Download or read book Essays on Labor Markets and Income Inequality in Less Developed Countries written by Ariel Fiszbein and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Labor Markets in Developing Countries written by Binh T. Nguyen and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality written by Ms.Era Dabla-Norris and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.

Download or read book Inequality and Labor Market Institutions written by Ms.Florence Jaumotte and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The SDN examines the role of labor market institutions in the rise of income inequality in advanced economies, alongside other determinants. The evidence strongly indicates that de-unionization is associated with rising top earners’ income shares and less redistribution, while eroding minimum wages are related to increases in overall income inequality. The results, however, also suggest that a lack of representativeness of unions may be associated with higher inequality. These findings do not necessarily constitute a blanket recommendation for higher unionization and minimum wages, as country-specific circumstances and potential trade-offs with other policy objectives need to be considered. Addressing inequality also requires a multipronged approach, which should include taxation reform and curbing excesses associated with financial deregulation.

Download or read book Employment and Development written by Gary S. Fields and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Employment and Development brings together the contributions of 2014 IZA Prize in Labor Economics award winner Gary S. Fields to address global employment and poverty problems. Most of the poor in developing countries live in households in which people work, but still they are poor because the best available work pays so little. Employment and Development: How Work Can Lead From and Into Poverty questions how economic growth affects standards of living, how labor markets work in developing countries, and how different labor market policies affect well-being. Through a collection of essays, this book tackles major questions in development and labor economics. Who benefits from economic growth and who is hurt by economic decline? Why are distributional factors and labor market conditions improving in some countries but not in others? How do developing countries' labor markets work? How would labor market conditions change if different policies were to be put into effect? What are the welfare consequences of these changes? Through distributional analysis, Fields examines inequality, poverty, income mobility, and economic well-being, and through analysis of changing labor market conditions he examines employment and unemployment, employment composition, and labor earnings. By concentrating on the poor and understanding how the labor markets work for them and how their labor market earnings might be raised in response to different policy interventions, Fields addresses questions of first-order importance for human well-being.

Download or read book Economic Reforms Growth and Inequality in Latin America written by Gustavo Indart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 2004. Growth, income distribution, and labour markets are issues of pivotal importance in the Latin American context. Examining unique theoretical issues and the empirical evidence, this book provides a critical analysis of the key elements of income distribution determinants, labour market functions, trade policies, and their interrelations. As the advance of globalization becomes seemingly unstoppable, this book provides an important reappraisal of the impact of this new phenomenon, and in particular, the pernicious impact it may have on income growth and distribution. The key objective of the volume is to integrate more fully the analysis of trade and labour market economists, in order to better understand the labour market and income distribution implications of globalization and international integration. Forty years after the early calls to appropriately investigate the micro foundations of macroeconomics, the separation of the two at the policy level is more damaging than ever before - particularly for developing regions; this volume therefore makes an important contribution at the theoretical and policy levels by bringing together macroeconomic and microeconomic analyses.

Download or read book Poverty Inequality and Development written by Alain de Janvry and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-06-09 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays honors a remarkable man and his work. Erik Thorbecke has made significant contributions to the microeconomic and the macroeconomic analysis of poverty, inequality and development, ranging from theory to empirics and policy. The essays in this volume display the same range. As a collection they make the fundamental point that deep understanding of these phenomena requires both the micro and the macro perspectives together, utilizing the strengths of each but also the special insights that come when the two are linked together. After an overview section which contains the introductory chapter and a chapter examining the historical roots of Erik Thorbecke's motivations, the essays in this volume are grouped into four parts, each part identifying a major strand of Erik's work—Measurement of Poverty and Inequality, Micro Behavior and Market Failure, SAMs and CGEs, and Institutions and Development. The range of topics covered in the essays, written by leading authorities in their own areas, highlight the extraordinary depth and breadth of Erik Thorbecke's influence in research and policy on poverty, inequality and development. Acknowledgements These papers were presented at a conference in honor of Erik Thorbecke held at Cornell University on October 10-11, 2003. The conference was supported by the funds of the H. E. Babcock Chair in Food, Nutrition and Public Policy, and the T. H. Lee Chair in World Affairs at Cornell University.

