Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Labor'

Prevailing literature on Chinese labor non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which focuses largely on their relations with the authoritarian state and strategies for survival, mainly views that these labor groups, in order to survive, tend to confine their work to social service provisions and legal consultations that are permitted, or, at least, not prohibited, by the state. Hence, they hardly become the agencies of social change to build a labor movement in China. However, based my observations between 2013-2015 in the Guangdong Province, I argue that a small group of labor NGOs have stepped beyond their supposed roles and become labor movement agencies in China; they actively assist and organize striking workers to negotiate with employers, and have hatched several informal labor groups in industrial zones. To explain this new development of labor NGOs in China, first, I argue that the state exerts its control on labor NGOs through a differentiated process, which creates a certain space for movement-oriented labor NGOs to survive. On the one hand, the state's need for NGOs in relieving its social welfare obligations gives them a chance to "disguise" as an ostensible social service provider by employing strategies. One the other hand, the different functions, power bases and vested interests of labor NGO-related state organstrade unions, public and national security agencies, and civil affairs bureaususually lead to less coordinated efforts in containing these groups. Second, the movement-oriented labor NGOs are able to develop strong ties to workers and facilitate labor organizing. During workers' collective struggles, they organize training to enhance workers' right consciousness and transmit the idea of collective bargaining to them; they also help elect and train worker representatives, offer tactics to them, and are even present on bargaining tables on workers' behalf. By hatching informal labor groups, these labor groups network and educate workers in communities to build solidarity, and encourage them to run group activities and learn self-organization skills. Particularly, worker-turned NGO activists, who previously experienced labor disputes and with leadership skills, notably facilitate these activities due to their deep understanding of workers' circumstance and demands, and profound knowledge of their language and labor dispute settlement. This research demonstrates that, although movement-oriented labor NGOs are probably transitional forms in China and not able to replace genuine trade unions, they have taken up some roles that trade unions were supposed to play, significantly contributing to improving the organizational capacity of Chinese workers.

Prevailing literature on Chinese labor non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which focuses largely on their relations with the authoritarian state and strategies for survival, mainly views that these labor groups, in order to survive, tend to confine their work to social service provisions and legal consultations that are permitted, or, at least, not prohibited, by the state. Hence, they hardly become the agencies of social change to build a labor movement in China. However, based my observations between 2013-2015 in the Guangdong Province, I argue that a small group of labor NGOs have stepped beyond their supposed roles and become labor movement agencies in China; they actively assist and organize striking workers to negotiate with employers, and have hatched several informal labor groups in industrial zones. To explain this new development of labor NGOs in China, first, I argue that the state exerts its control on labor NGOs through a differentiated process, which creates a certain space for movement-oriented labor NGOs to survive. On the one hand, the state's need for NGOs in relieving its social welfare obligations gives them a chance to "disguise" as an ostensible social service provider by employing strategies. One the other hand, the different functions, power bases and vested interests of labor NGO-related state organstrade unions, public and national security agencies, and civil affairs bureaususually lead to less coordinated efforts in containing these groups. Second, the movement-oriented labor NGOs are able to develop strong ties to workers and facilitate labor organizing. During workers' collective struggles, they organize training to enhance workers' right consciousness and transmit the idea of collective bargaining to them; they also help elect and train worker representatives, offer tactics to them, and are even present on bargaining tables on workers' behalf. By hatching informal labor groups, these labor groups network and educate workers in communities to build solidarity, and encourage them to run group activities and learn self-organization skills. Particularly, worker-turned NGO activists, who previously experienced labor disputes and with leadership skills, notably facilitate these activities due to their deep understanding of workers' circumstance and demands, and profound knowledge of their language and labor dispute settlement. This research demonstrates that, although movement-oriented labor NGOs are probably transitional forms in China and not able to replace genuine trade unions, they have taken up some roles that trade unions were supposed to play, significantly contributing to improving the organizational capacity of Chinese workers.

This thesis examines the effects of labor regulation on formal (regulated) labor markets in Latin America. It is divided in three chapters, in which I analyze the effects of pension programs on formal-sector labor supply and the effects of payroll taxes on formal-sector labor demand. The first two chapters analyze how future pension benefits affect formal-sector labor supply. Since formal-sector jobs comply with labor regulation, including contributions to pension plans, formal-sector workers receive long-run benefits in the form of pensions. If workers account for such benefits when they search for formal-sector jobs, the pension system affects formal-sector labor supply before the retirement age. In Chapter 1, I estimate the causal link between future pension benefits and formal-sector labor supply by using a cohort-based reform undertaken in Colombia. I demonstrate that workers with higher pension gains are more willing to work in formal-sector jobs, rather than working in unregulated businesses or by themselves. The result is consistent with a life-cycle model of formal-sector labor supply presented in Chapter 2, where pension benefits are an amenity of working in the formal sector. The results suggest that pension reforms may have large effects on the labor market that should be taken into account in the design of pension programs. Chapter 3 analyzes the effect of payroll taxes on formal-sector labor demand in the presence of wage rigidity. In particular, I study the impact of a reduction of payroll taxes on the creation of formal-sector jobs in Colombia, where about 40 percent of formal-sector workers earn the minimum wage. Using a reform that granted tax credits to firms hiring workers younger than 28 years of age, I obtain estimates of the effect of payroll taxes on formal-sector employment and wages. I show that payroll tax incidence is borne by formal-sector employers. The reduction in payroll taxes increased formal-sector employment and had no effects on wages. Using the estimation results, I recover an estimate of the elasticity of the formal-sector labor demand of -0.44. This result implies that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage reduces formal-sector employment by 4.4 percent.
Arts, Faculty of
Vancouver School of Economics
Graduate

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2013.
Title as it appears in MIT Commencement Exercises program, June 2013: Labor arbitrage : impact of offshoring in the U.S. labor market. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 34-36).
The rapid growth of offshoring has ignited a contentious debate over its impact on the US labor market. Between 1983 and 2002, the United States economy lost 6 million jobs in manufacturing and income inequality increased sharply [Ebenstein, 2011]. Today due to the falling costs of transportation, coordination and communication this tendency is accelerating affecting both white and blue collar workers. While there many papers that analyze the productivity increase due to offshoring practices [Mitra, 2007], [Global Insight, 2004], [Houseman, 2010], most of them just assume that this improvement is automatically translated into lower prices therefore benefiting consumers. Nevertheless this assumption only holds in price competitive markets, which is not always the case. In this paper I will challenge the assumption of price competitive markets and argue how offshoring increases within-country income inequality. In addition I will analyze the aggregated effect of offshoring in the U.S. economy through both empirical and theoretical approaches.
by Jorge Malibran.
S.M.

This article focuses on the analysis and use of the institutions that are used in the new work process in order to give effective protection to workers in a process who were imposes a minimum duty of proof, and in turn, serve to combat fraud in hiring.
El presente artículo se enfoca en el análisis y usos de las instituciones que se utilizan en el nuevo proceso laboral con el fin de dar un tutela efectiva a aquellos trabajadores dentro de un proceso a quienes se les impone un deber mínimo de probanza, y, a su vez, sirva para combatir el fraude en la contratación laboral.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008.
Title from electronic title page (viewed Feb. 17, 2009). "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Economics." Discipline: Economics; Department/School: Economics.

