nep-lma New Economics Papers
on Labor Markets - Supply, Demand, and Wages
Issue of 2019‒08‒19
twenty-two papers chosen by
Joseph Marchand
University of Alberta

  1. Long-run consequences of informal elderly care and implications of public long-term care insurance By Korfhage, T.;
  2. Government Regulation and Lifecycle Wages: Evidence from Continuing Coverage Mandates By Maclean, J. Catherine; Webber, Douglas A.
  3. Confidence and Career Choices: An Experiment By Barron, Kai; Gravert, Christina
  4. Immigrants and Workplace Training: Evidence from Canadian Linked Employer Employee Data By Dostie, Benoit; Javdani, Mohsen
  5. Pay, Employment, and Dynamics of Young Firms By Tania Babina; Wenting Ma; Christian Moser; Paige Ouimet; Rebecca Zarutskie
  6. Is expansion of overeducation cohort-driven? Evidence from Poland By Jan Baran
  7. Long-Run Effects of Dynamically Assigned Treatments: A New Methodology and an Evaluation of Training Effects on Earnings By van den Berg, Gerard J.; Vikström, Johan
  8. Does Import Competition Reduce Domestic Innovation? Evidence from the 'China Stock' and Firm-Level Data on Canadian Manufacturing By Myeongwan Kim
  9. The Internal Spatial Organization of Firms: Evidence from Denmark By Acosta, Camilo; Lyngemark, Ditte Håkonsson
  10. Which Ladder to Climb? Decomposing Life Cycle Wage Dynamics By Bayer, Christian; Kuhn, Moritz
  11. Labor Demand Shocks at Birth and Cognitive Achievement during Childhood By Regmi, Krishna; Henderson, Daniel J.
  12. Integration in Global Value Chains and Employment in Europe By Filippo Bontadini; Rinaldo Evangelista; Valentina Meliciani; Maria Savona
  13. Missing Disinflation and Human Capital Depreciation By Abdoulaye Millogo; Jean-François Rouillard
  14. Formative Experiences and the Price of Gasoline By Christopher Severen; Arthur A. van Benthem
  15. Labour Supply and Childcare: Allowing Both Parents to Choose By Mumford, Karen A.; Parera-Nicolau, Antonia; Pena-Boquete, Yolanda
  16. The Effectiveness of Interventions to Reduce Informality in Low- and Middle Income Countries By Jessen, Jonas; Kluve, Jochen
  17. Self-Control: Determinants, Life Outcomes and Intergenerational Implications By Cobb-Clark, Deborah A.; Dahmann, Sarah C.; Kamhöfer, Daniel A.; Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah
  18. Is Employment Polarization Informative about Wage Inequality and Is Employment Really Polarizing? By Hunt, Jennifer; Nunn, Ryan
  19. Multiple Births, Birth Quality and Maternal Labor Supply: Analysis of IVF Reform in Sweden By Bhalotra, Sonia R.; Clarke, Damian; Mühlrad, Hanna; Palme, Mårten
  20. The Impact of High-Performance Work Systems on Employees: A Sectoral Comparison. By Michael White; Alex Bryson
  21. The impact of border changes and protectionism on real wages in early modern Scania By Kathryn E. Gary; Cristina Victoria Radu
  22. High performance work systems and public sector workplace performance in Britain. By Michael White; Alex Bryson

  1. By: Korfhage, T.;
    Abstract: In this paper, I estimate a dynamic structural model of labor supply, retirement, and informal care supply, incorporating labor market frictions and the German tax and benefit system. I find that informal elderly care has adverse and persistent effects on labor market outcomes and therefore negatively affects lifetime earnings, future pension benefits, and individuals'well-being. These consequences of caregiving are heterogeneous and depend on age, previous earnings, and institutional regulations. Policy simulations suggest that, even though fiscally costly, public long-term care insurance can offset the personal costs of caregiving to a large extent - in particular for low-income individuals.
