Thèses sur le sujet « Precarious employment – European Union countries »

L'emploi informel est devenu un sérieux défi pour l'économie ukrainienne et des pays en transition au cours de l'adaptation aux conditions du marché. La tendance du nombre de travailleurs qui participent au secteur informel est en hausse depuis les dernières années. Dans mes recherches, je vais présenter l'état actuel de l'emploi informel en Ukraine et les pays en transition. Une attention particulière est accordée à la répartition du travail entre les différentes catégories de population, en divisant les individus en cinq catégories (employés formels, employés informels, travailleurs indépendants formels, travailleurs indépendants informels et chômeurs) selon la définition de l'emploi informel de l'OIT. Nous examinons le marché du travail en utilisant les données de Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey pour l'Ukraine et Survey on Living and Income Conditions pour les pays en transition et nous élaborons la fonction des gains du capital humain pour le marché du travail en appliquant la fonction de répartition des gains de Mincer, afin d'étudier les facteurs qui déterminent les revenus et le choix de l'emploi de l'individu en Ukraine et les pays en transition
Informal employment became a serious challenge for the Ukrainian economy and economy of transition countries during the adjustment to market conditions. Trends of the number of workers participating in the informal sector have been rising for the last years. In my research I will present the current state of informal employment of Ukraine and transition countries. Detailed attention is paid to labour distribution across different population categories by dividing the individuals into five categories (formal employee, informal employee, formal self-employed, informal self-employed and unemployed) following the definition of informal employment from the ILO. We examine labour market using the data of the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey for Ukraine and the Survey on Living and Income Conditions for transition countries and we design human capital earnings function for labour market by applying Mincer earnings distribution function in order to investigate the factors that determine the individual’s earnings and choice of the employment status both for Ukraine and transition countries

Defence date: 14 December 2007
Examining board: Professor Colin Crouch, University of Warwick (EUI Supervisor); Professor Ramón Ramos Torre, Universidad Complutense; Professor Martin Rhodes, University of Denver; Professor Jelle Visser, Universiteit van Amsterdam
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
A large part of the literature on part-time employment stresses that this form of employment contract is the result of employers’ strategies and female employees who need to reconcile work and family life. However, the growth in the number of employees sharing employment and other paid or unpaid interests expands the range and significance of working-time issues. This dissertation claims that where regulation and implementation of working-time transitions are favourable to part-time employment, part-time is likely to expand to more diverse categories of workers than those for whom it was originally intended ( i.e. mothers with caring responsibilities). The research follows a case-oriented comparative approach that draws on documentary information and a total of 48 in-depth interviews with actors’ representatives at three levels: national, sector (education and local government) and organizational, in the UK, the Netherlands and Spain. Initiated in different moments in time, the regulation of working-time transitions appears to follow a similar staged path in the three countries, although the wider institutional context affecting part-time and the active support of main actors varies for each country, especially at the organizational level. In the Dutch case, part-time regulation started off as a mechanism to enable the employment of women with caring responsibilities and, from there, it evolved towards a wider understanding of workingtime flexibility, extending the right to work part-time to other categories of employees. Given the pioneering role of the Netherlands in this area, it could be argued that both the UK and Spain have been following the Dutch example although with different degrees of success. In the Netherlands, after two decades of active support to part-time, there is still a big gender gap among part-timers, and in many sectors and occupations employees face difficulties to change their working hours; still, the general trend seems to be that access to part-time is becoming easier at more sector and occupational levels, in a context where organizations, already facing short full-time working weeks and high percentages of part-time, have been learning to decouple business hours from the different duration of the employees’ shifts. The need to design clear-cut coordination mechanisms that guarantee the steadiness of the service and the 'standardisation' of handing-over procedures, have helped to accept a variety of working-time arrangements. This capacity to dissociate organisations’ operative time from employees’ working hours is also present in British and Spanish 24-hour services, what has favoured exceptional good part-time jobs. However, the political efforts to promote part-time in Spain and the UK are confronted with serious obstacles, their segmented labour forces among them. The long-hours culture in both Spain and the UK, together with the high proportion of temporary contracts in the Spanish case, are the most visible signs of the structural difficulties these two countries face to achieve working-time flexi-curity. In the three countries, there are no clear links between long hours and productivity levels, and the processess that lead to more transparent assessments of work performance seem to facilitate working-time flexibility beyond standard full-time employment contracts. Certainly, different commitments and compromises need to be achieved between conflicting demands and interests about how employees use their own time, but this thesis argues that part-time may help to soften the conflicts between the specialization and hierarchy requirements of the social division of labour and individuals’ time-use autonomy.

