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Low-skilled prime-age men are less likely to be employed than high-skilled prime-age men, and the differential has increased since the 1970s. I build a search model encompassing three explanations: (1) automation and trade reduced the demand for low-skilled workers; (2) health, welfare, and recreational gaming/computer technology reduced the supply of low-skilled workers; and (3) factors affecting job search, such as online job boards, reduced frictions for high-skilled workers. I find a shift in demand away from low-skilled workers was the leading cause, a shift in supply had little effect, and search frictions actually reduced employment inequality.

In this paper, I examine the welfare impact of migration in a general equilibrium model with endogenous worker location choice. My framework incorporates labor productivity differences across countries, worker heterogeneity in productivity across skill and nativity types, as well as country-pair specific costs of migration. In a series of experiments, I predict the migration response of workers to an expansion or contraction in the number of European Union (EU) member countries. For the case of the United Kingdom (U.K.) leaving the EU, commonly referred to as Brexit, low skilled native-born U.K. workers suffer a drop-in income, whereas high skilled workers experience an increase. This result is driven, in part, by an increase in high skilled immigration to the U.K. from outside the EU, which helps to dampen the loss in income of low skilled workers.

Over 25 million people are victims of forced labor globally; the vast majority are low-skilled migrant workers who migrated from a different country or region. Evidence so far indicates that much of labor exploitation has roots in the recruitment process. This motivates the question of whether there are characteristics common to low-skilled labor recruitment that can serve as reliable indicators of forced labor risk in the workplace. Leveraging unique data sets from the Myanmar Government and the Issara Institute on weekly demand for Burmese migrant workers in Thailand by Thai companies, and on worker voice hot-line data from 2018-2020, we find that unexpected labor shortages in the workplace significantly increase migrant worker abuse. Using an Instrumental Variable (IV) approach, we find that an increase of one standard deviation in low-skilled labor shortages in the workplace leads to a 34.5% or higher increase in worker-reported labor abuse in the two to four weeks that follow. Shocks of such magnitude occur about 10% of the time. We also find a visible correlation between provinces whose labor markets are more stressed on average and the frequency of unexpected labor shortages in a province, suggesting that stressed labor markets are also more prone to unexpected shortages and abuse. Overall, this research suggests that inefficiencies in matching supply and demand for low-skilled labor play an important role in determining labor abuse outcomes, and that reducing these inefficiencies in the labor recruitment process could help mitigate labor abuse.

We estimate the minimum wage's effects on low-skilled workers' employment and income trajectories. Our approach exploits two dimensions of the data we analyze. First, we compare workers in states that were bound by recent increases in the federal minimum wage to workers in states that were not. Second, we use 12 months of baseline data to divide low-skilled workers into a "target" group, whose baseline wage rates were directly affected, and a "within-state control" group with slightly higher baseline wage rates. Over three subsequent years, we find that binding minimum wage increases had significant, negative effects on the employment and income growth of targeted workers. Lost income reflects contributions from employment declines, increased probabilities of working without pay (i.e., an "internship" effect), and lost wage growth associated with reductions in experience accumulation. Methodologically, we show that our approach identifies targeted workers more precisely than the demographic and industrial proxies used regularly in the literature. Additionally, because we identify targeted workers on a population-wide basis, our approach is relatively well suited for extrapolating to estimates of the minimum wage's effects on aggregate employment. Over the late 2000s, the average effective minimum wage rose by 30 percent across the United States. We estimate that these minimum wage increases reduced the national employment-to-population ratio by 0.7 percentage point.

This study examines the city-size wage premium (CSWP) for local urban hukou holders (citizens) and rural migrants by utilizing data from the Chinese Household Income Project surveys (CHIP 2002 and 2013) employing OLS and Propensity Score Matching method. Heterogeneity of skills (measured by level of education) is found to be one determinant of the city-size wage disparity. But irrespective of skills, citizens receive a higher city-size premium than the rural migrants; nevertheless, the premium received by rural migrants has increased over the past few years. Within the similar occupation and type of firm, a highly skilled citizen received a CSWP of Yuan 880.08 in 2013 (Yuan 347.48 in 2002) on average per month. Whereas, a highly skilled rural migrant received an average monthly premium of Yuan 601.71 in 2013, and an insignificant premium in 2002. The corresponding values for low skilled citizens and rural migrants in 2013 are Yuan 415.67 and 267.27 respectively. Our results establish that there has been a positive effect on rural migrants from the relaxation of policies and labour laws, and a move towards equalization within the same level of skills.