Medizin in Leipzig gibt es seit langem auch als akademisches Fach. Seit 1415 besteht eine Medizinische Fakultät an der Universität. Kliniken entstanden und erkrankte Personen wurden durch die Ärzte der Universität betreut. Im 19. Jahrhundert aber setzte sich eine neue Naturwissenschaftlich ausgerichtete Medizin durch, und Leipzig gehörte zu den führenden Universitäten der neuen Richtung. Das stellt eine Ausstellung der UB Leipzig heraus, die aus Anlass des 600-jährigen Jubiläums der Medizinischen Fakultät geplant wurde und vom 11. Juni bis zum 18. Oktober 2015 in der Bibliotheca Albertina zu sehen ist. Frau Prof. Ingrid Kästner, Mitarbeiterin des Karl-Sudhoff-Instituts für die Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, hat den Katalog der Ausstellung geschrieben und die Exponate ausgewählt. Nicht nur Bücher aus dem Bestand der UB Leipzig sind zu sehen, sondern auch wertvolle Stücke aus dem Universitätsarchiv, dem Paul-Flechsig-Institut und dem Karl-Sudhoff-Institut.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2015.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (page 16).
In this paper we aim to test the extent of labor risk sharing exists in thai village economies. Specifically we test the null hypothesis of full risk sharing at the village level. We outline a simple planner's problem that motivates our empirical specification. Our empirical specification consists of two equations, a labor supply equation that determines how many hours you work conditional on participating in the labor market, and a selection equation which determines the probability of working positive hours. Our empirical specification allows for fixed effects that correspond to different Pareto weights for the agents. Our dataset, an unusually long panel survey spanning over 160 months conducted in 16 villages in Thailand, allows us to deal with these fixed effects. Our results lead us to reject the null of full risk sharing since non-labor income has a significant negative effect on participation. In most specifications it also has a significant but small negative effect on hours worked conditional on participation. In light of these results we reject the null of full risk sharing.
by Lucas Manuelli.
S.M.

The ageing of the Swedish population entails an increase of public and pension expenditure. A solution to keep the compensation level constant is to make individuals retire later from the labor force. In order to understand what actions need to be implemented, there is a need of more knowledge about the characteristics of individuals who chose to remain in the labor force after the normal age of retirement. This essay investigates how senior workers’ that are above the normal retirement age responds to an increase of non-labor income and how it affects labor supply. The results show that around 66 % of individuals will continue to work to the same extent, around 15 % will choose to reduce hours of work, and near 19 % will chose to retire. Also the results show that a person that will not change anything in hours of work after an increase in non-labor income will most likely be a male that is self-employed, who really likes his job and has a postgraduate degree. One conclusion in this essay is that to only focus on compensation levels in different social insurance systems to increase senior workers’ labor force participation will not be as effective as if also focus would be on social norms and cultural beliefs to increase engagement towards work.

El desenvolupament més important en el mercat de treball en tots els països industrialitzats ha estat l’increment de dones casades a la força laboral. La literatura econòmica associa l'increment de la participació a la força laboral de les dones amb el canvi en l'estructura salarial. En aquesta Tesi, estudio els tres elements clau en el canvi de posició de les dones en el mercat laboral: la diferència salarial de gènere (gender wage gap, gwg), l’elasticitat de l’oferta de treball femení, i la interacció entre l’oferta laboral femenina i la decisió de tenir fills. A més, exploro com és el rendiment de les dones en el mercat laboral, així com el rol que juguen les institucions del mercat laboral i les seves polítiques en l’oferta laboral femenina. En el primer capíto, exploro l’evolució en el gwg en un grup de països europeus. Utilitzo un nou enfocament que es basa en mesures directes sobre requeriments de capacitats per a treballar en determinades feines. Divideixo les capacitats entre brawns i brains. Durant els anys 90 i els anys 2000, el gwg ha caigut a una majoria de països europeus i als Estats Units. Una part d’aquesta caiguda es pot explicar pels canvis d’ocupació d’homes i de dones i pels diferents requeriments de capacitat que aquestes ocupacions tenen. Malgrat tot, a diferència de l’experiència americana, als països europeus els canvis en els retorns als brains i als brawns han implicat un increment en el gwg. Endemés, una part substancial dels canvis en el gwg no pot ser explicada pels canvis en les diferències de capacitat entre homes i dones, ni tampoc per canvis en les característiques d’homes i dones o en l’estructura salarial. L’anàlisi mostra que hi ha una part inexplicada del gwg que està altament correlacionada amb les institucions del mercat laboral, tot suggerint una forta relació entre els canvis en les institucions que governen el mercat laboral amb canvis en l’evolució del gwg. En el segon capítol, estudio l’elasticitat de l’oferta laboral de les dones i els homes casats. En particular, estimo l’elasticitat de l’oferta laboral de dones i homes casats en el marge extensiu, tenint en compte que existeix heterogeneïtat en l’educacio de les parelles i modelo explícitament com interactuen entre si els membres de la llar quan prenen decisions sobre l'oferta laboral. Els resultats mostren que hi ha una variació considerable entre les parelles en la manera com prenen decisions sobre l'oferta laboral. A més, l’elasticitat en l’oferta laboral difereix en gran mesura entre les llars, depenent del nivell educatiu dels seus membres. Una de les troballes centrals és que, si ignorem l’heterogeneïtat entre els diferents tipus de llars i les diferències entre les parelles en la manera com prenen les seves decisions d’oferta laboral, trobem una elasticitat d’oferta salarial massa baixa per a les dones casades. En el tercer capítol, escrit conjuntament amb Nezih Guner i Virginia Sánchez-Marcos, investiguem com els contractes temporals afecten la fertilitat de les dones a Espanya. Estimem models de duració de temps discret en el naixement del primer i subsegüents fills, i comparem les probabilitats de tenir un fill per part de dones amb contracte temporal i amb contracte permanent. Els resultats d’aquest capítol suggereixen que l’estabilitat laboral és un determinant important de la probabilitat de tenir fills. Trobem que la probabilitat que una dona sense fills, però amb un contracte permanent, tingui un fill l’any següent és més alta que la probabilitat que una dona sense fills amb un contracte temporal en tingui. L’efecte es torna molt més important per a transicions successives (del primer al segon, i del segon al tercer).
The most important development in labor markets, in all industrialized countries was the increase in the entry of women, in particular married women, into the labor force. The economic literature associates the increasing labor force participation of women with the changes in the wage structure, either in terms of the gender wage gap or the elasticity of the female labor supply to changes in their own wages or their husband's wages and with the changing fertility behavior of women. In this thesis, I study the three key aspects of the changing position of women in the labor markets: the gender wage gap, female labor supply elasticities and the interaction between labor supply of women and fertility behavior, and explore how women fare in the labor markets and how labor market institutions and policy affect their behavior. In the first chapter of this thesis, I explore the recent gender wage gap trends in a sample of European countries with a new approach that uses the direct measures of skill requirements of jobs held by men and women. During the 1990s and 2000s, the gender wage gap declined in the majority of European countries and in the U.S. A part of this decline is explained by changes in male-female differences in brain and brawn skill intensities that occur due to the shifts in occupational allocations. However, in contrast to the U.S. experience, in European countries the changes in returns to brain and brawn skills had a widening effect on the gender wage gaps. Furthermore, a substantial part of the changes in the gender wage gaps cannot be explained by the changes in the gender gaps in labor market characteristics, skills or changes in the wage structure. The analysis show that the unexplained part of the gender wage gap is strongly correlated with labor market institutions suggesting a strong link between the changes in the labor market institutions and changes in gender wage gap trends. In the second chapter, I study labor supply elasticities of married women and men and estimate labor supply elasticities of married women and men along the extensive margin allowing for the heterogeneity among couples (in educational attainments of husbands and wives) and explicitly modeling how household members interact and make their labor supply decisions. The results of Chapter 2 show that there is considerable variation among couples in the way they make their labor supply decisions. Moreover, labor supply elasticities differ greatly among households by the relative education levels of spouses. One of the central finding is that ignoring the heterogeneity between household types and differences between couples in the way they make their labor supply decisions yield a lower labor supply wage elasticity for married women. The third chapter, coauthored with Nezih Guner and Virginia Sánchez-Marcos, we investigate how temporary contracts affect the fertility behavior of women in Spain. To this end, we estimate discrete-time duration models of the first and subsequent births and compare the probability of having a child of women working under permanent and temporary contracts. The results of Chapter 3 suggest that job stability is an important determinant of the birth hazards. We find that childless women working under permanent contracts in a given year are more likely to give a birth in the following year than childless women working under temporary contracts in that particular year. Moreover, the effect becomes stronger for the transitions from the first to second and even more pronounced from second to third birth.

