Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Employment duration'

The purpose of this study is to investigate the nature and role of organisational commitment among public sector employees in Saudi Arabia. The aim is to develop the public sector to accommodate the rapid growth in the number of employees. This is regarded as one of the most important challenges facing both sectors (public and private). Additionally, this study attempts to identify significant influences on organisational commitment in the public sector in Saudi Arabia. The selected variables are: personal factors (gender, age, level of education, income, marital status, experience); job characteristics (autonomy, skill variety, task identity, feedback and friendship opportunities); work environment (supervision, co-workers, company identification, physical work conditions and financial rewards). The questionnaire in this study was designed to obtain respondents' views in relation to commitment. It was distributed to 900 employees in the public sector in Saudi Arabia (male and female) at all Saudi ministries. The results of this study have indicated that: 1) The five personal variables (gender, age, nationality, marital status and income) have a negative relationship with organisational commitment, while education has a positive and significant relationship with organisational commitment. Experience has a poor relationship with organisational commitment. 2) Variables related to job characteristics (skill, task identity, friendship opportunity, feedback and autonomy) have a positive relationship with organisational commitment. 3) Work environment variables (company identification, co-workers, physical work conditions and financial rewards) have a positive and significant relationship with organisational commitment but supervision has a negative relationship with organisational commitment. The possible contributing factors to these findings were analysed. This study also investigates the feasibility of improving the level of organisational commitment among public sector employees in Saudi Arabia. Finally, recommendations are provided to improve organisational commitment among public sector employees and future areas for research are suggested.

In an effort to explore various difficulties in the process of reemployment, the focus of this study is how, to what extent, and in what way length of unemployment duration is generated by the interplay between the structural characteristics of the labor market and the individual characteristics of unemployed workers. The structural resources are conceptualized in terms of (1) different types of reemployment, and (2) economic sectors. It turns out that the insertion of labor market structures into research on unemployment duration is quite valuable in improving our understanding of individual reemployment behavior.
The findings show that reemployment through job recalls is relatively easier than through job switches. Even though many unemployed workers remained to benefit from the structural buffer of internal labor markets in their struggle for reemployment, workers losing core-sector jobs are found to have more difficulty in switching to a new job relative to those losing peripheral jobs. The finding illustrates a critical weakness of internal labor markets in reallocating unemployed workers.
Furthermore, the impact of the labor market location of lost jobs is also observed in both the manner and the extent to which the individual attributes of unemployed workers affect the process of reemployment. (1) More education substantially improves the reemployment chances of workers losing core-services jobs, but not workers unemployed from other sectors. (2) The reemployment probability of workers losing core-services jobs is increased with an improvement in general education whereas the reemployment probabilities of workers losing core goods-production jobs tend to increase with an accumulation in firm-specific skills. (3) Men tend to maintain their reemployment advantage through their access to internal labor markets whereas women improve their reemployment probability by benefiting from job expansion in service industries. (4) Experienced core-service workers tend to have a shorter unemployment duration than young ones when their jobs are available for recall, whereas experienced peripheral goods production workers often have a competitive disadvantage in switching to a new job. And (5) UI benefits slow down the job-recall rate substantially but have little impact on the individual behavior of searching for a new job. The problem of timing termination of unemployment duration to coincide with exhaustion of UI benefits is much more severe for the job-recall rate than for the job-switch rate.

This thesis follows and analyses what happens to individuals who work at establishments that are closed down. I examine if and when the displaced workers are re-employed. Furthermore, I examine to what extent individuals have moved, changed industry of work, have started to commute or have become self-employed. Additionally I examine, if the workers become selfemployed after displacement, how many of them that does so within the same industry of work as they initially got displaced from. A unique longitudinal matched employer-employee data incorporating all firms, establishments and their employees in Sweden between the years 1997-2008 is used. All individuals between 25 and 55 years of age at the time of displacement that were displaced between 2000 and 2003 due to establishment closures are followed over a five-year period of time. Consistent with previous empirical research, it is shown that an absolute majority of the workers that are displaced one given year also recovers within that same year. The results moreover express that the longer the displaced workers are out of employment, the larger is the willingness to change industry of work, change municipality of living or move into self-employment. The willingness to commute is however found to be fairly constant over time. Finally, I find that those who become self-employed to a greater extent start business in other industries than they were displaced from as time passes.