We estimated the impact of the minimum wage on wages, unemployment, and formal-informal sector mobility for women in the domestic-work sector in Uruguay. Applying the density-discontinuity design developed by Jales (2017), we used cross-sectional data for the period 2006-2016 from the National Household Survey and found that the minimum wage had significant effects on labor outcomes, with almost 20% of women increasing their wages to reach the minimum. This effect was observed in both the formal and informal sectors, though the latter was not covered by the policy. We also showed a decline in employment in the domestic sector as well as a significant effect on formal-informal sector mobility with negative impacts on formal employment. We present suggestive evidence those effects were offset by other labor policies undertaken in the analysis period.

We estimated the impact of the minimum wage on wages, unemployment, and formal-informal sector mobility for women in the domestic-work sector in Uruguay. Applying the density-discontinuity design developed by Jales (2017), we used cross-sectional data for the period 2006–2016 from the National Household Survey and found that the minimum wage had significant effects on labor outcomes, with almost 20% of women increasing their wages to reach the minimum. This effect was observed in both the formal and informal sector, though the latter was not covered by the policy. We also showed a decline in employment in the domestic sector as well as a significant effect on formal-informal sector mobility with negative impacts on formal employment. We present suggestive evidence those effects were offset by other labor policies undertaken in the analysis period.

This paper examines the effects of information and communication technology (ICT) and offshoring on the skill demand in Japanese manufacturing. One of the contributions of this paper is that we focus explicitly on the demand for low-wage part-time workers, which we call low skilled workers. Estimating a system of variable factor demands for the period 1980–2011, we find that industries with higher ICT stock shifted demand from middle-low to middle-high and low skilled workers. Offshoring is associated with the increasing demand for high skilled workers but it has insignificant effects on the demand for middle-high, middle-low, and low skilled workers. The results together suggest that the increasing demand for low-wage part-time workers can be attributable to ICT in Japan.

Spain is delayed in adopting information and communication technologies (ICT) and its productivity per hour worked presents a downward trend since the mid-90s. In this paper we argue that these two facts are related. Using the EU KLEMS dataset we test the capital-skill complementarity hypothesis in a cross-section of sectors in Spain. We find that the substitutability between workers and ICT assets falls as worker skill level rises, and that this feature holds across all sectors. Furthermore, the ICT assets are complementary with skilled workers. The fraction of workers employed with medium and high skills across sectors rose by 21% and 12%, respectively, to the disadvantage of low skilled workers, due to an adjustment within sectors more than to a composition effect between sectors. Finally, using a regression analysis, we conclude that some labor market institutions are likely behind the evolution of sectorial productivity and ICT investment in Spain.

While higher wages at home reduce the incentive to emigrate by increasing the opportunity cost of working abroad, they also facilitate emigration for liquidity-constrained individuals. Our theoretical model examines the interaction between these two effects. We show that (i) the relationship between the home-country wage and emigration pressure is hump-shaped, (ii) the hump is more pronounced the lower the cost of migration, and (iii) the ratio of high to low-skilled emigrants is decreasing in the home-country wage. We test our model empirically for three different skill groups of emigrants and find strong evidence in support of the three hypotheses. The peak emigration rate for the low skilled is estimated at $4000 at 2000 PPP-adjusted prices. A rise in the annual per-capita income of the source country from $231 of the poorest economy in our sample to $4000, is associated with an increase in the emigration rate of its low-skilled workers from about 2.7% to 5.0%.

One of the most common applications of accessibility is in evaluating inequality in access to jobs. A vital factor to be incorporated by accessibility indicators when analyzing job accessibility is the competition for job positions by job seekers; otherwise, the results may be inaccurate or misleading. Despite efforts by researchers to develop accessibility measures that capture job competition, they fail to ensure that these measures are practical and easily interpretable and communicable, which in turn makes planners and policymakers continue to opt for more straightforward measures. In this paper we aim to fill this gap by providing a simple accessibility measure that accounts for competition effects, while remaining practical, intuitive, and highly communicable. The proposed indicator – Balancing Time – is applied to assess the inequality in job accessibility in 160 neighborhoods within the city of Rio de Janeiro, and the results are compared with the most popular indicator used in practice, the cumulative opportunities. The findings suggest that Balancing Time overcomes some of the limitations of cumulative opportunities and that it is a useful tool for planners, particularly in the cities with job opportunities concentrated in central areas. Given its simplicity, Balancing Time is especially relevant in the context of the Global South, where most transport agencies face data limitations and have low skilled technical staff.