This thesis consists of three papers about labor market institutions and labor turnover. The first paper deals with the effects of enforcement of labor laws on turnover among formal workers. Examining data from RAIS, the paper discusses a previously undocumented discontinuous reduction in the layoffs at one year tenure. The analysis suggest that this results from the requirement of homologation for termination of those contracts, which works as a firing cost. Firms subject to low inspection frequency respond to stricter enforcement by increasing turnover during the first year, thus avoiding the payment of evaded benefits. The second paper analyses two distortions potentially present in Brazilian labor market institutions: collusion between workers and firms to withdraw funds from unemployment insurance and FGTS, and the incentive for termination of employment contracts before one year, to avoid the homologation. The effect of these distortions on firms' turnover strategy is quantified by a model. The results indicate that both distortions have effects on the distribution of layoffs over the employment duration, but little effect on the overall turnover, productivity and efficiency. The conclusion is that the distortions are relatively unimportant when compared to the selection of suitable employees for the job positions as a driver for turnover rates. In the third and last paper, we assess the impact of these distortions on the turnover and productivity through their influence on incentives for investment in labor relationships. A new model is proposed, in which labor productivity depends on investment in human capital by the worker. The model shows that distortions leading to high turnover decrease the investment in labor relationships. The lower investment, in turn, reduces relationships' values, inducing more turnover. Thus, the existence of rents associated with turnover can reduce investment in human capital and labor productivity.
Esta tese é composta por três artigos sobre instituições do mercado de trabalho e rotatividade da mão-de-obra. O primeiro artigo aborda os efeitos o monitoramento das leis trabalhistas sobre a rotatividade dos trabalhadores formais. A partir dos dados da RAIS, o artigo documenta de forma inédita, uma redução descontínua das demissões quando os contratos completam um ano. A análise sugere que isto se deve a exigência de homologação para a rescisão desses contratos, que funciona como um custo de demissão. Firmas pouco sujeitas a inspeções pelo MTE respondem a aumentos da fiscalização com mais rotatividade durante o primeiro ano, evitando o pagamento de d´dívidas trabalhistas. O segundo artigo analisa duas possíveis distorções presentes nas instituições do mercado de trabalho no Brasil: o conluio entre trabalhador e firma para a apropriação do seguro desemprego e do FGTS; e o t´término dos contratos de trabalho antes de completarem um ano, visando evitar a homologação. O efeito dessas distorções sobre as decisões de demissão e quantificado através de um modelo. Os resultados indicam que as distorções têm efeitos sobre a distribuição das demissões ao longo da duração do emprego, mas com pequeno impacto sobre rotatividade total, produtividade e eficiência. Conclui-se que a principal motivação para a rotatividade e a seleção de trabalhadores adequados. No terceiro artigo, procura-se identificar os efeitos das mesmas distorções sobre os incentivos ao investimento nas relações de trabalho. Elabora-se um novo modelo em que a produtividade depende de investimento em capital humano pelo trabalhador. O modelo evidencia que distorções que induzem a rotatividade diminuem o investimento nos vínculos de emprego. O menor investimento, por sua vez, reduz o valor da relação, induzindo mais rotatividade. Assim, a existência de rendas associadas à rotatividade pode resultar em baixos investimentos em capital humano e produtividade.
Tese (doutorado) - Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. Departamento de Economia, Rio de Janeiro, 2015.
Bibliografia: p. [86]-89.

Background: The aims of this randomised, double blind, placebo controlled trial were to compare vaginal PGE2 gel with oral misoprostol in the induction of labour at term. Methods: Women randomised to the oral misoprostol group received 20mcg oral misoprostol solution at two hourly intervals and placebo vaginal gel, and those in the vaginal prostaglandin group received vaginal PGE2 gel at six hourly intervals and oral placebo solution. The primary outcome measures were vaginal birth not achieved in 24 hours, uterine hyperstimulation with associated fetal heart rate changes, and caesarean section. Women were asked about their preferences for care, and a cost comparison was performed for the two methods of induction of labour. A nested randomised trial compared health outcomes for the woman and her infant related to morning or evening admission for commencing induction of labour. Results: A total of 741 women were randomised, 365 to the misoprostol group and 376 to the vaginal PGE2 group. There were no differences between women in the oral misoprostol group and women in the vaginal PGE2 group, for the outcomes vaginal birth not achieved in 24 hours (Misoprostol 168/365 (46.0%) versus PGE2 155/376 (41.2%); RR 1.12 95% CI 0.95-1.32; p=0.134), caesarean section (Misoprostol 83/365 (22.7%) versus PGE2 100/376 (26.6%); RR 0.82 95% CI 0.64- 1.06; p=0.127), or uterine hyperstimulation with fetal heart rate changes (Misoprostol 3/365 (0.8%) versus PGE2 6/376 1.6%); RR 0.55 95% CI 0.14-2.21; p=0.401). Women in the misoprostol group were more likely to indicate that they 'liked everything' associated with their labour and birth experience compared with women in the vaginal PGE2 group (Misoprostol 126/362 (34.8%) versus PGE2 103/373 (27.6%); RR 1.26; 95% CI 1.02-1.57; p=0.036). There were no differences in the primary outcomes when considering morning or evening admission to commence induction. The use of misoprostol was associated with a saving of $110.83 per woman induced. Conclusions: The use of oral misoprostol in induction of labour does not lead to poorer health outcomes for women or their infants, women express greater satisfaction with their labour and birth experience, and with misoprostol induction there is a cost saving to the institution.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 2005.

This study analyzes how employees at a university recreation center discursively construct their experiences of emotional labor, how they conceptualize such behavior in terms of displaying unfelt emotions and faking in good and bad faith, and what these discursive constructions reveal about their perceptions of authenticity. The findings demonstrate that workers construct emotional labor as a natural ability and as performing a role. People who construct emotional labor as a natural ability depict themselves as the controller of their workplace emotion. They display unfelt emotions in good faith when they do so to uphold another’s face, and they believe that they possess a true self. Employees who construct emotional labor as performing a role view their supervisors as controller of their workplace emotion. They fake emotions in good faith when doing so uphold their own face, and they fake in bad faith when it upholds the face of a co-worker who they feel needs to be disciplined. These people do not possess a sense of authentic self. They view themselves as multi-faceted and they say that they use social comparison to determine how to behave in particular situations. These findings reveal previously unexplored complexities in scholars’ conceptions of emotional labor and authenticity.