This paper considers how the probabilities of transitioning from joblessness to part- versus full-time work change with the duration of joblessness and labor market conditions. Using 1996-2013 Survey of Income and Program Participation data, I estimate these transition probabilities using a Cox proportional hazard model. I find that as the duration of jobless spells increases, the monthly probability of transitioning to full-time employment declines faster than for part-time employment. Additionally, a one percentage point increase in the national unemployment rate is associated with a ten percent decrease in the probability of transitioning to full-time work but unrelated for part-time work. Consequently, the share of individuals transitioning from joblessness to part-time work increases with the duration of joblessness and with increasing labor market slack. Additional evidence suggests these increases are due to behavioral changes rather than unobserved heterogeneity. Finally, compared to their previous employment, individuals who transition from unemployment to part-time work also experience decreases in real hourly wages, private health-care coverage, and occupational skill level. These results provide motivation for considering non-wage aspects of job quality when studying re-employment from joblessness.
Applied Mathematics

This paper studies the relationship between individual characteristics of displaced workers and the probability of re-employment. A competing risks hazard model is used, distinguishing between exits from joblessness to self-employment and to paid-employment. All individuals between 25 and 55 years of age, at the time of displacement, that suffered from at least one year of joblessness after being displaced between 1990 and 1998 due to establishment closures that occurred between 1990 and 2001 are included. This allows for the closure procedure to be between one and three years long. Each individual is followed, from the year of displacement until the year of re-employment or at the latest, ten years after displacement. Semi-parametric estimation techniques for discrete time data are used, and in consistency with previous research the results show that subgroups of the jobless individuals experience different re-employment probabilities. The results suggest that a non-immigrant, high income-earner in the mid-thirties, with short tenure at the closing establishment, and who was not displaced early in the closure process and who has lived in the same city for a long time, faces the greatest probability of becoming re-employed. Furthermore, men and individuals with self-employment experience face lower probabilities of re-employment in paid-employments compared to their counterparts. This relationship is however reversed when studying the probability of leaving joblessness for self-employment. Men, immigrants, high income-earners, displaced from smaller establishments, previously self-employed and those with shorter tenure in previous employment are found to be more likely to enter self-employment than their counterparts. A positive duration dependency is prevalent in re-employment probability, suggesting that search activity is increased over time. The probability of self-employment entry is however decreasing the first years of joblessness following displacement, displaying an initial negative duration dependency.

Geographic space is an important friction preventing the instantaneous matching of unemployed workers to job vacancies. Cities reduce spatial frictions by decreasing the average distance between potential match partners. Owing to these search efficiencies, theories of agglomeration predict that unemployed workers in larger labor markets find employment faster than observationally similar workers in smaller markets. Existing studies rely on cross-sectional variation in aggregate unemployment rates across spatially distinct labor markets to test for scale effects in job search. A major difficulty with these studies is that the unemployment rate is, at any given time, simultaneously the incidence and duration of unemployment. Therefore, conclusions about unemployment exits using the unemployment rate are confounded by transitions into unemployment. This dissertation examines the relationship between market scale unemployment duration for permanently laid off workers in the U.S. Using a large sample of individual unemployment spells in 259 MSAs, proportional hazard model estimates predict a negative relationship between market scale and the hazard of exiting unemployment. This effect is strengthened when space is explicitly controlled for and measured with greater precision. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that search efficiencies lead workers to increase their reservation wages. 2SLS estimates show that re-employment earnings for permanently laid off workers increase with market scale after controlling for endogenous search duration. These effects are robust to standard controls, as well as controls for local labor market conditions. These results challenge the view that search efficiencies lead to lower unemployment rates through faster job-finding rates.

The existing literature finds negative associations between mental illness and labor market outcomes. Using data from the 2007 to 2011 National Health Interview Survey, this study examines the consequences of emotional (depression, anxiety, or other emotional problems) and psychological (ADD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or other mental problems) problems on four aspects of labor market decisions: the probability of participating in the labor force, the likelihood of working full time, the average number of hours worked per week and annual earnings. In addition to analyzing the effects of either having or not having a mental illness, I also test if there is a relationship between the duration of having a mental illness and labor market behaviors. I find evidence to show that having an emotional or psychological problem has an adverse impacts on all four aspects of labor market outcomes. Additionally, the results suggest that unconditional on having a mental illness, duration has statistically significant effects on labor market behaviors, while conditional on having a mental illness, statistical significance is not as prevalent.