Award date: 1 December 2005
Supervisor: M. A. Moreau
In this thesis I propose to examine the effectiveness of the non-discrimination legislative framework now in place at the European level as a tool for achieving fairness and a decent standard of living for people with disabilities. With this aim in mind, the first section of the thesis will examine what factors led the Union to frame its work in the promotion of disability rights and how current anti-discrimination legislation emerged as a result. Section two goes on to examine the relationship between equality and disability and how the notion of equality can be applied to disability discrimination. Section three is dedicated to an analysis of the Framework Directive and its effectiveness in ensuring protection and rights for people with disabilities in the labour market. Finally section four examines the potential of the most innovative part of the Directive for people with disabilities, the concept of reasonable accommodation, which has been introduced to EU law for the first time by Article 5 of the Directive.

The thesis investigates the role of structural rigidities in recent labour market performances in Europe through various and complementary angles in five essays. By structural rigidities, we mean a lasting feature caused by a set of institutions, which prevents a market from operating efficiently. The approach is essentially empirical and macro-economic, while the scope of the analysis is definitely European, which is technically reflected in the use of either euro area aggregates or panels and cross-sections of European countries.
Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
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This thesis focuses on the industry wage differentials, rent-sharing and the gender wage gap. I empirically investigate: i) the interaction between inter-industry wage differentials and the gender wage gap in six European countries, ii) how rent sharing interacts with the gender wage gap in the Belgian private sector and iii) the existence of inter-industry wage differentials in Belgium, through the unobserved ability hypothesis.

The first chapter is devoted to the analysis of the interaction between inter-industry wage differentials and the gender wage gap in six European countries, i.e. Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. To do so, we have relied on a unique harmonised matched employer-employee data set, the 1995 European Structure of Earnings Survey. As far as we know, this paper is the first to analyse with recent techniques, on a comparable basis, and from a European perspective: i) inter-industry wage differentials by gender, ii) gender wage gaps by industry, and iii) the contribution of industry effects to the overall gender wage gap. It is also one of the few, besides Kahn (1998), to analyse for both sexes the relationship between collective bargaining characteristics and the dispersion of industry wage differentials.

Empirical findings show that, in all countries and for both sexes, wage differentials exist between workers employed in different sectors, even when controlling for working conditions, individual and firm characteristics. We also find that the hierarchy of sectors in terms of wages is quite similar for male and female workers and across countries. Yet, the apparent similarity between male and female industry wage differentials is challenged by standard statistical tests. Indeed, simple t-tests show that between 43 and 71% of the industry wage disparities are significantly different for women and men. Moreover, Chow tests indicate that sectoral wage differentials are significantly different as a group for both sexes in all countries. Regarding the dispersion of the industry wage differentials, we find that results vary for men and women, although not systematically nor substantially. Yet, the dispersion of industry wage differentials fluctuates considerably across countries. It is quite large in Ireland, Italy and the U.K. and relatively moderate in Belgium, Denmark and Spain. For both sexes, results point to the existence of a negative and significant relationship between the degree of centralisation of collective bargaining and the dispersion of industry wage differentials.

Furthermore, independently of the country considered, results show that more than 80% of the gender wage gaps within industries are statistically significant. The average industry gender wage gap ranges between -.18 in the U.K. and -.11 in Belgium. This means that on average women have an inter-industry wage differential of between 18 and 11% below that for men. Yet, correlation coefficients between the industry gender wage gaps across countries are relatively small and often statistically insignificant. This finding suggests that industries with the highest and the lowest gender wage gaps vary substantially across Europe.

Finally, results indicate that the overall gender wage gap, measured as the difference between the mean log wages of male and female workers, fluctuates between .18 in Denmark and .39 in the U.K. In all countries a significant (at the .01 level) part of this gap can be explained by the segregation of women in lower paying industries. Yet, the relative contribution of this factor to the gender wage gap varies substantially among European countries. It is close to zero in Belgium and Denmark, between 7 and 8% in Ireland, Spain and the U.K. and around 16% in Italy. Differences in industry wage premia for male and female workers significantly (at the .05 level) affect the gender wage gap in Denmark and Ireland only. In these countries, gender differences in industry wage differentials account for respectively 14 and 20% of the gender wage gap. To sum up, findings show that combined industry effects explain around 29% of the gender wage gap in Ireland, respectively 14 and 16% in Denmark and Italy, around 7% in the U.K. and almost nothing in Belgium and Spain.

In conclusion, our results emphasize that the magnitude of the gender wage gap as well as its causes vary substantially among the European countries. This suggests that no single policy instrument will be sufficient to tackle gender pay inequalities in Europe. Our findings indicate that policies need to be tailored to the very specific context of the labour market in each country.