    Keywords: long-term care; informal care; long-term care insurance; labor supply; retirement; pension benefits; structural model;
    JEL: I18 I38 J14 J22 J26
    Date: 2019–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:19/17&r=all
  2. By: Maclean, J. Catherine (Temple University); Webber, Douglas A. (Temple University)
    Abstract: We examine the lifecycle wage effects of health insurance market regulation that compels private insurers to offer continuing coverage to beneficiaries. Using a panel of male workers drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we model wages across the lifecycle as a function of the mandated number of months of continuing coverage at labor market entrance. Access to continuing coverage is plausibly valuable to young workers as this benefit facilities job mobility, which is important for early career wage growth and lifecycle wages, but is costly to firms. We show that more generous mandated continuing coverage at labor market entrance causes an initial wage decline of roughly 1% that reverses after five years in the labor market leading to higher wages later in the career. Wage increases are observable up to 30 years after labor market entrance. We provide suggestive evidence that increased job mobility early in the career is a mechanism for the observed wage effects.
    Keywords: regulation, job lock, continuing coverage, wage determination, persistence
    JEL: J3 H2 I13
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12464&r=all
  3. By: Barron, Kai (WZB Berlin); Gravert, Christina (University of Copenhagen)
    Abstract: Confidence is often seen as the key to success. Empirical evidence about how such beliefs about one\'s abilities causally map into actions is, however, sparse. In this paper, we experimentally investigate the causal effect of an increase in confidence about one\'s own ability on two central choices made by workers in the labor market: choosing between jobs with different incentive schemes, and the subsequent choice of how much effort to exert within the job. An exogenous increase in confidence leads to an increase in subjects\' propensity to choose payment schemes that depend heavily on ability. This is detrimental for low ability workers. Policy implications are discussed.
    Keywords: overconfidence; experiment; beliefs; real-effort; career choices;
    JEL: C91 D03 M50 J24
    Date: 2019–07–30
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:169&r=all
  4. By: Dostie, Benoit (HEC Montreal); Javdani, Mohsen (University of British Columbia, Okanagan)
    Abstract: Job training is one of the most important aspects of skill formation and human capital accumulation. In this study we use longitudinal Canadian linked employer-employee data to examine whether white/visible minority immigrants and Canadian-borns experience different opportunities in two well-defined measures of firm-sponsored training: on-the-job training and classroom training. While we find no differences in on-the-job training between different groups, our results suggest that visible minority immigrants are significantly less likely to receive classroom training, and receive fewer and shorter classroom training courses, an experience that is not shared by white immigrants. For male visible minority immigrants, these gaps are entirely driven by their differential sorting into workplaces with less training opportunities. For their female counterparts however, they are mainly driven by differences that emerge within workplaces. We find no evidence that years spent in Canada or education level can appreciably reduce these gaps. Accounting for potential differences in career paths and hierarchical level also fails to explain these differences. We find however that these gaps are only experienced by visible minority immigrants who work in the for-profit sector, with those in the non-profit sector experiencing positive or no gaps in training. Finally, we show that other poor labor market outcomes of visible minority immigrants, including their wages and promotion opportunities, stem in part from these training gaps.
    Keywords: immigrants, wages, firm-sponsored training, linked employer-employee data
    JEL: J24 L22 M53
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12511&r=all
  5. By: Tania Babina; Wenting Ma; Christian Moser; Paige Ouimet; Rebecca Zarutskie
    Abstract: Why do young firms pay less? Using confidential microdata from the US Census Bureau, we find lower earnings among workers at young firms. However, we argue that such measurement is likely subject to worker and firm selection. Exploiting the two-sided panel nature of the data to control for relevant dimensions of worker and firm heterogeneity, we uncover a positive and significant young-firm pay premium. Furthermore, we show that worker selection at firm birth is related to future firm dynamics, including survival and growth. We tie our empirical findings to a simple model of pay, employment, and dynamics of young firms.
    Keywords: Young-Firm Pay Premium, Selection, Worker and Firm Heterogeneity, Firm Dynamics, Startups
    JEL: J30 J31 D22 E24 M13
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:19-23&r=all
  6. By: Jan Baran (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw)
    Abstract: The study offers insight into dynamics of overeducation in Poland. The share of overeducated workers among tertiary educated workers grew substantially by about 8 p.p. between 2006 and 2016. In the paper, changing overeducation risk is disentangled into age, period and cohort effects. A strong upward trend in cohort effects is identified for individuals born after 1970, but not for older generations. It suggests that overeducation is a phenomenon which affects more profoundly individuals who entered the labour market after the collapse of the communism. Moreover, the study confirms that overeducation decreases with age, which has been already a well-documented finding in the literature.
