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This paper investigates dynamic changes in instrumental (i.e., work‐related) tie‐seeking patterns and the structure of a communication network following a downsizing event—whereby many employees are simultaneously eliminated from a network. Our analysis spans a two‐year period and applies a resource‐ and network‐change approach to examine how survivors develop revised resource‐acquisition strategies while repositioning themselves after a downsizing. Our results demonstrate that two temporary logics of tie formation—a suspension of within‐unit homophily and a preference for seeking ties with long‐tenured employees—help employees acquire betweenness centrality during the disruption period. Specifically, we find that disruption initiates a transitional period after downsizing in which new tie‐making logics are employed, including seeking out ties with long‐tenured employees and employees outside of one's department. We observed post‐disruption, during the stabilization period after downsizing, where logics used for tie‐making in the disruption period were abandoned, pre‐disruption tie‐making logics were resumed, and betweenness centrality remained relatively constant. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of these results and suggest future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Service offshoring raises the fear of job loss for high‐skilled workers, unlike goods offshoring, because workers at home compete with highly educated workers in low‐income countries. This paper examines whether the increase in the United States's service offshoring to India has reduced the domestic employment of the occupations with greater exposure to Indian service imports. To account for endogeneity, I instrument for the growth of the United States's service imports from India by exploiting the change in Indian exports to European countries. Service offshoring reduces total employment from 2000 to 2006; however, this effect disappears overall and becomes positive for college‐educated workers in the later period from 2006 to 2016. Unlike goods offshoring, the employment effect is largely driven by college‐educated workers, and the employment growth in the later period is larger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: This paper will set up a general equilibrium model with a distorted labour market to explore the effects of an environmental tax and union bargaining power on formal employment and the informal competitive wage. We find that when the government raises the environmental tax, both formal employment and informal competitive wage would fall. In addition, we confirm that a policy of labour market reform would increase both formal employment and the informal competitive wage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines two labour market outcomes experienced by users of federally-funded transportation services for low-wage workers in the United States, using primary data from 23 locations. The propensity of users to be unemployed prior to using the service is found to be related to the type of service (fixed-route/demand-response) and location type (urban/rural) but not to aggregate local unemployment, variability in local unemployment rates or local welfare policies. The propensity to earn higher wages is related to the type of employment transportation service and location, and local unemployment levels. Results imply a need for locally-derived, coordinated employment transportation plans. Resumen Este artículo examina dos consecuencias del mercado laboral sufridas por los usuarios de servicios de transporte subvencionados por el gobierno federal para trabajadores de bajos ingresos en los Estados Unidos, haciendo uso de datos primarios de 23 localizaciones. Se ha encontrado que la propensión de los usuarios a estar desempleados antes de utilizar el servicio está relacionada con el tipo de servicio (ruta fija/demanda-respuesta) y el tipo de localización (urbana/rural), pero no con el desempleo local agregado, la variabilidad de las tasas de desempleo local o las políticas locales de asistencia social. La propensión a ganar salarios más altos está relacionada con el tipo de servicio de transporte del empleo y la localización, y las tasas de desempleo locales. Los resultados implican la necesidad de planes coordinados de transporte del empleo basados en las condiciones locales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is on aggregate U.S. labor productivity growth. Accordingly, we have taken real gross national product per labor hour employed as our indicator of labor productivity. Table I shows the history of labor productivity over the 1947–1973 period. The time periods reported in Table I were chosen to encompass peak periods of economic activity. This should minimize business cycle distortions of productivity movements. The data in Table I suggest that productivity has slowed considerably. It is important to ask whether the slowdown is permanent in nature. A closely related issue is the question of whether economic policy measures can be designed which would significantly affect long-run productivity growth. The only way to resolve these issues is to undertake a careful accounting of the sources of productivity growth and to develop forecasts of movements in the factors which affect productivity. The analysis of this paper indicates that the slowdown in productivity growth, in the 1970's in particular, can be traced to a very slow growth in the capital/labor ratio in the years 1970–75 and to a change in the labor force mix because of the entrance into the work force of large numbers of young and inexperienced workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy Points: Historically, reforms that have increased the duration of job‐protected paid parental leave have improved women's economic outcomes. By targeting the period around childbirth, access to paid parental leave also appears to reduce rates of infant mortality, with breastfeeding representing one potential mechanism. The provision of more generous paid leave entitlements in countries that offer unpaid or short durations of paid leave could help families strike a balance between the competing demands of earning income and attending to personal and family well‐being. Context: Policies legislating paid leave from work for new parents, and to attend to individual and family illness, are common across Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries. However, there exists no comprehensive review of their potential impacts on economic, social, and health outcomes. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of the peer‐reviewed literature on paid leave and socioeconomic and health outcomes. We reviewed 5,538 abstracts and selected 85 published papers on the impact of parental leave policies, 22 papers on the impact of medical leave policies, and 2 papers that evaluated both types of policies. We synthesized the main findings through a narrative description; a meta‐analysis was precluded by heterogeneity in policy attributes, policy changes, outcomes, and study designs. Findings: We were able to draw several conclusions about the impact of parental leave policies. First, extensions in the duration of paid parental leave to between 6 and 12 months were accompanied by attendant increases in leave‐taking and longer durations of leave. Second, there was little evidence that extending the duration of paid leave had negative employment or economic consequences. Third, unpaid leave does not appear to confer the same benefits as paid leave. Fourth, from a population health perspective, increases in paid parental leave were consistently associated with better infant and child health, particularly in terms of lower mortality rates. Fifth, paid paternal leave policies of adequate length and generosity have induced fathers to take additional time off from work following the birth of a child. How medical leave policies for personal or family illness influence health has not been widely studied. Conclusions: There is substantial quasi‐experimental evidence to support expansions in the duration of job‐protected paid parental leave as an instrument for supporting women's labor force participation, safeguarding women's incomes and earnings, and improving child survival. This has implications, in particular, for countries that offer shorter durations of job‐protected paid leave or lack a national paid leave entitlement altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper analyses the causal relationship between highway infrastructure and employment within the U.S. We estimate dynamic panel models in a vector autoregressive framework using time-series cross-sectional data on lane miles of roadway capacity and private sector employment for the 48 contiguous states over the period 1984–1997. The issue of spatial dependence is explicitly taken into account by means of a spatial filtering technique. Our analysis reveals evidence of employment growth temporally influenced by annual growth in the provision of major highways within the same state and all other states, as well as the other way around. However, the results show that the existence and direction of these temporal and spatial effects depend on the type of highways and time lags considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since the early 1970's it has become increasingly apparent that labor productivity growth in the U.S. private sector has slowed appreciably. Although long-run trends in productivity growth are difficult to identify, given that productivity varies considerably over the business cycle, productivity growth rates have been low for about ten years, spanning almost two complete business cycles. The evidence for slower growth in the past decade is now incontrovertible. Although a large body of research has been devoted to discovering the sources of productivity growth in the U.S., relatively few studies have focussed on the productivity slowdown since the mid-1960's. Most of these analyzed the effect of sectoral shifts in the composition of employment and output. However, the accumulated evidence of ten years indicates that intersectoral shifts of employment can explain only a fraction of the productivity slowdown. This paper investigates capital stock growth as a possible cause for slower growth, and estimates its contribution to the reduction in productivity growth in the United States since 1965. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessments of the impact of minimum wages on labor market outcomes in Africa are relatively rare. In part this is because the available data do not permit adequate treatment of econometric issues that arise in such assessments. This paper, however, attempts to estimate the impact of introducing a minimum wage law in the agriculture sector in South Africa, based on 15 waves of the biannual Labor Force Survey conducted between September 2000 and September 2007. The chosen sample includes six waves before the legislation's effective date (March 2003) and nine afterwards. To assess whether the changes experienced by farm workers are unique, we identify a control group that has similar characteristics to the treatment group. Our econometric approach involves using two alternative specifications of a difference-in-differences model. We test whether employers reduced employment, and whether they responded at the intensive margin by reducing hours of work. The results suggest a significant employment reduction in agriculture from the minimum wage (and particularly a