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on Labour Economics |
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Issue of 2024‒05‒20
23 papers chosen by |
| By: | OECD; Ben Westmore |
| Abstract: | Gender inequalities in Australia have steadily declined, but remain particularly visible in the labour market. Women in Australia have lower employment rates, hourly wages and hours worked than their male counterparts. Childbirth is particularly disruptive for their labour market experience. Reforms to the tax and benefits system, childcare and parental leave arrangements are all needed to reduce the barriers to female labour participation of mothers. At the same time, ensuring the adequacy of unemployment benefits will support the living standards of many low-income women given that they have become an increasing share of recipients. Single mothers face particularly high poverty risk and would also benefit from more robust arrangements around child support payments from non-custodial parents. |
| Keywords: | Australia, childcare, gender equity, parental leave, taxation |
| JEL: | D63 J13 J16 H24 |
| Date: | 2024–04–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1793-en&r=lab |
| By: | Levai, Adam (LISER); Turati, Riccardo (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | The existing literature investigating the labor market impact of immigration assumes, implicitly or explicitly, that the law or labor regulation is exogenous to immigration. To test this assumption, we build a novel workers' protection measure based on 36 labor law variables that capture labor regulation over a sample of 70 developed and developing countries from 1970 to 2010. Exploiting a dynamic panel setting using both internal and external instruments, we establish a new result: immigrants' norms and experience of labor regulation influence the evolution of host countries labor law regulation. This effect is particularly strong for two components of workers' protection: worker representation laws and employment forms laws. Our main results are consistent with suggestive evidence on the transmission of preferences from migrants to their offspring (vertical transmission), and from migrants to natives or local political parties (horizontal transmission). Finally, we find that the size of the immigrant population per se has a small and negligible impact on host country labor market regulation. |
| Keywords: | international migration, labor market institutions, labor regulation, legal transplants |
| JEL: | J61 K31 F22 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16929&r=lab |
| By: | Agostina Brinatti; Mingyu Chen; Parag Mahajan; Nicolas Morales; Kevin Shih |
| Abstract: | We study how random variation in the availability of highly educated, foreign-born workers impacts firm performance and recruitment behavior. We combine two rich data sources: 1) administrative employer-employee matched data from the US Census Bureau; and 2) firm-level information on the first large-scale H-1B visa lottery in 2007. Using an event-study approach, we find that lottery wins lead to increases in firm hiring of college-educated, immigrant labor along with increases in scale and survival. These effects are stronger for small, skill-intensive, and high-productivity firms that participate in the lottery. We do not find evidence for displacement of native-born, college-educated workers at the firm level, on net. However, this result masks dynamics among more specific subgroups of incumbents that we further elucidate. |
| Keywords: | Immigration; Firm Dynamics; productivity; H-1B visas; High-skill immigration |
| JEL: | F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedrwp:98171&r=lab |
| By: | Pineda-Hernández, Kevin; Rycx, François; Volral, Mélanie |
| Abstract: | A large body of literature shows that first-generation immigrants born in developing countries experience a higher likelihood of being overeducated than natives (i.e. immigrant overeducation). However, evidence is remarkably scarce when it comes to the overeducation of second-generation immigrants. Using a matched employer-employee database for Belgium over the period 1999-2016 and generalized ordered logit regressions, we contribute to the literature with one of the first studies on the intergenerational nexus between overeducation and origin among tertiary-educated workers. We show that immigrant overeducation disappears across two generations when workers work full-time. However, immigrant overeducation is a persistent intergenerational phenomenon when workers work part-time. Our gender-interacted estimates endorse these findings for female and male immigrants. |
| Keywords: | immigrants, intergenerational studies, labour market integration, overeducation, generalized ordered logit, moderating factors |
| JEL: | I21 I22 J15 J24 J61 J62 J71 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1427&r=lab |
| By: | Bergemann, Annette (University of Groningen); Brunow, Stephan; Stockton, Isabel (Institute for Fiscal Studies, London) |
