates growth worldwide. When replicating the experiment for different regions and for groups of countries classified according to their level of income, the greatest impact of increases in economic uncertainty is found in upper middle-income economies. Given the anticipatory nature of economic uncertainty with respect to the evolution of the economy, and its relationship with suicide rates, the obtained results suggest the usefulness of uncertainty indicators as tools for the early detection of periods of increased suicide risk and for the design of suicide prevention strategies. |
| Keywords: | Economic uncertainty, Suicide, Prevention, Unemployment, Economic growth, Dynamic panel model. JEL classification: C33, C51, I15, J17, O57, Z18. |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ira:wpaper:202209&r= |
| By: | Ellora Derenoncourt (Princeton University); Chi Hyun Kim (University of Bonn); Moritz Kuhn (University of Bonn); Moritz Schularick (University of Bonn, Sciences Po Paris) |
| Abstract: | The racial wealth gap is the largest of the economic disparities between Black and white Americans, with a white-to-Black per capita wealth ratio of 6 to 1. It is also among the most persistent. In this paper, we construct the first continuous series on white-to-Black per capita wealth ratios from 1860 to 2020, drawing on historical census data, early state tax records, and historical waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances, among other sources. Incorporating these data into a parsimonious model of wealth accumulation for each racial group, we document the role played by initial conditions, income growth, savings behavior, and capital returns in the evolution of the gap. Given vastly different starting conditions under slavery, racial wealth convergence would remain a distant scenario, even if wealth-accumulating conditions had been equal across the two groups since Emancipation. Relative to this equal-conditions benchmark, we find that observed convergence has followed an even slower path over the last 150 years, with convergence stalling after 1950. Since the 1980s, the wealth gap has widened again as capital gains have predominantly benefited white households, and income convergence has stopped. |
| Keywords: | Racial inequality, income and wealth inequality |
| JEL: | J15 N31 N32 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:168&r= |
| By: | Sandra M. Leitner (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Roman Stöllinger (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a large sample of employees from 35 European countries to study the direct and indirect effects of ICT use on burnout and work engagement as two opposite poles of employee psychological health, where the former comprises the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy. It applies the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model and analyses the mediating role of three job demands (work extensity, work intensity, social demands) and four job resources (social support from management or colleagues, job control, rewards) on workers’ psychological health. It accounts for the importance of the place of work for the effect of ICT use on workers’ psychological health by differentiating between four types of workers home-based workers, highly mobile workers, occasionally mobile workers, and workers who always work at the employer’s premises. The results show that ICT use is associated with lower levels of exhaustion but is unrelated to work engagement. Furthermore, work intensity, work extensity, social demands and rewards mediate the effect of ICT use on exhaustion, while job control and rewards mediate the effect of ICT use on work engagement. Our multi-group analysis attributes the negative effect of ICT use on exhaustion mainly to occasionally mobile workers and to workers who always work at the employer’s premises and highlights that the factors that mediate the effect of ICT use on workers’ psychological health differ across the four types of workers. Home-based workers stand out in two important respects first, ICT use per se is unrelated to burnout; second, only one factor – work intensity – mediates the effect of ICT use on burnout, but its effect is especially strong. |
| Keywords: | ICT use, burnout, work engagement, main place of work, job demands-resources model |
| JEL: | I10 I31 J81 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:wpaper:216&r= |