    Keywords: overeducation, education mismatch, tertiary education, age–period–cohort
    JEL: I21 J21 J24
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2019-13&r=all
  7. By: van den Berg, Gerard J. (University of Bristol); Vikström, Johan (IFAU)
    Abstract: We propose and implement a new method to estimate treatment effects in settings where individuals need to be in a certain state (e.g. unemployment) to be eligible for a treatment, treatments may commence at different points in time, and the outcome of interest is realized after the individual left the initial state. An example concerns the effect of training on earnings in subsequent employment. Any evaluation needs to take into account that some of those who are not trained at a certain time in unemployment will leave unemployment before training while others will be trained later. We are interested in effects of the treatment at a certain elapsed duration compared to "no treatment at any subsequent duration". We prove identification under unconfoundedness and propose inverse probability weighting estimators. A key feature is that the weights given to outcome observations of non-treated depend on the remaining time in the initial state. We study earnings effects of WIA training in the US and long-run effects of a training program for unemployed workers in Sweden.
    Keywords: treatment effects, dynamic treatment evaluation, program evaluation, duration analysis, matching, unemployment, employment
    JEL: C14 J3
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12470&r=all
  8. By: Myeongwan Kim
    Abstract: A key economic issue in Canada is the declining Business Enterprise Research and Development in manufacturing since the early 2000s. Accompanying this, the total factor productivity (TFP) growth in manufacturing slowed after 2000. However, there has not been a definitive explanation for these trends. To deepen our understanding of this phenomenon, we focus on the increasing Chinese import share in the total domestic absorption in Canadian manufacturing since the early 2000s, which appears to be driven by positive supply shocks within Chinese manufacturing. Based on a firm-level database covering all incorporated firms in Canadian manufacturing, we find that rising Chinese import competition led to declines in R&D expenditure and TFP growth within firms but reallocated employment towards more productive firms and induced less productive firms to exit. The negative within-effects were pronounced for firms that were initially smaller, less profitable, and less productive. These firms also experienced declines in their profit margins due to rising Chinese import competition while larger and better-performing firms did not. Our estimates imply that rising Chinese import competition can explain about 7 per cent of the total decline of $1.36 billion (2007 CAD) in R&D expenditure in Canadian manufacturing between 2005 and 2010. Although it led to declines in TFP within firms, the positive reallocation effects more than offset the negative within-effect. Had there been no increase in Chinese import competition between 2005 and 2010, TFP in Canadian manufacturing would have declined by 1.26 per cent per year instead of the actual 1.09 per cent per year over this period.
    Keywords: China Shock, Canada, Imports, Productivity, Innovation
    JEL: O32 O51 O53 L60
    Date: 2019–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sls:resrep:1711&r=all
  9. By: Acosta, Camilo; Lyngemark, Ditte Håkonsson
    Abstract: While multi-establishment firms are an important part of the economy, little is known about their spatial organization. In this article, we study how the location and the occupational composition of establishments within firms has changed during the last 36 years. Using Danish administrative employer-employee data, we present a series of stylized facts regarding the spatial internal organization of firms. We show that the average number of establishments at the firm level increased by 36% during this period. Moreover, the average distance of the establishments and workers to their headquarters has increased by more than 200%. These changes are mainly driven by increases in the average distance of production workers and business service workers, and a higher use of the latter. Finally, we show that the ratio of managers to production and clerical workers within firms has increased, in particular in establishments located in the largest urban municipalities. After presenting the facts, we briefly discuss some of the mechanisms that could be behind these changes.
    Keywords: Spatial organization, agglomeration, multi-establishment firms, occupational composition
    JEL: J20 L22 L23 R00 R30
    Date: 2019–07–16
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:95283&r=all
  10. By: Bayer, Christian (University of Bonn); Kuhn, Moritz (University of Bonn)
    Abstract: Wages grow and become more unequal as workers age. Economic theory focuses on worker investment in human capital, search for employers, and residual wage shocks to account for these life cycle wage dynamics. We highlight the importance of jobs: collections of tasks and duties defined by employers within the production process. We provide empirical evidence that climbing the career ladder toward jobs characterized by more responsibility, complexity, and autonomy accounts for the largest part of life cycle wage dynamics. It accounts for 50% of average wage growth, 50% of rising differences between gender, and virtually all of rising dispersion within gender over the life cycle.