Thesis advisor: Sanjay K. Chugh
Thesis advisor: Fabio Schiantarelli
My doctoral research focuses on the role of labor market frictions in shaping macroeconomic outcomes. I am currently pursuing three main lines of research that constitute the three chapters of this dissertation. The first chapter focuses on involuntary part-time employment as an additional margin used by firms to adjust to business cycle fluctuations. The chapter documents empirical regularities of involuntary part-time employment in the U.S. and furnishes a tractable analytical framework for studying this phenomenon that has gained so much attention in the years that followed the Great Recession. In the second chapter, which is joint work with Sanjay Chugh, Ryan Chahrour and Alan Finkelstein-Shapiro, we study the labor market wedge in the context of a search and matching model to understand how static and dynamic inefficiencies change over the business cycle. Measuring the labor market wedge and understanding its sources of movement is of great importance from a macroeconomic point of view, as existing research shows it holds a prominent place in explaining fluctuations in aggregate output. Finally, in the third chapter I study empirically the determinants of the job finding probability, a key object in the context of frictional labor markets. More specifically, I analyze how decisions on time allocation by the unemployed affect their chances of finding a job, and identify the activities that make more likely for an unemployed individual to receive and accept a job offer. Chapter 1. In recent years researchers and policymakers have shown renewed interest in involuntary part-time employment as a crucial indicator of labor market health. The fact that individuals have part-time jobs even though they would be willing to work more hours is evidence that resources in the economy are not employed at full capacity. This group represents almost 40 percent of total underemployment. Despite its large size and importance to policy-makers, surprisingly little literature addresses the empirical regularities or economic role this margin plays in determining labor market outcomes. In "Underemployment and the Business Cycle" I address several questions regarding involuntary part-time employment. First, how does involuntary part-time employment differ from the standard extensive and intensive margins? Second, what factors influence the choice of firms to use involuntary part-time workers? Third, how might economic policy contribute to the existence of involuntary part-time employment in the economy? And, fourth, have there been any changes over time in the response of involuntary part-time employment to changes in aggregate economic conditions and, if so, what explains them? To describe the empirical regularities of involuntary part-time employment, I use detailed micro-level data from longitudinally-linked monthly files of the Current Population Survey. A novel finding that emerges from the analysis of this dataset is that wages of involuntary part-time workers display higher volatility and lower persistence than those of their full-time counterparts, thus indicating a higher degree of flexibility. In addition, I find that changes in involuntary part-time employment are mostly explained by reallocation of workers from full-time to part-time positions within the firm, which involves more than just a mere reduction in hours worked. I then aggregate the data and compute business cycle statistics. Surprisingly, I find that the behavior of involuntary part-time employment resembles the behavior of unemployment more than the one of full-time employment. In fact, the results indicate that involuntary part-time employment is very volatile and strongly countercyclical. To understand the evidence I find at the micro and macro levels, I build an augmented search and matching model of the labor market featuring full-time and part-time employment, and a production function that combines both types of workers. The decision of whether a worker is full-time or part-time is made entirely by the firm, depending on the realizations of both aggregate and idiosyncratic productivity processes. The model is able to deliver the countercyclicality of involuntary part-time employment found in the data. The key mechanism to obtain this result is the relatively higher flexibility of part-time contracts that makes it more profitable for the firm to reallocate workers from full-time to part-time arrangements during recessions. Based on the model that captures key empirical facts, I conduct policy analysis to evaluate the effect of an increase in the cost of health insurance on involuntary part-time employment. The policy experiment predicts that an increase in the cost of health insurance provided by the firm to its full-time workers, such that their share in average full-time wages goes up by 1 percentage point, leads to an increase of steady state involuntary part-time employment by 10 percent, which nowadays would be equivalent to half a million additional involuntary part-time workers. I find evidence that involuntary part-time employment has become more volatile and persistent in the last 25 years. I study the impact that innovation in workforce management practices, a process that started in the 1990s and that has increased the degree of substitutability between full-time and part-time workers, may have had in changing the response over time of involuntary part-time employment to business cycle fluctuations. Impulse response analysis from the model indicates that an increase in the degree of substitutability makes involuntary part-time employment more sensitive to aggregate productivity shocks. Chapter 2. In "The Labor Wedge: A Search and Matching Perspective" we define and quantify static and dynamic labor market wedges in a search and matching model with endogenous labor force participation. Existing literature has generally centered on Walrasian labor markets in characterizing the inefficiencies, or ``gaps'', between labor demand and labor supply. However, given the conventional view in the profession that the matching process plays an important role in the labor market, the neoclassically-measured labor wedge suffers from a misspecification problem as it ignores the role of long-lasting relationships in explaining the cyclical pattern of the labor wedge. To construct the wedge we use a rigorously defined transformation function of the economy, which contains both the matching technology and the neoclassical production technology. Both technologies are primitives of the economy in the sense that a Social Planner must respect both processes. Given the model-appropriate transformation frontier and the household's static and dynamic marginal rates of substitution, we use data on the labor force participation rate, the employment rate, the vacancy rate, real consumption, real government spending, and real GDP to construct static and dynamic labor wedges. We find that, in a version of the model where all employment relationships turn over every period, the static labor wedge is countercyclical, a result that is consistent with existing literature. Once we consider long-lasting employment relationships, we can measure both static and dynamic wedges separately. We then find that, while the static wedge continues to be countercyclical, the dynamic (or intertemporal) wedge is procyclical. Since the latter is associated with the vacancy-posting decision of the firm, this result suggests that understanding the behavior of labor demand may be crucial to explaining the dynamic wedge. Our focus so far has been on obtaining a quantitative measure of both the static and dynamic wedges, and on analyzing their business cycle properties. Now we are working on extending this framework to provide a micro-founded explanation of the forces that could be driving the cyclical movements of the wedges. Chapter 3. Recent research has found that individuals who become unemployed allocate most of their forgone working hours into leisure rather than increasing the time devoted to job search activities. What is the rationale behind this decision? There are many factors that may affect the job search behavior of the unemployed. However, in this study I focus on a particular channel: the decision on how unemployed individuals allocate their time could be biased towards activities that increase their probability of finding a job. They might find more valuable to increase their social activities rather than looking formally for a job because this enhances their network, which could increase their chances of finding a job, even with less search effort. In "The Time Use Decisions of the Unemployed: A Survival Analysis", I conduct a duration analysis to estimate the effect of different time use allocations on the unemployment hazard rate using time use data from the Survey of Unemployed Workers in New Jersey. Defining "finding a job" as a failure, I estimate a single-spell, discrete-time duration model of unemployment with time-varying covariates using semi-parametric techniques. Given that I work with interval-censored data, I conduct the analysis using discrete time survival analysis techniques. The results indicate that education/training activities have a significant and positive impact on the hazard rate, i.e. they increase the probability that an unemployed worker finds a job, while leisure has the opposite effect. Furthermore, neither job-search nor networking have a significant effect on the hazard rate in the baseline specification. However, this result changes when incorporating into the regression interaction terms of these variables with a dummy that takes the value one if the individual is a long-term unemployed and zero otherwise. In this case, the coefficient associated with networking becomes positive and significant, while the coefficient of the interaction term is negative. This implies that networking has a positive effect on the hazard rate for short unemployment spells, but this effect weakens if the individual has been unemployed for a longer period. On the other hand, even after incorporating the interaction term, job search remains insignificant. These findings shed light on why individuals may not want to devote additional time to formal job search: it does not pay off with a higher likelihood of receiving a job offer, regardless of the length of the unemployment spell. On the other hand, other activities, such as investing in education or networking, are positively related to the probability of finding a job -- at least for short unemployment spells -- and thus it makes more sense for these individuals to devote more time to them

