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on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
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Issue of 2020‒11‒02
six papers chosen by |
| By: | L. WILNER (Insee - Crest) |
| Abstract: | This paper disentangles the roles played by state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity in self-assessed happiness. It estimates a dynamic nonlinear model of subjective well-being on longitudinal data, primarily from France, but also from Australia, Germany, and the UK. Life satisfaction is persistent over time, which static models ignore. This persistence is heterogeneous across individuals: it concerns mostly those already happy with their lives while, in contrast, unhappiness seems more transitory. The impact of initial conditions is large in comparison with usual determinants of happiness, or with state dependence. |
| Keywords: | Happiness; subjective well-being; life satisfaction; dynamic model; state dependence; correlated random effects; initial conditions. |
| JEL: | I31 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nse:doctra:g2020-08&r=all |
| By: | Aizer, Anna (Brown University); Devereux, Paul J. (University College Dublin); Salvanes, Kjell G. (Norwegian School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Women who give birth as teens have worse subsequent educational and labor market outcomes than women who have first births at older ages. However, previous research has attributed much of these effects to selection rather than a causal effect of teen childbearing. Despite this, there are still reasons to believe that children of teen mothers may do worse as their mothers may be less mature, have fewer financial resources when the child is young, and may partner with fathers of lower quality. Using Norwegian register data, we compare outcomes of children of sisters who have first births at different ages. Our evidence suggests that the causal effect of being a child of a teen mother is much smaller than that implied by the cross-sectional differences but that there are probably still significant long-term, adverse consequences, especially for children born to the youngest teen mothers. Unlike previous research, we have information on fathers and find that negative selection of fathers of children born to teen mothers plays an important role in producing inferior child outcomes. These effects are particularly large for mothers from higher socio- economic groups. Our data also enable us to examine the effect of age at first birth across a range of maternal ages. Importantly, while we find that child outcomes are worst for those born to teen mothers, outcomes improve with mothers' age at first birth until mothers are in their mid-20s and then flatten out. |
| Keywords: | teen childbearing, child outcomes, human capital |
| JEL: | J12 J13 I31 I32 |
| Date: | 2020–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13781&r=all |
| By: | Ilaria D’Angelis (Boston College) |
| Abstract: | Do young highly educated women face higher job search frictions, have stronger preferences for non wage job-specific amenities, and receive job offers entailing lower hourly wages or stronger wage penalties for amenities provision relative to men? I study a recent cohort of young, highly educated American workers, document the existence of a gender pay gap at the beginning of workers’ careers, and provide evidence that its increasing path over years in the labor market can be rationalized by underlying unobservable differences in search frictions, preferences for amenities, and in the characteristics of the job offers that workers receive. Building on the descriptive evidence I collect, I answer the questions above by estimating a model of hedonic job search. I use the estimated parameters to show that young workers’ predicted utility from jobs can be decomposed into components due to wage and wage penalties/gains for amenities provision in the job offers received, preferences for amenities, and workers’ selection into different jobs. The main amenities of interest are flexible schedule, overtime, paid and unpaid parental leave, and child care. I find that young, highly educated male and female employed workers are remarkably similar in terms of both search frictions and preferences for job attributes, while female unemployed workers are less likely to obtain job offers than men, in spite of similar levels of labor market attachment. The job offers that women face, instead, differ from the job offers that men receive. Women tend to be offered low wages, and obtain lower wage gains attached to the provision of amenities relative to men. Wages and amenities-related wage penalties strongly affect the predicted male-to-female gap in utility that young workers obtain from jobs, especially in executive and professional careers. In addition, lower wage gains (or wage losses) that women experience when amenities are provided, tend to expand the gender wage gap in jobs providing benefits like flexibility and parental leave. |
| Keywords: | gender wage gap, nonwage benefits, job search, early careers |
| JEL: | J16 J31 J32 J64 |
| Date: | 2020–10–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:1018&r=all |
| By: | Haufler, Andreas (University of Munich and CESifo); Perroni, Carlo (University of Warwick and CESifo) |
| Abstract: | We offer a new explanation for why taxes have become less progressive in many countries in parallel with an increase in income inequality. When performancebased compensation differentials are needed to incentivize effort, redistribution through progressive income taxes becomes less precisely targeted. Taxation reduces after-tax income inequality but undermines incentive contracts, lowering effort and raising pre-tax income differentials. Market integration can widen the spread of project returns and make contract choices more responsive to changes in the level of taxation, resulting in a lower optimum income tax rate even when individuals are not inter-jurisdictionally mobile. |
| Keywords: | Redistributive Taxation; Performance-based Contracts; Market Integration JEL Classification: H21, F15, D63 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:492&r=all |
| By: | Belloc, Filippo (University of Siena); Burdin, Gabriel (Leeds University Business School); Landini, Fabio (University of Parma) |
| Abstract: | The interplay between labour institutions and the adoption of automation technologies remains poorly understood. Specifically, there is little evidence on how the nature of industrial relations shapes technological choices at the workplace level. Using a large sample of more than 20000 European establishments located in 28 countries, this paper documents conditional correlations between the presence of employee representation (ER) and the use of automation technologies. We find that ER is positively associated with robot usage. The presence of ER also correlates with the utilization of software-based artificial intelligence tools for data analytics. We extensively dig into the mechanisms through which ER may foster the use of robots by exploiting rich information on the de facto role played by ER bodies in relation to well-defined decision areas of management. Greater automation in establishments with ER does not seem to result from more adversarial employment relationships (as measured by past strike activity) or constraints on labour flexibility imposed by the interference of employee representatives with dismissal procedures. Interestingly, the positive effect of ER on robot usage is driven by workplaces operating in relatively centralized wage-setting environments, where one would expected a more limited influence of ER on wages. While our findings are exploratory and do not have a causal interpretation, they are suggestive that ER influences certain workplace practices, such as skill development, job redesign and working time management, that may be complementary to new automation technologies. |
| Keywords: | automation, robots, artificial intelligence, unions, employee representation, labor market institutions, European Company Survey |
| JEL: | J50 O32 O33 |
| Date: | 2020–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13799&r=all |
| By: | Sascha O. Becker (University, University of Warwick; CAGE; CEPR, CESifo, IZA, and ROA); Jared Rubin (Rubin: Chapman University); Ludger Woessmann (University of Munich and ifo Institute; CESifo, IZA, and CAGE) |
| Abstract: | This chapter surveys the recent social science literature on religion in economic history, covering both socioeconomic causes and consequences of religion. Following the rapidly growing literature, it focuses on the three main monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—and on the period up to WWII. Works on Judaism address Jewish occupational specialization, human capital, emancipation, and the causes and consequences of Jewish persecution. One set of papers on Christianity studies the role of the Catholic Church in European economic history since the medieval period. Taking advantage of newly digitized data and advanced econometric techniques, the voluminous literature on the Protestant Reformation studies its socioeconomic causes as well as its consequences for human capital, secularization, political change, technology diffusion, and social outcomes. Works on missionaries show that early access to Christian missions still has political, educational, and economic consequences in present-day Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Much of the economics of Islam focuses on the role that Islam and Islamic institutions played in political-economy outcomes and in the “long divergence” between the Middle East and Western Europe. Finally, cross-country analyses seek to understand the broader determinants of religious practice and its various effects across the world. We highlight three general insights that emerge from this literature. First, the monotheistic character of the Abrahamic religions facilitated a close historical interconnection of religion with political power and conflict. Second, human capital often played a leading role in the interconnection between religion and economic history. Third, many socioeconomic factors matter in the historical development of religions. |
| Keywords: | JEL Classification: |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:480&r=all |