    Keywords: life cycle wage growth, wage inequality, career ladder
    JEL: D33 E24 J31
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12473&r=all
  11. By: Regmi, Krishna (Montana State University); Henderson, Daniel J. (University of Alabama)
    Abstract: As epidemiological studies have shown that conditions during gestation and early childhood affect adult health outcomes, we examine the effect of local labor market conditions in the year of birth on cognitive development in childhood. To address the endogeneity of labor market conditions, we construct gender-specific predicted employment growth rates at the state level by interacting an industry's share in a state's employment with the industry's national growth rate. We find that an increase in employment opportunities for men leads to an improvement in children's cognitive achievement as measured by reading and math test scores. Additionally, our estimates show a positive and significant effect of male-specific employment growth on children's Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores and in home environment in the year of birth. We find an insignificant positive effect of buoyancy in females' employment opportunities on said test scores.
    Keywords: labor market conditions, cognitive ability, child's well-being
    JEL: J20 J21 I20 I30
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12521&r=all
  12. By: Filippo Bontadini (SPRU, University of Sussex, UK/OFCE, Nice); Rinaldo Evangelista (University of Camerino); Valentina Meliciani (University Luiss Guido Carli, Department of Management); Maria Savona (SPRU, University of Sussex, UK)
    Abstract: This chapter aims at revisiting the empirical evidence on the recent trends of countries’ integration in global value chains in Europe. It investigates two potential sources of unbalances that these processes might relate to: (i) the sectoral specialization of the patterns of international fragmentation, whether high technology manufacturing or knowledge intensive services (KIBS); (ii) the occupational categories that have benefited or been penalized by these trends. A rich empirical mapping of these trends in the European countries is provided, based on OECD ICIO and EU ISCO data. The results on the overall and sectoral-specific trends of integration in GVCs and the associated changes in the shares of managers and manual workers show a dual-speed and qualitatively different integration patterns in Europe, with Eastern European (EE) countries rapidly integrating in high tech manufacturing, and the core of western countries strengthening their mutual integration in the KIBS area. Despite the relatively “good quality” integration of EE countries, the evidence does not seem to reveal a mirroring upgrading of employment structures. While this empirical contribution does not attempt to identify causal relationships, the picture provided in the chapter shows that, overall, integration in GVC seems to reproduce and perhaps exacerbate the initial asymmetries in the sectoral and employment structure, with manual workers occupation reducing overall and knowledge intensive occupations concentrating in western Europe.
    Keywords: Global value chains, offshoring, KIBS, High-tech manufacturing, employment, skills
    JEL: J24
    Date: 2019–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sru:ssewps:2019-16&r=all
  13. By: Abdoulaye Millogo (Département d'économique, Université de Sherbrooke); Jean-François Rouillard (Département d'économique, Université de Sherbrooke)
    Abstract: In line with New-Keynesian predictions and certain historical trajectories that tracked by inflation during past crises, the context of the Great Recession should have spurred a sharp fall in inflation or even deflation. On the contrary, the sensitivity of inflation to changes in unemployment has diminished, giving rise to the paradox of missing disinflation. By investigating this paradox, this article develops a variant of the New-Keynesian models where mechanisms of depreciation of human capital are implemented. In the model, rising unemployment translates into a relatively large increase in long-term unemployment. Unemployed people with low levels of human capital become dominant and more workers are now likely to suffer from depreciation of human capital. The depreciation weakens the intensity with which the unemployed prospect new jobs and moderates the decline in wages and prices. Calibrated to the United States economy, model simulations show that this model variant compares relatively better the highlights of missing disinflation than a New-Keynesian without depreciation of human capital. In response to shocks of the same size, the response of inflation in the model with depreciation of human capital is 3 to 4-fold less than in standard New-Keynesian models.
    Keywords: Missing Disinflation, Deflation, Human Capital Depreciation, Unemployment, Great Recession
    JEL: E31 E32 J24
    Date: 2019–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shr:wpaper:19-03&r=all
  14. By: Christopher Severen; Arthur A. van Benthem
    Abstract: An individual’s initial experiences with a common good, such as gasoline, can shape their behavior for decades. We first show that the 1979 oil crisis had a persistent negative effect on the likelihood that individuals that came of driving age during this time drove to work in the year 2000 (i.e., in their mid 30s). The effect is stronger for those with lower incomes and those in cities. Combining data on many cohorts, we then show that large increases in gasoline prices between the ages of 15 and 18 significantly reduce both (i) the likelihood of driving a private automobile to work and (ii) total annual vehicle miles traveled later in life, while also increasing public transit use. Differences in driver license age requirements generate additional variation in the formative window. These effects cannot be explained by contemporaneous income and do not appear to be only due to increased costs from delayed driving skill acquisition. Instead, they seem to reflect the formation of preferences for driving or persistent changes in the perceived costs of driving.
