|
on Labor Markets - Supply, Demand, and Wages |
| By: | Hernnäs, Sofia (Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Automation affects workers because it affects the task content of their occupations. I propose a model which takes two important labor market features into account: (i) automation happens to tasks and (ii) workers with bundled skills work in occupations with bundled tasks. Equilibrium skill returns vary across occupations, and the impact of automation on skill returns is occupation-specific. Using my framework, I find that skill returns in the automated task decline if tasks are gross complements, consistent with much previous literature. Inequality increases in the occupation that is least intensive in the automated task, consistent with the development in Sweden 1985 - 2013. More generally, the model allows exploring how automation of one task affects the task content of occupations, returns to tasks, workers’earnings and inequality. |
| Keywords: | Labor Demand; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials |
| JEL: | J23 J24 J31 |
| Date: | 2020–12–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2020_006&r=all |
| By: | Alessandra Bonfiglioli; Rosario Crinò; Harald Fadinger; Gino Gancia |
| Abstract: | We use French data over the 1994-2013 period to study how imports of industrial robots affect firm-level outcomes. Compared to other firms operating in the same 5-digit sector, robot importers are larger, more productive, and employ a higher share of managers and engineers. Over time, robot import occurs after periods of expansion in firm size, and is followed by improvements in efficiency and a fall in demand for labor. Guided by a simple model, we develop various empirical strategies to identify the causal effects of robot adoption. Our results suggest that, while demand shocks generate a positive correlation between robot imports and employment, exogenous changes in automation lead to job losses. We also find that robot imports increase productivity and the employment share of high-skill professions, but have a weak effect on total sales. The latter result suggests that productivity gains from automation may not be entirely passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices. |
| Keywords: | automation, displacement, firms, robots |
| JEL: | J23 J24 O33 D22 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8741&r=all |
| By: | Pierre Koning (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Paul Muller (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Roger Prudon (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | While a large share of Disability Insurance recipients are expected to recover, outflow rates from temporary disability schemes are typically negligible. We estimate the disincentive effects of disability benefits on the response to a (mental) health improvement using administrative data on all Dutch disability benefit applicants. We compare those below the DI eligibility threshold with those above and find that disincentives significantly reduce work resumption after health improves. Approximately half of the response to recovery is offset by benefits. Structural labor supply model estimates suggest disincentive effects are substantially larger when the workers’ earnings capacity is fully restored. |
| Keywords: | Disability insurance, Mental health, Labor supply, Health shocks |
| JEL: | J08 I1 J22 |
| Date: | 2020–12–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20200084&r=all |
| By: | Julien Albertini (Univ Lyon, Université Lumière Lyon 2, GATE UMR 5824, F-69130 Ecully, France); Arthur Poirier (GAINS, University of Le Mans); Anthony Terriau (GAINS, University of Le Mans) |
| Abstract: | As a complement to the federal EITC, some states offer their own EITC, typically calculated as a percentage of the federal EITC. In this paper, we analyze the effect of state EITC on education using policy discontinuities at U.S. state borders. Our estimates reveal that an increase in state EITC leads to a statistically significant drop in high school completion. We then use a life-cycle matching model with directed search and endogenous educational choices, search intensities, hirings, hours worked, and separations to investigate the effects of EITC on the labor market in the long run and along the transitional dynamics. We show that a tax credit targeted at low-wage (and low-skilled) workers reduces the relative return to schooling, thereby generating a powerful disincentive to pursue long-term studies. In the long run, this results in an increase in the proportion of low-skilled workers in the economy, which may have important implications in terms of employment, productivity, and income inequalities. |
| Keywords: | EITC, Education, Human capital, Search and matching, Life cycle |
| JEL: | D15 E24 H24 I24 J24 J6 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gat:wpaper:2036&r=all |
| By: | Lance Lochner; Youngmin Park |