We study the effects of low-skilled immigration on firm profits, average wages, employment, capital and total factor productivity (TFP) by combining firm-level and local labour market data from Italy. We find that low-skilled immigration increases profits by reducing average wages and total labour costs. This effect is small on average, but about ten times larger for firms operating in local labour markets with a high share of low-skilled employment than for other firms. In these areas, the substitution effects triggered by immigration reduce average wages much more than elsewhere.

Focusing attention on a movement effect that is farther away from the body (distal external focus) has been shown to result in more effective motor performance or learning than focusing on an effect that is in greater proximity to the body (proximal focus). The present study examined whether the distance of the external focus impacts the performance of relatively inexperienced and experienced performers differently. Low-skilled and high-skilled volleyball players passed a volleyball continuously to a target. In the proximal focus condition they were asked to concentrate on the "platform," whereas in the distal focus condition they were instructed to concentrate on the target. The high-skilled group's accuracy scores were higher in the distal relative to proximal focus condition. However, low-skilled players' accuracy scores was greater in the proximal relative to distal focus condition. We argue that the optimal distance of the external focus depends on the level of expertise when the skill requires a specific movement technique. An external focus on that technique seems to be more advantageous for low-skilled performers. In contrast, when the movement pattern has become more automatic (high-skilled performers), a focus on the overall movement effect is more beneficial.

We estimated the impact of the minimum wage on wages, unemployment, and formal-informal sector mobility for women in the domestic-work sector in Uruguay. Applying the dual-economy, density-discontinuity design developed by Jales (2017), we used cross-sectional data for 2006-2016 from the National Household Survey and found that the minimum wage had significant effects on labor outcomes, with almost 20% of women increasing their wages to reach the minimum. This effect was observed in both the formal and informal sector, though the latter was not covered by the policy. Our results showed a drop in employment as well as a significant effect on sector mobility with negative impacts on formality. Nevertheless, these undesired effects were offset by other labour policies undertaken in the period, by sustained economic growth, and by improvement in labor- market conditions. A novel identification strategy that is particularly suited to developing countries provides empirical evidence regarding the effects of a minimum wage on women workers in the informal sector.

Matched employee-employer data from the UK are used to analyze the wage premium to working in an innovative firm. We find that firms that are more R&D intensive pay higher wages on average, and this is particularly true for workers in some low-skilled occupations. We propose a model in which a firm's innovativeness is reflected in the degree of complementarity between workers in low-skill and high-skilled occupations, and in which non-verifiable soft skills are an important determinant of the wages of workers in low-skilled occupations. The model yields additional predictions on training, tenure and outsourcing which we also find support for in data.

While there is a vast literature considering the labour market effects of immigration, less has been done to investigate how immigration affects the educational choices of young natives. Using Italian provincial data and an instrumental variables strategy, we show that the recent rise of low skilled immigrants has increased both the probability that young native high school graduates (males in the whole country and females in the industrialized North) enrol in or attain higher education and the probability that young natives (males and females) with less than high school education stay out of further education or training. We show that our results can be explained by a standard model of educational choices if some conditions are satisfied.

A controversial issue in the US is how to reduce the number of illegal immigrants and what effect this would have on the US economy. To answer this question we set up a two-country model with search in labor markets and featuring legal and illegal immigrants among the low skilled. We calibrate it to the US and Mexican economies during the 2000-2010 period. As immigrants - especially illegal ones - have a worse outside option than natives, their wages are lower. Hence, their presence reduces the labor cost of employers who, as a consequence, create more jobs per unemployed when there are more immigrants. Because of such effects our model shows increasing deportation rates and tightening border control weakens low-skilled labor markets, increasing unemployment of native low-skilled workers. Legalization, instead, decreases the unemployment rate of low-skilled natives and increases income per native. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. 18 792 821 792-821