Download or read book Essays on Inequality in Labor Markets and Wealth written by David Nathaniel Wasser and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays that address important questions within the fields of labor economics and public economics. I use advanced empirical methods and a combination of restricted access and public-use data to study the role of inequality in labor markets and wealth.In Chapter 1, I study whether the effects of unemployment insurance (UI) extensions are different for workers exposed to higher levels of local labor market concentration, a potential source of employer market power. UI extensions can improve the bargaining power of job seekers relative to employers by improving workers' outside options. I exploit measurement error in state unemployment rates that led to quasi-random assignment of UI durations in the U.S. during the Great Recession. Using matched employer-employee data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program, I find that UI extensions lengthen nonemployment durations by one week and cause economically meaningful but not statistically significant increases in earnings. The UI-earnings effect is significantly lower at higher levels of concentration, while there is no difference in the UI-duration effect. The lower UI-earnings effect is driven by differences at the extremes of the distribution of concentration. Workers exposed to higher concentration also are slightly more likely to change workplaces, local labor markets, and industries following an extension, but they are not induced to match into less-concentrated markets. My results imply that the benefits of more generous UI, in terms of match quality, are attenuated at higher levels of concentration, and so UI policy that accounts for local concentration is potentially warranted.In Chapter 2, joint with Anne M. Burton, we revisit how Ban the Box (BTB) policies affect the employment of minority men. BTB policies are intended to help ex-offenders find employment by delaying when employers can ask about criminal records. Existing evidence finds BTB causes discrimination against young, non-college-educated minority men. We show that effects for this group are not robust to a simple change in specification and the coding of BTB laws. Using a distinct treatment definition, we find no evidence of statistical discrimination: employment effects are near zero, precisely estimated, and not statistically significant.In Chapter 3, joint with N. Meltem Daysal and Michael F. Lovenheim, we study the effect of changes in parental wealth in childhood on the intergenerational transmission of wealth. Rising wealth inequality has spurred an increased interest in understanding how and why wealth is correlated across generations. Prior research has found an intergenerational correlation between 0.2 and 0.4 and has emphasized the role of family characteristics in driving this correlation. We contribute to this literature by examining the intergenerational transmission of wealth changes, which allows us to isolate the causal effect of wealth shocks from pre-determined parental preferences and household characteristics. Using Danish Register Data, we examine the effect of home price changes that occur between ages 0-5, 6-11, and 12-17 on overall wealth, housing wealth, and nonhousing wealth of adult children at ages 29-33. For the youngest age group, we find that 16.5% and 22.2% of each Krone of home price change is transmitted to overall wealth and housing wealth in adulthood, respectively. The corresponding transmission rates for the 6-11 age group are 30.8% and 18.5%, with a transmission to non-housing wealth of 12.3%. There is no transmission of home price changes that occur during the teenage years for any wealth outcome. Examining mechanisms, we find that home price increases in the first two age groups lead to modest increases in home ownership, educational attainment, and income. There also is an increase in partner wealth for the younger two groups. Income and education can explain less than a third of the intergenerational transmission we document. We argue that our results largely reflect changes to parental/household behaviors and preferences that are passed down to children and cause them to accumulate more housing wealth in young adulthood.

Download or read book Essays on Labor Market Changes and Individual Outcomes in Developing Countries written by Rashesh Shrestha and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is comprised of three self-contained empirical chapters, each exploring how individuals in developing countries navigate their labor markets. In my first chapter, I study the impact of a migration boom on investment in education by Nepalese youths. I find that opportunities to migrate have had a negative impact on attainment of education, which calls attention of policy-makers to design programs that incentive schooling. In the second chapter, I study the value of political connections to labor market outcomes. I find evidence of additional human capital investment and improved labor market outcomes due to political connections. In the third chapter, I compare the earnings growth of individuals in Indonesia who remained in formal employment (salaried workers employed in firms with five or more workers) and those who switched into non-formal jobs. The research indicates that slow job creation had a significant impact on the welfare displaced workers. Each of these chapters deals with an aspect of the labor market that is common across many developing countries. Changing economic incentives, political contexts, and globalization all contribute to individual decisions and outcomes that have consequences for welfare in poor countries. By better understanding the relationship between the characteristics of the labor markets and individual decisions and outcomes, we can hope to develop policies that maximize the ability of developing countries' labor markets to facilitate the process of economic development.

