Download or read book Three Essays on Labor Economics and Public Policy written by Paul A. Torelli and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in Labor Economics and Public Policy written by Gabriela Liliana Galassi and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis contains three chapters around two related questions: (1) what are the determinants of the decision to work?, and (2) what are the (unintended) effects of policies stimulating labor market participation? The first two chapters tackle the second question in the empirical setting of the Mini-Job reform in Germany, which expanded substantially the in-work benefits, or tax advantages for low-earning workers. The third chapter, dealing with the first question, focuses on the transmission of employment behavior and preferences for work across generations. The first chapter analyzes how firms respond to changes in tax benefits for low-earning workers and how, through equilibrium effects, such policies also affect non-targeted, highearning workers. Combining theoretical and empirical analysis, I document the presence of both job creation and substitution underlying firm responses induced by the Mini-Job Reform. In particular, I nd that firms with a high pre-reform use of low-earning workers increase the demand for workers with better earnings, an important result. The second essay provides an empirical analysis of the effects of the same reform on earnings and employment prospects of targeted workers. The findings question the role of in-work benefits as an antipoverty policy since they do not improve earnings of targeted workers. However, they also show that these benefits provide opportunities for jobless individuals to smoothly transit to better paid employment. Finally, in the third chapter, joint with Lukas Mayr and David Koll, we analyze how employment status and attitudes towards work are related across generations. Using data for the US, we find a significant positive correlation between the employment status of mothers and children, after controlling for productivity and other observable factors. We interpret this finding as evidence of transmission of preferences for work. We show that the correlation is unlikely to be driven by networks, transmission of specific human capital or local labor markets' conditions, and we provide suggestive evidence for a role model channel.

Download or read book Human Resource Economics and Public Policy written by Charles J. Whalen and published by W.E. Upjohn Institute. This book was released on 2010 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book honors Vernon Briggs's professional contributions. This book contains important discussions on issues of human resource economics, which is now often described as workforce development. This book offers much research information and policy analysis that can be used to develop what is needed for an active set of national human resource policies.

Download or read book Essays in Labor Economics and Public Policy written by Samuel M. Lundstrom and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dissertation I provide new evidence regarding the relationship between the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Achievement, and I present evidence relating to the optimal usage of minimum wage policy. In chapter one, I estimate the contemporaneous impact of the EITC on the achievement of children of single mothers. I find little evidence of a relationship. In chapter two I review a paper that was recently published in The American Economic Review which finds a very strong positive relationship between the EITC and child achievement. I present evidence suggesting that this evidence is flawed. From the evidence presented in chapters one and two I conclude that, while it is certainly possible that the EITC affects child achievement, we are still looking for good evidence of an effect. In chapter three I analyze changes in the target efficiency of the federal minimum wage over the past 25 years. Using static simulation methods, I find that minimum wage target efficiency is currently close to its 25-year peak. Furthermore, I find a very strong positive relationship between minimum wage target efficiency and the real federal minimum wage. The implication is that, from an efficiency standpoint, a good time to raise the minimum wage is when it is already high. This discovery raises the possibility that the minimum wage increases the employment of low-skilled poor individuals relative to the employment of low-skilled non-poor individuals.