The second chapter examines investigates how rent sharing interacts with the gender wage gap in the Belgian private sector. Empirical findings show that individual gross hourly wages are significantly and positively related to firm profits-per-employee even when controlling for group effects in the residuals, individual and firm characteristics, industry wage differentials and endogeneity of profits. Our instrumented wage-profit elasticity is of the magnitude 0.06 and it is not significantly different for men and women. Of the overall gender wage gap (on average women earn 23.7% less than men), results show that around 14% can be explained by the fact that on average women are employed in firms where profits-per-employee are lower. Thus, findings suggest that a substantial part of the gender wage gap is attributable to the segregation of women is less profitable firms.

The third and final chapter contributes to the understanding of inter-industry wage differentials in Belgium, taking advantage of access to a unique matched employer-employee data set covering the period 1995-2002. Findings show the existence of large and persistent wage differentials among workers with the same observed characteristics and working conditions, employed in different sectors. The unobserved ability hypothesis may not be rejected on the basis of Martins’ (2004) methodology. However, its contribution to the observed industry wage differentials appears to be limited. Further results show that ceteris paribus workers earn significantly higher wages when employed in more profitable firms. The instrumented wage-profit elasticity stands at 0.063. This rent-sharing phenomenon accounts for a large fraction of the industry wage differentials. We find indeed that the magnitude, dispersion and significance of industry wage differentials decreases sharply when controlling for profits.

Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
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The general focus of this thesis is on how the family, work and the welfare system are intertwined. A major determinant is the way responsibilities are shared by the state, the market and civil society in different welfare state regimes. An introductory chapter will therefore be dedicated to the development of the social dimension in the process of European integration. A first chapter will then go deeper into the comparative analysis of welfare state regimes, to comment on the provision of welfare in societies with a different mix of state, market and societal welfare roles and to assess the adequacy of existing typologies as reflections of today’s changed socio-economic, political and gender reality. Although they stand strong on their own, these first two chapters also contribute to contextualising the research subject of the remainder of the thesis: the study and comparison of the differential situation of women and men and of mothers and non-mothers on the labour markets of the EU-15 countries as well as of the role of public policies with respect to the employment penalties faced by women, particularly in the presence of young children. In our analysis, employment penalties are understood in three ways: (i) the difference in full-time equivalent employment rates between mothers and non-mothers, (ii) the wage penalty associated with motherhood, and (iii) the wage gap between part-time and full-time workers, considering men and women separately. Besides from a gender point of view, employment outcomes and public policies are thus assessed comparatively for mothers and non-mothers. Because women choose to take part in paid employment, fertility rates will depend on their possibilities to combine employment and motherhood. As a result, motherhood-induced employment penalties and the role of public policies to tackle them should be given priority attention, not just by scholars, but also by politicians and policy-makers.
Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
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In the first chapter of this thesis, we investigate the impact of human capital and wage structure on the gender pay in a panel of European countries using a newly available and appropriate database for cross-country comparisons and a comparable methodology for each country.

Our first question is :What role do certain individual characteristics and choices of working men and women play in shaping the cross-country differences in the gender pay gap? What is the exact size of the gender pay gap using the “more appropriate” database available for our purpose? Giving that there are mainly only two harmonized data-sets for comparing gender pay gap throughout Europe: the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) and the European Structure of Earning Survey (ESES). Each database having its shortages: the main weakness of the ECHP is the lack of perfect reliability of the data in general and of wages in particular. However the main advantage of this database is the panel-data dimension and the information on both households and individuals. The data of the ESES is, on the contrary, of a very high standard but it only covers the private sector and has a cross-sectional dimension. Furthermore only few countries are currently available :Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Ireland and Italy.

We use the European Structure of Earning Survey (ESES) to analyse international differences in gender pay gaps in the private sector based on a sample of five European economies: Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy and Spain. Using different methods, we examine how wage structures, differences in the distribution of measured characteristics and occupational segregation contribute to and explain the pattern of international differences. Furthermore, we take account of the fact that indirect discrimination may influence female occupational distributions. We find these latter factors to have a significant impact on gender wage differentials. However, the magnitude of their effect varies across countries.

In the second chapter, we analyse the persistence of the gender pay differentials over time in Europe and better test the productivity hypothesis by taking into account unobserved heterogeneity.

Our second question is :What is the evolution of the pay differential between men and women over a period of time in Europe? And what is the impact of unobserved heterogeneity?

The researcher here provides evidence on the effects of unobserved individual heterogeneity on estimated gender pay differentials. Using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), we present a cross-country comparison of the evolution of unadjusted and adjusted gender pay gaps using both cross-section and panel-data estimation techniques. The analysed countries differ greatly with respect to labour market legislation, bargaining practices structure of earnings and female employment rates. On adjusting for unobserved heterogeneity, we find a narrowed male-female pay differential, as well as significantly different rates of return on individual characteristics. In particularly, the adjusted wage differential decreases by 7 per cent in Belgium, 14 per cent in Ireland, between 20-30 per cent Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain and of 41 per cent and 54 per cent in the UK and in Denmark respectively.