Aquesta tesi persegueix els objectius següents. En primer lloc, estudia els factors que impulsen el creixement constant tant en la participació de la mà d'obra com en les hores per treballador de persones majors, persones majors de 62 anys, als Estats Units des de mitjan anys vuitanta. Utilitzem dades del Health and Retirement Study (HRS) per estimar un model de cicle de vida de l'oferta laboral, la jubilació i l'acumulació de riqueses per contrastar el comportament de l'oferta laboral de dues cohorts als EUA: persones nascudes després de la Primera Guerra Mundial ("The Great Depression Kids"), i els nascuts després de la Segona Guerra Mundial ("The Baby Boomers"). Ens centrem en les diferències entre aquestes dues cohorts en l'obtenció i la dinàmica de la salut, així com les polítiques a què s'enfronten, un augment gradual de l'Edat de jubilació normal i l'eliminació de la prova de guanys l'any 2000, com a possibles fonts de canvi. Els resultats demostren que els efectes de les polítiques i els factors no relacionats amb la política tenen una magnitud similar. L'eliminació de la prova de guanys va tenir el major impacte de totes les polítiques. De forma conjunta, l'augment de les despeses mèdiques de butxaca i l'augment de l'esperança de vida són els factors dominants entre els no relacionats amb les polítiques. En segon lloc, utilitzem el Panell Socioeconòmic Alemany (SOEP) per estudiar com la introducció d'un salari mínim federal a Alemanya l'1 de gener de 2015 afecta els salaris de les reserves individuals. Trobem que la reforma estava associada amb un augment dels salaris de reserva d'aproximadament el 4 per cent en el final més baix de la distribució. A més, els canvis en els salaris de reserva i els salaris observats a causa de la reforma salarial mínima són comparables en la seva magnitud. També mostrem que els ciutadans alemanys ajusten els seus salaris de reserva més que els immigrants. En tercer lloc, torneu a utilitzar les dades SOEP per estimar l'efecte de la reforma salarial mínima alemanya sobre la durada de l'atur. Trobem una associació molt forta de la reforma amb un augment de la durada de l'atur entre homes joves. Aquest efecte és especialment fort en les regions amb alt grau de reforma.
This dissertation pursues the following objectives. First, it studies the factors driving the steady growth in both labor force participation and hours per worker of seniors, individuals above age 62, in the US since the mid 1980s. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to estimate a life-cycle model of labor supply, retirement, and wealth accumulation in order to contrast the labor supply behavior of two cohorts in the US: individuals born after World War I ("The Great Depression Kids"), and those born after the World War II ("The Baby Boomers"). We focus on the differences between these two cohorts in earning and health dynamics as well as policies that they face, a gradual increase in Normal Retirement Age and the elimination of the earnings test in 2000, as potential sources of change. The results demonstrate that the effects of policies and policy-unrelated factors are of similar magnitude. The elimination of the Earnings Test had the biggest impact of all policies. Jointly, the rise in out-of-pocket medical expenditures and the increase in life expectancy are the dominant factors among non policy-related ones. Second, we use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to study the how the introduction of a federal minimum wage in Germany on January 1, 2015, affected individual reservations wages. We find that the reform was associated with an increase in reservation wages of approximately 4 percent at the low end of the distribution. Furthermore, the shifts in reservation wages and observed wages due to the minimum wage reform are comparable in their magnitude. We also show that German citizens adjust their reservation wages more than immigrants do. Third, use again the SOEP data to estimate the effect of the German minimum wage reform on unemployment duration. We find a very strong association of the reform with an increase in unemployment durations across young men. This effect is especially strong in the regions with high reform bite.

This thesis is composed of three articles. The first addresses the recent decline in worker mobility between jobs and links it to changes in demand for jobs along the skill distribution. I present a novel theoretical framework, where workers compete for and sort to jobs in a frictional labor market. Using the framework I analyze to what extent the recent decline in worker mobility can be attributed to changing demand for jobs. The second article analyzes how the advancement of Information and Communication Technology affects the sorting of workers and jobs across cities. I provide a theoretical framework allowing for rich interactions between technology usage, occupation choice and location choice of workers. I show that the productivity advancement of IT technology can rationalize the changes in sorting patterns of workers across cities. The last article documents gender pay gaps among professors at the University of California and shows that even after conditioning on research output women are paid less than men.
Aquesta tesi està formada per tres articles. El primer estudia la recent disminució de la mobilitat laboral (en termes de canvis de feina) i la relaciona amb canvis en la demanda de feina per part de treballadors amb diferents nivells d’habilitat. Es proposa un nou marc teòric en el qual, dins d’un mercat laboral amb friccions, els treballadors competeixen entre ells i es distribueixen els llocs de treball. Amb aquest marc, s’analitza la mesura en la qual els canvis en la demanda de llocs de treball poden explicar la disminució recent de la mobilitat laboral. El segon article analitza com el progrés de les tecnologies de la informació i la comunicació afecta a la distribució de feines i treballadors entre les diverses ciutats. S’ofereix un marc teòric ric que permet molts tipus d’interaccions entre l’ús de la tecnologia, l’elecció d’una ocupació i la tria d’una ciutat per part dels treballadors. Es mostra que l’increment de la productivitat de les TIC pot racionalitzar els canvis observats en els patrons de distribució dels treba lladors entre les diverses ciutats. El darrer article documenta l’existència de diferències de gènere en els salaris dels professors de la Universitat de Califòrnia i es mostra que, fins i tot quan es té en compte la diferència de producció científica, les dones reben una menor retribució que els homes.

This thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter studies the effects of an integration of local labor markets between France and Switzerland. It shows that removing barriers to worker mobility can improve the labor market outcomes of workers, even of those that do not move. The reason is that the option to work at a larger number of employers decreases a single firm’s wagesetting power. The second chapter estimates the elasticity of labor supply to individual firms in Switzerland with a discrete choice model where workers have correlated preferences across firms. The results show that allowing for correlated worker preferences across firms in the model increases the estimated degree of competition in the labor market. The last chapter studies the role of childbearing for gender differences in the careers of PhD scientists in the United States. It finds that one third of the gender gap in earnings after twenty years cannot be explained by the presence of children.
Esta tesis consta de tres capítulos. El primer capítulo estudia los efectos de una integración de los mercados laborales locales entre Francia y Suiza. El análisis demuestra que eliminar barreras a la movilidad de los trabajadores puede aumentar el empleo y los salarios, incluso de la gente que no se desplaza. Esto se debe a que la opción de trabajar para un mayor número de empleadores disminuye el poder de fijación de salarios de una sola empresa. El segundo capítulo estima la elasticidad de la oferta de mano de obra a las empresas en Suiza. Se aplica un modelo de elección discreta en el que los trabajadores tienen preferencias correlacionadas entre las empresas. Los resultados muestran que tener en cuenta las preferencias correlacionadas de los trabajadores aumenta el grado estimado de competencia en el mercado laboral. El último capítulo estudia cómo la presencia de niños impacta las diferencias entre los géneros en las carreras de los científicos de doctorado e nEstados Unidos. El análisis en cuentra que un tercio de la diferencia en los ingresos entre los géneros después de veinte años no puede explicarse por la presencia de niños.