| Abstract: | We estimate female and male workers' marginal willingness to pay to reduce commuting distance in Germany, using a partial-equilibrium model of job search with non-wage job attributes. Commuting costs have implications not just for congestion policy, spatial planning and transport infrastructure provision, but are also relevant to our understanding of gender differences in labour market biographies. For estimation, we use a stratified partial likelihood model on a large administrative dataset for West Germany to flexibly account for both unobserved individual heterogeneity and changes dependent on wages and children. We find that an average female childless worker is willing to give up daily €0.27 per kilometre (0.4% of the daily wage) to reduce commuting distance at the margin. The average men's marginal willingness to pay is similar to childless women's over a large range of wages. However, women's marginal willingness to pay more than doubles after the birth of a child contributing substantially to the motherhood wage gap. A married mixed-sex couple's sample indicates that husbands try to avoid commuting shorter distances than their wives. |
| Keywords: | commuting, marginal willingness to pay for job attributes, on-the-job search, Cox relative risk model, partial likelihood estimation, gender and parenthood in job search models, heterogeneity in job mobility, gender wage gap |
| JEL: | C41 J13 J16 J31 J62 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16890&r=lab |
| By: | Gottlieb, Charles (Aix Marseille University); Doss, Cheryl (Tufts University); Gollin, Douglas (Tufts University); Poschke, Markus (McGill University) |
| Abstract: | Across countries, women and men allocate time differently between market work, domestic services, and care work. In this paper, we document the gender division of work, drawing on a new harmonized data set that provides us with high-quality time use data for 50 countries spanning the global income distribution. A striking feature of the data is the wide dispersion across countries at similar income levels. We use these data to motivate a macroeconomic model of household time use in which country-level allocations are shaped by wages and a set of "wedges" that resemble productivity, preferences, and disutilities. Taking the model to country-level observations, we find that a wedge related to the disutility of market work for women plays a crucial role in generating the observed dispersion of outcomes, particularly for middle-income countries. Variation in the division of non-market work is principally shaped by a wedge indicating greater disutility for men, which is especially large in some low- and middle-income countries. |
| Keywords: | labor supply, home production, care work, time use, gender inequality, gender norms |
| JEL: | E24 J16 J22 O11 |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16896&r=lab |
| By: | Sangwan, Nikita; Sharma, Swati |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the vulnerabilities women encounter in labor markets worldwide. We investigate the potential of social protection measures in mitigating declines in women's labor market participation. Specifically, we look at the Indian context, where lockdowns spurred a reverse migration of male workers from urban to rural areas, exerting pressure on rural labor markets. Despite a 6% rise in reliance on India's largest demand driven employment guarantee scheme, our analysis reveals a 0.4% decrease in women's participation during the pandemic, equivalent to a loss of 11, 500 person-days of work. However, a gender quota provision helped sustain women's employment status. In districts where the reservation quotas had not been exhausted pre pandemic, women's share in public works increased by 2.7%. Our findings underscore the need for mandated provisions and targeted programs for women to counteract labor market withdrawals and bolster overall labor market participation in times of crisis. |
| Keywords: | Covid-19, Rural labor market, Gender, Reverse migration, MGNREGA, GKRA |
| JEL: | J08 J16 O15 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:qmsrps:202404&r=lab |
| By: | Christine L. Exley; Raymond Fisman; Judd B. Kessler; Louis-Pierre Lepage; Xiaomeng Li; Corinne Low; Xiaoyue Shan; Mattie Toma; Basit Zafar |
| Abstract: | We analyze data from two universities that allowed students to conceal grades from their transcripts during the Covid-19 pandemic. Across both institutions, we observe a significant and substantial gender concealment gap: women are less likely than men to conceal grades that would harm their GPA. We explore the robustness, drivers, and consequences of the concealment gap via rich data on student traits and course-level characteristics as well as complementary data from an experiment with real employers and a survey of impacted students. Our findings highlight how information-optional policies can create unexpected and potentially undesirable disparities. |
| JEL: | D82 J16 J71 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32350&r=lab |
| By: | Olga Alonso-Villar; Coral del Río |
| Abstract: | By building an entire counterfactual income distribution in which married/cohabiting male and female same-sex couple families and married/cohabiting different-sex couple families have the same composition in terms of education, race, age, presence of children, and geographical variables, we determine the differential effect of these factors to explain the position of each family type within the income distribution. We also explore the income sources from which intergroup income differences arise. This approach enables us to integrate the position of individuals in the labor market and their wellbeing in terms of family income (once the effects of the above variables are accounted for). Our analysis suggests that the sexual orientation wage disadvantage that men in same-sex couples experience coexists with a family income advantage (in both the actual and the counterfactual economy), which arises from the higher probability of two-earner couples among male same-sex couples and their gender wage advantage. However, these two features are not enough to protect male couples in the low tail of the income distribution, who have lower conditional earnings than married different-sex couple families do. As for female same-sex couple families, their position in the counterfactual income distribution seems to be strongly limited by the gender wage gap these women experience, which is not outweighed by the sexual orientation wage advantage they have and the higher probability of two-earner couples among these families. |
