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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2019‒10‒21
six papers chosen by |
| By: | Bell, David N.F. (University of Stirling); Hart, Robert A. (University of Stirling) |
| Abstract: | The share of overtime hours within total hours worked in Britain has declined from 4.8% to 2.9% between 1999 and 2018. This is equivalent to 321 thousand full-time jobs. We investigate this decline focussing on full-time and part-time males and females together with overtime pay effects that include the implications for the gender pay gap. We test for economic, structural and cyclical influences via a two-part regression model that allows us to differentiate between the incidence of overtime working and the average weekly hours of overtime workers. This investigation features collective bargaining coverage, job mobility, the minimum wage, industrial composition and the public/private sector dichotomy. The analysis covers the whole economy embracing nineteen 1-digit industries as well as a separate insight into the manufacturing industry where we feature vehicle manufacture. |
| Keywords: | overtime hours, overtime pay, two-part regression model |
| JEL: | J21 J22 J31 J52 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12651&r=all |
| By: | Anna Baranowska-Rataj; Kieron Barclay; Joan Costa-i-Font; Mikko Myrskylä; Berkay Özcan |
| Abstract: | Using Swedish population register data on cohorts born 1982-1994 (N=1,087,750), we examine the effects of preterm births on school grades using sibling fixed effect models which compare individuals with their non-preterm siblings. We test for heterogeneous effects by degree of prematurity, as well as whether family socioeconomic resources and school characteristics can compensate for any negative effects of premature births. Our results show that preterm births can have negative effects on school grades, but these negative effects are largely confined to children born extremely preterm ( |
| Keywords: | premature births, human capital, early life investments, education investments, Sweden |
| JEL: | I10 I20 J13 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7870&r=all |
| By: | Elena Bárcena-Martin (Universidad de Málaga, Spain); Elena Jacques Silber (Bar-Ilan University, Israel); Yuan Zhang (Fudan University, Shanghai, China) |
| Abstract: | This paper extends previous work on income-weighted measures of distributional change by defining in a unified framework population weighted and relative indices of structural and exchange mobility and measures of $\sigma$- and $\beta$-convergence. The analysis focuses on both the anonymous (comparison of cross- sections) and non-anonymous case (panel data) and unconditional as well conditional measures of pro-poor growth are defined. The empirical illustration, based on urban China data of non-retired individuals from the China Family Panel Studies, compares incomes in 2010 and 2014 and shows the usefulness of the tools introduced in the present study. It turns out that, during the period examined, there was $\beta$-convergence and slight $\sigma$-divergence, non-anonymous growth was pro-poor while anonymous growth was not. Income growth favored individuals with low levels of education as well as younger people in the non-anonymous case, but not in the anonymous case. |
| Keywords: | $\beta$-convergence, $\sigma$-divergence, exchange mobility, structural mobility, pro-poor growth, China. |
| JEL: | D31 I32 O15 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2019-505&r=all |
| By: | Osnat Peled (Bank of Israel); Jacques Silber (Bar-Ilan University, Israel) |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2019-503&r=all |
| By: | Bharat Chandar; Uri Gneezy; John List; Ian Muir |
| Abstract: | Even though social preferences affect nearly every facet of life, there exist many open questions on the economics of social preferences in markets. We leverage a unique opportunity to generate a large data set to inform the who's, what's, where's, and when's of social preferences through the lens of a nationwide tipping field experiment on the Uber platform. Our field experiment generates data from more than 40 million trips, allowing an exploration of social preferences in the ride sharing market using bid data. Combining experimental and natural variation in the data, we are able to establish tipping facts as well as provide insights into the underlying motives for tipping. Interestingly, even though tips are made privately, and without external social benefits or pressure, more than 15% of trips are tipped. Yet, nearly 60% of people never tip, and only 1% of people always tip. Overall, the demand-side explains much more of the observed tipping variation than the supply-side. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:natura:00680&r=all |
| By: | Nava Ashraf; Alexia Delfino; Edward L. Glaeser |
| Abstract: | Commerce requires trust, but trust is difficult when one group consistently fears expropriation by another. If men have a comparative advantage at violence and there is little rule-of-law, then unequal bargaining power can lead women to segregate into low-return industries and avoid entrepreneurship altogether. In this paper, we present a model of female entrepreneurship and rule of law that predicts that women will only start businesses when they have both formal legal protection and informal bargaining power. The model's predictions are supported both in cross-national data and with a new census of Zambian manufacturers. In Zambia, female entrepreneurs collaborate less, learn less from fellow entrepreneurs, earn less and segregate into industries with more women, but gender differences are ameliorated when women have access to adjudicating institutions, such as Lusaka's “Market Chiefs” who are empowered to adjudicate small commercial disputes. We experimentally induce variation in local institutional quality in an adapted trust game, and find that this also reduces the gender gap in trust and economic activity. |
| JEL: | J16 K40 O15 R12 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26366&r=all |