In the third chapter, we investigate causes of the gender pay gap beyond the gender differences in observed and unobserved productive characteristics or simply the sex. Explanations of the gender pay gap may be the penalty women face for having children. Obviously, the motherhood wage penalty is relevant to larger issues of gender inequality given that most women are mothers and that childrearing remains a women’s affair. Thus, any penalty associated with motherhood but not with fatherhood affects many women and as such contributes to gender inequalities as the gender pay gap. Furthermore, the motherhood wage effect may be different along the wage distribution as women with different earnings may not be equal in recognising opportunities to reconcile their mother’s and earner’s role. This brings us to our third question.

Our third question is :What is the wage effect for mothers of young children in the household? And does it vary along the wage distribution of women?

This chapter provides more insight into the effect of the presence of young children on women’s wages. We use individual data from the ECHP (1996-2001) and both a generalised linear model (GLM) and quantile regression (QR) techniques to estimate the wage penalty/bonus associated with the presence of children under the age of sixteen for mothers in ten EU Member States. We also correct for potential selection bias using the Heckman (1979) correction term in the GLM (at the mean) and a selectivity correction term in the quantile regressions. To distinguish between mothers according to their age at the time of their first birth, wage estimations are carried out, separately, for mothers who had their first child before the age of 25 (‘young mothers’) and mothers who had their first child after the age of 25 (‘old mothers’). Our results suggest that on average young mothers earn less than non-mothers while old mothers obtain a gross wage bonus in all countries. These wage differentials are mainly due to differences in human capital, occupational segregation and, to a lesser extent, sectoral segregation between mothers and non-mothers. This overall impact of labour market segregation, suggests a “crowding” explanation of the family pay gap – pay differential between mothers and non-mothers. Nevertheless, the fact that we still find significant family pay gaps in some countries after we control for all variables of our model suggests that we cannot reject the “taste-based” explanation of the family gap in these countries. Our analysis of the impact of family policies on the family pay gap across countries has shown that parental leave and childcare policies tend to decrease the pay differential between non-mothers and mothers. Cash and tax benefits, on the contrary, tend to widen this pay differential. Sample selection also affects the level of the mother pay gap at the mean and throughout the wage distribution in most countries. Furthermore, we find that in most countries inter-quantile differences in pay between mothers and non-mothers are mainly due to differences in human-capital. Differences in their occupational and sectoral segregation further shape these wage differentials along the wage distribution in the UK, Germany and Portugal in our sample of young mothers and in Spain in the sample of old mothers.

In the fourth chapter, we analyse the combined effect of motherhood and the family status on women’s wage.

Our fourth question is :Is there a lone motherhood pay gap in Europe? And does it vary along the wage distribution of mothers?

Substantial research has been devoted to the analysis of poverty and income gaps between households of different types. The effects of family status on wages have been studied to a lesser extent. In this chapter, we present a selectivity corrected quantile regression model for the lone motherhood pay gap – the differential in hourly wage between lone mothers and those with partners. We used harmonized data from the European Community Household Panel and present results for a panel of European countries. We found evidence of lone motherhood penalties and bonuses. In our analysis, most countries presented higher wage disparities at the top of the wage distribution rather than at the bottom or at the mean. Our results suggest that cross-country differences in the lone motherhood pay gap are mainly due to differences in observed and unobserved characteristics between partnered mothers and lone mothers, differences in sample selection and presence of young children in the household. We also investigated other explanations for these differences such as the availability and level of childcare arrangements, the provision of gender-balanced leave and the level of child benefits and tax incentives. As expected, we have found significant positive relationship between the pay gap between lone and partnered mothers and the childcare, take-up and cash and tax benefits policies. Therefore improving these family policies would reduce the raw pay gap observed.

Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
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Aquesta tesi té com a objectiu principal descriure la precarització del mercat laboral tal com es manifesta en diferents tipus de contracte (permanent, temporal i informal) i explorar l’associació de la precarietat laboral amb la salut dels treballadors. A través de diferents metodologies s’han realitzat tres estudis quantitatius amb dades de diferents enquestes i dues revisions diferents de la literatura. Els resultats confirmen la precarització de les condicions d’ocupació com a conseqüència de les polítiques del mercat de treball i l’augment del poder dels empresaris. La precarietat laboral està present en tots els tipus de contracte estudiats, tant en els treballadors permanents com en els temporals i informals, i segueix un gradient entre elles. També s’ha demostrat que el treball informal, una de les condicions d’ocupació menys estudiades des del punt de vista de la salut pública, es troba present a la Unió Europea. Aquests treballadors tenen pitjors condicions de treball i nivells més elevats de precarietat laboral comparats amb els treballadors permanents i temporals; però això no es reflexa en un pitjor estat de salut. Els nostres resultats confirmen la importància d’estudiar la precarietat laboral mitjançant una mesura multidimensional. Incloure en els sistemes de vigilància epidemiològica la mesura tant de la precarietat laboral com del treball informal seria de gran importància per tal de constatar-ne l’evolució i permetre el disseny de polítiques públiques orientades a millorar la salut dels treballadors i reduir les desigualtats en salut existents entre ells.
The main aim of this dissertation was to describe the precaritzation of the labour market as it manifests itself in different types of contract (permanent, temporary and informal) as a proxy of employment conditions and to explore the association of precarious employment with workers’ health. Adopting different methodologies, three quantitative studies were performed using data from different surveys as well as two different types of literature reviews. Results confirm the precaritzation of employment conditions as a consequence of the labour market policies and an increase of the employers’ power. Employment precariousness is present in all types of contract studied, both in permanent employees and in temporary and informal employees, and a gradient exists between them. It has also shown that informal employment, one of the least studied employment condition from a public health stand point, is present in the European Union. These workers have worse working conditions and higher levels of precarious employment compared with permanent and temporary workers; but this is not reflected as having worse health. Our results confirm the importance of studying precarious employment through multidimensional measure. Including both measures of precarious and informal employment in epidemiological surveillance systems is of great importance in order to verify their evolution and allow for the design of public policies oriented to improve workers’ health and reduce existing health inequalities among them.

The thesis, entitled "Essays on macroeconometrics and short-term forecasting",

is composed of three chapters. The first two chapters are on nowcasting,

a topic that has received an increasing attention both among practitioners and

the academics especially in conjunction and in the aftermath of the 2008-2009

economic crisis. At the heart of the two chapters is the idea of exploiting the

information from data published at a higher frequency for obtaining early estimates

of the macroeconomic variable of interest. The models used to compute

the nowcasts are dynamic models conceived for handling in an efficient way

the characteristics of the data used in a real-time context, like the fact that due to the different frequencies and the non-synchronicity of the releases

the time series have in general missing data at the end of the sample. While

the first chapter uses a small model like a VAR for nowcasting Italian GDP,

the second one makes use of a dynamic factor model, more suitable to handle

medium-large data sets, for providing early estimates of the employment in

the euro area. The third chapter develops a topic only marginally touched

by the second chapter, i.e. the estimation of dynamic factor models on data characterized by block-structures.

The firrst chapter assesses the accuracy of the Italian GDP nowcasts based

on a small information set consisting of GDP itself, the industrial production

index and the Economic Sentiment Indicator. The task is carried out by using

real-time vintages of data in an out-of-sample exercise over rolling windows

of data. Beside using real-time data, the real-time setting of the exercise is

also guaranteed by updating the nowcasts according to the historical release calendar. The model used to compute the nowcasts is a mixed-frequency Vector

Autoregressive (VAR) model, cast in state-space form and estimated by

maximum likelihood. The results show that the model can provide quite accurate

early estimates of the Italian GDP growth rates not only with respect

to a naive benchmark but also with respect to a bridge model based on the

same information set and a mixed-frequency VAR with only GDP and the industrial production index.

The chapter also analyzes with some attention the role of the Economic Sentiment

Indicator, and of soft information in general. The comparison of our

mixed-frequency VAR with one with only GDP and the industrial production

index clearly shows that using soft information helps obtaining more accurate

early estimates. Evidence is also found that the advantage from using soft

information goes beyond its timeliness.

In the second chapter we focus on nowcasting the quarterly national account

employment of the euro area making use of both country-specific and

area wide information. The relevance of anticipating Eurostat estimates of

employment rests on the fact that, despite it represents an important macroeconomic

variable, euro area employment is measured at a relatively low frequency

(quarterly) and published with a considerable delay (approximately

two months and a half). Obtaining an early estimate of this variable is possible

thanks to the fact that several Member States publish employment data and

employment-related statistics in advance with respect to the Eurostat release

of the euro area employment. Data availability represents, nevertheless, a

major limit as country-level time series are in general non homogeneous, have

different starting periods and, in some cases, are very short. We construct a

data set of monthly and quarterly time series consisting of both aggregate and

country-level data on Quarterly National Account employment, employment

expectations from business surveys and Labour Force Survey employment and

unemployment. In order to perform a real time out-of-sample exercise simulating

the (pseudo) real-time availability of the data, we construct an artificial

calendar of data releases based on the effective calendar observed during the first quarter of 2012. The model used to compute the nowcasts is a dynamic

factor model allowing for mixed-frequency data, missing data at the beginning

of the sample and ragged edges typical of non synchronous data releases. Our

results show that using country-specific information as soon as it is available

allows to obtain reasonably accurate estimates of the employment of the euro

area about fifteen days before the end of the quarter.