| Abstract: | This paper develops and estimates a two-factor model of intergenerational skill transmission when earnings inequality reflects differences in individual skills and other non-skill shocks. We consider heterogeneity in both initial skills and skill growth rates, allowing variation in skill growth to change over the lifecycle. Using administrative tax data on two linked generations of Canadians covering 37 years, we exploit covariances in log earnings (at different ages) both across and within generations to identify and estimate the intergenerational correlation structure for initial skills and skill growth rates, lifecycle skill growth profiles, and the dynamics of non-skill earnings shocks. We estimate low intergenerational elasticities (IGEs) for earnings in Canada (less than 0.2, even when based on 5- and 9-year average earnings); however, skill IGEs are typically 2-3 times larger due to considerable (and persistent) variation in earnings conditional on skills. Both earnings and skill IGEs decline substantially for more recent cohorts and are lower for children born to younger fathers. We estimate significant heterogeneity in both initial skills and skill growth rates, showing that intergenerational transmission of these factors explains up to 40% of children's skill variation. Skills become a more important determinant of earnings over the first part of workers' careers, while intergenerational transmission of skills becomes less important with age. Although "inherited" initial skills (compared to skill growth) are a more important determinant of children's skills throughout their lives, parents' initial skills and skill growth rates are equally important determinants of children's skills, largely because both strongly influence children's initial skills. Finally, we study intergenerational mobility for the 35 largest cities in Canada, determining the extent to which considerable differences in earnings and skill IGEs vary with the extent of local heterogeneity in parental skills vs. earnings instability. |
| JEL: | D31 J24 J62 |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28141&r=all |
| By: | Alexander Bick; Adam Blandin |
| Abstract: | The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a central source of U.S. labor market data. We show that, for a few thousand dollars, researchers can quickly design and implement their own online survey to supplement the CPS. The survey closely follows core features of the CPS, ensuring that outcomes are conceptually compatible and allowing researchers to weight and validate results using the official CPS. Yet the survey also allows for faster data collection, added flexibility and novel questions. We show that the survey provided useful estimates of U.S. labor market aggregates several weeks ahead of the CPS during the turbulent start of the COVID-19 recession. We then assess the extent of downward nominal wage rigidity at the onset of the pandemic, finding that wage reductions were widespread, but were more common for job-switchers and recalled workers. We discuss a wide range of additional applications. |
| Keywords: | labor market survey; real-time data; nominal wage rigidity |
| JEL: | E24 J21 C81 |
| Date: | 2020–12–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:feddwp:89244&r=all |
| By: | Brenda Samaniego de la Parra; León Fernández Bujanda |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the effects of increasing the cost of informal jobs on formal firms' and workers' outcomes. We create novel datasets combining administrative records and household surveys data, and exploit exogenous variation in this cost generated by over 480,000 random work-site inspections in Mexico. Increasing the cost of informal jobs at formal firms leads to lower employment growth, lower formal job creation, and higher formal and informal job destruction. For informal workers, inspections increase the probability of being formalized at the inspected firm, but also increase the probability of dissolving the informal match. Transitioning to a formal job due to an inspection increases the probability of being poached to a new, formal job. |
| JEL: | D22 E26 J46 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdm:wpaper:2020-19&r=all |
| By: | Jonas Loebbing |
| Abstract: | What are the implications of (endogenous) directed technical change for the design of redistributive income taxes? I study this question in a Mirrleesian economy augmented to include endogenous technology development and adoption choices by firms. Under certain conditions, any progressive tax reform induces technical change that compresses the pre-tax wage distribution. The key intuition is that progressive tax reforms tend to increase labor supply of less skilled relative to more skilled workers, which induces firms to develop and use technologies that are more complementary to the less skilled. These directed technical change effects make the optimal tax scheme more progressive, raising marginal tax rates at the right tail of the income distribution and lowering them at the left tail. For reasonable calibrations, the impact of directed technical change on the optimal tax is quantitatively important: optimal marginal tax rates are reduced substantially for incomes below the median and increase monotonically over the bulk of the income distribution instead of being U-shaped (as in most of the previous literature). |
| Keywords: | optimal taxation, directed technical change, endogenous technical change, wage inequality |
| JEL: | H21 H23 H24 J31 O33 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8743&r=all |