noticeable move away from employment of part-time workers), an increase in wages on average, and a rise in non-wage benefits compliance. Our analysis also indicates that, firstly, overall average of hours worked fell in the post-law period, suggesting that employers adjusted to some extent on the intensive margin. Secondly, it appears that hours of work increased more in areas where wages were lower in the pre-law period, driven largely by the fall in part-time employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effect of oil price innovations on manufacturing job flows across U.S. states. First, I estimate a nonlinear structural equation model and compute impulse response functions by Monte Carlo integration. I find asymmetries in the responses of job flows to positive and negative oil price innovations. Yet, these asymmetries do not pass a test of symmetry on the impulse responses, especially after accounting for data mining. Third, I use a test for the absence of job reallocation to evaluate whether an unexpected increase in the real price of oil price triggers an important change in job reallocation. I find that oil price shocks have limited regional allocative effects. (JEL E24, E32, Q43) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines recent nonmetropolitan population redistribution trends and places them in historical context. Between 1980 and 1987, nonmetropolitan areas grew by 4 percent despite a slight migration loss. Metropolitan growth rates again exceeded those in nonmetropolitan areas during the period in sharp contrast to the trend of the 1970s. The nonmetropolitan population and migration gains between 1980 and 1987 are neither as large nor widespread as those during the 1970s, but they are quite substantial by any historical standard. There is little evidence in the data for the 1980s suggesting a return to an era of substantial out-migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scope of usual central place studies is broadened in this paper to include industrial employment, church membership, taverns, and measures of residential socioeconomic status as well as commerce. As other studies have found commerce is becoming increasingly concentrated in larger communities, and communities near larger cities have relatively little commerce for their size. Industrial employment is more concentrated than commerce, but industrial growth has been greatest away from major urban centers. and has shown little tendency to concentrate in particular "growth center" communities, an indication that wage structure is a primary concern for industries in the region. Church membership is greater per capita in small than large towns, and has shown no tendency to concentrate. Taverns have declined, especially in large communities. Indications are that smaller communities have been gaining in average incomes and latter still have higher status. Results suggest smaller communities are losing commercial functions but are retaining and even gaining in residential and social functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Important new evidence on racial employment discrimination in the United States has been provided by Comanor (1973) who demonstrated that racial discrimination in hiring was a pervasive part of the US labor market in the mid-1960s. While Comanor showed significant employment effects of discrimination, he did not directly examine the related issue of racial wage rate differentials. In view of recent interest in the stability of US black-white income differences (e.g. Ashenfelter, 1970; Freeman, 1973a, b; Wohlstetter and Coleman, 1972), the issue of wage rate discrimination is of added interest, for these income differentials may result just from discriminatory hiring practices (blacks are forced to work in low-wage industries), or from a combination of wage rate discrimination and a disadvantageous employment distribution.
We seek in this paper to test statistically for the existence of wage rate differences between comparably employed blacks and whites and men and women. Because we have individual level information for 1960, 1967 and 1970, we are able to examine the question of wage rate discrimination more closely than in other studies. The plan of the paper is as follows. Section I discusses the measurement problems posed by actually testing for wage rate discrimination with Census data; Section II discusses the problems of inferring discrimination with various statistical models; Section III presents and interprets the empirical results for 1960, 1967 and 1970, and discusses the problem of sample size fragmentation; Section IV concludes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the effects of the policies of wage and price restraint that have at various times been employed in Britain since 1945. We have taken the two-equation model that has been studied extensively in the context of data for both the United Kingdom and the United States,[2] and have assumed that, although far from perfect, this model will be a good enough statistical description of wage and price inflation to allow it to catch any major influence of wage and price restraints. In order to see how the potential effects of incomes policies should be specified in this two-equation model, we are forced to examine the derivation of the equations in some detail. In this process we discover that shift dummies which have been used by other investigators[3] to catch the effects of incomes policies are inappropriate and that their use can give rise to misleading results. After conducting tests more satisfactory than those employing shift dummies, we conclude that the data are not inconsistent with the view that wage and price restraints have usually been ineffective in restraining inflation, and also that the restraints have sometimes actually had the effect of raising the rate of inflation above what it would otherwise have been. This perverse effect is very noticeable in the most recent periods of "restraint" since 1966. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: When the Federal Reserve was established by the US Congress in 1913, its charter mandated that the new central bank “promote an elastic currency” and the institution was given extraordinary powers to serve as a lender of last resort to the banking system. Congress was reacting to the cycle of financial panics that had beset the country since the Civil War and had worsened with the Panic of 1907. Congress sought to find a remedy to prevent runs on banks turning into full-fledged financial crises. The term “elastic” in the opening words of the charter was intended to underscore the need for a robust banking system that could withstand shocks and not collapse upon itself. There was no mention whatsoever of a dual mandate of promoting price stability and encouraging full employment. With prodding from the US Congress, the Federal Reserve became highly involved in the management of the economy of the United States after WWII, focusing on inflation and full employment objectives. In 1993 Professor John Taylor set forth an elegant and simple framework (aka, the Taylor Rule) for analyzing the interest rate policy of the Federal Reserve in terms of its dual mandate. This paper examines Federal Reserve behavior from the mid-1950s to 2011 through the lens of the Taylor Rule. Our contribution is to use a dynamic linear model with Bayesian inference to update the evolution through time of the key parameters surrounding the inflation and full employment mandates, using only the information available to the Federal Reserve at each point in time. Our findings provide a more nuanced quantitative view than is previously available in the literature of how the Federal Reserve shifted its management of its dual mandate over time and in response to different economic challenges. Moreover, our research leads to serious questions of how Federal Reserve decision making may change in the future, following the financial panic of 2008, pointing toward numerous avenues for new research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper documents the economic performance of immigrants in a country characterized by an extensive welfare state and a short immigration history. Upon arrival, immigrants to Finland have substantially lower employment rates than comparable natives. While they experience rapid employment growth, only men from OECD countries catch up with natives. Despite the persisting employment and earnings differences between non-OECD immigrants and natives, the differences in income transfers disappear in roughly 20 years. The immigrant-native employment gaps are larger in Finland than in Australia, Canada, or the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs a hazard model to analyse the impact of education and two types of prison employment programmes on recidivism over a ten-year period for 4515 prisoners released from Ohio prisons in 1992. Estimations with a Weibull mixture model and propensity score approach provide two means for investigating self-selection bias. Selection bias is detected for participation in the most common prison job programme but has little effect on estimated marginal savings impacts of prison industry and education programmes. Estimates of the cost savings from postponing return to prison due to programme participation are provided. The potential for cost savings through decreasing or delaying return to prison is an important finding given the substantial and increasing cost of incarceration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses factors influencing the destinations chosen by 13 different categories of migrant engineers in the USA between 1994 to 1999. Migration patterns are analysed with the aid of fractional-response regression models. The objective is to assess the relative weight of employment opportunities and selected amenities in guiding the migratory shifts of these workers. Engineers are divided into two categories representing individuals of working age and those who are either retired or are close to retirement. The results indicate that local employment opportunities have a dominant impact on the destinations chosen by the former group and that amenities play virtually no role in this regard. However, warmer winters have some modest positive effect on destinations chosen by the latter group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a paper presented during the "Whither Jobs and People?: Rural-Suburban-Urban Differences and Modern Growth Patterns" session at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Sciences Association on January 5-7, 2007 in Chicago, Illinois. It is observed that the growth influence amenities and the pattern of urban sprawl vary across the United States. It is pointed out that the effectiveness of policies that support nonmetropolitan country growth could be enhanced.