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on Labour Economics |
| By: | Schirner, Sebastian |
| JEL: | D72 J16 J15 H70 F22 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc24:302435 |
| By: | Bert Van Landeghem; Thomas Dohmen; Arne Risa Hole; Annemarie Künn-Nelen |
| Abstract: | This study examines jobseekers' preferences for a variety of job attributes. It is based on a choice experiment involving 1, 852 clients of the Flemish Public Employment Service (PES). Respondents value flexibility (e.g., remote work and schedule flexibility), job security and social impact of the job, and require significant compensation for longer commute times. A majority (70%) would need very substantial wage increase beyond their acceptable baseline wage to compensate for less flexibility, job security or social impact. These findings enhance our understanding of labour supply decisions and can inform the design of salary packages and HR policies. |
| Keywords: | Reservation Wage; Job Search; Job Amenities; Compensating Differentials; Choice Experiments |
| JEL: | J31 J32 J64 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_597 |
| By: | Iris Kesternich; Marjolein Van Damme; Han Ye |
| Abstract: | One reason gender pay gaps persist is that women receive more of their total compensation through amenities. Since wages, but not amenities, increase retirement incomes, this may translate into gender pension gaps. Using a discrete choice experiment we investigate whether the valuation for amenities changes when the trade-off with pension income is made salient. We find that women value amenities more than men. Beliefs about the effect of wage changes on pension income do not show large gender differences. However, women change their choices much more strongly than men when reminded about the effects of current choices on pension income. |
| Keywords: | gender, pension gap, amenities, work meaning, workplace flexibility, hypothetical choice experiment, salience, beliefs |
| JEL: | D91 J16 J26 J32 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_600 |
| By: | Costanza Giannantoni; Andres Rodriguez-Pose; ; ; |
| Abstract: | Declining fertility and the persistent underrepresentation of women in the labour market are key concerns of our time. The fact that they overlap is not fortuitous. Traditionally, women everywhere have faced a conflict in balancing their career ambitions with family responsibilities. Yet, the pressures arising from this conflict vary enormously from one place to another. Existing research has tended to overlook the geographical features of this dilemma, which could result in an inadequate understanding of the issue and lead to ineffective policy responses. This paper examines how variations in the quality of regional institutions affect women’s capacity to reconcile career and motherhood and, consequently, gender equality within Europe. Using panel data from 216 regions across 18 European countries, we uncover a positive effect of regional institutional quality on fertility rates, taking into account variations in female employment. Moreover, we show that European regions with better government quality provide a more reliable environment for managing the career/motherhood dilemma often faced by women. In contrast, women living in regions with weaker government institutions are more constrained in both their career and childbearing options. |
| Keywords: | Fertility; Gender equality, Institutional quality; European regions |
| JEL: | J11 J13 R11 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:2435 |
| By: | Lee, Siha; Liu, Sitian |
| Abstract: | We study the fertility effects of the 1997 Quebec Family Policy, which introduced universal childcare and simultaneously ended its newborn allowance. Using a 20% sample of Canadian tax returns, we find that the reform reduced overall fertility at the intensive margin but had varying impacts by life stage. For younger cohorts of women early in their careers and family planning, the reform increased their likelihood of having a first or second child without reducing employment, suggesting that subsidized childcare may have helped young women balance work and family life. In contrast, for older cohorts of women, most of whom already had at least one child, the reform boosted employment but decreased the likelihood of having more children, implying that increased maternal employment may have raised the opportunity costs of additional children. |
| Keywords: | Family policy, fertility, childcare, newborn allowance |
| JEL: | J13 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:clefwp:303511 |
| By: | Beverly Hirtle; Anna Kovner |
| Abstract: | We analyze 6, 400 letters of recommendation for more than 2, 200 economics and finance Ph.D. graduates from 2018 to 2021. Letter text varies significantly by field of interest, with significantly less positive and shorter letters for Macroeconomics and Finance candidates. Letters for female and Black or Hispanic job candidates are weaker in some dimensions, while letters for Asian candidates are notably less positive overall. We introduce a new measure of letter quality capturing candidates that are recommended to "top" departments. Female, Asian, and Black or Hispanic candidates are all less likely to be recommended to top academic departments, even after controlling for other letter characteristics. Finally, we examine early career outcomes and find that letter characteristics, especially a "top" recommendation have meaningful effects on initial job placements and journal publications. |
| Keywords: | recommendation letters; gender in economics; race and ethnicity in economics; research institutions; professional labor markets |
| JEL: | A11 A23 J15 J16 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedrwp:98967 |
| By: | Joe Long; Carlo Medici; Nancy Qian; Marco Tabellini |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the economic consequences of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned immigration from China to the United States. The Act reduced the number of Chinese workers of all skill levels residing in the U.S. It also reduced the labor supply and the quality of jobs held by white and U.S.-born workers, the intended beneficiaries of the Act, and reduced manufacturing output. The results suggest that the Chinese Exclusion Act slowed economic growth in western states until at least 1940. |
| JEL: | J15 J6 N01 N91 N92 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33019 |
| By: | Heller, Lorena; Nogales, Ricardo |