| By: | Francesco D'Acunto; Jin Xie; Jiaquan Yao |
| Abstract: | Trust between parties should drive the negotiation and design of contract: if parties did not trust each others' reaction to unplanned events, they might agree to pay higher costs of negotiation to complete contracts. Using a unique sample of U.S. principal-agent consulting contracts and a negative shock to trust between parties staggered across space and over time, we find that lower trust increases contract completeness. Not only contract complexity but also the verifiable states of the world contracts cover increase after a drop in trust. The results hold for several text-analysis-based measures of completeness and do not arise when agents are also principals (shareholders) or in other falsification tests. Non-compete agreements, confidentiality and indemnification clauses, and restrictions to agents' actions are more likely to be added to contracts signed in the same locations, same industries, and same years after a negative shock to trust. |
| Keywords: | empirical contract theory, incomplete contracts, cultural economics, beliefs and choice, corporate finance, consulting, textual analysis, non-compete agreements, big five, fraud, accounting, management, organization |
| JEL: | D86 D91 J33 L14 Z10 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8714&r=all |
| By: | Jim Yongtao Jin; Geethanjali Selvaretnam |
| Abstract: | There are circumstantial and researched evidence that people’s preferences to work differ and change. We depart from partial equilibrium models which show decisions for labour and leisure depend on their relative prices. This paper presents a simple general equilibrium framework to show that labour hours are determined by the preference to work and are independent of real wages and consumption. Moreover, the theoretical model enables us to estimate the preference to work at the macro level. A panel data analysis across countries for the years 1990 – 2018 shows with statistical significance that preference to work has been on the downward trend and has a negative relationship with GDP per capita and the ratio of wage income to GDP. Results also show that higher the preference to work, higher the GDP growth rate and lower the reported level of happiness. |
| Keywords: | work, labour hours, preference to work, economic growth, happiness, general equilibrium |
| JEL: | J22 O4 I31 D5 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gla:glaewp:2020_30&r=all |
| By: | Rune Vejlin; Gregory F. Veramendi |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a sufficient statistics approach for estimating the role of search frictions in wage dispersion and lifecycle wage growth. We show how the wage dynamics of displaced workers are directly informative of both for a large class of search models. Specifically, the correlation between pre- and post-displacement wages is informative of frictional wage dispersion. Furthermore, the fraction of displaced workers who suffer a wage loss is informative of frictional wage growth and job-to-job mobility, independent of the job-offer distribution and other labor-market parameters. Applying our methodology to US data, we find that search frictions account for less than 20 percent of wage dispersion. In addition, we estimate that between 40 to 80 percent of workers experience no frictional wage growth during an employment spell. Our approach allows us to estimate how frictions change over time. We find that frictional wage dispersion has declined substantially since 1980 and that frictional wage growth, while low, is more important towards the end of expansionary periods. We finish by estimating two versions of a random search model to show how at least two different mechanisms—involuntary job transitions or compensating differentials—can reconcile our results with the job-to-job mobility seen in the data. Regardless of the mechanism, the estimated models show that frictional wage growth accounts for about 15 percent of lifecycle wage growth. |
| Keywords: | search models, wage dispersion, wage growth, sufficient statistics, displacement |
| JEL: | E24 J31 J64 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8722&r=all |
| By: | Giovanni Gallo (Sapienza University of Rome); Michele Raitano (Sapienza University of Rome) |
| Abstract: | Using a static microsimulation model based on a link between survey and administrative data, the article investigates the effects of the pandemic on income distribution in Italy. The analysis focuses both on individuals and on households, by simulating changes in labour incomes and in equivalised incomes, respectively. For both units of observations, changes before and after the emergency income benefits introduced by the Government to deal with the effects of the COVID-19 emergency are compared. The effects of the pandemic are simulated for the whole 2020 under three different scenarios capturing an increasing length of the pandemic. We find that the pandemic has led to a relatively greater drop in labour incomes for those lying in the poorest quantiles, but they were the same having benefited more from the emergency benefits. As a result, compared with the ‘No-COVID scenario’, income poverty and inequality indexes significantly grow in all scenarios when emergency benefits are not considered, whereas the poverty increase greatly narrows and inequality levels slightly decrease once benefits are considered. This evidence signals the crucial role played by cash social transfers to contrast the most serious economic consequences of the pandemic. |