| Keywords: | Income distribution, same-sex couples, sexual minorities, LGBTQ+ |
| JEL: | D31 D63 J12 J15 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vig:wpaper:2401&r=lab |
| By: | Pilar Beneito; Maria Garcia-Vega; Oscar Vicente-Chirivella; Guillaume Wilemme |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of industrial robots on the use of labor intermediaries or temporary work agencies (TWAs) and firm productivity. We develop a theoretical framework where new technologies increase the need for quality match workers. TWAs help firms to search for workers who better match their technologies. The model predicts that using robots increases TWA use, which increases robots’ productivity. We test the model implications with panel data of Spanish firms from 1997 to 2016 with information on robot adoption and TWA use. Using staggered difference-in-difference (DiD) estimations, we estimate the causal effects of robot adoption on TWAs. We find robot adopters increase the probability of TWA use compared to non-adopters. We also find that firms that combine robots with TWAs achieve higher productivity than those who adopt robots without TWAs. |
| Keywords: | Robots, job-worker matching, temporary work agencies, firm productivity. |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notgep:2024-02&r=lab |
| By: | Guendalina Anzolin; Chiara Benassi; Armanda Cetrulo |
| Abstract: | A large body of research has investigated the impact of industrial relations on workplace innovation. Econometric research based on U.S. data suggests that unions are detrimental to innovation, while evidence from Europe is more mixed. This points to the importance of "contextualized" theorizing about the effects of industrial relations on firm-level innovation. Such an approach is common in qualitative research but is infrequently seen in quantitative studies. To address this gap, our article investigates the link between industrial relations and innovation at the firm level using establishment-level surveys from Germany (IAB establishment data) and Italy (INAPP-RIL establishment data). Our findings point to significant cross-country differences in how industrial relations institutions, including workplace representation and firm/sectoral agreements, can influence firm-level innovation. This cross-country variation underscores that similar institutions may serve different functions depending on the specificities of the national context. |
| Keywords: | Germany, Italy, collective bargaining, unions, innovation |
| Date: | 2024–04–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2024/12&r=lab |
| By: | Vanda Almeida (OECD); Claire Hoffmann (OECD); Sebastian Königs (OECD and IZA); Ana Moreno-Monroy (OECD); Mauricio Salazar-Lozada (OECD); Javier Terrero-Dávila (OECD) |
| Abstract: | People’s ability to access essential services is key to their labour market and social inclusion. An important dimension of accessibility is physical accessibility, but little cross-country evidence exists on how close people live to the services facilities they need. This paper helps to address this gap, focusing on three types of essential services: Public Employment Services, primary schools and Early Childhood Education and Care. It collects and maps data on the location of these services for a selection of OECD countries and links them with data on population and transport infrastructure. This allows to compute travel times to the nearest service facility and to quantify disparities in accessibility at the regional level. The results highlight substantial inequalities in accessibility of essential services across and within countries. Although large parts of the population can easily reach these services in most countries, some people are relatively underserved. This is particularly the case in non-metropolitan and low-income regions. At the same time, accessibility seems to be associated with the potential demand for these services once accounting for other regional economic and demographic characteristics. |
| Keywords: | geographic inequalities, geospatial disparities, service accessibility, social services, employment services |
| JEL: | H00 I24 J01 O18 R12 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2024-670&r=lab |
| By: | Maria De Paola (University of Calabria, INPS Direzione Centrale Studi e Ricerche, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)); Roberto Nisticò (Università di Napoli Federico II, CSEF and IZA); Vincenzo Scoppa (University of Calabria, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the effects on individuals’ fertility of the fertility behavior of their co-workers. Using matched employer-employee data from the Italian Social Security Institute (INPS) for the years 2016-2020, we estimate how the fertility rate among co-workers of the same age group and in the same occupation affects a worker’s likelihood of having a child. We exploit the variation in workplace peer fertility induced by the Jobs Act reform, which weakened employment protection – and therefore reduced the fertility rate – for the employees affected, i.e. those in larger firms hired on open-ended contracts after 7 March 2015. Our analysis focuses on similar workers hired before the Jobs Act and uses the fraction of co-workers hired after 7 March 2015 as an instrumental variable for average peer fertility. We find that a 1-percentage-point reduction in the average peer fertility at year t-1 leads to a reduction in the individual probability of having a child at year t by 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points, or a 10% reduction in average fertility. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that while workplace peer effects may operate primarily through social influence and social norms, information sharing and career concerns tend to attenuate individuals’ responses to the fertility of their co-workers, especially among women. Our findings also help to understand the potential spillovers that employment protection reforms may have on fertility rates through social interactions. |
| Keywords: | Fertility; Peer Effects; Instrumental Variables; Employment Protection Legislation. |
| JEL: | C3 J13 J65 J41 M51 |
| Date: | 2024–04–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sef:csefwp:714&r=lab |
| By: | Philipp Ager; Marc Goni; Kjell G. Salvanes |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how gender-biased technological change in agriculture affected women’s work in 20th-century Norway. After WWII, dairy farms began widely adopting milking machines to replace the hand milking of cows, a task typically performed by young women. We show that the adoption of milking machines pushed young rural women out of farming in dairy-intensive municipalities. The displaced women moved to cities where they acquired more education and found better-paid employment. Our results suggest that the adoption of milking machines broke up allocative inefficiencies across sectors, which improved the economic status of women relative to men. |
| Keywords: | Technological change, rural-to-urban migration, gender effects |
| JEL: | J16 J24 J43 J61 N34 O14 O33 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_535&r=lab |
| By: | Luke Petach |
| Abstract: | Using monthly state-level data on work stoppages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and state-level labor market data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) this paper estimates the effect of state-level labor market conditions on strike activity from 1993 to 2023. Panel fixed-effects estimates suggest a one percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate reduces the number of work stoppages involving 1, 000 or more workers (per million) by approximately 14%. The fixed-effects estimates are supported by a propensity-score based specification that exploits the differential timing of national recessions across US States. Entering a recession is negatively related to state-level strike activity as measured by both work stoppages and the share of employed workers reporting an absence from work due to a labor dispute. The results in this paper provide empirical support for Kalecki (1943)’s argument regarding the “political aspects of full employment”: weak labor markets reduce direct action by labor, thereby providing a rationalization for capitalist opposition to full employment policy. |
| Keywords: | Michal Kalecki, Strikes, Work Stoppages, Labor Relations, Business Cycles |
| JEL: | D33 E11 J52 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pke:wpaper:pkwp2407&r=lab |
| By: | Alice Chong (Graduate School of Economics, Waseda University); Haruko Noguchi (Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University) |
| Abstract: | Flexible working arrangements, such as telework, have the potential to serve as a mechanism for promoting female workforce participation and concurrently encouraging childbearing, particularly in rapidly aging societies. This study employs longitudinal data from the Japan Panel Study of Employment Dynamics (JPSED) to estimate the impact of being employed in an occupation characterized by a high proportion of teleworkers on the likelihood of women experiencing a birth or pregnancy within a given year. Employing a difference-in-differences framework in combination with fixed effects logistic regression, the study exploits the exogenous increase in occupations’ teleworker ratios driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings suggest that women in occupations with high teleworking ratios exhibit a 1.5 times increase in odds of being pregnant. While the results for the odds of giving birth are positive, they lack statistical significance. Furthermore, the treatment effects are heterogeneous, demonstrating more pronounced effects on women with higher levels of education, full-time employment, and abovemedian income. These results are reinforced with propensity score matching and random permutation tests. This study sheds light on the potential influence of telework on family planning decisions and underscores the importance of considering various demographic factors in understanding the nuanced effects of flexible working arrangements on fertility outcomes. |
| Keywords: | telework; Japan; fertility; female LFP; family formation; difference-in-differences |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wap:wpaper:2313&r=lab |
| By: | Esteban M. Aucejo; A. Spencer Perry; Basit Zafar |