The paper investigates the effects of firms’ investment in Research and Development (R&D) on employment dynamics in the British local labour markets (Travel to Work Areas). We distinguish between local areas characterised by the initial level of routinised employment of the workforce. We implement a instrumenting strategy to address endogeneity issues in the relation between innovation and employment. Our results suggest that increases in R&D investments mainly affect routinised areas, where the employment created is low skilled, concentrated in non-tradable sectors (like transport, construction) and services. A significant share of the jobs created is self-employment, concentrated in the 25-34 age cohort. We qualify the effect of R&D on self-employment by looking at local firms’ dynamics, which suggest that the increase in self-employment is reflected in a higher number of micro-firms. Rather, in non-routinized areas, R&D results in the expected increase in the demand of high-skilled workers and a reduced demand of low-skill employment.

Do low-skilled workers benefit from the growth of high-technology industries in their local economy? Policymakers invest considerable resources in attracting and developing innovative, high-tech industries, but there is relatively little evidence on the distribution of the benefits. This paper investigates the labour market impact of high-tech growth on low and mid-skilled workers, using data on UK local labour markets from 2009–2015. It shows that high-tech industries – either STEM-intensive ‘high-tech’ or digital economy – have a positive jobs multiplier, with each 10 new high-tech jobs creating around 7 local non-tradeable service jobs, around 6 of which go to low-skilled workers. Employment rates for mid-skilled workers do not increase, but they benefit from higher wages. Yet while low-skilled workers gain from higher employment rates, the jobs are often poorly paid service work, so average wages fall, particularly when increased housing costs are considered.

We investigate the migration response to state and local variation in minimum wages in the United States. We find that a one dollar difference between two areas’ real minimum wage is associated with 3.1% more migration of low-skilled workers towards the location with the lower minimum wage. The minimum wage does not influence the migration decisions of high-skilled workers.

Synopsis Research on migrant women tends to address the experiences of women located in low skilled, low-paid work like domestic care work in receiving countries. Less attention has been directed towards the mobility and experiences of skilled and elite professional women who, while pursuing their professional careers and livelihood strategies, must also attend to social reproductive roles. Drawing on research with two groups of skilled Ghanaian women – nurses in England and professionals who have returned to Ghana – this paper analyzes how they navigate multiple caregiving responsibilities. The women's movements produced family separations that engendered a myriad of multiscalar strategies to negotiate and reconfigure care relationships and obligations. Among nurses who are not from elite backgrounds, their formal care work and competing caring roles are shaped beyond, but in constant reference to, demands placed on them in multiple local and transnational settings. Among highly skilled migrants, their class status, access to resources and mobility mitigate the challenges of caregiving and the impacts of familial separation. In conclusion, the paper contributes to the literature on skilled migration and care by presenting the gender and class tensions that the combination of professional and personal caregiving create for skilled and mobile African women.

In a random search environment with two racial groups each composed of identical numbers of high and low productivity workers, firms use an imperfect screening device (interviews) to control hiring. If inconclusive interviews lead firms to hire majority workers but not minority workers, then the unemployment pool for majority workers is of higher average quality. This can justify the initial hiring choices. The model is calibrated to the market for high-school drop-outs in the USA. Color blind hiring always eliminates racial disparities but is not necessarily beneficial; in the USA it would improve welfare but white unemployment would increase.

We investigate a market in which experts have a moral hazard problem because they need to invest in costly but unobservable effort to identify consumer problems. Experts have either high or low qualification and can invest either high or low effort in their diagnosis. High skilled experts are able to identify problems with some probability even with low effort while low skilled experts here always give false recommendations. Experts compete for consumers by setting prices for diagnosis and service. Consumers can visit multiple experts, which enables an endogenous verifiability of diagnosis. We show that with a sufficient number of high skilled experts, stable second-best and perfectly non-degenerate equilibria are possible even with flexible prices, although they depend on transactions costs being relatively low. By contrast, with a small share of high skilled experts in the market, setting fixed prices can be beneficial for society.

We use micro data on skills to analyze the human capital of entrepreneurial and incumbent plants in U.S. manufacturing over 2005-2013. We find a large drop in cognitive skills in entrepreneurial plants. This has long-term implications since initial cognitive skills at the plant level predict future skills and growth rates. The gap between entrant and incumbent skills increases with exposure to Chinese imports, with entrants' skills falling and those of incumbents increasing. Import competition explains between 17%-60% of the skill differential between entrants and incumbents. While high skilled incumbents grow faster than low skilled establishments in exposed industries, the evidence for entrants is weaker. Overall, we find that entrepreneurial firms and incumbents are acquiring different skill sets, leaving entrants more exposed to the risk of automation or offshoring.