| Keywords: | income distribution, inequality, poverty, emergency benefits, microsimulations, Italy, Covid-19 |
| JEL: | D31 D63 E27 I32 J31 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2020-566&r=all |
| By: | José-Ignacio Antón; Enrique Fernández-Macías; Rudolf Winter-Ebmer |
| Abstract: | Whereas there are recent papers on the eect of robot adoption on employ- ment and wages, there is no evidence on how robots aect non-monetary working conditions. We explore the impact of robot adoption on several domains of non-monetary working conditions in Europe over the period 19952005 combining information from the World Robotics Survey and the European Working Conditions Survey. Aiming to deal with the possible en- dogeneity of robot deployment, we employ an instrumental variables strategy, using the robot exposure by sector in other developed countries as an instru- ment. Our results indicate that robotization has a negative impact on the quality of work in the dimension of work intensity and no relevant impact on the domains of physical environment or skills and discretion. |
| Keywords: | robotization, working conditions, job quality, Europe, regional labour markets |
| JEL: | J24 J81 O33 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jku:econwp:2020-20&r=all |
| By: | Amanda Y. Agan; Sonja B. Starr |
| Abstract: | Using a large field experiment, we show that racial composition of employer neighborhoods predicts employment discrimination patterns in a direction suggesting in-group bias. Our data also show racial disparities in the geographic distribution of job postings. Simulations illustrate how these patterns combine to shape disparities. When jobs are located far from Black neighborhoods, Black applicants are doubly disadvantaged: discrimination patterns disfavor them, and they have fewer nearby opportunities. Finally, building on prior work on Ban-the-Box laws, we show that employers in less Black neighborhoods appear much likelier to stereotype Black applicants as potentially criminal when they lack criminal record information. |
| JEL: | J23 J71 R23 |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28153&r=all |
| By: | Muehlemann, Samuel; Pfann, Gerard (RS: GSBE Theme Learning and Work, RS: GSBE Theme Data-Driven Decision-Making, RS: GSBE Theme Creativity, Innovation & Entrepreneurship , Organisation,Strategy & Entrepreneurship); Pfeifer, Harald; Dietrich, Hans |
| Abstract: | We present a model with heterogeneous inputs and constant elasticity of substitution to examine the possible effects of a supply shock in the market for apprenticeship training. The model’s predictions are tested using data from a German high school reform that led to a one-time increase in the supply of highly educated apprentices. A difference-in-differences estimation strategy exploits regional variation in the timing of implementation, and an instrumental variable approach identifies the supply shock effects. We find that apprenticeship contracts among individuals with a high school degree increased by 7.8%, while apprentice wages were unaffected by the supply shock. Moreover, we find no evidence of substitution effects, as the number of training contracts among individuals with a lower-level school degree remained unchanged. Our model predicts that such effects may occur when wages are sticky for apprentices with a high level of education relative to their productivity, which signals inefficiencies in the market for apprenticeship training. |
| JEL: | I21 J20 |
| Date: | 2020–12–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:umaror:2020013&r=all |
| By: | Bas Jacobs (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Uwe Thuemmel (University of Zurich) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how linear tax and education policy should optimally respond to skill-biased technical change (SBTC). SBTC affects optimal taxes and subsidies by changing i) direct distributional benefits, ii) indirect redistributional effects due to wage-(de)compression, and iii) education distortions. Analytically, the effect of SBTC on these three components is shown to be ambiguous. Simulations for the US economy demonstrate that SBTC makes the tax system more progressive, since SBTC raises the direct distributional benefits of income taxes, which more than offset their larger indirect distributional losses, and it increases education distortions. Also, SBTC lowers optimal education subsidies, since SBTC generates larger direct distributional losses of education subsidies, which more than offset their larger indirect distributional gains, and it exacerbates education distortions. |
| Keywords: | Human capital, General equilibrium, Optimal taxation, Education subsidies, Technological change |
| JEL: | O3 H2 H5 I2 J2 |
| Date: | 2020–12–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20200085&r=all |
| By: | Fabienne Kiener; Ann-Sophie Gnehm; Uschi Backes-Gellner |