| Abstract: | Over 30 percent of female workers are self-employed across Latin America, relying on this mode of work for subsistence. Self-employment in the region is regularly marked by the absence of health insurance and lack of pension benefits. Despite the aspirations of many women to gain access to these benefits, they are persistently overrepresented among the socially unprotected part of the workforce. To address this issue and explore potential solutions, we conducted a laboratory experiment in Bolivia to assess the efficacy of nudges to influence the behavior of self-employed women. Participants were randomly assigned to one of six groups, each receiving either an informative message highlighting the benefits of contributing to a long-term pension system, a message emphasizing the advantages of health insurance, or a nudge aimed at reducing the effort and costs associated with enrolling in a savings or retirement plan. Our findings indicate that informative messages alone were effective in increasing voluntary contributions to experimental pension and health insurance schemes. Reductions in time and effort required for enrollment did not lead to a significant increase of voluntary contributions. Moreover, we found that the effectiveness of these interventions varied depending on the type of worker, with high-effort workers being the most responsive. |
| Keywords: | Self-employment;Pension system;Health Insurance;Laboratory experiment |
| JEL: | C91 J16 J20 J70 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:13754 |
| By: | Dr. Marc-Antoine Ramelet; Anna Zeitz |
| Abstract: | We provide evidence on the transmission of oil price movements to individual incomes for a large oil-importing economy. To do so, we trace the footprint of oil price surprises on the income elements of a representative household panel for Germany. An inflationary oil price shock persistently increases the likelihood of unemployment and leads to a sticky decline in contracted labour incomes even though hours worked remain unaffected. These responses are underlined by marked heterogeneity: more vulnerable household groups (namely, the young, less educated, and those with lower incomes) are more affected overall. Our results also highlight the importance of general equilibrium effects since the responses do not depend on the oil intensity of employment sectors. |
| Keywords: | Oil price shocks, Employment, Labour income, Household heterogeneity |
| JEL: | E32 E24 Q43 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:snb:snbwpa:2024-11 |
| By: | Guy Lacroix; Pierre-Carl Michaud |
| Abstract: | We provide empirical evidence on the effectiveness of a tax measure aimed at increasing the employment rates of older workers in Quebec, Canada. We use several data sources and various identification strategies. First, we use a Quebec-Ontario difference-in-differences design and do not detect robust effects on employment for most age groups except for those aged 60 to 64, but the common trend assumption is found not to hold. For this last group, we use an alternative identification strategy that exploits the variation in treatment intensity over time using longitudinal administrative tax data for Quebec only. Doing so, we do not f ind any effect on transitions in or out of the labour force. We do find a small positive effect on earnings (intensive margin) but a negative one on the affected workers’ net tax liability. Finally, addressing the invalid comparison with Ontario, we investigate the impact of the credit using a staggered adoption design exploiting differences across cohorts within Quebec. The results are consistent with the alternative approach. We conclude that the tax measure does not appear to be a cost-effective way of raising public revenues nor of increasing the employment rates of older workers. |
| Keywords: | older workers, labour market participation, tax incentives. |
| JEL: | J14 J16 H31 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rsi:cjpcha:02 |
| By: | Wei Cheng; Bruce A. Weinberg |
| Abstract: | The adoption of new ideas is critical for realizing their full potential and for advancing the knowledge frontier but it involves analyzing innovators, potential adopters, and the networks that connect them. This paper applies natural language processing, network analysis, and a novel fixed effects strategy to study how the aging of the biomedical research workforce affects idea adoption. We show that the relationship between adoption and innovator career age varies with network distance. Specifically, at short distances, young innovators’ ideas are adopted the most, while at greater network distances, mid-career innovators’ ideas have the highest adoption. The main reason for this contrast is that young innovators are close to young potential adopters who are more open to new ideas, but mid-career innovators are more central in networks. Overall adoption is hump-shaped in the career age of innovators. Simulations show that the aging of innovators and of potential adopters have comparable effects on the adoption of important new ideas. |
| JEL: | D85 J11 O33 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33030 |
| By: | Stefano Piasenti (University of Bologna); Süer Müge (HU Berlin) |
| Abstract: | Behavioral differences by biological sex are still not fully understood, suggesting that studying gender differences in behavioral traits through the lenses of continuous identity might be a promising avenue to understand the remaining observed gender gaps. Using a large U.S. online sample (N=2017) and machine learning, we develop and validate a new continuous gender identity measure consisting of separate femininity and masculinity scores. In a first study, we identify ninety attributes from prior research and conduct an experiment to classify them as feminine and masculine. In a subsequent study, a different group of participants completes tasks designed to elicit behavioral traits that have been previously documented in the behavioral economics literature to exhibit binary gender differences. Data for the second study are collected in two waves; the first wave serves as a training sample, allowing us to identify key attributes predicting behavioral traits, create candidate identity measures, and select the most effective one, comprising sixteen attributes, based on predictive power. Finally, we use the second wave (test sample) to validate our gender identity measure, which outperforms existing ones in explaining gender differences in economic decision-making. We show that confidence, competition, and risk are associated with masculinity, while altruism, equality, and efficiency are with femininity, providing new possibilities for targeted policymaking. |
| Keywords: | Biological sex; Gender identity; Machine learning; Online experiment; |
| JEL: | D91 J16 J62 C91 |
| Date: | 2024–10–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:513 |
| By: | Chiara Costi; Andrew Clark; Conchita D'Ambrosio; Anthony Lepinteur; Giorgia Menta |
| Abstract: | We here exploit an exogenous shift in working conditions for public-sector workers in Italy to establish the causal effect of a return-to-office (RTO) mandate on worker health and well-being. In nine waves of quarterly panel data we first find a significant fall in teleworking for those affected by the RTO mandate, who also spend more time outdoors, work fewer hours, and interact less with relatives and friends. The net effect of these lifestyle changes on a battery of health and well-being measures following the return to office work is insignificant. The place of work post-pandemic has neither positive nor negative health implications. |
| Keywords: | Return to office; Working from home; Health; Well-being |
| JEL: | I18 I31 J88 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irs:cepswp:2024-07 |