Download or read book Essays on Labor Economics and Public Policy written by Michael R. Strain and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main component of this thesis, found in the first chapter, is an investigation of earnings instability, which can be thought of as the fluctuations around permanent earnings over time of a worker's labor market earnings. This chapter reflects my interests in labor economics and in economic analysis using longitudinal, linked worker-firm data. The instability of labor earnings in the United States contributes to earnings inequality and may diminish household welfare. Despite the importance of earnings instability little is known about its correlates or causes. This study seeks to better understand whom earnings instability affects and why it affects them. Using both parametric and semi-parametric techniques, I provide an in-depth investigation into the relationship between earnings instability and worker skill. I find that earnings instability follows a U-shape over skill, with low-skill workers experiencing the least stable earnings, middle-skill workers experiencing the most stable, and high-skill workers falling in between the two. This finding is robust to a number of controls, sample selections, and other statistical concerns, and is not driven by workers entering and leaving employment, changing jobs, or holding multiple jobs. I then investigate whether firm characteristics affect the stability of worker earnings. I am the first to directly test the relationship between earnings instability and firm employment instability using linked employer-employee data. I find a positive and statistically significant relationship between the two that remains when the effect is estimated using only within-firm variation. This suggests that the effect is a feature of the way workers are being paid by their employer. The size of the effect varies by a worker's position in the earnings distribution: low-earning worker are passed a greater share of firm employment instability than higher-earning workers. This finding helps to explain the left tail of the U-shape of earnings instability over skill. I find significant heterogeneity in the magnitude and significance of the effect across industries and explore how the competitiveness of an industry relates to the size of the industryspecific effect. My interest in the economics of education is reflected in the second essay of this thesis, which studies a public policy innovation using administrative records. The effects of single-sex education are hotly contested, both in academic and policy circles. Despite this heated debate, there exists little credible empirical evidence of the effect of a U.S. public school's decision to offer single-sex classrooms on the educational outcomes of students. This study seeks to fill this hole. Using administrative records for third through eighth graders in North Carolina public schools, the chapter finds evidence that the offering of single-sex mathematics courses is associated with lower performance on end-of-grade math exams, and finds no evidence that the offering of single-sex reading scores increases performance on reading exams. Evidence of significant heterogeneity in the effect across schools is also presented. Finally, my interest in public policy is further reflected in the third chapter of this thesis, coauthored with Donald Morgan and Ihab Seblani. Despite a dozen studies, the welfare effects of payday credit are still debatable. We contribute new evidence to the debate by studying how payday credit access affects bank overdrafts (such as returned checks), bankruptcy, and household complaints against lenders and debt collectors. We find some evidence that Chapter 13 bankruptcy rates decrease after payday credit bans, but where we find that, we also find that complaints against lenders and debt collectors increase. The welfare implications of these offsetting movements are unclear. Our most robust finding is that returned check numbers and overdraft fee income at banks increase after payday credit bans. Bouncing a check may cost more than a payday loan, so this finding suggests that payday credit access helps households avoid costlier alternatives. While our findings obviously do not settle the welfare debate over payday lending, we hope they resolve it to some extent by illuminating how households rearrange their financial affairs when payday loan supply changes. In summary, this thesis nicely reflects my interests in labor economics, public policy, economic analysis using linked and administrative data, and education economics, and the econometric and research skills I have acquired during my five years as a graduate student in economics at Cornell.

Download or read book Three Essays on Public Policy and Labor Economics written by Max Matthew Schanzenbach and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Labor Economics and Public Finance written by Antoine Goujard and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public policies are an important determinant of the welfare of individuals and the society at large. Careful evaluation of the impact of public policies on welfare is therefore imperative for our understanding of the positive and normative implications for these institutions. The three chapters of this thesis examine the welfare consequences of specific economic and political institutions. Chapters 1 and 2 study two distinct channels through which social housing, a common feature of developed countries, may impact the neighborhoods in which they are built and the labor market outcomes of their low income tenants. Chapter 1 is concerned with the effect of the provision of social housing on neighboring private ats. It assesses the spillovers of low-income tenants and the change in the composition of the housing stock that are to be expected from the provision of new social housing units. In particular, it uses the direct conversion of private rental flats into social units without any accompanying rehabilitation to identify the impact of the inflow into the neighborhood of low income tenants, separately from the effects of social housing on the quality of the existing housing stock. Chapter 2 shows that social housing influences the location of low income tenants, and that the neighborhood of social housing units may improve the labor market outcomes of the poorest tenants. I observe the relocation of welfare recipients through the selection process of social housing applicants in the city of Paris from 2001 to 2007. The institutional process acts as a conditional randomization device across residential areas in Paris. The empirical estimates outline that neighborhoods have weak short- and medium-run effects on the economic self-sufficiency of poor households. Chapter 3, by contrast, focuses on how regional migrations of unemployed workers may affect their job search prospect in Europe. Using a longitudinal sample of French unemployment spells, the empirical estimates outline positive migration effects on transitions from unemployment to employment that depends on the previous duration of the unemployment spells.

Download or read book Radical Economics and Labour written by Frederic Lee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To celebrate the centenary of the most radical union in North America - The Industrial Workers of the World - this collection examines radical economics and the labor movement in the 20th Century. The union advocates direct action to raise wages and increase job control, and it envisions the eventual abolition of capitalism and the wage system through the general strike. The contributors to this volume speak both to economists and to those in the labor movement, and point to fruitful ways in which these radical heterodox traditions have engaged and continue to engage each other and with the labor movement. In view of the current crisis of organized labor and the beleaguered state of the working class—phenomena which are global in scope—the book is both timely and important. Representing a significant contribution to the non-mainstream literature on labor economics, the book reactivates a marginalized analytical tradition which can shed a great deal of light on the origins and evolution of the difficulties confronting workers throughout the world. This volume will be of most interest to students and scholars of heterodox economics, those involved with or researching The Industrial Workers of the World, as well as anyone interested in the more radical side of unions, anarchism and labor organizations in an economic context.