Socle des revenus et de la stabilité politique, l'emploi est l'instrument par lequel l'Homme s'épanouit et acquiert une place en société. Il fait l'objet de constantes interventions législatives en vue de permettre au salarié de faire pleinement carrière dans l'entreprise. On a vu ces dernières décennies diverses actions assurant non seulement au salarié la permanence du rapport contractuel, mais également, celles visant à le protéger contre la perte de l'emploi. Il en est ainsi dans la majorité des systèmes juridiques, notamment en France et dans les pays de l'espace OHADA tels que le Cameroun où les pouvoirs publics s'efforcent de conduire des reformes visant à pérenniser le rapport contractuel. Ces mesures prennent de l'importance à la naissance même de la relation de travail. Durant celle-ci, interviennent la suspension, la formation professionnelle et la règle du maintien des contrats en cas de restructuration, en vue de parvenir à l'impératif de stabilité des emplois. Il en est également des diverses dispositions visant à protéger l'emploi contre les risques de perte pouvant provenir de l'employeur. Cette étude a pour objet l'analyse des techniques de protection du rapport contractuel. Elle retrace l'ensemble des mesures préconisées pour garantir la conservation de l'emploi dans l'entreprise, fait ressortir des insuffisances et propose quelques solutions
Basis of income and political stability, employment is the gateway through which man gets his roots and acquires a place in society. It is the object of constant legislative intervention in order to assist the worker to fully exercise his career in the enterprise. We have seen these last decades diverse actions geared towards not only assuring to the worker the stability of contractual relations, but equally actions to guarantee him against loss of employment. It is thus the case in a majority of legal systems, notably France and within the OHADA sphere such as Cameroon where the State authorities are striving to drive reforms aimed at preserving contractual relationship. These measures gain importance during the establishment of the employment contract. During the execution of the relationship, involved the suspension, professional training and maintaining the rule of contracts in the event of restructuring in order to achieve the imperative of job stability. It is equally same for various dispositions aimed at protecting employment against the risk of loss which could result from the employer. This study aims to analyze the different techniques of protection of contractual relationship. It relates the recommended possible ways to secure jobs in the enterprise. However, it also displays the insufficiencies and proposes some solutions