We have developed a new driving assistant system that can help low-skilled drivers improve their driving skill. There are three key contributions. First, we have developed a statistical method to extract distinctions between high- and low-skilled drivers based on AdaBoost, which selects a small number of critical operation features between high- and low-skilled drivers. The second is that a driving skill evaluation model is built based on extracted features. Finally, we performed a series of experiments using a driving simulator, in which advice based on extracted features was supplied to low skilled drivers. Result shows advices were effective improved drivers' driving skill.

We provide the first analysis of the short-run causal impact of immigrant inflows on native populations at the local labor market level. Using published statistics from the American Community Surveys of 2000–2010, we examine how immigrant inflow shocks to a metropolitan area affect native populations. We find that immigrant inflows are associated with increases in local native populations on an annual basis but that these OLS estimates are generally upward biased. Our IV results are purged of this bias, but we still find that an additional immigrant increases the low skill native population by 0.4–0.7 in the concurrent period. To explain this result, we show that immigrant inflows lead to declines in outflows of low skill natives from affected MSAs. This is most pronounced in MSAs from which relocation is arguably more costly, which may disproportionately affect the low skilled. We find short-run responses among high skill natives that are consistent with displacement. The decline in high skilled native populations is driven by high skilled immigrant inflows, and high skilled outflows increase from affected MSAs. We show that these short-run changes are obscured in specifications using longer-run population changes and conclude that the short-run impact of immigrants on native populations differs markedly from their longer-run impact.

Modern societies would potentially reap large benefits from upgrading low skilled's education. However, this is difficult to put into practice because employers are reluctant to train low skilled and because low skilled are unwilling to participate. To circumvent this potential market imperfection, a large supply of formal education in Sweden is complemented with the eligibility of enrollees for financial support. This study uses detailed data on Swedish siblings aged 24–43 in 1994 to evaluate the impact on annual earnings. The estimated average return was 4.4% in 2004. Calculations indicate that this is barely sufficient to cover society's total costs.

This paper proposes a theoretical matching framework to analyze firms' and workers' response to a targeted hiring subsidy program when taking into account interactions between segments of the low-skilled labor market. By developing a general equilibrium model, the paper provides a useful tool to evaluate the aggregate effects induced on the low-skilled labor market. Then, the model is computed above French data to estimate the employment and welfare effects of a measure introduced in France in 1995, the “Initiative-for-Employment Contract”. Finally, as the framework is well-suited to investigate design issues, I analyze the efficiency of the French program as well as targeting issues.

Objectives Cricket batting is performed under demanding constraints, which requires rapid and accurate decision making for successful achievement of the skill goal. To understand how batsmen negotiate these constraints, the capability of highly skilled and low skilled cricket batsmen to utilise visual information prior to and during sections of ball flight to strike balls delivered by fast bowlers was examined. Method Six highly skilled and six low skilled batsmen faced different types of balls delivered by three fast bowlers. Batsmen wore vision occlusion spectacles and were required to strike delivered balls, while their vision of the bowler's delivery action and ball flight was selectively occluded. Three vision conditions were randomly designed that included temporal occlusion at: (i) a point prior to ball release (providing only advance information), (ii) a point prior to ball bounce (providing advance and ball flight information) and (iii) no occlusion (where all advance, ball flight and bounce information were visible). Foot movements made forward or backward were assessed as a measure of ball length judgement, while the quality of bat–ball contact was assessed as a measure of interception. Results Results demonstrated the superior capability of highly skilled batsmen to utilise information prior to ball release to judge short ball length. Expert batsmen were better able to utilise ball flight information prior to and post-bounce to attain a superior number of bat–ball contacts. Conclusions Findings demonstrate that the mechanism of experts to deal with task constraints when attempting to intercept a delivered ball is their capability to pick-up visual information to judge ball landing position.