We also look at the nowcasts of employment of the four largest Member

States. We find that (with the exception of France) augmenting the dynamic

factor model with country-specific factors provides better results than those

obtained with the model without country-specific factors.

The third chapter of the thesis deals with dynamic factor models on data

characterized by local cross-correlation due to the presence of block-structures.

The latter is modeled by introducing block-specific factors, i.e. factors that

are specific to blocks of time series. We propose an algorithm to estimate the model by (quasi) maximum likelihood and use it to run Monte Carlo

simulations to evaluate the effects of modeling or not the block-structure on

the estimates of common factors. We find two main results: first, that in finite samples modeling the block-structure, beside being interesting per se, can help

reducing the model miss-specification and getting more accurate estimates

of the common factors; second, that imposing a wrong block-structure or

imposing a block-structure when it is not present does not have negative

effects on the estimates of the common factors. These two results allow us

to conclude that it is always recommendable to model the block-structure

especially if the characteristics of the data suggest that there is one.
Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion
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Defence date: 12 September 2016
Examining Board: Professor Hanspeter Kriesi, EUI (Supervisor); Professor Pepper Culpepper, formerly EUI/University of Oxford (Co-Supervisor); Professor Lucio Baccaro, University of Geneva; Professor emer. Wolfgang Streeck, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Outsiders are perhaps the clearest losers of the neoliberal era. They are either unemployed or have atypical jobs, thereby often lacking adequate coverage in such fundamental areas as wage bargaining, job security, and welfare benefits. The growing number of outsiders in advanced capitalist political economies is associated with several trends that are adverse in their implications for democracy and society: declining voter turnout and political resignation, diverging life chances and growing poverty as well as poor health, and even an increased relative risk of suicide. The willingness of a state to protect workers from the risks of being unemployed or atypically employed is thus of great political and social significance. Why, then, did some European welfare states protect outsiders better than others, given the common constraints of the neoliberal era? My PhD thesis examines this question through a comparative investigation of labour market policy change in Austria, Denmark, and Sweden over the past three decades, complemented with shadow case studies of Italy and Spain. A historical reconstruction of reform trajectories in similar small states with different distributive outcomes allows us to test the explanatory power of different theoretical approaches. Building on primary and secondary sources as well as evidence from 46 interviews with policy-making elites, this thesis follows a qualitative methodological approach that combines co-variation analysis, causal process tracing and counterfactual arguments. Challenging conventional theories, the thesis finds that the enhanced protection of outsiders rests on the interaction between inclusive trade unions and politically weak governments. High levels of inclusiveness continue to provide trade unions with an acute interest in the protection of outsiders. But governments of all partisan colours prioritised fiscal consolidation over the social protection of outsiders in the neoliberal era. When they had a united majority of seats in parliament, they were therefore strong enough to pursue a unilateral reform strategy that excludes unions to the detriment of outsiders. When they were weakened by intra-coalitional divides or a hung parliament, on the other hand, they negotiated political deals with trade unions to mobilise an extra-parliamentary channel of consensus mobilisation. This kind of weakness was instrumental in forcing governments to compensate outsiders for economic uncertainty. The core argument of this thesis can therefore be summarised as follows: the weaker the government, the stronger the capacity of inclusive trade unions to enhance the protection of outsiders through an extension of job security regulations, unemployment benefit entitlements, and active labour market policy spending. This finding calls into question the electoral responsiveness of national governments – and thus political parties – to the social needs of an increasingly numerous group of precarious workers.