Download or read book Essays on Labor Market Changes and Individual Outcomes in Developing Countries written by Rashesh Shrestha and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is comprised of three self-contained empirical chapters, each exploring how individuals in developing countries navigate their labor markets. In my first chapter, I study the impact of a migration boom on investment in education by Nepalese youths. I find that opportunities to migrate have had a negative impact on attainment of education, which calls attention of policy-makers to design programs that incentive schooling. In the second chapter, I study the value of political connections to labor market outcomes. I find evidence of additional human capital investment and improved labor market outcomes due to political connections. In the third chapter, I compare the earnings growth of individuals in Indonesia who remained in formal employment (salaried workers employed in firms with five or more workers) and those who switched into non-formal jobs. The research indicates that slow job creation had a significant impact on the welfare displaced workers. Each of these chapters deals with an aspect of the labor market that is common across many developing countries. Changing economic incentives, political contexts, and globalization all contribute to individual decisions and outcomes that have consequences for welfare in poor countries. By better understanding the relationship between the characteristics of the labor markets and individual decisions and outcomes, we can hope to develop policies that maximize the ability of developing countries' labor markets to facilitate the process of economic development.

Download or read book Labour Markets and Income Inequality written by Rolph van der Hoeven and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the outcomes of the economic reform policies of the 1980s and 1990s in terms of inequality focusing on developing countries.

Download or read book Essays on Labor and Development Economics written by Edwin Antonio Goñi-Pacchioni and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work comprises four essays in two related areas: labor and development economics. On the labor side, two essays study (i) the effects of sizeable policy reforms over labor informality and (ii) the relation between productivity and wages in a context of substantial informality and high turnover rates. On the development side, two essays provide a comparison between developed and developing countries in the following aspects: (iii) the degree of complementarity of production factors and their capacity to translate R&D investments into economic growth and (iv) the effects of fiscal redistribution over income inequality. Within the context of Latin America - the most income-unequal and labor-informal region in the world - this work intends to augment the understanding of the behavior, dynamics, interactions and contributions of productive factors (labor and innovative capital) and the effects that policies aimed at formalizing labor, innovating capital or redistributing factors retributions may have. The study applies recent measurement techniques and exploits rich novel datasets which combined with reformulated models help us to propose alternative appealing explanations. Lessons learnt from these four essays suggest that (i) job dynamics play a fundamental role in the success (or failure) of policies aimed at promoting labor formality. Against the conventional wisdom, we contend that reductions in hiring rather than increases in separation rates are the main determinants of informality increases following protectionist policies. (ii) Job dynamics also play a differentiating role in the determination of wage-productivity elasticities and income risk (with new hires reacting more than incumbents). (iii) Yet, returns of labor and physical capital are constant across countries and periods regardless the stage of development whereas they exhibit an inverted U shape for technological capital (this is, highest returns observed for mid developed cases). (iv) Comparable private returns of productive factors are mirrored in comparable market income inequality measures observed across some developed and developing regions. However, while in Europe fiscal redistribution helps to achieve better distributed disposable income, in Latin America fiscal redistribution has meager or even countervailing effects.