This study explores if declining employment in routine middle-skilled jobs as a result of technological change is creating more over-educated workers in the low skilled non-routine manual jobs. Using data from European Labour Force Survey covering the period from 1999 to 2007, the paper analyses employment change and over-education in four countries of Europe – Germany, Spain, Sweden and UK. The results suggest higher incidence of over-education in polarized countries – Spain and UK as compared to countries with employment upgrading – Germany and Sweden. It also reveals that in Spain and UK, over-education is prominent and increasing over time in the low paid jobs which are mostly non-routine manual in nature, while Germany and Sweden have more over-educated workers in middle skilled routine and high skilled analytical jobs. I find similar results in both descriptive and job fixed effects regressions.

We study shocks to the coal and steel industries to measure the effect of long-term changes in demand for low-skilled workers on welfare expenditures. The coal and steel industries have historically paid high wages to low-skilled men. We find a substantial increase in welfare expenditures in response to the collapse of the steel and coal industries in the 1980s, and an even more substantial reduction in welfare expenditures during the coal boom of the 1970s. Additional analysis indicates the reduction in welfare expenditures during the coal boom is due in part to a decline in single-parent households.

ILO instruments have long recognized the potential of bilateral cooperation in the good governance of labour migration flows, and in contributing to the protection of migrant workers. In the recent past, bilateral labour arrangements (BLAs) and Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) on labour migration have gained significance as tools to facilitate the cross-border movement of workers across all regions. The study reviews the evolution of bilateral agreements since the 1950s and identifies changing patterns in such agreements. The focus is on bilateral arrangements for migration of low skilled workers. It is shown that MOUs are the main form of bilateral cooperation in Asia whereas Africa, Europe and the Americas have generally relied on BLAs.It evaluates BLAs and MOUs using international standards and norms as a benchmark, and highlights the major issues involved. For the comparative evaluation, the study draws upon regional mappings of BLAs and MOUs undertaken by the ILO/KNOMAD (Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development) project.The study highlights the extent to which agreements contribute to ensuring good governance in facilitating labour migration processes, protecting human and labour rights of migrant workers, and reaping development benefits of migration. It makes a series of recommendations based on the analysis.

We document that immigration to U.S. states has increased the mass of workers at the lower range of the skill distribution. We use this change in skill distribution of workers to analyze the effect of immigration on wages. Our model allows firms to endogenously respond to the immigration-induced changes in skill distribution in terms of their decisions (i) to enter different industries which require the use of different technologies; (ii) to choose across technologies that differ in their skill-intensity; and (iii) to employ workers of different skill levels. Allowing these mechanisms to interact, we find that, in line with much of the related empirical literature, immigration has a small effect on average real wages of low skilled workers for U.S. states. We further show that immigration increases the wage inequality between workers of different skill levels in all states, and that the effect of immigration on wages and wage inequality varies systematically with the volume of immigration across states.

The recent policy of labour retrenchment in state-owned enterprises in China (known as xia gang) has important implications for both efficiency and equity. This paper examines the individual-level determinants and consequences of the xia gang policy, using a survey conducted in the year 2000. As many as 11% of urban workers had been retrenched, and 53% of these remained unemployed. The risk of retrenchment was higher for women, the less educated, the low skilled, the middle-aged, and those employed by local government or urban collectives. Reemployment rates are low and imply that unemployment will be long-term. The duration of unemployment is longer for the unhealthy, the less educated, and women with young children. Unemployment benefit has no effect on the duration of unemployment. The income losses from retrenchment stem largely from the loss of earnings while unemployed. However, reemployed workers are paid less than if they were never retrenched. D 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

An outline of the Los Angeles economy reveals the area generally reflects the larger US economy in its orientation toward services, although manufacturing in the region remains a healthy portion of its output. The sharp dichotomy in Los Angeles' manufacturing between high and low skilled labor parallels the social and demographic divisions that exist in the metropolitan area. In accord with its image, Los Angeles plays a substantial role in the US motion picture industry. The film industry, high technology firms as well as production spurred by migration have allowed Los Angeles to avoid the broad industrial decline that has occurred in other parts of the US.

It is often assumed that international labor migration from Tajikistan, while having no noticeable effects on investment (usually defined as medium and long-term consumption, such as education, or investment into housing or business), on average leads to an increase in short-term consumption, mostly food. In this paper, a simple household-level model determining the migration decision is developed and tested empirically. In a second step, the effect of low-skilled labor migration on household expenditure shares is analyzed using 2SLS. While only weak effects of migration measured by a simple dummy are visible, repeating the analysis using the length of the migration spell instead, as well as its squared term, reveals that labor migration apparently takes a while to "kick in" and become profitable to those remaining at home. The observed long-term effects on household consumption patterns, albeit being rather small, actually speak in favour of investment of remittances, with the respective shares increasing over time, while the budget share spent on food slowly decreases.