| Abstract: | Balancing the demands of work and schooling is a challenging task for an increasing number of students who have to pay their way through college and for workers who intend to upgrade their skills. However, flexible learning and working environments could play an important role in easing many frictions associated with performing both activities simultaneously. Using detailed (work and study effort) data -- from a partnership between Arizona State University and Uber that allows eligible drivers to enroll in online college courses for free -- we analyze how labor supply and study efforts respond to changes in labor market conditions and college activities/tasks. Our findings indicate that a 10% increase in average weekly online college activities reduces weekly time spent on the Uber platform by about 1%, indicating a low “short run” opportunity cost of studying when working. We also show that study time is not particularly sensitive to changes in labor market conditions, where a 10% increase in average weekly pay reduces study hours by only 2%. Consistent with these results, we find that workers take advantage of their flexible schedules by changing their usual working hours when their college courses are more demanding. We do not find adverse effects of work hours on academic performance in this context, or of study hours on workplace performance (as measured by driver ratings or tips). Finally, the (elicited) value assigned to flexible working and educational formats is high among the students in our sample, who view online education as an important vehicle for increasing expected future income. Overall, this study underscores that combining flexible working and learning formats could constitute a suitable path for many (lowSES) students who work to afford an increasingly expensive college education and for workers aiming to improve their skill set. |
| JEL: | I20 J01 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32357&r=lab |
| By: | OECD; Randall S. Jones |
| Abstract: | Japan faces serious demographic headwinds. Under current fertility, employment and immigration rates, the population would fall by 45% by 2100 and employment by 52%. Given the challenges of a shrinking and ageing population, the government has pledged to “create a children-first economic society and reverse the birth rate decline”. One priority is to strengthen the weak financial position of youth, which leads many to delay or forgo marriage and children. Making it easier to combine paid work and family is also critical so that women are not forced to choose between a career and children. Policies should also cut the cost of raising children, the key obstacle to couples achieving their desired number of children. Given the challenge of reversing fertility trends, Japan needs to prepare for a low-fertility future by raising productivity and employment, particularly among women and older people. Breaking down labour market dualism, which disproportionately affects youth, women and older people, is a priority. Abolishing the right of firms to set a mandatory retirement age (usually at 60) and raising the pension eligibility age would also promote employment. Foreign workers are helping ease labour shortages, but more needs to be done to attract foreign talent. A comprehensive approach is needed to raise fertility, the employment rates of women and older persons and inflows of foreign workers. |
| Keywords: | dualism, female employment, fertility rate, foreign workers, Labour market, mandatory retirement, non-regular workers, older workers, pension eligibility age, population ageing, work-life balance |
| JEL: | J1 J2 J3 J7 J8 |
| Date: | 2024–04–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1792-en&r=lab |
| By: | Park, Sungbin; Lee, Kyung Min; Earle, John S. |
| Abstract: | During a pandemic, unemployment insurance (UI) may have externalities for health. Studying variation across states in UI benefits during summer 2021, using longitudinally linked Current Population Survey data, and controlling for individual and state characteristics, we find that unemployment-employment transitions rise 10 percentage points (42 percent of the unconditional mean) in treated states, which cut UI early, relative to states maintaining higher benefits. Estimates of hazards and censored regressions imply a benefit elasticity of unemployment duration of 0.5-0.7. Using an instrumental variables strategy, we find sharp covid rises in states with higher re-employment rates because of the UI cuts: case, hospitalization, and death rates are all estimated to more than double. Consistent with a causal interpretation, the differences between treated and other states in re-employment and covid outcomes are negligible prior to treatment, diverge simultaneously with the policy change, and reconverge quickly after the end of the policy difference. Results are robust to controlling for other relevant factors and policies. We estimate that additional wages of \$1.1bln received by re-employed workers offset only one-eighth of the UI losses, and, even from a government budget perspective, UI savings are more than offset by increased hospitalization costs of \$14.8bln. Increases in illness-related losses in work time can be valued at \$1.5bln. Beyond the monetary and morbidity costs of the UI cuts, we estimate additional deaths at 27, 000. The results suggest an important role for UI during infectious stages of pandemics that should be considered for future policy design. |
| Date: | 2024–04–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:2fnkp&r=lab |
| By: | Bruce D. Meyer; Angela Wyse; Gillian Meyer; Alexa Grunwaldt; Derek Wu |