Download or read book Essays in Public and Labor Economics written by Hee-Seung Yang and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three empirical papers exploring policy-relevant questions in Public Finance and Labor Economics. In particular, it inquires into social insurance programs, the purpose of which is to protect individuals against adverse events. More generous benefits, however, often lead to unintended behavioral responses even as they provide greater protection. This dissertation focuses on identifying and quantifying the distortionary effects of social insurance, providing an input to optimal design. The first chapter investigates the effect of Social Security dependent benefit provisions on the labor force participation of married women aged 25-54. Many provisions of the Social Security program may distort an individual's work incentive. In particular, the availability of dependent benefits may reduce the net return to work since secondary earners, who are likely to claim benefits based on their spouses' earnings records, pay the full payroll tax without receiving marginal benefits for additional earnings. I rely on differences in Social Security coverage among husbands by state and sector to identify the impact on the labor supply of their wives. The results show that married women tend to reduce their labor supply when dependent benefits are available, suggesting that changes in the Social Security system that strengthen the relationship between earnings and benefits would have a positive effect on the labor supply of married women. The second chapter analyzes how Social Security dependent benefit provisions affect women's divorce behavior. Under the current Social Security system, a divorced woman is eligible to receive dependent benefits based on her ex-spouse's earnings record if her marriage lasted at least 10 years and she remains unmarried after divorce. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I estimate a discrete time duration model of the probability of divorce. The results suggest that married women are likely to delay divorce to preserve the option of receiving dependent benefits if their marriages are near 10 years duration. This effect is stronger for women whose earnings are much lower than their husbands' or whose predicted remarriage probabilities are low, so are those most likely to value the option. The final chapter examines the effect of extended parental coverage on young adults' labor market choices. Young adults aged 19-29 are significantly less likely to have health insurance since most family insurance policies cut off dependents when they turn 19 or finish college. In recent years, several states have expanded eligibility to allow young adults as old as 30 to remain covered under their parents' employer-provided health insurance. For those who qualify for these benefits, the expansion of parental coverage partially reduces the value of being employed by a firm that provides health insurance since adult children can now get health insurance through another channel. We employ quasi-experimental variation in the timing and generosity of states' eligibility rules to identify the effect of the policy change on young adults' labor market choices. Our results suggest that the expansion of parental coverage increases the group coverage rate and reduces labor supply among young adults, particularly in full-time employment.

Download or read book Labor Markets Migration and Mobility written by William Cochrane and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is devoted to three key themes central to studies in regional science: the sub-national labor market, migration, and mobility, and their analysis. The book brings together essays that cover a wide range of topics including the development of uncertainty in national and subnational population projections; the impacts of widening and deepening human capital; the relationship between migration, neighborhood change, and area-based urban policy; the facilitating role played by outmigration and remittances in economic transition; and the contrasting importance of quality of life and quality of business for domestic and international migrants. All of the contributions here are by leading figures in their fields and employ state-of-the art methodologies. Given the variety of topics and themes covered this book, it will appeal to a broad range of readers interested in both regional science and related disciplines such as demography, population economics, and public policy.

Download or read book Essays in Labor Economics written by Jan Tilly and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of two papers. In the first paper, I study the employment and welfare effects of short-time work in Germany during the recession between 2008 and 2010. Short-time work is a government program that subsidizes part-time work during economic downturns. Using administrative data, I document that (i) take-up of short-time work is increasing in experience and tenure, (ii) almost all short-time workers return to full-time work, and (iii) short-time work is not associated with a long-term loss in earnings. I develop a model that is consistent with these facts. The model features search frictions, aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks, human capital, and an intensive margin. Productivity shocks differ in duration and magnitude, and when hit by an adverse temporary productivity shock, firms can curtail their losses by reducing working hours. Using the estimated model, I find that short-time work was important in reducing job loss during the recession. However, the welfare gains are modest, because workers who would have been laid off without short-time work are workers for whom the earnings loss associated with unemployment is low.In the second paper, I investigate how policy expectations interact with the employment effects associated with minimum wage increases. I provide evidence from federal and state minimum wage increases in the U.S. that minimum wage increases result in substantial negative employment effects when the increases are unanticipated and no employment effects when they are anticipated. The effects of unanticipated increases are further exacerbated when the increases are indexed to inflation. I then develop an equilibrium search model in which workers and firms have rational expectations of the future evolution of the minimum wage. Using the estimated model, I show that policy expectations are quantitatively important to understand the impact of minimum wage increases on employment.