| Abstract: | For non-cognitive skills, economics research has focused primarily on social skills as one element. One important, largely unexplored element is self-competence, the ability to act responsibly for oneself. We therefore study returns to self-competence adding heterogeneous and complementary returns to the literature on non-cognitive skills. Using texts of training curricula as data source, we apply machine-learning methods to identify self-competence in occupations. Combining these measures with labor market data, we find heterogeneous returns to self-competence: A medium level of self-competence has the strongest wage returns compared to low or high levels, but with high cognitive requirements also high self-competence pays. |
| Keywords: | non-cognitive skills, human capital, text as data, curricula content analyses, vocational education and training |
| JEL: | I26 J24 M53 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iso:educat:0175&r=all |
| By: | Giménez-Nadal, José Ignacio; Molina, José Alberto; Velilla, Jorge |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic has confined millions in their homes, representing an unprecedented case for spending more time together with family members. This is a challenge for households, given that more time with the partner or children may not necessarily translate into increased well-being. This paper explores subjective well-being in the uses of time for US and UK workers, differentiating between solo activities and activities done with family members, at home and outside the home. Using American and British time use surveys, we compute the instant utility associated with paid work, unpaid work, leisure, and childcare activities. The results show that workers prefer joint leisure to solo leisure, and that significant differences exist between female and male workers for solo and joint market work and housework. Furthermore, we simulate a lockdown situation, which suggests diverging effects of a lockdown in the US and the UK, and on women and men. The conclusions of this paper may help to assess the psychological consequences of COVID-19 lockdowns, beyond the negative economic and labour market consequences. |
| Keywords: | subjective well-being,togetherness,gender difference |
| JEL: | D10 J16 J22 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:736&r=all |
| By: | Christine Blandhol; Magne Mogstad; Peter Nilsson; Ola Lotherington Vestad |
| Abstract: | Do employees benefit from worker representation on corporate boards? Economists and policymakers are keenly interested in this question – especially lately, as worker representation is widely promoted as an important way to ensure the interests and views of the workers. To investigate this question, we apply a variety of research designs to administrative data from Norway. We find that a worker is paid more and faces less earnings risk if she gets a job in a firm with worker representation on the corporate board. However, these gains in wages and declines in earnings risk are not caused by worker representation per se. Instead, the wage premium and reduced earnings risk reflect that firms with worker representation are likely to be larger and unionized, and that larger and unionized firms tend to both pay a premium and provide better insurance to workers against fluctuations in firm performance. Conditional on the firm’s size and unionization rate, worker representation has little if any effect. Taken together, these findings suggest that while workers may indeed benefit from being employed in firms with worker representation, they would not benefit from legislation mandating worker representation on corporate boards. |
| Keywords: | worker compensation, worker representation, corporate governance, unions |
| JEL: | G34 G38 J31 J54 J58 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8794&r=all |
| By: | Yashiro, Naomitsu; Kyyrä, Tomi; Hwang, Hyunjeong; Tuomala, Juha |
| Abstract: | There are two major barriers to increasing employment of older workers. First, older workers engaged in codifiable, routine tasks are particularly prone to the risk of being displaced by computers and robots. Second, several countries have in place various labour market institutions that encourage early retirement, such as exceptional entitlements or looser criteria for unemployment and disability benefits applied to older individuals. We present evidence that these two factors reinforce each other to push older workers out of employment. We find that older workers who are more exposed to digital technologies are more likely to leave employment, and that this effect is significantly magnified when they are eligible to an extension of unemployment benefits until the earliest age for drawing old age pension. Furthermore, our findings imply that a policy reform that tightens the eligibility for the benefit extension would increase mostly the employment of older workers that are more exposed to digital technologies. |
| Keywords: | technological change, disability benefits, unemployment benefits, early retirement, Social security, taxation and inequality, Labour markets and education, H55, J26, J65, O33, |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fer:wpaper:136&r=all |
| By: | Celeste K. Carruthers; Christopher Jepsen |