| Abstract: | Homelessness is arguably the most extreme hardship associated with poverty in the United States, yet people experiencing homelessness are excluded from official poverty statistics and much of the extreme poverty literature. This paper provides the most detailed and accurate portrait to date of the level and persistence of material disadvantage faced by this population, including the first national estimates of income, employment, and safety net participation based on administrative data. Starting from the first large and nationally representative sample of adults recorded as sheltered and unsheltered homeless taken from the 2010 Census, we link restricted-use longitudinal tax records and administrative data on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicare, Medicaid, Disability Insurance (DI), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), veterans’ benefits, housing assistance, and mortality. Nearly half of these adults had formal employment in the year they were observed as homeless, and nearly all either worked or were reached by at least one safety net program. Nevertheless, their incomes remained low for the decade surrounding an observed period of homelessness, suggesting that homelessness tends to arise in the context of long-term, severe deprivation rather than large and sudden losses of income. People appear to experience homelessness because they are very poor despite being connected to the labor market and safety net, with low permanent incomes leaving them vulnerable to the loss of housing when met with even modest disruptions to life circumstances. |
| JEL: | H0 I00 J0 R0 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32323&r=lab |
| By: | Martina Zanella (Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin) |
| Abstract: | Women are still under-represented and struggling to establish careers in traditionally male-dominated fields. Does minority status in and of itself create a barrier to women's success? Experiments suggest that under-representation exacerbates the detrimental effect of the negative stereotypes that often characterize women's ability in these fields. However, in real-world environments, these results might not hold. While lab experiments typically shut down the selection channel altogether, the choice to enter male-dominated fields is endogenous, and may in part be motivated by challenging these stereotypes. This paper assesses how minority status affects performance when selection is endogenous by studying the performance of 14, 000 students at an elite university across 16 departments, in a real-world setting that combines a choice with well-defined stereotypes - university major - with exogenous variation in peer identity - quasi-random allocation of students across class groups within the same course. The evidence indicates that those who go against stereotypes (e.g. women in math) do not suffer from being in the minority, but they impose negative externalities on those who select on stereotypes (e.g. men in math). In line with social identity considerations being incorporated into educational choices, the evidence points towards ex-ante "sensitivity" to social norms and preferences to engage with same-gender peers inducing students to select different majors and then reacting to the composition of the environment in a self-fulfilling way. |
| Keywords: | Occupational choices; gender stereotypes; minority status; peer effects in education |
| JEL: | D91 I24 J15 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0224&r=lab |
| By: | Jason Deegan; Tom Broekel; Silje Haus-Reve; Rune Dahl Fitjar |
| Abstract: | This paper adds a multidimensional perspective to the study of related diversification. We examine how regions diversify into new jobs – defined as unique industry-occupation combinations – asking whether they do so from related industries or related occupations. We use linked employer-employee data for all labour market regions in Norway, covering the time period 2009 –2014. Diversification into new jobs is more likely in the presence of related occupations and industries in a region. Furthermore, occupational and industrial relatedness have complementary effects on diversification. Occupational relatedness and its interaction with industrial relatedness are particularly important for diversification into more complex activities. |
| Keywords: | Regional capabilities, jobs, occupations, relatedness, diversification |
| JEL: | O18 R11 J62 R12 |
| Date: | 2024–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2409&r=lab |
| By: | Vincent Siegerink; Fabrice Murtin |
| Abstract: | This working paper provides an overview of a standardised Employee Well-being Survey implemented in four companies in Japan. This survey aligns with international measurement guidelines and practices, including the 2017 OECD Guidelines on Measuring the Quality of the Working Environment, it has been developed under the guidance of the Committee on Statistics and Statistical Policy, and it allows for the calculation at firm level of an equivalent of the Job Strain index, namely the third pillar of the OECD Job Quality framework. The objectives of the study were: i) to pilot the new Employee Well-being Survey at the firm level; ii) to demonstrate the potential of harmonised employee survey data as a source of information on business social performance, with associated benefits for companies, stakeholders, investors, governments and national statistical offices; and iii) to operationalise one element of a proposed framework on measuring non-financial performance of businesses. |
| Keywords: | corporate sustainability, Employee well-being, working conditions |
| JEL: | I31 J81 M54 C83 |
| Date: | 2024–05–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:wiseaa:24-en&r=lab |