Download or read book Essays in Economic Theory Growth and Labour Markets written by George Bitros and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The distinguished contributors in this volume provide a variety of essays, which are written in honor of Emmanuel Drandakis. These essays fall into four uniform areas of economics: economic growth, general equilibrium, labor economics and game theory and applications. The editors focus on a select set of issues that stand high on the agenda of academic research. They provide fresh insights and approaches to the analysis of these issues, and thus open up wider avenues for our understanding of the dilemmas posed for theory and policy. Readers are offered new empirical evidence on such thorny social problems as, for example, unemployment, the intergenerational transmission of human capital and the response of wages to price and endowment changes.

Download or read book Short and Long Term Influences of Education Health Indicators and Crime on Labor Market Outcomes Five Essays in Empirical Labor Economics written by Elisabeth Lång and published by Linköping University Electronic Press. This book was released on 2017-09-11 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The objective of this thesis is to improve the understanding of how several individual characteristics, namely education (years of schooling), health indicators (height, weight, smoking, alcohol consumption, and exercise), criminal behavior, and crime victimization, influence labor market outcomes in the short and long run. The first part of the thesis consists of three studies in which I adopt a within-twin-pair difference approach to analyze how education, health indicators, and earnings are associated with each other over the life cycle. The second part of the thesis includes two studies in which I use field experiments in order to test the employability of exoffenders and crime victims. The first essay, Learning for life?, describes an analysis of the education premium in earnings and health-related behaviors throughout adulthood among twins. The results show that the education premium in earnings, net of genetic inheritance, is rather small over the life cycle but increases with the level of education. The results also show that the education premium in health-related behaviors is mainly concentrated on smoking habits. The influences of education on earnings and health-related behaviors seem to work independently of each other, and there are no signs that health-related behaviors influence the education premium in earnings or vice versa. The second essay, Blowing up money?, details an analysis of the association between smoking and earnings in two different historical social contexts in Sweden: the 1970s and the 2000s. I also consider possible differences in this association in the short and long run as well as between the sexes. The results show that the earnings penalty for smoking is much stronger in the 2000s as compared to the 1970s (for both sexes) and that it is larger in the long run as compared to the short run (for men). The third essay, Two by two, inch by inch, describes an analysis of the height premium among Swedish twins. The results show that the height premium is relatively constant over the life cycle and that it is larger below median height for men and above median height for young women. The estimates are similar for monozygotic and dizygotic twins, indicating that environmentally and genetically induced height differences are similarly associated with earnings over the life cycle. The fourth essay, The employability of ex-offenders, published in IZA Journal of Labor Policy (2017), 6:6, details an analysis of whether male and female exoffenders are discriminated against when applying for jobs in the Swedish labor market. The results show that employers do discriminate against exoffenders but that the degree of discrimination varies across occupations. Discrimination against ex-offenders is pronounced in female-dominated and high-skilled occupations. The magnitude of discrimination against exoffenders does not vary by applicants’ sex. The fifth essay, Victimized twice?, describes an analysis of whether male and female crime victims are discriminated against when applying for jobs in the Swedish labor market. This study is the first to consider potential hiring discrimination against crime victims. The results show that employers do discriminate against crime victims. The discrimination varies with the sex of the crime victim and occupational characteristics and is concentrated among high-skilled jobs for female crime victims and among femaledominated jobs for male crime victims.