Public unemployment insurance benefits tend to benefit disproportionately the low skilled. Hence they may serve as an income insurance substitute for human capital acquisition. As a result of their negative effect on the incentive to accumulate human capital, they lead to an increased supply of low skilled and to higher unemployment among the low skilled both in the short and long term rate. Accounting for the long term costs of unemployment insurance benefits may greatly increase the cost of the welfare state.

We assess the impact of low-skilled immigration on capital intensity. We first present a model characterized by frictions in the labor market and firms' asymmetric information on workers' skills and show that firms can react to the immigration-induced reduction of their workforce's skill level by increasing the capital-labor ratio. We test the predictions of the model on a sample of Italian manufacturing firms over the period 1996-2007, finding that increased immigration of low-skilled workers from developing countries, measured at the provincial level and instrumented with pre-existing enclaves of immigrants and network effects, raises capital intensity. In line with the predictions of the theoretical model, the impact of immigration, which is quite robust across empirical specifications, is stronger for larger firms and in skill-intensive sectors.

We ask how two reforms of migration law (EEA accession in 1994 and the integration agreement regulation in 2003) impacted on the education structure of migrants to Austria. To identify the effects of these reforms, we use the fact that EEA accession affected only migrants from EEA countries, while third country citizens were unaffected and that the opposite is the case for the integration agreement regulation. We find robust evidence that the share of low educated permanent migrants from the EEA to Austria reduced relative to the share of low educated permanent migrants from other countries due to Austria's EEA accession. With respect to the reform of residence law in 2003 our results are less robust. Most of them, however, point to an increased share of low skilled permanent migrants.

While various studies have already shown that people prefer high- over low-skilled migrants we know surprisingly little why this is so. This paper tries to close this gap by investigating three explanatory models. (1) According to the labor market competition model, citizens oppose immigrants with the same skill levels who are perceived as competitors on the job market. (2) According to the welfare state model low-skilled immigrants’ use of public services is disproportionally higher than their contribution to tax revenues contrary to high-skilled immigrants. (3) According to the deservingness model high-skilled immigrants are preferred as low-skilled immigrants are considered as lazy people who would be as well off as natives if they only tried harder. As one of the first studies outside the US these arguments are tested by means of an experimental online survey in Switzerland. Respondents were randomly assigned to evaluate low- and high-skilled immigrants. We find that different groups prefer high- over low-skilled immigrants for different reasons: While the labor market competition model does nort play a role, the welfare state model only holds for natives who are well off in regions with low taxes. Finally, attitudes on deservingness explain preference of high-skilled immigrants only if the respondents have a high income.

Education is widely recognized as one of the most important determinants of earnings in the labour market. A main aspect of the relationship between education and earnings is the wage premium between workers with higher and lower education. The findings of previous studies show that changes in the relative supply of high skilled to low skilled workers are negatively related with the wage premiums. Increases in relative demand, on the other hand, are found to have a positive impact. In this study I analyze the evolution of wage premiums of attaining further education in the Republic of Cyprus. The results indicate a fall, on average, in the wage premiums of the first period (1991-1996) and a rise in the second (1996-2003). Several plausible explanations are given for these changes using the findings, the existing literature and important historical facts.

This paper deals with the recruitment strategies of employers in the low-skilled segment of the labour market. We focus on low-skilled workers because they are overrepresented among jobless people and constitute the bulk of the clientele included in various activation and labour market programmes. A better understanding of the constraints and opportunities of interventions in this labour market segment may help improve their quality and effectiveness. On the basis of qualitative interviews with 41 employers in six European countries, we find that the traditional signals known to be used as statistical discrimination devices (old age, immigrant status and unemployment) play a somewhat reduced role, since these profiles are overrepresented among applicants for low skill positions. On the other hand, we find that other signals, mostly considered to be indicators of motivation, have a bigger impact in the selection process. These tend to concern the channel through which the contact with a prospective candidate is made. Unsolicited applications and recommendations from already employed workersemit a positive signal, whereas the fact of being referred by the public employment office is associated with the likelihood of lower motivation.