Occupant une place essentielle dans la société, le sport ne pouvait échapper plus longtemps au droit, en particulier le sportif professionnel. Le statut social du sportif, acteur central du spectacle sportif, fait l'objet d'une construction de plus en plus élaborée, car nécessaire. Le régime du salariat sportif, qui se limite aux contrats conclus entre les sportifs professionnels et les clubs sportifs, sans que l'on puisse les assimiler à des artistes, obéit à la fois aux droits étatique et communautaire, mais également aux pouvoirs sportifs, que ce soit la réglementation ou la justice sportive. La spécificité du salariat sportif repose sur ce pluralisme juridique, de sources et d'organes de justice, avec l'intégration dans le régime social du sportif de la norme sportive. Le droit du travail est particulièrement propice à une telle intégration, notamment la place qu'il fait à la négociation collective et au principe de faveur. Le juge y participe également en reconnaissant cette spécificité. Cette spécificité s'exprime tant au niveau de la formation du contrat, que de son exécution ou de sa rupture. Les pratiques des transferts, des prêts, de l'homologation des contrats ou des réglementations contre le dopage attestent de celle-ci
Occupying an essential place in the society, the sport could escape no longer the law, in particular the sportsman become professional. The social status of the sportsman, the central actor of the sports show, is the object of a more and more elaborated construction, because necessary. The regime of the sports wage-earner, who limits himself to the contract between the professional sportsmen and the sports clubs, without that we can assimilate them to artists, obeys at once the state and community rights, but also the sports powers, whether it is the regulations and the sports justice. The specificity of the sports wage-earner bases on this legal pluralism, in sources and in organs of justice, with the integration in the social diet of the sportsman of the sports standard. The labor law is particularly convenient to such an integration, in particular the place which it makes for the collective bargaining and for the principle of favour. The judge also participates in it by recognizing this specificity. This specificity expresses himself both at the level of the formation of the contract, and of its execution or of its break. The practices of transfers, loans, ratification of contracts or regulations against the doping give evidence of this one