En aquesta tesi, analitzo les causes i conseqüències del desajust entre les habilitats de treballadors i les habilitats requerides per la seva ocupació. També investigo els factors que determinen l’èxit de fertilització in vitro, els quals posseeixen importants implicacions sobre l’elecció professional i la fertilitat de les dones. En el primer capítol, calculo noves mesures de desajust d’habilitats per habilitats alfabetitzadores i numèriques. Les mesures existents de desajust d’habilitats basades en les dades de l’Avaluació Internacional de Competències d’Adults (PIAAC) només utilitzen informació de la part del treballador i ignoren el tipus de treball que aquests realitzen. Per a 13 dels països de l’OCDE, mesuro les habilitats dels treballadors utilitzant la puntuació en exàmens individuals i les habilitats requerides per les seves professions amb dades de requisits ocupacionals de la Xarxa d’Informació Ocupacional. Mesuro 1) la correlació entre les habilitats i els requisits ocupacionals a cada país i 2) el percentatge de treballadors el desajust dels quals és superior a 50. Mostro que les mesures de desajust que proposo tenen una correlació negativa amb la productivitat laboral agregada superior a les mesures existents. En el segon capítol, col·laborant amb en Andrii Parkhomenko, estudiem la relació entre les prestacions d’atur i el canvi d’ocupació. Pot afectar el nivell de les prestacions d’atur al tipus de treball posterior a l’atur? Utilitzant dues bases de dades d’Estats Units, el SIPP i el NLSY79, documentem nous resultats envers la relació entre les prestacions d’atur i el canvi d’ocupació. Primerament, els aturats que tenen dret a prestacions més altes canvien d’ocupació en menor freqüència. En segon lloc, entre els que si canvien d’ocupació, les prestacions més altes tenen una correlació positiva amb el requisit d’habilitats en la nova ocupació. Finalment, el primer resultat és més pronunciat per a treballadors que tenen una permanència més llarga a la seva antiga ocupació i, en canvi, en el segon resultat, es més pronunciat entre els que tenen una permanència més curta. Proposem un model d’agents i llocs de treball heterogenis per estudiar l’efecte de les prestacions d’atur en els sous i el tipus d’ocupacions de treballadors que han estat a l’atur. El model estimat ens permet mostrar que, proporcionant prestacions més altes a treballadors amb menys experiència, el resultat és de sous mitjans més alts. En el tercer capítol, col·laborant amb la Fane Groes, la Daniela Iorio, la Mallory Leung i el Raul Santaeulalia-Llopis, estudiem els factors que determinen l’èxit de la fertilització in vitro (FIV), utilitzant dades administratives de Dinamarca (1995-2009). Trobem que l’educació materna afecta de manera significativa a l’èxit de FIV (nascut viu). Comparant les fertilitzades que no van acabar l’educació secundària envers les que tenen un diploma universitari o de secundària, tenen un 21% i un 13% més de probabilitat d’aconseguir un nascut viu a través de FIV, respectivament. Argumentem que el gradient d’educació reflexa diferències en productivitat en FIV (com de bé les dones segueixen les instruccions del tractament de FIV) i en factors psicològics (com les afecta assumir el tractament). Desenvolupem un model dinàmic de dones utilitzant la tecnologia de FIV, on les dones tenen productivitats diferents en FIV i nivells diferents d’estrès psicològic associat al tractament. En el model, les dones equilibren la probabilitat positiva d’obtenir un fill i el cost psicològic del tractament. El model estimat demostra que el 95% del gradient es pot explicar amb les diferencies en la productivitat en FIV.
En esta tesis analizo las causas y consecuencias del desajuste entre las habilidades de trabajadores y las habilidades requeridas por su ocupación. Estudio cómo medir este desajuste y cómo se ve afectado por el nivel de prestaciones de desempleo mediante su efecto en el cambio de ocupación. También investigo los factores que determinan el éxito de la fertilización in vitro, los cuales tienen implicaciones importantes sobre la elección profesional y de fertilidad de las mujeres. En el primer capítulo, calculo nuevas medidas de desajuste de habilidades para habilidades alfabetizadoras y numéricas. Las medidas existentes de desajuste de habilidades basadas en los datos de la Evaluación Internacional de Competencias de Adultos (PIAAC) usan información solo de la parte del trabajador e ignoran el tipo de trabajos que estos realizan. Para 13 de los países de la OCDE, mido las habilidades de los trabajadores usando la puntuación obtenida en exámenes individuales y las habilidades requeridas por sus profesiones con datos de requisitos ocupacionales de la Red de Información Ocupacional. Mido 1) la correlación entre las habilidades y los requisitos ocupacionales en cada país y 2) el porcentaje de trabajadores para los que el desajuste es mayor de 50. Muestro que las medidas de desajuste que propongo tienen una correlación negativa con la productividad laboral agregada más alta que las medidas existentes. En el segundo capítulo, en colaboración con Andrii Parkhomenko, estudio la relación entre las prestaciones de desempleo y el cambio de ocupación. ¿Puede afectar el nivel de las prestaciones de desempleo al tipo de trabajos posteriores al desempleo? Usando dos bases de datos de Estados Unidos, el SIPP y el NLSY79, documentamos nuevos resultados sobre la relación entre las prestaciones de desempleo y el cambio de ocupación. Primero, los desempleados que tienen derecho a prestaciones más altas cambian de ocupación menos frecuentemente. Segundo, entre los que sí cambian de ocupación, las prestaciones más altas tienen una correlación positiva con el requisito de habilidades en la nueva ocupación. Por último, el primer resultado es más pronunciado para trabajadores que tienen una permanencia más larga en su antigua ocupación, mientras que el segundo resultado es más pronunciado entre quienes tienen una permanencia más corta. Proponemos un modelo de agentes y trabajos heterogéneos para estudiar el efecto de las prestaciones de desempleo en los salarios y el tipo de ocupaciones de trabajadores que pasan por el desempleo. El modelo estimado nos permite mostrar que proporcionando prestaciones más altas a trabajadores con menos experiencia, los salarios medios son más altos. En el tercer capítulo, en colaboración con Fane Groes, Daniela Iorio, Mallory Leung and Raul Santaeulalia-Llopis, estudio los factores que determinan el éxito de la fertilización in vitro (FIV), usando datos administrativos de Dinamarca (1995-2009). Determinamos que la educación materna afecta de manera significativa al éxito de FIV (nacido vivo). Comparado con las fertilizadas que no acabaron la secundaria, quienes tienen diploma universitario o de secundaria tienen un 21% o un 13%, respectivamente, más probabilidades de lograr un nacido vivo mediante FIV. Argumentamos que el gradiente de educación refleja diferencias en productividad en FIV (cómo de bien las mujeres siguen las instrucciones del tratamiento de FIV) y en factores psicológicos (cómo les afecta asumir el tratamiento). Desarrollamos un modelo dinámico de mujeres usando la tecnología de FIV, donde las mujeres tienen distintas productividades en FIV y distintos niveles de estrés psicológico asociado con el tratamiento. En el modelo, las mujeres equilibran la probabilidad positiva de obtener un hijo y el coste psicológico del tratamiento. El modelo estimado demuestra que el 95% del gradiente se puede explicar con las diferencias en la productividad en FIV.
In this dissertation, I analyze the determinants and consequences of a mismatch between the skills of workers and the skills required by the occupation they work in. I study how skills mismatch can be measured and how it is affected by unemployment insurance policy through occupational switching. I also investigate the determinants of in vitro fertilization success, which has important implications for women's career and fertility choices. In Chapter 1, I compute new measures of skills mismatch for literacy and numeracy based on how well workers sort to jobs. Existing measures of skills mismatch based on the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) use information only on the worker's side and ignore jobs that workers perform or the sorting between workers and jobs. For 13 OECD countries from the PIAAC, I measure workers' skills by their individual test scores and the skill requirements of their jobs by the occupational requirements from the Occupational Information Network. I then look at 1) the correlation between the skills and skill requirements in each country and 2) the percentage of workers for whom the absolute difference between the percentile rank of their skills and the skill requirements of their jobs is larger than 50. I show that across countries the new measures of mismatch correlate negatively with measures of aggregate labor productivity, and the correlation is stronger than the existing measures. In Chapter 2, joint with Andrii Parkhomenko, we study the relationship between unemployment benefits and occupational switching. Do unemployment benefits only provide income support for workers during their unemployment spells, or do they also affect post-unemployment outcomes? Using two US data sets, the SIPP and the NLSY79, we document three new facts on the relationship between unemployment benefits and occupational switching. First, unemployed individuals who are eligible for higher unemployment benefits are less likely to switch occupations. Second, conditional on switching, having higher unemployment benefits correlates positively with the cognitive skills requirements of the new occupation. Finally, while the first fact is stronger for workers with longer occupational tenure, the second fact is stronger for workers with shorter occupational tenure. We then build a search model with heterogeneous individuals and jobs to study how unemployment benefits affect skill requirements and wages for workers who experience employment-unemployment-employment transitions. Using the estimated model we find that providing larger benefits to workers with shorter labor market experience results in higher average wages. In Chapter 3, joint with Fane Groes, Daniela Iorio, Mallory Leung and Raul Santaeulalia-Llopis, we study the determinants of in vitro fertilization (IVF) success using administrative data from Denmark (1995-2009). We find that maternal education significantly determines IVF success (live birth). Compared with high school dropouts, patients with a college (high school) degree have a 21% (13%) higher chance of attaining a live birth through IVF. We argue that the education gradient in IVF reflects educational disparities in IVF productivity (how well women follow the IVF procedure) and the psychological factors (how they are affected by undertaking the treatments). We develop a dynamic model of women using IVF technology in which women differ in IVF productivity and the psychological stress associated with undergoing the treatment. In the model, women face a trade-off between a positive probability of succeeding in getting a child through IVF and the psychological cost associated to undergoing the treatment. The estimated model sheds light on the importance of each of the factors in explaining the IVF educational gradient. In particular, we find that differences in average IVF productivity across education groups account for more than 95% of the observed gradient.

In this dissertation, I present three essays on labor share.