    Keywords: formative experiences, preference persistence, path dependence, driving behavior, gasoline price
    JEL: D12 D90 L91 Q41 R41
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7757&r=all
  15. By: Mumford, Karen A. (University of York); Parera-Nicolau, Antonia (European Commission); Pena-Boquete, Yolanda (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
    Abstract: We develop and estimate a structural model of labour supply for two parent families in Australia, taking explicit account of the importance of childcare related variables. Our main contribution is to consider the labour supply decisions of both parents and their choice of childcare simultaneously. Labour supply decisions of mothers are found to be substantially more responsive to changes in their own wage (at intensive and extensive margins) than is the case for fathers, with minimal cross-wage labour supply responses from fathers. Our results imply that policies increasing the wage of mothers will be associated with marked increases in labour market participation and in the working hours of mothers in the Australian labour market, with little offsetting decline in the labour supply of fathers.
    Keywords: childcare, parental labour supply, discrete, unitary
    JEL: J00 J13 J22
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12500&r=all
  16. By: Jessen, Jonas (DIW Berlin); Kluve, Jochen (Humboldt University Berlin, RWI)
    Abstract: Labor markets in low- and middle income countries are characterized by high levels of informality. A multitude of interventions have therefore been implemented in many countries with the objective to increase the formalization of firms and workers, including information campaigns, simplification of registration procedures, reductions of payroll taxes and social security contributions, and interventions that enforce labor or business formalization. In this paper, we compile a database of 157 impact estimates from 32 academic studies that evaluate empirically one or more of these formalization interventions. The empirical analysis correlates the impact estimates of the primary studies — given as either (i) a measure of sign and statistical significance or (ii) the effect size — with explanatory factors such as the intervention type, the outcome variable, the scope of the intervention (program or policy), and other covariates. Several key findings emerge: first, the intervention type is not a strong determinant for the effectiveness of formalization interventions, though tax incentives and labor inspection are most likely to display significant positive effects. Second, the outcome "worker registration" shows significantly better results than other outcomes. Third, interventions at scale — i.e. formalization "policies" — are more effective on average than singular "programs".
    Keywords: formalization, labor registration, business registration, impact evaluation
    JEL: C40 J08 J48
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12487&r=all
  17. By: Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. (University of Sydney); Dahmann, Sarah C. (University of Sydney); Kamhöfer, Daniel A. (Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE)); Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf)
    Abstract: This paper studies self-control in a nationally representative sample. Using the well-established Tangney scale to measure trait self-control, we find that people’s age as well as the political and economic institutions they are exposed to have an economically meaningful impact on their level of self-control. A higher degree of self-control is, in turn, associated with better health, educational and labor market outcomes as well as greater financial and overall well-being. Parents’ self-control is linked to reduced behavioral problems among their children. Importantly, we demonstrate that self-control is a key behavioral economic construct which adds significant explanatory power beyond other more commonly studied personality traits and economic preference parameters. Our results suggest that self-control is potentially a good target for intervention policies.
    Keywords: self-control, Tangney scale, personality traits, intergenerational transmission
    JEL: D91 J24
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12488&r=all
  18. By: Hunt, Jennifer (Rutgers University); Nunn, Ryan (Brookings Institution)
    Abstract: Equating a job with an individual rather than an occupation, we re-examine whether U.S. workers are increasingly concentrated in low and high-wage jobs relative to middle-wage jobs, a phenomenon known as employment polarization. By assigning workers in the CPS to real hourly wage bins with time-invariant thresholds and tracking over time the shares of workers in each, we do find a decline since 1973 in the share of workers earning middle wages. However, we find that a strong increase in the share of workers in the top bin is accompanied by a slight decline in the share in the bottom bin, inconsistent with employment polarization. Turning to occupation-based analysis, we show that the share of employment in low-wage occupations is trending up only from 2002-2012, and that the apparent earlier growth and therefore polarization found in the literature is an artefact of occupation code redefinitions. This new timing rules out the hypothesis that computerization and automation lie behind both rising wage inequality and occupation-based employment polarization in the United States.