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we investigate the existence of infrequent shocks and the degree of persistence of U.S. state unemployment over the period 1976-2004. We first apply individual Lagrange multiplier (LM) unit root tests and fail to reject the hysteresis hypothesis in forty states. When two changes in level are incorporated, we again fail to reject the hysteresis hypothesis in forty states. Since individual unit root tests normally lack power, we employ the recently developed panel LM unit root tests with up to two changes in level. Only in this case are we able to reject the joint unit root hypothesis in favor of regime stationarity. Computation of half-lives through impulse-response functions indicates the high degree of persistence of U.S. state unemployment. These results contrast with the common belief among scholars that U.S. state unemployment is closer to the natural rate paradigm than to the hysteresis paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between job sprawl and the spatial mismatch between blacks and jobs. Using data from a variety of sources, including the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census and U.S. Department of Commerce's ZIP Code Business Patterns, I control extensively for metropolitan area characteristics and other factors. In addition, I use metropolitan area physical geography characteristics as instruments for job sprawl to address the problem of simultaneity bias. I find a significant and positive effect of job sprawl on mismatch conditions faced by blacks that remains evident in the twostage least squares models but not in first difference change regressions. The crosssectional effect is particularly important in the Midwest and West, and in metropolitan areas where blacks' share of the population is large and where blacks' population growth rate is relatively low. Among others, the results also reveal that the measures of mismatch and job sprawl used in this analysis are highly correlated with blacks' employment outcomes in the expected direction. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares management flexibility in employment decision making in the United States and Canada through a cross-national survey of organizations in representative jurisdictions in each country, Pennsylvania and Ontario, respectively, that investigates the impact of differences in their legal environments. The results indicate that, compared to their Ontario counterparts, organizations in Pennsylvania have a higher degree of flexibility in employment outcomes, such as higher dismissal and discipline rates, yet do not experience any greater flexibility or simplicity in management hiring and firing decisions. One explanation for this result may lie in the finding that organizations in Pennsylvania experience greater legal pressures on decision making, reflecting the generally more intense conflict in the employment law system in the United States. By contrast, high-performance work systems, which some have looked to as a possible management-driven mechanism for enhancing fairness in employment, had more modest effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses US Census data from 1970 to 1990 to focus on “integrated” occupations—those in which men and women are approximately equally represented. We focus on the extensive variability that exists across these nominally integrated occupations, specifically their social demography and the paths by which they reach compositional sex equity. We also examine the link between occupational integration and race/sex succession, and explore the earnings consequences of working in mixed occupations. Our findings suggest that integration means quite different things at different levels of the occupational hierarchy and for the women and men integrating sex-atypical occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of competition between insurers for the patronage of a firm's employees. Since for employment-based health insurance the employee choice of health insurance plans is often limited, the availability of competing plans in the market does not necessarily reflect competition within the firm. We utilize data from the 1987 National Medical Expenditures Survey (NMES) to examine the effect of intrafirm competition in the employment-based health insurance market. Using switching regression models, we explore the process that sets premiums and the process that sets the net premium/medical cost margins. We find that greater choice results in higher margins and lower premiums. We also find significantly negative health maintenance organization choice effects on both premiums and margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the U.S., since the early 1980s, the vast majority of states have implemented enterprise zones. Based on U.S. Bureau of Census' longitudinal research database data, this paper analyzes urban zones in six states. It examines the factors that states use to choose zone locations and the subsequent effect of the zones on business activity and employment. Further matched sample and geographic comparison groups are created to measure the impact of zone policy on employment, establishment, shipment, payroll, and capital spending outcomes. The analysis finds that zones have a positive effect on the outcomes of new establishments and a negative effect on the outcomes of previously existing establishments.

Political efficacy is a widely studied phenomenon and an important predictor of political participation, but little is known about the political efficacy of the millions of people with disabilities in the United States. This paper reports the results of a nationally representative telephone survey of 1,240 people—stratified to include 700 people with disabilities—following the November 1998 elections. Several measures of efficacy that help predict political activity were found to be significantly lower among people with disabilities than among otherwise similar people without disabilities. Although lower levels of internal efficacy and civic skills could largely be explained by educational and employment gaps, lower levels of other variables (external efficacy, perceived influence of people with disabilities, and perceived treatment of people with disabilities) remained after applying a wide range of controls, indicating that people with disabilities are less likely to see the political system as responsive to them. This perception is concentrated among non–employed people