Defence date: 28 June 2002
Examining board: Prof. Simon Deakin, University of Cambridge ; Prof. Christian Joerges, European University Institute ; Prof. Karl Klare, Northeastern University, Boston (co-supervisor) ; Prof. Silvana Sciarra, European University Institute (supervisor)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 7 June 2008
Examining Board: Tanja Boerzel (Free Univ. Berlin), Maurizio Ferrera (Univ. Milano), Adrienne Héritier (EUI/RSCAS), Martin Rhodes (Denver Univ./former EUI)
This thesis aims to understand how the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) has developed at the European level and to explore how, and with what effect, it has influenced the EU Member States. My cases are policy areas, which have been selected on the basis of their salience in Member States. The case of high salience is employment policy and the case of low salience is anti-poverty policy. Regarding the European level, the thesis seeks to identify the main causal factors that determine the development of the OMC. I use an adapted version of the Principal-Agent framework, where the Member States represent the Principal(s) and the European Commission represents the Agent. While most existing literature analyses the OMC at one moment in time, I analyse how the OMC develops through time, where I distinguish between emergence, when it has not been fully established, and evolution, when it has been fully established as a policy coordination instrument. I develop two hypotheses to test Commission-Member State interaction during OMC development during emergence and evolution and two to test if their interaction differs in cases of high and low saliency. My findings show that the Commission has a greater influence during the emergence of the OMC and that the Member States have more influence during the evolution of the OMC. The saliency of a policy issue only minimally influences Member State and Commission interaction in the two cases. For the national level, the thesis seeks to shed some light on how and the extent to which the OMC has been integrated into the domestic contexts of (14) EU Member States. The endeavour is first to draw some general conclusions about how governmental and non-governmental actors in Member States use the OMC. My findings show that it has mainly been used as a policy reporting instrument, but has in some cases also been used for policy development. The aim is secondly to assess the extent to which the general objectives of the OMC have been achieved. My findings show that it does not define core reform programmes in Member States, which is hardly surprising, since the OMC is a soft policy instrument.

Defence date: 18 December 2017
Examining Board: Prof. Hans-Peter Blossfeld, European University Institute (supervisor), Prof. Fabrizio Bernardi, European University Institute; Prof. Héctor Cebolla-Boado, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia; Prof. Lucinda Platt, London School of Economics and Political Science
This thesis is a collection of three empirical studies on the impact of social origin on labourmarket outcomes across migration status and ethnic-origin categories. The existence of immigrant and ethnic penalties in the labour market is a recurrent finding. Migration research has, however, drawn little upon social stratification literature, despite sharing common concerns, to explain them. In this thesis, I seek to contribute to bridging the gap between the two disciplines. I pose two overall hypotheses: (i) compositional differences in social background across ethnic-minority groups and natives are likely to explain an important part of labour market penalties; and (ii) the strength of the effect of social origin on destination and its mechanisms of transmission might differ across groups. These hypotheses are tested by first using log-multiplicative layer effect models followed by different specifications of multivariate analyses based on data from Understanding Society. The findings show that: (i) class overrides ethnicity in explaining intergenerational mobility, although the strength of the OD association differs by ethnic origin and gender; (ii) labour-force participation is a gendered process with significant differences across migration status and ethnic origin, which are partly explained by the work status of the mother-in-law transmitted through partner/spouse’s characteristics; (iii) employment penalties are explained to a large extent by parental work status, education, and age, with variation in the strength of the effect of the last two factors across ethnic origin; and (iv) some groups experience more difficulties than natives with similar class backgrounds in employment as well as access to (and stable placement in) the salariat, although education exerts a compensatory effect. I conclude by arguing that future research should investigate further within-group explanations by deepening in the role of different mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of social (dis)advantage at different levels of the labour market.

Defence date: 28 May 2010
Examining Board: Fabrizio Bernardi (EUI); Jaap Dronkes (formerly EUI/Univ. Maastricht, Supervisor); Markus Gangl (Univ. Wisconsin, in absentia); Irena Kogan (Univ. Mannheim)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
This thesis concerns the labour market outcomes of early school leavers in a European, cross-national perspective. More specifically, it deals with the way country level factors shape the disadvantages these early school leavers experience on the European labour market, when compared with those who have at least upper secondary education. To the extent that country level variation in the labour market integration of early school leavers can be attributed to specific institutional and macro-structural characteristics, it enriches the single cross-national definition of early school leaving, and points towards best practices that can be learned from. The overarching research question that runs through this thesis is twofold. To what extent is the labour market integration of early school leavers in Europe obstructed by the country-specific macro-structural factors underlying a knowledge economy? And, second, can the various education and labour market policies across the European countries help to decrease the relative labour market disadvantage of early school leavers? The concept of early school leaving, the process of ranking and rating countries on the basis of institutional and macro-structural characteristics, and the increasing availability of standardised country level indicators have all developed through a cross-fertilisation of academic research and EU policy making, which is why this thesis draws upon both the empirical literature and the Lisbon objectives when arguing the relevance of the research and formulating its conclusions. Using the ESS, the ECHP, and the EU-SILC, this thesis addresses the cross-level influences of educational expansion, skill-biased occupational change, the type and quality of the education and training system, and labour market policies. In conclusion, attention is drawn to the three most relevant findings in this research. These are (1) the downside of an equitable educational system, (2) the benefit of a higher educational quality, and (3) the influence of durable active labour market policy.