The first chapter studies the effect of offshoring on the relative share of income going to labor and capital. It introduces offshoring in a model of heterogeneous firms with two intermediate inputs. The intermediate inputs are produced with a CES technology using two factors of production: labor and capital. Given the direction of labor-saving technical change, offshoring decreases the relative demand for labor, which thereby decreases labor share. Empirical studies of the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) show that in manufacturing industries in developed countries, the share of imported intermediate inputs, especially those that originate in developing countries, negatively affects labor share.

The second chapter studies the effect of trade liberalization on labor share. It introduces technology upgrading in a model of trade in which heterogeneous firms use two inputs: labor and capital. The model allows for non-neutral technology upgrading and it uses a CES production function. The joint treatment of technology upgrading and export choices shows that trade liberalization can induce efficient firms to upgrade their technology. Given the direction of labor-saving technology upgrading, trade liberalization increases the relative demand for capital and decreases labor share. This model also explains why exporting firms are more capital intensive.

The third chapter studies the effect of ICT use on the labor share in South Korean firms employing Workplace Panel Survey (WPS). The results robustly show that increasing ICT use decreases labor share in both manufacturing firms and non-manufacturing firms. It also finds that the decreasing the bargaining position of labor negatively affects labor share.

This thesis examines two topics in labor economics and policy evaluation. Chapter 1 provides an introduction. Chapter 2 addresses the estimation of the effects of the minimum wage on labor market outcomes in developing countries. The main finding is that, even in the absence of policy variation, that is, when the same level of the minimum wage holds for all the workers in the data, it is still possible to recover the effects of this policy under particular assumptions of a dual economy model. Using this result, the effects of the minimum wage in Brazil from 2001 to 2009 are estimated. It is shown that the minimum wage has considerably increased average wages and reduced wage inequality. However, these effects are accompanied by higher unemployment and an increase in the size of the informal sector. Overall, the loss of tax revenues from the outflow of workers to the informal sector and unemployment more than offsets the increase in wages. Thus, this minimum wage policy contributes to a decrease in the labor tax revenues collected by the government. Chapter 3 also considers estimation of the effects of the minimum wage on labor market outcomes in developing countries. However, this chapter explores the use of less restrictive assumptions regarding the joint distribution of sectors and wages. To ease the estimation of the model parameters, a parametric approach (maximum likelihood) is used. The results validate the conclusions obtained in the previous chapter. Chapter 4 investigates the estimation of policy effects in partially randomized designs. It is shown that when randomization is implemented in a stratified way, the usual tests of balance of characteristics between treatment and control groups can suffer from size distortions, lack of power, or both. A solution to this problem is proposed, and its performance is compared with the baseline estimators in a simulation. It is shown that the proposed test possesses the desirable characteristics of correct nominal size and consistency. Finally, to illustrate the use of these techniques, a stratified, randomized job training program is analyzed.
Arts, Faculty of
Vancouver School of Economics
Graduate

I model a hiring process in which a candidate is evaluated sequentially by two agents of a firm. Each agent observes an independent signal of the candidate's productivity. I show that if the second agent values a non-productive attribute of a given candidate, that candidate may be less likely to be hired than a candidate lacking the preferred non-productive attribute due to the first agent adjusting their own quality threshold to compensate. I go on to empirically explore the behavior of prisoners in Oregon based on exogenous shocks to the status quo. These shocks include changes in the generosity of sentence reductions available to certain prisoners and the implementation of a variety of policies that have made it less costly for prisoners to communicate with the outside world. I find that prisoners respond to behavioral reviews with improved behavior on the days immediately before and after a review, but increasing available sentence reductions awarded for good behavior does not reduce misconduct rates among inmates. Furthermore, I find that increasing the ability of prisoners to communicate with friends and family using technology has not led to the decrease in in-person visitation that many have predicted. Instead, total communication seems to have increased in Oregon prisons. Given the extensive literature that suggests increased communication with the outside world reduces a prisoner's likelihood of recidivating, this result may indicate that introducing communication technology and making it more affordable may be a cost effective policy to prevent future crimes. This dissertation includes unpublished co-authored material.