with disabilities. The lower efficacy levels linked to “disability gaps” in employment, income, education, and group attendance appear to account for as much as half of the disability political participation gap; hence, policies intended to increase employment and educational opportunities for people with disabilities have potentially important political effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a standard differences-in-differences (DD) technique and a modified DD technique in the slopes, this paper determines that hosting the 1996 Summer Olympic Games boosted employment by 17% in the counties of Georgia affiliated with and close to Olympic activity, relative to employment increases in other counties in Georgia (the rate of growth increased 0.002 percentage points per quarter). Estimation of a random-growth model confirms a positive impact of the Olympics on employment. In addition, the employment impact is shown not to be merely a "metropolitan statistical area (MSA) effect"; employment in the northern Olympic venue areas was found to increase 11% more post- versus pre-Olympics than it did in other, similar southern MSAs. The evidence of an Olympic impact on wages is weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the structural effects of the migration turnaround on the small towns and communities of rural America. It is hypothesized that the rapid immigration of urbanites may give rise to structural disturbances in the rural communities in which it occurs; institutional overland and cultural clash are the principal forms of community disturbance discussed. Perceptions of fundamental community problems were ascertained via questionnaires mailed to a sample of 21,792 Michigan households, randomly selected by counties. Findings form an ecological, county-level analysis show that the migration turnaround is linked to community problems, particularly in the areas of education, community solidarity, health care, social welfare, crime and Public safety, and other municipal services. Concerning the employment situation, the postulate that job opportunities would he fewer in high growth areas is not supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary immigration to the United States and the formation of new ethnic groups are the complex and unintended social consequences of the expansion of the nation to its post-World War II position of global hegemony. Immigrant communities in the United States today are related to a history of American military, political, economic, and cultural involvement and intervention in the sending countries, especially in Asia and the Caribbean Basin, and to the linkages that are formed in the process that open a variety of legal and illegal migration pathways. The 19.8 million foreign-born persons counted in the 1990 U.S. census formed the largest immigrant population in the world, though in relative terms, only 7.9% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, a lower proportion than earlier in this century. Today's immigrants are extraordinarily diverse, a reflection of polar-opposite types of migrations embedded in very different historical and structural contexts. Also, unlike the expanding economy that absorbed earlier flows from Europe, since the 1970s new immigrants have entered an "hourglass" economy with reduced opportunities for social mobility, particularly among the less educated, and new waves of refugees have entered a welfare state with expanded opportunities for public assistance. This paper seeks to make sense of the new diversify. A typology of contemporary immigrants is presented, and their patterns of settlement, their distinctive social and economic characteristics compared to major native-born racial-ethnic groups, and their different modes of incorporation in - and consequences for - American society are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calculates the distribution of unemployment duration lengths and transition rates for Massachusetts workers in the late nineteenth century. Using data on time spent out of work and assuming that the spell durations followed a Weibull distribution, I parameterize a model of the timing of transitions from unemployment to employment and vice versa, I then simulate the employment experience of representative workers and construct distributions of completed spell lengths. The experience of most out-of-work workers in a year seems to have been in one rather long spell rather than in shorter multiple ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between graduates' skills and their risk of over-education and unemployment in 17 European countries. Distinguishing between field-specific and academic skills, the authors find that, as predicted by the crowding-out hypothesis, field-specific skills offer more protection against the risk of over-education when the excess labour supply in the occupational domain of the graduate's field of study increases. Conversely, academic skills have that effect when excess supply in the overall labour market is higher. Field-specific skills also protect graduates against the risk of unemployment, whereas graduates' level of academic skills appears to be unrelated to the risk of becoming unemployed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the NBER-CES Manufacturing Industry Database, the authors identify a positive relationship between total factor productivity and the skilled-to-unskilled labour and wage ratios. Highlighting the skill premium for skilled workers, they find that technology has become more favourable to skilled labour since the 1980s. The productivity differentials between skilled and unskilled labour increase relative demand for the former when they are imperfect substitutes. The authors show that the relationships between technology and both ratios are positive in science-based and production-intensive industries, and negative in supplier-dominated industries, suggesting industry heterogeneity in technological knowledge. From a policy perspective, governments should promote science-based innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Penrose Hypothesis that managerial resources will grow at a rate somewhat faster than that of firm size is tested along with the alternative steady-state hypothesis that both grow at the same rate. A dynamic firm model is used to motivate the study. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment Statistics are used to measure managerial resources. Firm size is in terms of employment, or real value added, or real value of shipments. The data cover the period 2003-2006 and are used with a Cobb-Douglas type log-form growth function. The statistical results are quite strongly in favor of the Penrose Hypothesis, suggesting a managerial limit to the rate of growth of the firm. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the predictive ability of the Federal Reserve's Beige Book for aggregate output and employment have proven inconclusive. This might be attributed, in part, to its irregular release schedule. We use a model that allows for data sampling at mixed frequencies to analyze the predictive power of the Beige Book. We find that the Beige Book's national summary and District reports predict GDP and aggregate employment and that most District reports provide information content for regional employment. In addition, there appears to be an asymmetry in the predictive content of the Beige Book language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A modified gravity model is estimated using a cross section of data drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau survey of 2000 in order to analyze the impact of economic freedom on gross migration flows among the lower 48 states. Spatial econometric methods are utilized in order to capture spatial effects not detected by distance. In addition, the Economic Freedom of North America Index is decomposed to determine the individual impact of various policies. Results show that states with higher relative economic freedom experience greater migration inflow through its direct impact on income and employment growth. In aggregate, the findings indicate that individuals migrate toward states with relatively higher government consumption expenditures, relatively lower tax burdens, and states with more freedom with respect to labor decisions in the form of less restrictive minimum wages, less concentration of unions, and less dependence on public employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research shows that the manufacturing sector contains private information advantages for consumer confidence. It examines the consumer confidence-manufacturing link by comparing the U.S. national-level Index of Consumer Sentiment with identically constructed confidence indices from a key manufacturing state and a nonmanufacturing state. Granger causality analysis shows that the manufacturing state's confidence index leads the national index, whereas the nonmanufacturing state's confidence index lags it. Factors influencing confidence include percentage manufacturing employment, equity markets indicators, and disposable income. Fitting a consumption function to confidence measures for the three confidence indices shows the strongest relationship to be in the manufacturing state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses changes in poverty rates in the U.S., to analyze the strength of spatial externalities in poverty reduction at the tract level, and to examine how the effect of job growth on poverty reduction is mediated by initial poverty conditions and local social capital in one's own and neighboring areas, using tract-level data. Employment growth was a significant force for poverty reduction, with dramatic differences by initial poverty condition, and the largest effects in the poorest tracts. Other things being equal, the higher the initial poverty rate in a tract, the greater the decline in poverty over the 1990s. Being in a poverty pocket, however, slows the decline. The interaction between social capital and employment growth was not significant. The results suggest that job growth does have a poverty-reducing effect, and that this effect is larger in high-poverty tracts. Social capital appears to be most important in contributing to poverty decline in high-poverty areas. It also enhances the impact of job growth in medium poverty areas.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Asian recession saw an increase in the volume of mainly manufactured Asian exports. Other things equal, this would have disadvantaged the labour intensive end of northern (mainly USA and EU) manufacturing and hence the northern manufacturing workforce. Central to the crisis, however, was a redirection of investment away from Asia to the north, raising northern aggregate demand and hence employment in northern services. This paper examines the magnitudes of these two effects in a broader analysis of the real impacts of the Asian recession that is grounded in a global general equilibrium framework. Northern workers are found to be net beneficiaries in both the short and medium run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluates whether welfare recipients in the United States would work full time if offered a earnings supplement that was conditioned on full time employment. Additional cash transfer cost of the scheme for the government; Negative impact of financial incentives on increasing full time employment.