Defence date: 6 December 1993
Examining Board: Prof. Erian Bercusson, European University Institute (supervisor) ; Dr. Lammy Betten, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht ; Prof. Ad Geers, Rijksuniversiteit Limburg ; Prof. Yota Kravaritou-Manitakis, European University Institute ; Dr. Christopher McCrudden, Lincoln College, Oxford
First made available online on 26 January 2017.
To be a disabled citizen of the European Community at the present time means to be disadvantaged. Naturally the degree of that disadvantage varies between individuals, even between individuals with similar impairments, but its discriminatory nature does not. The disadvantage stems primarily from the institutionalised forms of discrimination which people with impairments are forced to confront every day of their lives. These involve physical (architectural) barriers, assumptions of inferiority, inflexible structures and organisations, and the very conception of "normality”. This discrimination touches every aspect of life - education, relationships, social activities, housing and employment, and marginalises some ten per cent of the Community’s population, i.e. no less than 33 million people. Up until now the adoption and implementation of measures to improve the quality of life available to disabled people and to promote their integration has been regarded as largely the prerogative of Member States. This approach can no longer be regarded as satisfactory in a period when the Community is increasingly coming to exert an influence over many of the areas which directly affect or influence the life of its disabled citizens: the establishment of the internal market, harmonisation of standards and goods, free movement of persons, vocational training and the mutual recognition of diplomas to mention but a few. It is the argument of this thesis that Community intervention, which respects the principle of subsidiarity, is now called for in certain fields of disability policy. The most obvious area for such intervention, given the primarily economic nature of the original EEC Treaty and much of the subsequent Community legislation, is the employment of disabled people - although it must be recognised that the desired economic integration cannot occur without complementary measures to promote social integration. The focus of this thesis shall therefore be the need, scope and possible content of a European Community policy to promote the employment of people with disabilities.

Defence date: 11 June 2015
Examining Board: Professor Martin Kohli, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor Hans-Peter Blossfeld, European University Institute; Professor Ariana Need, University of Twente; Professor Bernhard Ebbinghaus, University of Mannheim.
After pervading Western Europe for more than twenty years, early retirement trends reversed in the mid-1990's when activation policies re-converted existing incentives to extend working life (EWL). This study investigates the institutional conditions explaining the cross-national variation of activation policies' outcomes in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy between the mid-1990's and 2009. Revoking existing benefits for diffused and uncertain advantages, these policies faced harsh opposition from the coalitions (labour and capital organizations) interested in keeping the costs of early exit externalized for their members (older workers and their employers). In this study the central research question is: to what extent has the effectiveness of activation policies been affected by the organizational articulation of the externalization coalitions? The articulation of these coalitions is framed according to the affinities coupling protection, production and partnership institutions. From an actor-centered perspective, the EWL re-conversion is depicted as a sequential game. Under irresistible environmental pressure, the state first interact with social partners to retrench welfare incentives and then to encourage HRM strategies to retain older workers. The higher is the organizational articulation of labour and capital, the more interactions tend to be framed in social governance modes that, discouraging opportunistic actions, convey the EWL reconversion from the strategy of the state into the companies' HRM. In these cooperative modes social partners are thus expected to not hinder but to support the adoption of retrenchment and retaining policies. Being the articulation the highest in the Netherlands, lower in Germany and the lowest in Italy, the effectiveness of activation policies is expected to follow the same pattern. This hypothesis is tested using Event History Analysis on data drawn from the third wave of the SHARE in a two-stage research design estimating the effectiveness of retrenchment and retaining policies. The main findings show that social partners mediated the EWL re-conversion, promoting the effectiveness of activation in the Netherlands and hindering it among their members more in Italy than in Germany.

Defence date: 20 October 2014
Examining Board: Professor Ruth Rubio Marín, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor Bruno De Witte, Maastricht University and European University Institute; Professor Massimo Iovane, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II; Professor Siobhán Mullally, University College Cork.
This thesis starts from the consideration that law, mainly but not exclusively immigration law, can disproportionally and negatively affect immigrant women's enjoyment of their rights in conditions of equality with both immigrant men and citizen women. These perverse effects are equally evident in the fields of family life and in that of employment. In the light of this observation, the aim of this thesis is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to verify the presence of such gendered shortcomings in apparently neutral norms applicable to immigrant women in the European legal space, both at European and domestic level. On the other hand, and most importantly, it aims to verify the transformative potential of human and fundamental rights law in this area, exploring the beneficial effects as well as the defects of this source per se and in its judicial application vis-à-vis biased norms applicable to immigrant women. In order to pursue this objective, this thesis explores three different levels of protection and enforcement of immigrant women's human and fundamental rights in the European legal space. Chapter 1 is devoted to the human rights framework established by the Council of Europe, with a special focus on the European Convention on Human Rights. Chapter 2 discusses European fundamental rights law, with main reference to the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms of the European Union. In Chapters 3 and 4 the national case studies of Italy and Spain will be analysed respectively, with reference to the multi-level system of fundamental rights protection in force in their legal orders.