Mestrado em Ciências Actuariais
Em Portugal, o debate sobre o desemprego tem estado muito activo ao longo dos últimos meses. A problemática do desemprego assume cada vez mais importância no quotidiano. O endividamento dos consumidores tem vindo a aumentar, acompanhando uma mudança de hábitos de consumo que reflectem uma alteração de comportamentos culturais e sociais. O crédito ao consumo é um mercado em forte expansão, com grande variedade de oferta de produtos e de acesso cada vez mais amplo. Do ponto de vista deste trabalho, o seguro de protecção ao crédito ajuda os clientes a cumprir as obrigações de pagamentos relativas aos seus compromissos financeiros, tais como créditos pessoais, créditos hipotecários ou cartões de crédito, no caso de desemprego involuntário. Em consequência, abordaremos o crescimento do crédito ao consumo no século XXI, por um lado, e o alargamento do âmbito dos seguros e a necessária especialização da actividade seguradora, por outro. O comportamento do desemprego tem sido objecto de muita reflexão, estudo e análise estatística. É possível avaliar o risco de desemprego numa dada população e intervalo de tempo. Neste sentido, é natural o recurso ao formalismo matemático do cálculo de probabilidades para descrever a duração do emprego dos indivíduos. Começando por se fazer uma apresentação do conceito de seguros de protecção ao crédito, a evolução do desemprego e das condicionantes do foro demográfico, social e económico, faz-se depois uma actualização, com dados mais recentes. À semelhança das tábuas de mortalidade, as tábuas de emprego diferenciam-se pelas características da população analisada e por um conjunto de aspectos metodológicos que presidem à sua construção. Uma vez este diagnóstico realizado, propõe-se então um conjunto de situações para cálculos de prémios de seguro que permitirão concluir sobre os efeitos das condicionantes do emprego.
In Portugal, the debate regarding unemployment has been very active throughout the last months. The problematic assumes more importance in the daily life. The consumers' indebtedness has increase, following a change of consumption habits that reflects an alteration of cultural and social behaviors. The consumer credit is a market in strong expansion, with great variety of products offer and ampler access. The creditor insurance helps the customers to fulfill their obligations of payments to its financial commitments, such as personal loans, mortgage loans or credit cards, in case of involuntary unemployment. We will come near the growth of the credit consumption in the 21st century and the widening of credit protection insurances' scope and the necessary specialization of the insuring activity. The behavior of the unemployment has been purpose of much reflection, study and statistical analysis. It is possible to evaluate the risk of unemployment in one given population and specific period of time. In this direction, the resource to mathematical formalism of the calculation of probabilities to describe the duration of employment of the individuals is natural. We start for making a presentation of the concept of creditor insurance, the evolution of the unemployment and its demographics, social and economic environment update with most recent data. Similarly to mortality tables, an employment table is differentiated for the characteristics of the analyzed population and for a set of methodologies aspects that head over to its construction. Through the diagnosis, we considered a set of situations for premium calculations that will allow to conclude on the effect of protection the involuntary loss of employment.

Using the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS), this paper identifies factors contributing to women’s individual risk of being victimized by their current intimate partner. Additionally, this analysis examines the overlap of physical and sexual violence within intimate relationships. Past research into IPV has identified a numerous predictor variables. Adapting nine such variables (controlling behaviours, male heavy drinking, female only income, female past marriage, female past IPV, respondents’ age, relationship duration, relationship status and violence outside the home) to the IVAWS dataset, a framework identifying risk patterns for physical and sexual violence was developed. The results identify a number of variables that performed as expected and increased a women’s risk of being a victim of IPV; however, some variables decreased women’s risk and therefore acted as protective factors. These findings suggest that IPV at the country level is more complex and requires additional research to fully explain the variation observed.

This thesis studies the effects of import competition from China and Eastern Europe on the health and fertility decisions of German individuals working in manufacturing. Individuals are matched with separate measures of exposure to competition from China and Eastern Europe, respectively. To isolate exogenous supply shocks from the origin, instrumental variables for competition from each of China and Eastern Europe are constructed. Results in Chapter 1 suggest that higher import competition worsens individual health via job displacement, wage decline, shortened employment duration, increased reliance on welfare and less future orientation, with Chinese import competition affecting individuals twice as much. Health declines as individuals increase their visits to the doctor, exercise less frequently and have a higher probability of developing chronic illness. Also, there is some evidence that individuals do not tend to become disabled but may be slowly pushed into chronic illness. Findings in Chapter 2 show that import competition negatively affects the individual’s probability of having children via reduced earnings, lower satisfaction with personal income and shortened employment duration. The chapter then investigates effects of import exposure by gender. Results show that male and female fertility choices differ upon rising import competition. Higher import exposure lowers female earnings and job autonomy, which in turn generates a lower opportunity cost of work, to the point where having children would become a more rewarding alternative for female workers. By contrast, increased import exposure negatively affects male workers’ fertility through reduced earnings and employment duration.