This study investigates immigrant-native differences in the activities of adolescents 2 years after their sophomore year of high school. We employ longitudinal data for the modeling of duration, nativity and generation differences in education and employment activities during late adolescence. We ask if the same human and social capital characteristics employed as explanations for nativity differences in achievement are predictive of high school participation versus other activities such as labor force participation within a cohort of adolescents. Despite their lower levels of human capital and lower previous academic performance, recent immigrants who arrive in the United States as adolescents are more likely than those who arrive earlier or those born in the United States to persevere in high school. Access to familial social capital and attitudinal measures help explain some of this effect. As for those who do leave school early, socioeconomic status and language background play a role in the activities respondents pursue. While recent immigrants are more likely to persevere in high school, once they leave they are no more likely to pursue additional education than their U.S. born counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does imperfect competition increase the magnitude of business cycles? If so, the variability of an industry's employment and output should be positively related to the market power of firms in that industry. This paper demonstrates that the opposite is true: U.S. manufacturing industries with high price-cost margins display less employment variability than do low-markup industries. These high-markup industries display less price variability as well. Highly concentrated industries, however, do display more employment variability. To some degree, markups may reflect labor hoarding rather than market power; this may account for part, but not all, of the negative correlation between markups and variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to establish what we do, and do not, know about the consequences of advance notification and to identify the sources of opposition to the proposed legislation. To this end, the current bill is first discussed against the backdrop of earlier federal (and state) initiatives in this area. A review of the extent of notice in individual and collectively bargained contracts precedes discussion of the cases for and against notifying workers of their impending displacement. An examination of the extant literature charting the effects of advance notification on unemployment and earnings follows. It is concluded on the basis of these theoretical and empirical arguments that a case can be made for the experimental adoption of legislation. That said, the next task is to explain the intensity of employer opposition. This emerges as having less to do with the legislation itself than with a major reform agenda also before Congress that seeks to mandate an altogether wider array of employee benefits than prenotification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the extent of labor market competition among blacks, hispanics, and whites in the United States. The specification of a generalized Leontief production function leads to an empirically tractable system of input demand functions. The estimation of the demand system, using the 1976 Survey of Income and Education, reveals that (a) blacks and hispanics are complementary inputs; (b) hispanics and whites may also be complements; and (c) blacks and whites are not complements and may be substitutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Portions of the United States near the Mexican border are experiencing massive inflows of both legal and illegal migrants of Mexican origin. The resultant concentration of low skill labor in these areas of the southwestern states supposedly has led to an excess supply of labor and subsequent depressed labor market conditions, particularly for blue collar workers and Mexican-American nationals. This paper analyzes the degree to which the labor market in this area is depressed. The results presented here tend to verify hypotheses suggested by several other authors but indicate that the magnitude of the problem as reflected by low wages along the border is much less severe than generally believed. The importance of this study is that it measures a phenomenon that heretofore has been accepted with very little empirical verification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines the specific human capital hypothesis concerning short-run employment variation to analyze the circumstances in which wage reductions and/or layoffs will occur. By relaxing the usual assumption of downward wage rigidity, we show that the specificity of training influences the attractiveness of wage reduction compared to job separation, The choice of adjustments is analyzed and implications are drawn concerning the impact of the level of specific skill and of other factors on the choice and on the magnitude of such wage reductions as occur. These implications are tested with data on the Seattle recession of 1970-72. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a high point in 1940, near the end of the economic depression of the 1930s, the proportion of persons 18 to 29 years of age who were living with their parents declined to a low point in 1960, near the end of the baby boom, and rose moderately by 1984. The recent increase occurred during several years of high rates of marriage postponement, college enrollment, unemployment, divorce, and births to unmarried mothers. This paper documents the changes since 1940 and presents selected demographic characteristics of young adults living in their parental homes in 1980. The tables are based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau's decennial censuses and Current Population Survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]