Download or read book Three Essays on Economic Development written by Paula Luciana Méndez Errico and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main objective of this dissertation is to study some of the mechanisms suggested by the economic literature as factors that could prevent individuals from attaining certain domains of well-being. This thesis is divided in three independent essays providing new evidence on three issues within the field of economic development: the effect of social networks on immigrants' labor market outcomes (first essay), the long-lasting impact of income inequality on entrepreneurial success and job creation (second essay), and the importance of multiple abilities, parental educational background and race in explaining educational gaps (third essay). I explain the goal and findings of these three essays next. The first essay "The impact of social networks on immigrants' employment prospects: the Spanish case 1997-2007" analyzes the factors that could affect immigrants' integration in the host country. Specifically, I study the extent to which social networks affect job match and wages for immigrants in Spain. By focusing on social networks impact on labor market outcomes, I contribute to the empirical literature by addressing a less explored channel through which immigrants' social and economic integration could be affected. The findings suggest that social networks are likely to help immigrants to find a job in the short-run, but may limit opportunities to fully integrate in the longer term. These results shed light on the importance of social networks preventing immigrants' integration, as well as help to orientate the design of integration policies for immigrants living in Spain. The second essay "The Long-Term Effect of Inequality on Entrepreneurship and Job Creation" studies the extent to which initial conditions understood as income inequality in 1700s and 1800s, and credit market institutions, can condition entrepreneurship and job creation to flourish over time. This essay adds to the literature on the long-lasting effects of income inequality on economic development by empirically testing the predictions of the model by Banerjee and Newman (1993). This model predicts that countries with initially low income inequality would grow over time aided by a strong entrepreneurial sector. A contrasting equilibrium could be reached if a country starts with a high ratio of poor to wealthy people. In this case development runs out of steam. The findings of this essay give empirical support to the predictions of the model, showing that historical income inequality and current credit market imperfections prevent firms to be created and surviving over time, at the time that affect job creation over time. To the best of our knowledge, this article is the first one that tests the long-term effects of inequality on occupational choice. The third essay, entitled "Schooling progression in Uruguay: why some children are left behind?" studies the impact of parental traits on children's educational attainment in Uruguay. Specifically, I analyze whether long-term parental background, crystallized by parental educational background, race, cognitive and non-cognitive abilities, and short-term family income measured by the opportunity cost of education, affect child' schooling progression, and at what stage of the educational path they take on their importance. The results show that parental educational background, cognitive and non-cognitive abilities have effects of diverse magnitude across stages of the educational path. Long-term parental background has increasing effect over the children's schooling progression in comparison to short-term parental income as it decreases its significance when students progress to higher schooling stages. Specifically, cognitive ability has increasing effects on the students' likelihood of dropping out across the educational path. Motivation and risky behavior measuring non-cognitive ability also influence children's schooling completion at early stages of education.

Download or read book Labor Markets in an Era of Adjustment Issues papers written by Susan Horton and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Labor Markets in Developing Countries written by Alejandra Cox Edwards and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on the Distribution of Income Attention and Rewards written by Stefan Legge and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation uses empirical methods to study problems in the fields of macroeconomics, trade, political economy, and behavioral economics. Chapter 1 provides an extensive literature review that dissects the large body of research on the determinants of income inequality. It shows that most explanations focus on technology, education, trade, and labor market regulations while less attention has been paid to the role of immigration, superstars, female labor supply, marital sorting, and demographic trends. Chapter 2 investigates how population aging affects the rate of innovation. Assuming individuals must spend time on learning how to use new technology, the demand for innovative goods declines if the population becomes older. Data from OECD countries support these theoretical predictions. Chapter 3 analyzes both empirically and theoretically how firms in developing countries respond to tariff reductions. In the presence of imperfect capital markets trade liberalization can hurt small and medium-sized firms. Financially constrained Firms are more likely to either leave the market or reduce their R & D efforts when being exposed to lower tariff protection. Chapter 4 studies voter preferences over immigration and redistribution in Europe. It shows that after 2002 support for income redistribution increased while attitudes over immigration polarized. A model that allows individuals to be motivated by altruistic motives is used to explain these trends. Chapter 5 investigates the importance of ranking schemes and tests whether media attention affects perceptions about future events. Data on close World Cup tournaments in alpine skiing allows to estimate the causal effect of media attention. The results document that rankings generate sharp discontinuities in media attention. However, there is no evidence that biased media attention affects prices or quantities in the betting market. Chapter 6 examines whether limited attention can affect.