Códigos do JEL Classification System: C38, I25, J64, J65
No cenário da actual crise económica, os dados da OIT (2010) e do Eurostat (2010), permitem validar o aumento da taxa de desemprego nos países da União Europeia (UE) nos últimos anos e as mudanças qualitativas ocorridas no perfil dos cidadãos desempregados. Neste contexto, torna-se fundamental identificar e compreender as variáveis que estarão a contribuir para o aumento da taxa e duração do desemprego em Portugal, e assim, analisar as mudanças ocorridas no perfil dos desempregados em Portugal. Para este efeito, foi realizada uma análise estatística com base nos “Conjuntos Difusos- fuzzy clustering”, aos microdados presentes no Inquério ao Emprego, relativamente aos anos de 2001 e de 2010, cedidos pelo Instituto Nacional de Estatistica (INE). O modelo de análise da duração do desemprego proposto, contempla características sócio-demográficas e fatores comportamentais e situacionais. Foram identificadas 3 tipologias de desempregados em 2001 e em 2010, que revelam a existência de algumas diferenças nos perfis de desempregados nos anos em análise. Em 2001, identificaram-se os DLD e Pouco Qualificados; os DLD, Qualificados e Precários; os Jovens, Graduados e Desempregados de Curta Duração. Em 2010, identificaram-se os DLD e Pouco Qualificados; os Desempregados de Curta Duração, Qualificados e Precários; os Jovens, Graduados e DLD. Os resultados mostram que o desemprego é heterogéneo, existindo desempregados que partilham características de diferentes perfis. Os segmentos obtidos podem sustentar a definição de políticas públicas de emprego direcionadas e orientadas em Portugal.
In the actual economic crisis environment, the ILO (2010) and EUROSTAT (2010) data allows to validate the increase of unemployment tax in the European Union (UE) countries, as well as the qualitative changes occurred in the profile of unemployed citizens in recent years. In this context, one becomes basic to thus identify and to understand the variables that are contributing to the increase and duration of unemployment in Portugal and to analyze the occurred changes in the profile of the unemployed in Portugal. To this effect, a statistic analysis was carried out having by basis the “Diffuse Sets -fuzzy clustering”, to the micro data presented in the Job Inquiry, concerning the years of 2001 and 2010, yielded by the National Institute of Estatistica (INE). The proposed model used for analysis of the duration of unemployment, contemplates social-demographic characteristics, behavioral and situational factors. Three main types of unemployed in 2001 and 2010 were identified, that disclose the existence of some differences in the profiles of unemployed in the years in analysis. In 2001, were identified the Unemployed of Long Term and the Under Qualified; the Unemployed of Long Term, Qualified and Precarious; and the Young, Graduated and Unemployed of Short Term. In 2010, were recognized the Unemployed of Long Term and the Under Qualified; the Unemployed of Short Term, Qualified and Precarious; and the Young, Graduated and DLD. The results show that unemployment is heterogeneous, and there are cases of unemployed that share characteristics of different profiles. The achieved segments can support the definition of directed and guided public employment policies in Portugal.