Download or read book Labor Markets in Action written by Richard Barry Freeman and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Public Policy and Labor Economics written by Yun Zhou (Ph. D.) and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The majority of insured Americans obtain health insurance coverage through employment as a non-portable fringe benefit. The link between health insurance coverage and employment could have potential important implica- tions on workers’ labor market decisions. My dissertation consists of three chapters that contribute to the understanding of the interaction between health insurance and workers’ job mobility. My first chapter studies the effect of the state dependent coverage man- dates on the job mobility of young adults. Prior to the Affordable Care Act, many states had already implemented insurance mandates that extended the age that young adults could gain access to parental health insurance, an alternative insurance source which is not contingent on employment. If young workers with employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) are locked into less preferred jobs for fear of losing health benefits, expanded dependent coverage is expected to reduce the job lock and increase mobility. Expanded eligibility could also decrease mobility among those who are pushed out of a better matched but uninsured job in search of access to ESI (job push). Using Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) 2000-2010 data, the impact of the state mandates on job mobility is identified by a triple-difference framework that exploits the state level dependent coverage variations in eligibility criteria, mandate implementation states, and mandate implementation time. Results show that expanded dependent coverage led to a 5% decrease in the mobility of workers with no ESI (job push). I find no evidence of reduced job lock. The second chapter of my dissertation extends the analysis of my first chapter to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Dependent Coverage Mandate. The ACA Dependent Coverage Mandate was passed on March 23rd, 2010, and became effective on September 23, 2010. The mandate requires that health insurance plans that provide dependent coverage must cover dependents until the age of 26. Using SIPP 2008-2013 data, and both difference-in-difference framework and regression discontinuity design, I find consistent evidence of reduced job push and no evidence of reduced job lock. The estimated reduced job push is larger than the state analysis. The third chapter studies the impact of the ACA Medicaid expansion on childless adults’ job mobility. The ACA Medicaid expansion raised the Medi- caid income eligibility threshold to 138% of the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) for everyone including childless adults who were not the traditional beneficiaries of the Medicaid. 32 states adopted the expansion while 19 states opted out. The reform could potentially increase childless adults’ job mobility if they are “locked” in their jobs for fear of losing employer-sponsored health insurance. Using the 2011-2016 basic monthly Current Population Survey (CPS), this paper tests this hypothesis by comparing the job mobility of childless adults in expansion states to those residing in non-expansion states, before and after the expansion. Results show the existence of “job lock” effect: the ACA Medicaid expansion increased the childless adults’ job mobility by 7% - 9%, and the increase comes entirely from job-to-job transitions. I find no evidence of the “employment lock”: the availability of Medicaid did not cause childless adults to be more likely to become unemployed or leave the labor force.

Download or read book Essays in Labor Economics and the Economics of Education written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis combines five essays in the fields of Labor Economics and the Economics of Education. The goal of the thesis is to understand the factors that influence individuals' choices with respect to their educational attainment and their labor supply. The thesis is motivated by the notion that policies at different institutional levels (e.g., at the university or at the government level) can influence these choices to some extent. The first two chapters examine the role of peer groups for student outcomes in post-secondary education. Many university entrants rely on friends and study partners as sources of information and support. To determine the effect of peer group composition on academic achievement, I exploit random assignment to orientation week groups at the University of St. Gallen. Chapter 1 examines the effect of the composition of these peer groups with respect to students' predicted performance ("peer quality"). The results are as follows: First, students' outcomes are positively influenced by their peers' quality. Second, a simulation analysis shows that a policy maker who cares about average achievement should compose groups so that peer quality across groups balances. Chapter 2 examines gender peer effects in the same context. The analysis shows that while female students seem to benefit from higher shares of females in their peer group, no clear policy rule for gender group composition can be established. Chapter 3 (co-authored with Darjusch Tafreschi and Sharon Pfister) examines the effect of course repetition in higher education. Students who do not meet a certain performance cut-off have to repeat the full first year or to drop out otherwise. We compare individuals to both sides of this cut-off, but close to the cut-off, to determine the effect of grade repetition. Grade repetition positively and persistently affects subsequent grades. The last two chapters investigate labor supply decisions. Chapter 4.

Download or read book Essays in Labor Economics and the Economics of Education written by Jaime Lynn Thomas and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation addresses three broad issues within the fields of labor economics and the economics of education: the accumulation of human and information capital, school quality, and policy-relevant analysis of classroom organization. At the secondary-school level, I document the importance of information capital, or accurate information about postsecondary and labor-market alternatives. At the elementary-school level, I analyze the effect of combination classes and discuss different ways to measure school quality and the importance of these measures to parents of school-aged children. In the first chapter, "Information Capital and Early-Career Wages," I define one measure of information capital acquired by students during high school and develop a framework through which I analyze the effect of this measure on educational attainment, job tenure, and wages. I also investigate the school-level characteristics that influence an individual's stock of information capital. In the second chapter, "Combination Classes and Educational Achievement," I measure the effect of membership in a combination class in first grade on student achievement. I address the selection that occurs when implementing a combination class and find that first graders in 1-2 combinations can be expected to outperform single-grade students on math tests by one-seventh of a standard deviation. In addition, I find no evidence that first graders in schools offering combination classes perform worse than first graders in schools that do not offer such classes. Therefore, I conclude that combination classes may be a Pareto-improving option for school administrators. In the last chapter, "Neighborhood Demographics, School Effectiveness, and Residential Location Choice," I investigate how neighborhood demographics and school effectiveness influence the residential location decisions of parents of different income levels. I find that low-income parents in the San Francisco Bay Area respond more strongly to school effectiveness than to neighborhood demographics, but that the reverse is true for high-income parents.