    Keywords: employment polarization, wage inequality
    JEL: J31 J62
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12472&r=all
  19. By: Bhalotra, Sonia R. (University of Essex); Clarke, Damian (Universidad de Santiago de Chile); Mühlrad, Hanna (IFN - Research Institute of Industrial Economics); Palme, Mårten (Stockholm University)
    Abstract: In this study we examine the passage of a reform to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures in Sweden in 2003. Following publication of medical evidence showing that pregnancy success rates could be maintained using single rather than multiple embryo transfers, the single embryo transfer (SET) was mandated as the default IVF procedure. Using linked registry data for the period 1998-2007, we find that the SET reform was associated with a precipitous drop in the share of multiple births of 63%. This narrowed differences in health between IVF and non- IVF births by 53%, and differences in the labor market outcomes of mothers three years after birth by 85%. For first time mothers it also narrowed the gap in maternal health between IVF and non-IVF births by 36%. Our findings imply that more widespread adoption of SET could lead to massive gains, reducing hospitalization costs and the foregone income of mothers and improving the long-run socioeconomic outcomes of children. This is important given that the share of IVF facilitated births exceeds 3% in several industrialized countries and is on the rise.
    Keywords: IVF, fertility, maternal health, neonatal health, career penalty, human capital formation
    JEL: J13 I11 I12 I38 J24
    Date: 2019–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12490&r=all
  20. By: Michael White (University of Westminster); Alex Bryson (University College London, National Institute of Social and Economic Research and Institute for the Study of Labor)
    Abstract: Using nationally representative linked employer-employee surveys of workplaces with 50 or more employees we find the adoption of High-Performance Work Systems (HPWS) in the private sector is largely positively correlated with employee job attitudes pre-recession. However, high intensity HPWS has partly adverse consequences for private sector employees in the post-recession period. In contrast, there are no indications of public sector employees responding positively or negatively to HPWS and HPWS is not associated with adverse effects post-recession. The sectoral difference in results is interpreted in terms of different employment relationships and different sources of employee motivation.
    Keywords: high performance work systems; public sector; organizational commitment; intrinsic job satisfaction; well-being
    JEL: I31 J45 M5
    Date: 2019–08–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qss:dqsswp:1904&r=all
  21. By: Kathryn E. Gary (Lund University); Cristina Victoria Radu (University of Southern Denmark)
    Abstract: In the aftermath of Brexit there has been increased speculation into what national borders mean for economic and individual wellbeing. Investigating similar events in history can help us understand some of these potential effects. Malmö, a city in modern-day southern Sweden, was a part of Denmark until the middle of the seventeenth century, located just across the Sound from the capital of Copenhagen. Malmö and its surrounding regions were ceded to Sweden at the end of the Second Northern War in 1658 and Sweden immediately established barriers to trade and to human capital flow between its new territories and Denmark, going so far as to prohibit Swedish attendance to Copenhagen University and instead establishing its own university in Lund in 1666. Malmö and its surrounding region, Scania, quickly shifted from an important trade city located within sight of the capital to a distant periphery with limited trade capacity. This change in possession of Scania provides a historical experiment that can highlight the effect of the second nature geography changes as well as protectionism on well-being. We use a novel database of Danish and Swedish real wages to investigate the impact of these changes on Scanian living standards by employing a difference in difference approach to show that wages fell more in Scania than those in surrounding regions in relation to the border change and associated protectionism.
    Keywords: Border Changes, Real Wages, Second Nature Geography, Welfare Ratios, Standard of Living, Denmark, Sweden, Malmo, Scania, Scandinavia, Early Modern Period
    JEL: J31 N33 N93
    Date: 2019–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0166&r=all
  22. By: Michael White (University of Westminster); Alex Bryson (University College London, National Institute of Social and Economic Research and Institute for the Study of Labor)
    Abstract: Using nationally representative surveys of workplaces with 50 or more employees we find the adoption of High-Performance Work Systems (HPWS) in the public sector are positively correlated with workplace financial performance and the implementation of workplace organizational change. The associations are stable in 2004 and 2011, despite the intervening recession and cuts in public finance. The results are thus broadly consistent with studies finding similar positive correlations between HPWS and workplace performance in the private sector. There was little heterogeneity in effects across sectors within the public sector, with the exception of health services where the effects of HPWS on workplace change were lower.
    Keywords: high performance work systems; public sector; financial performance; organizational change
    JEL: J45 M5
    Date: 2019–08–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qss:dqsswp:1903&r=all

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