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of working women when they announce their pregnancies, take maternity leave, transition back to work, and utilize flexible work policies. Using a qualitative methodology, transcripts of in-depth interviews were analyzed utilizing a life history approach. Key findings of the study are that women perceive more negative responses to the announcement of their pregnancies than positive ones. In terms of maternity and parental leave policies, all the participants had access to these benefits. Women found issues with financial adequacy, administration, and duration of these policies. Mothers found that financial support from the Canadian government was inadequate to allow them to take the full duration of the 52-week maternity and parental leave for which they were eligible. In addition, employer “top-up” payments were limited and administrative details of maternity leave were often not discussed fully with pregnant workers. When women returned to work, they found that workplaces did not offer resources such as a phased-in return to work or personnel to help them re-engage with their prior work projects. Women discussed the challenges of managing their dual roles of worker and mother and found that managers and coworkers put them in a mommy mould which lessened the quality of their assignments. New mothers found that they had difficultly juggling their work and home responsibilities, finding time for themselves, and receiving increased domestic support from their spouses. While some workplaces offered women flexible workplace policies, not all mothers chose to access them as they found these policies often negatively impacted their career progression. Other issues were a lack of flexible workplace policy transparency, inconsistent manager support, and difficulty maintaining a flexible schedule. Findings have major implications for an improved response from managers upon pregnancy announcement, improved dialogue among employers about increasing “top up” maternity leave pay to new mothers, developing a formal transition plan for new mothers returning to the workplace, and expanding the use of flexible workplace policies.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
職業醫學與工業衛生研究所
97
1.The Impact of Duration of Breast Feeding on the Neurodevelopment of Those Children Born to Taiwanese and Immigrant Mothers Background: Many studies have suggested a positive association between breast feeding and developmental milestones, motor skills, language, and cognitive but there were no studies to evaluate the neurobehavioral development in early childhood and breast feeding in different ethnic. Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of duration of breast feeding on the neurodevelopment of children born to Taiwanese and immigrant mothers. Material and Methods: This study was based on the pilot databases of the Taiwan Birth Cohort Study. Questionnaire interviews were used to collect the information on the duration of breastfeeding, milestone, and neurobehavioral development scale including gross motor, fine motor, language, and self-help and social competence, and its covariates at the 6 (n = 1580) and 18 months (n = 1423). Mother’s ethnicity was grouped into two groups: Taiwanese and immigrant and the duration of breastfeeding into three groups: never breastfed, less than four months, and four months and more. The reference group was never breastfed children born to Taiwanese mothers. Multiple linear regression model and Cox proportional hazard model were used to estimate the effects and controlled for potential confounders including maternal age, education, marital status, smoking during pregnancy, and infant sex, gestational age and birth order. Results and Conclusions: We found that neurobehavioral development scores at the age of 18 months increased consistently with increasing duration of breastfeeding either in child born to Taiwanese or immigrant mothers. Although immigrant mothers were in lower education level, lower family income, and more living in rural area than Taiwanese mothers; longer breastfeeding duration could still benefit to their children’s neurobehavioral development. 2.Characteristics of Maternal Employment during Pregnancy and Pregnancy-induced Hypertension: Results from the Taiwan National Birth Cohort Study Background: Maternal employment during pregnancy and occupational stress has been considered risk factors for pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH) but it is unclear what aspects of characteristics of employment might be important. Objective: The objective of this study is to evaluate the associations between characteristics of employment during pregnancy and PIH in a large birth cohort study. Material and Methods: In this study, we used the multistage stratified systematic sampling to recruit 21,248 postpartum women from the Taiwan National Birth Registration database in 2005. Interviewers had a home interview at the sixth month after their deliveries by using a structured questionnaire to obtain characteristics of maternal employment and potential confounders. Diagnosis of PIH including gestational hypertension and pre-eclampsia was obtained from the birth registration. After excluding mothers with multiple gestations and women less than 18 years old of age, 261 of 20,147 women had been diagnosed with gestational hypertension and 56 women were pre-eclampsia. We used logistic regression models to explore the effect of characteristics if maternal employment on PIH. Results: Compared to women who employed during pregnancy, women with higher occupational stress had a slight higher risk to develop PIH. In addition, women with more than 8 working hours per week, working in service industry, and unsatisfied with her job may increase the risk of PIH. However, these findings were not significant after controlling potential confounders. Discussion and Conclusions: There was no convincing evidence that maternal employment had a higher risk of PIH. However, further research is warranted to confirm these negative findings.

Dissertação de mestrado em Economia
In the recent past, there has been a generalized investment in education across several countries including Portugal; however the rising of educational driven by youths has been followed by an increase in unemployment rate, with especial incidence among youths. Using a duration analysis framework in continuous time and the Portuguese LFS from 1998 to 2009, we aim to evaluate the role of education in labour market. Namely, we want to access whether education prevents unemployment for those who have a job and whether if it helps unemployed finding a job. Our results show that more educated individuals, with a high school diploma or higher, have lower hazard of job loss. Among those who lost their job or are looking for their first job, we found evidence that college graduates have higher prospects of finding a job. Those results seem to suggest that employers prefer more skilled workers, in accordance with the idea that education increases the individual’s productivity.
No passado recente, tem havido um aumento generalizado da educação em vários países, incluindo Portugal. Contudo o aumento do nível educacional da população fomentado pelos mais novos tem sido acompanhado por um aumento das taxas de desemprego, com maior incidência sobre os mais jovens. Usando modelos de duração em tempo contínuo com dados Portugueses do LFS de 1998 até 2009 tentamos avaliar o papel da educação no mercado de trabalho. Nomeadamente, avaliar se a educação previne o desemprego entre aqueles que estão a trabalhar e se ajuda os desempregados a encontrar emprego. Os nossos resultados mostram que os indivíduos com maior nível de educação, com ensino secundário ou superior, têm menor probabilidade de perder o emprego. Entre aqueles que não têm emprego ou estão à procura do primeiro emprego, encontramos evidência que o ensino superior aumenta a possibilidade de encontrar emprego. Estes resultados parecem sugerir uma maior preferência dos empregados por indivíduos com maior formação, em concordância com a ideia de que a educação aumenta a produtividade dos indivíduos.