Download or read book Essays in Quantitative Macroeconomics written by Philipp Grübener and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis contains four independent essays in heterogeneous agent macroeconomics. They explore the sources of income inequality and income risk and study the optimal design of public redistribution and insurance. The first chapter, joint with Filip Rozsypal, studies the origins of idiosyncratic earnings risk in frictional labor markets, with a particular focus on the role of firms for worker earnings risk. First, using administrative matched employer-employee data from Denmark, we document key properties of the worker earnings growth distribution, the firm revenue growth distribution, and their joint distribution. The worker earnings and firm revenue growth distributions exhibit strong deviations from normality, in particular excess kurtosis, with many workers and firms experiencing very small changes to their earnings/revenues, but a significant minority experiencing very large changes. Large earnings losses are more likely for workers in firms with negative revenue growth, driven both by separations to unemployment and earnings losses on the job. Second, we develop a model framework consistent with the data, with four key features: i) frictional labor markets and on the job search to capture unemployment risk and wage growth through a job ladder, ii) multi-worker firms to capture gross and net worker flows, iii) risk averse workers such that earnings risk matters, and iv) contracting with two-sided limited commitment because earnings of job stayers are changing infrequently in the data. Third, we use the model to explore policies designed to mitigate earnings fluctuations. The second chapter, joint with Annika Bacher and Lukas Nord, studies one particular private insurance margin against individual income risk only available to couples, which is the so called added worker effect. Specifically, we study how this intra-household insurance against individual job loss through increased spousal labor market participation varies over the life cycle. We show in U.S. data that the added worker effect is much stronger for young than for old households. A stochastic life cycle model of two-member households with job search in a frictional labor market is capable of replicating this finding. The model suggests that a lower added worker effect for the old is driven primarily by better insurance through asset holdings. Human capital differences between employed young and old contribute to the difference but are quantitatively less important, while differences in job arrival rates play a limited role. In the third chapter, joint with Axelle Ferriere, Gaston Navarro, and Oliko Vardishvili, we study optimal redistribution, taking into account not just the large income and wealth inequality in the data, but also the distribution of income risk that is key in the first two chapters. The U.S. fiscal system redistributes through a rich set of taxes and transfers, the latter accounting for a large part of the income of the poor. Motivated by this, we study the optimal joint design of transfers and income taxes. Within a simple heterogeneous-household framework, we derive analytical results on the optimal relationship between transfers and tax progressivity. Higher transfers are associated with lower optimal income tax progressivity. Redistribution is achieved with generous transfers while efficiency is preserved via a lower progressivity of income taxes. As such, the optimal tax-and-transfer system features larger progressivity of average than of marginal tax rates. We then quantify the optimal tax-and-transfer system in a rich incomplete-market model with realistic distributions of income, wealth, and income risk. The model features a novel flexible functional form for progressive income taxes and means-tested transfers. Relative to the current U.S. fiscal system, the optimal policy consists of more generous means-tested transfers, which phase-out at a slower rate. These larger transfers are financed with higher tax rates, but the taxes are not more progressive than the current system. The fourth chapter, joint with Axelle Ferriere and Dominik Sachs, also studies optimal redistribution, but instead of considering a stationary environment it analyzes the dynamics of the equity-efficiency trade-off along the growth path. To do so, we incorporate the optimal income taxation problem into a state-of-the-art multi-sector structural change general equilibrium model with non-homothetic preferences. We identify two key opposing forces. First, long-run productivity growth allows households to shift their consumption expenditures away from necessities. This implies a reduction in the dispersion of marginal utilities, and therefore calls for a welfare state that declines along the growth path. Yet, economic growth is also systematically associated with an increase in the skill premium, which raises inequality and the desire to redistribute. We quantitatively analyze these opposing forces for two countries: the U.S. from 1950 to 2010, and China from 1989 to 2009. Optimal redistribution decreases at early stages of development, as the role of non-homotheticities prevails. At later stages of development the rising income inequality dominates and the welfare state should become more generous.