In Chapter 1, we estimate the causal effect of homeownership on employment using a regression discontinuity design that exploits an arbitrary threshold arising from a homeownership program that assigns a house to low-income families in Chile. We establish that homeownership decreases employment by between 3.95 and 5.60 percentage points. These results contrast with previous non-experimental literature, which has often found positive effects. Our findings seem to be driven by children of the heads of households not entering the labor market, rather than workers being motivated to leave their job. We also find that residential stability and neighbourhood quality are unlikely to drive the effects, contrary to what has been proposed by previous theoretical papers. Chapter 2 studies the effect of homeownership on the academic achievements of children in the household, using a regression discontinuity design that exploits an arbitrary threshold arising from a voucher-based homeownership assistance program in Chile. Despite the fact that the homeownership program substantially increases the quality of the homes in which students live, I do not find that it affects their test scores. In a subgroup analysis, I find that homeownership decreases the test scores of elementary school students by 0.16 to 0.18 standard deviations. These effects may be due to the fact that, when receiving a voucher, many families cease to live with a hosting family, who are often close relatives (e.g. grandparents), and begin living in their own house. This seems to suggest that students experience a decrease in learning support that was previously provided to them by those close relatives. My results contrast with previous studies, which have often found positive effects of homeownership on students' academic achievements. In Chapter 3, I exploit a plausibly exogenous variation in the characteristics of principals to explore their effectiveness in improving school outcomes. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that principals appointed under the reform tend to be younger, less experienced, and more highly educated. Drawing from a panel dataset of teacher responses, I observe that the new principals improve the general climate in their schools by decreasing violence and expanding community engagement. On the other hand, they do not improve teacher-monitoring practices, teachers' pedagogical methods, or students' test results. A plausible explanation for these results is the lack of positive or negative incentives given to principals based on the performance of employees in their schools. Evidence in this paper suggests that, in certain institutional settings, school principals do not seem to be as relevant as is often assumed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2011.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
This dissertation consists of three chapters on topics in labor economics. In the first chapter, I present a model in which firms under-invest in hiring novice workers because they don't receive the full benefit of discovering novice talent. A firm must pay a cost to hire a novice worker. When it does, it obtains both labor services and information about the worker's productivity. This information has option value as a productive novice can be rehired. However, if competing firms also observe the novice's productivity, the option value of hiring accrues to the worker, not the employer. Firms will accordingly under-invest in discovering novice talent unless they can claim the benefit from doing so. I test this model's relevance in an online labor market by hiring 952 workers at random from an applicant pool of 3,767 for a 10-hour data entry job. In this market, worker performance is publicly observable. Consistent with the model's prediction, novice workers hired at random obtained significantly more employment and had higher earnings than the control group, following the initial hiring spell. A second treatment confirms that this causal effect is likely explained by information revelation rather than skills acquisition. Providing the market with more detailed information about the performance of a subset of the randomly-hired workers raised earnings of high-productivity workers and decreased earnings of low-productivity workers. Due to its scale, the experiment significantly increased the supply of workers recognized as high-ability in the market. This outward supply shift raised subsequent total employment and decreased average wages in occupations affected by the experiment (relative to non-treated occupations), implying that it also increased the sum of worker and employer surplus. Under plausible assumptions, this additional total surplus exceeds the social cost of the experiment. In the second chapter, I estimate the sensitivity of students' college application decisions to a small change in the cost of sending standardized test scores to colleges. In 1997, the ACT increased the number of free score reports it provided to students from three to four, maintaining a $6 marginal cost for each additional report. In response to this $6 cost change, ACT-takers sent more score reports and applications, while SAT-takers did not. ACT-takers also widened the range of colleges to which they sent scores. I show that students' response to the cost change is inconsistent with optimal decision-making but instead suggests that students use rules of thumb to make college application decisions. Sending additional score reports could, based on my estimates, substantially increase low-income students' future earnings. In the third chapter, I analyze the effects of the Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarships, a broad-based merit scholarship program that rewards students for their high school achievement with college financial aid. Since 1991, over a dozen states, comprising approximately a quarter of the nation's high school seniors, have implemented similar merit scholarship programs. Using individual-level data from the ACT exams, I find that the program did not achieve one of its stated goals, inducing more students to prefer to stay in Tennessee for college, but it did induce large increases in performance on the ACT. This suggests that policies that reward students for performance affect behavior and may be an effective way to improve high school achievement.
by Amanda Dawn Pallais.
Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2006.
Includes bibliographical references.
My dissertation is a collection of three essays that consider various aspects of income inequality and the demand for skill. The first chapter uses the advent of the US Interstate Highway System to examine the effect of reducing trade barriers on the relative demand for skilled labor. The Interstate Highway System was designed to connect major cities, to serve national defense, and to connect the US to Canada and Mexico. As an unintended consequence, many rural counties were connected to the highway system. I find that these counties experienced an increase in trade-related activities, such as trucking and retail sales. By increasing trade, the highways raised the relative demand for skilled manufacturing workers in skill-abundant counties and reduced it elsewhere, consistent with the predictions of the Heckscher-Ohlin model. The second chapter examines the effect of the division of labor on the demand for information processing. I find that manufacturing industries with a more complex division of labor employ relatively more clerks, who process information that is used to coordinate production. An early information technology (IT) revolution that took place around 1900 raised the relative demand for clerks in manufacturing, and significantly more so in industries with a complex division of labor.
(cont.) The increased demand for clerks likely contributed to the subsequent onset of the High School Movement. Interestingly, recent changes in IT have enabled firms to substitute computers for clerks, and I find evidence that this substitution occurred at a faster rate in more complex industries. The third chapter, coauthored with Liz Ananat, examines the effect of marital breakup on the economic outcomes of women with children. We find that having a female firstborn child increases the probability that a woman's first marriage ends in divorce. Using this exogenous variation we find that divorce has little effect on a woman's average household income, but it does increase the probability that her household ends up in the lowest income quartile. While women partially offset the loss of spousal earnings by receiving more child support and welfare, combining households, and increasing their labor supply, divorce still increases the odds of household poverty.
by Guy Michaels.
Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, 2016.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
This thesis is divided in three chapters. The first two chapters explore the role of structural changes and skill mismatches in generating unemployment. In the first chapter, I present a model in which technological change creates a mismatch between the skill requirements in novel jobs and workers' current skills. Although the economy adjusts as workers are retrained and learn these skills, I argue that the adjustment may be sluggish and inefficient. Moreover, along this adjustment the economy becomes more responsive to aggregate shocks. The key mechanism behind these results is that, due to matching frictions and because skills are not yet standardized, firms face a high cost to recruit workers with the requisite skills for novel jobs and they respond by creating fewer novel jobs. In the second chapter, I document that the decline in routine-cognitive jobs outside manufacturing-a pervasive structural change that has affected U.S. labor markets since the mid 90s-accelerated during the Great Recession and contributed to the long-lasting increase in unemployment since 2007. I show that the local labor markets that were more exposed to this structural change experienced worst outcomes during the Great Recession. Moreover, at the local labor market, this structural change interacted with temporal shocks to the demand for goods and services. In the third chapter, which is joint work with Daron Acemoglu, we study how the automation of jobs performed by labor affects employment, wages and the share of labor in national income.
by Pascual Restrepo Mesa.
Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2013.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
I addressed three questions in Labor Economics, using experimental and quasi-experimental variation to determine causality. In the first chapter, I ask whether playing longer in the NFL increases mortality in retirement. I compared players with very short careers with those with long careers. I also examined mortality for replacement players used briefly during the 1987 players' strike. I find that mortality is 15 percent higher for players with longer careers. This difference is even larger for positions with a high risk of injury. In the second chapter, we use a randomized experiment to evaluate the effects of academic achievement awards for first- and second-year college students studying at a Canadian commuter college. The award scheme offered linear cash incentives for course grades above 70. Awards were paid every term. Program participants also had access to peer advising by upperclassmen. Program engagement appears to have been high but overall treatment effects were small. The intervention increased the number of courses graded above 70 and points earned above 70 for second-year students, but generated no significant effect on overall GPA. Results are somewhat stronger for a subsample that correctly reproduced the program rules. In the third chapter, we examine two questions: (1) What is the value of receiving the first draft pick in the National Basketball Association?, and (2) Do teams lose intentionally to secure higher draft positions? We answer the first question by adjusting for the probability of winning the lottery using a propensity score methodology. The estimates indicate that winning the draft lottery increases attendance by 6 percentage points during the five-year period following the draft. Receiving the first pick is also associated with a small increase in win percentage. To answer the second question, we use a fixed-effects methodology that compares games in which a team can potentially change its lottery odds to games at the end of the season in which these odds are fixed. Since 1968, playoff-eliminated teams have seen around a 5 percentage point increase in win percentage once their lottery odds are fixed. This difference has ballooned above 10 percentage points in more recent years.
by Tyler Williams.
Ph.D.

Thesis advisor: Shannon Seitz
Issues pertaining to low income workers are of the upmost interest to policy makers. In the mid 1990s, the issue of welfare recipients and work was at the forefront of public policy, as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was passed. One of the many goals of the policy was to "end the dependence of needy families on government benefits" by encouraging work and ultimately higher wages. The first paper of my dissertation explores the processes by which work leads to wage growth for welfare recipients. I find that welfare recipients have similar returns to tenure and experience as non-recipients and that tenure has higher returns than experience for these women. Because of this, policies that discourage leaving work, like a work requirement, are more effective encouraging wage growth than policies discouraging welfare use, like a time-limit. A decade later, the low savings rates of low income workers has led policy makers within the Obama administration to consider making Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) available to all workers. The second paper of this dissertation examines how likely low individual workers are to participate in these plans. We find that low-income workers not currently offered voluntary retirement savings plans are less likely to participate than those currently offered those plans. The paper indicates policy makers should be wary of basing estimates of participation in the offered IRAs on current participation, as this may overestimate the participation rate by up to 25 percent
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Economics

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

The importance of risk-sharing in agricultural economies has been extensively analyzed through the principal-agent framework, which predicts that sharecropping should be observed more frequently than fixed rent contracts when output uncertainty is higher. Empirical studies, however, provide mixed support for this prediction, since often fixed rent contracts are found to be prevalent in more risky environments. The first chapter provides a model where the relative incidence of share tenancy over fixed rent contracts may be negative depending, among other things, on the relative average degree of risk aversion of tenants and landlords. The second chapter explores the empirical validity of the theoretical framework using Indian data. After paying special attention to the measure of uncertainty used to identify farming risk, a parameterized version of the theoretical model is structurally estimated. The econometric results support the proposed model. The third chapter studies the offset effect of pension wealth on private wealth when individuals are misinformed about their future retirement benefits. We show that if individuals have expectational errors correlated with their actual pension wealth, and update over time their expectations, then the canonical econometric specification used so far to estimate the offset effect gives biased estimates. An alternative econometric specification is proposed and used to estimate the offset effect on Italian data. The estimates obtained are higher than the ones previously found in the literature
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2003
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Economics