| Abstract: | Vocational education is formal education about work, and vocational programs of study typically target a narrow subset of middle-income occupations. In this chapter, we trace vocational education from competing 20th century education philosophies to its varied structures throughout the 21st century world. We then review the body of economic research on labor market returns to vocational education. Three themes from this rapidly expanding literature are that (1) workers with a vocational education tend to have a flatter age-employment profile than workers with an academic education, (2) individuals who seek and gain access to more secondary vocational education tend to have better attainment and early-career outcomes, whereas the effects of large-scale changes to tracking in secondary grades are more ambiguous; and (3) vocational postsecondary education is associated with improved labor market outcomes relative to no or incomplete postsecondary education, particularly for multi-year programs. We close by highlighting areas where more empirical research is needed, which include a deeper understanding of the long-term and inter-generational effects of vocational education on stability and growth in earnings, and the effects of vocational education in the developing world. |
| Keywords: | vocational education, earnings, employment |
| JEL: | I26 I23 J31 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8718&r=all |
| By: | Sabien Dobbelaere; Boris Hirsch; Steffen Müller; Georg Neuschaeffer |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how collective bargaining through unions and workplace co-determination through works councils shape labour market imperfections and how labour market imperfections matter for employer wage premia. Based on representative German plant data for the years 1999-2016, we document that labour market imperfections are the norm rather than the exception. Wage mark-downs, that is wages below the marginal revenue product of labour rooted in employers’ monopsony power, are the most prevalent outcome. We further find that both types of organised labour are accompanied by a smaller prevalence and intensity of wage mark-downs whereas the opposite holds for wage mark-ups, that is wages above the marginal revenue product of labour rooted in workers’ monopoly power. Finally, we document a close link between our production-based labour market imperfection measures and employer wage premia. The prevalence and intensity of wage mark-downs are associated with a smaller level and larger dispersion of premia whereas wage mark-ups are only accompanied by a higher premium level. |
| Keywords: | wage mark-downs, wage mark-ups, collective wage agreements, works councils, employer wage premia |
| JEL: | J42 J50 J31 D22 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8739&r=all |
| By: | Wehner, Caroline; de Grip, Andries (RS: GSBE Theme Learning and Work, RS: SBE - MACIMIDE, Research Centre for Educ and Labour Mark); Pfeifer, Harald |
| Abstract: | This paper explores whether firms recruit workers with different personality traits for different tasks. For our analysis, we used data from a discrete choice experiment conducted among recruiters of 634 firms in Germany. Recruiters were asked to choose between job applicants who differed in seven aspects: professional competence, the ‘big five’ personality traits and the prospective wage level. We found that all personality traits affect the hiring probability of the job applicant; among them, conscientiousness and agreeableness have the strongest effects. However, recruiters’ preferences differed for different job tasks. For analytical tasks, recruiters prefer more open and conscientious applicants, whereas they favour more open, extraverted, and agreeable workers for interactive tasks. |
| JEL: | J23 D91 M51 |
| Date: | 2020–12–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:umaror:2020012&r=all |
| By: | Joan Costa-i-Font; Mario Gyori |
| Abstract: | Although lower income is associated with overweight (and obesity), such an association is explained by a number of other confounding effects such as omitted variables (e.g., time preferences) explaining that income effect on overweight. We study the effect of unearned income shocks resulting from a lottery win (windfall income) on both overweight (alongside obesity and body mass index) distribution. We draw upon longitudinal data from the United Kingdom, a country where about half of a population plays the lottery. Our results suggest no evidence of contemporaneous effects of income on overweight, but a significant lagged effect. We find a reduction in overweight 12 months after a lottery win. A 10,000-sterling win reduces overweight by 2-3 percentage points. Furthermore, we document a nonlinear effect up to 36 months after the lottery win, suggesting that small wins increase overweight and large wins reduce it. The effect of a lottery win varies depending on an individual’s working hours and educational attainment. A lottery win among low education individuals decreases the risk of overweight. |
| Keywords: | obesity, overweight, income, windfall income, lottery wins, body mass index (BMI) |
| JEL: | I12 I18 J30 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8738&r=all |