Thesis advisor: Andrew Beauchamp
Thesis advisor: Arthur Lewbel
This thesis sheds light on two cutting-edge topics in Labor Economics, peer effects in the workplace and non-cognitive skills, and makes a methodological contribution to the related literature. The literature on peer effects in the workplace seeks to better understand co-workers' effect on an individual's productivity through the interactions among workers beyond the production technology. In the first essay, titled Learning When It Counts: Evidence from Professional Bowling Tournaments, I test the hypothesis that a worker can improve productivity by learning from peer co-workers in high-skill jobs. While demand for high-skill workers has been increasing, high-skill jobs often require workers to make a decision, facing uncertainty underlying their tasks. Highly skilled professionals have deep insights to pick up meaningful patterns of information. Therefore, if they are in an environment that allows them to learn additional information from co-workers, their productivity can improve. In this paper, I examine the productivity effects of learning among high-skill peers about uncertain conditions underlying their tasks with variations in the "space of ideas," exploiting a unique, novel dataset from professional bowling competitions. Specifically, a bowler learns about lane conditions in part by watching his competitor bowl on the same lane. A right-handed bowler learns more relevant (to his task) information from competing with another right-hander than with a left-hander, as the used part of the lanes (the proximate space of ideas) varies with handedness. I compare the probabilities of bowling a strike of bowlers matched with like-handed competitors versus opposite-handed competitors. I find a large impact of the same ideas space on learning, e.g, being paired with a like-handed bowler increases strike probability by 14 percentage points. This finding adds evidence for the existence of peer effects in high-skill jobs. I also show that learning curves exist only when bowlers are in same-handed match-ups, by examining how these differences change from one frame to the next over a game. Another calculation is determining how much total scores could be increased by pairing bowlers to raise the proximity in the space of ideas. These results are suggestive of how much workplaces might increase productivity by optimally pairing workers based on the proximity of the space of ideas. The second topic of this dissertation is non-cognitive skills such as conscientiousness, self-control and social skills. Conventionally, economists have assumed that measures of cognitive skills such as IQ were sufficient to represent the role of human capital in production. However, a growing body of research suggests that non-cognitive skills are important factors in educational attainment and labor outcomes. Recent research in psychology shows that bilingualism can help strengthen social skills and self-control. In the second essay, joint with Tracy Regan and titled Bilingual Advantage in Non-cognitive Skills, we examine the causal relationship between bilingualism and non-cognitive measures, exploiting a large dataset from Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002). To isolate the causality, we use an indicator for whether either parent was foreign-born as an instrumental variable for bilingualism. We find that raising the degree of speaking a language other than English to parents from none to all of the time can increase a student's percentile in the U.S. national distribution by 36 percentage points for conscientiousness (being well organized and working hard) and by 39 and 50 percentage points for instrumental motivation (academic motivation to achieve external goals such as better job opportunities) and persistence (keeping working even in difficulties). In particular, the bilingual advantage in persistence turns out to be significant only for disadvantaged children (the lowest socioeconomic status quartile) but insignificant for the others. These results suggest that bilingualism can be promoted as a policy tool to reduce inequality and call for further research on the relationship between bilingualism and non-cognitive skills. In the final essay, titled Simple Transformation for Finding a Maximum Weighted Matching in General Digraphs, I propose a novel, simple procedure using an existing efficient algorithm to find an optimal pairing that can produce the maximum output. As shown in the first essay, this algorithm can be useful for the optimal deployment of workforces with the consideration of peer effects. Particularly, the procedure is applicable to cases in which the order in a pair matters. The order can complicate the problem of finding optimal pairings, because a pair can have two orders. To address this ordered pairing problem, I devise a simple transformation of a general directed graph to a proper (undirected) graph. Using the transformed graph, a maximum weighted matching can be found, using any existing polynomial-time algorithm for undirected graphs. By recovering orientations in the found matching, a maximum weighted matching for the original directed graph can be found. I prove the matching from the suggested algorithm is always a maximum weighted matching in the directed graph. This thesis contributes to Labor Economics by adding evidence in newly-rising topics. The first chapter shows evidence of peer effect--learning from competitors--among high-skill workers. The second chapter suggests that bilinguals have an advantage in forming non-cognitive skills. The third chapter proposes an algorithm for finding an optimal pairing to maximize the aggregate productivity in the consideration of the learning effect found in the first chapter. I hope that the findings in the thesis will meaningfully contribute to the developing literature of Labor Economics
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Economics

My thesis combines three distinct papers in labor economics. The first chapter is a collaborative work with Bernd Fitzenberger and Karsten Kohn. In this chapter we scrutinize the effects of union density and of collective bargaining coverage on the distribution of wages both in the covered and the uncovered sector. Collective bargaining in Germany takes place at either the industry or firm level. Collective bargaining coverage is much greater than union density. The share of employees covered by collective bargaining in a single firm can vary between 0% and 100%. This institutional setup suggests that researchers should explicitly distinguish union density, coverage rate at the firm level, and coverage at the individual level. Using linked employer-employee data, we estimate OLS and quantile regressions of wages on these dimensions of union influence. A higher share of employees in a firm covered by industry-wide or firm-specific contracts is associated with higher wages, but there is no clear-cut effect on wage dispersion. Yet, holding coverage at the firm level constant, individual bargaining coverage is associated with a lower wage level and less wage dispersion. A greater union density reinforces the effects of coverage, but the effect of union density is negative at all points of the wage distribution for employees who work in firms without collective bargaining coverage. Greater union density thus compresses the wage distribution while moving the distribution in firms without coverage uniformly. The second chapter evaluates the impact of the UK Working Time Regulations 1998, which introduced mandatory paid holiday entitlement. The regulation gave(nearly) all workers the right to a minimum of 4 weeks of paid holiday per a year. With constant weekly pay this change amounts effectively to an increase in the real hourly wage of about 8.5% for someone going from 0 to 4 weeks paid holiday per year, which should lead to adjustments in employment. For employees I use complementary log-log regression to account for right-censoring of employment spells. I find no increase in the hazard to exit employment within a year after treatment. Adjustments in wages cannot explain this result as they are increasing for the treated groups relative to the control. I also evaluate the long run trend in aggregate employment, using the predicted treatment probabilities in a difference-in-differences framework. Here I find a small and statistically significant decrease in employment. This effect is driven by a trend reversal in employment, coinciding with the treatment. The third chapter considers how the availability of a personal computer at home changed employment for married women. I develop a theoretical model that motivates the empirical specifications. Using data from the U.S. CPS from 1984 to 2003, I find that employment is 1.5 to 7 percentage points higher for women in households with a computer. The model predicts that the increase in employment is driven by higher wages. I find having a computer at home is associated with higher wages, and employment in more computer intensive occupations, which is consistent with the model. Decomposing the changes by educational attainment shows that both women with low levels of education (high school diploma or less) and women with the highest levels of education (Master's degree or more) have high returns from home computers.

This thesis titled “Essays in Labour Economics” is comprised of three essays investigating various determinants of earnings inequality. Chapter 1 provides a novel explanation for labor market polarization—the rise in employment shares of high and low skill jobs at the expense of middle skill jobs, and the fall in middle-skill wages. We argue that recent and historical episodes of polarization resulted from increased automation. In our theoretical model, firms deciding whether to employ machines or workers in a given task weigh the cost of using machines, which is increasing in the complexity (in an engineering sense) of the task, against the cost of employing workers, which is increasing in training time required by the task. Some tasks do not require training regardless of complexity, while in other tasks training is required and increases in complexity. In equilibrium, firms are more likely to automate a task that requires training, holding complexity constant. We assume that more-skilled workers learn faster, and thus it is middle skill workers who have a comparative advantage in tasks that are most likely to be automated when machine design costs fall. In addition to explaining job polarization, our model makes sense of observed patterns of automation and accounts for a set of novel stylized facts about occupational training requirements. Chapter 2 establishes a novel source of wage differences among observationally similar high skill workers. We show that degree class — a coarse measure of performance in university degrees — causally affects graduates’ earnings. We employ a regression discontinuity design comparing graduates who differ only by a few marks in an individual exam, and whose degree class is thus assigned randomly. A First Class is worth roughly three percent in starting wages which translates into £1,000 per annum. An Upper Second is worth more on the margin—seven percent in starting wages (£2,040). In addition to identifying a novel source of luck in the determination of earnings, our findings also show the importance of simple heuristics for hiring decisions. Chapter 3 asks whether public policy affects the degree of intergenerational transmission of education. The chapter investigates this question in the context of secondary school transitions in Germany. During the last three decades, several German states changed the rules for admission to secondary school tracks. Combining a new data set on transition rules with micro data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP), I find that allowing free track choice raises the probability of attending the most advanced track by five percentage points. However, the effect is twice as large for children of less educated parents. The results suggest that the correlation between parents’ and children’s educational attainment may be reduced by more than one third when no formal restrictions to choosing a secondary school track exist.