Informality is at the center of the economic debate in Colombia, fueled by the high level prevalent in the country and its substantial increase during the 1990s. We study the effect of labor market rigidities, namely the increase in non-wage costs and the minimum wage on the size of the informal sector, the transition into and out of informality, and wages. Our results indicate that rises in non-wage costs and the minimum wage, increase the probability of transition into informality as well as the size of the informal sector. The analysis of these effects along the income distribution points towards strong exclusion motives for low skilled informal workers, mainly driven by labor demand adjustments in response to increasing hiring costs; and argues somehow in favor of exit motives for workers at the top of the wage distribution. Furthermore, there is strong indexation of salaries to the minimum wage, except for low skilled informal workers. In addition, firms adjust salaries in response to increasing non-wage costs for all workers within the labor force.

In this paper I analyze the effects of information and communication technology (ICT) on compensation shares of high-, medium-, and low-skilled workers. Com- pared to other studies, I investigate this question using a considerably richer data set with respect to the length of time series, set of countries and industries, and information on ICT. Next to investigating the influence of ICT in 14 countries, I concentrate on the analysis in 23 separate industries. The results I find show that the skill-biased technological change hypothesis is rejected if single countries are analyzed with an industry panel, while I find that technological change is a cause of changes in the relative compensation shares in single industries. Here there is a positive influence of ICT on high-skilled workers' relative compensation for the time before 1995, while ICT investments drive the medium- and low-skilled com- pensation shares together for a substantial amount of industries, especially since 1995.

The paper addresses an important aspect of the current migration and development debate - the role of diasporas and transnational communities as contributors to the development of their origin countries. He shows that diaspora definitions, estimates of diaspora numbers and conceptualising their contributions are very much inter-related. In the first section, the author reviews different definitions of diasporas and transnational communities. He then provides some statistical information and estimates available on diaspora communities in different regions of the world with some discussion of their profiles. The diversity of the diaspora is examined in terms of age and skill profiles, length of stay in host societies, status of stay (documented and undocumented) and return patterns. In the next section, the author examines the nature and diversity of diaspora contributions to development. Globalization trends and advances in internet and communications technology and travel and transport have led to many options in transnational engagements. At the same, the increasing attention on promoting migration and development linkages has focussed on the role of the diaspora as a major area of intervention. The author argues that betting on the intellectual or the skilled diaspora alone as common in most discussions could be misleading, and may provide wrong signals for policy interventions. There is substantive evidence that all categories of the diaspora including low skilled diaspora make important contributions to home countries, and this diversity of contributions needs to be given due recognition in diaspora engagement policies.The author concludes by highlighting a number of directions for further research: better information on diaspora profiles and their transnational engagements; role of women in diaspora communities and their engagement with home countries; transnational practices that embrace both source and destination countries; extent of integration of the diasporas in host societies, and the impact of such integration and protection of rights on their contributions; role of migrant organisations, both formal and informal; and analysis of current policies followed by particularly countries of origin for engaging their diaspora communities.

Research generally focuses on how immigration affects native workers, while the impact of immigration on domestic firms is often overlooked. This paper addresses this important omission by examining whether firms respond to immigration by adjusting the location of their production activities. Consistent with the predictions of the model, the results indicate that low skilled immigration decreases and high skilled immigration increases the relocation of production activities at both the extensive and intensive margins. These results explain why the impact of immigration on the wages of native workers is often found to be quite small.

Low-skilled workers do not fare well in today's skill intensive economy and their opportunities continue to diminish. Given that individuals in this challenging skill segment of the workforce are more likely to have poor experiences in the labor market, and hence incur greater public expenses, it is particularly important to seek and evaluate their labor market options. Utilizing data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the economic returns to business ownership among low-skilled workers and addresses the essential question of whether self-employment is a good option for low-skilled individuals that policymakers might consider encouraging. The analysis reveal substantial differences in the role of self-employment among low-skilled workers across gender and nativity – women and immigrants are shown to be of particular importance both from the perspectives of trends and policy relevance. We find that although the returns to low-skilled self-employment among men are relatively high we find that wage/salary employment is a substantially more financially rewarding option for most women. These findings raise the question of why low-skilled women enter self-employment. Our business start-up results are consistent, but not conclusive, with lack of affordable child care options and limited labor market opportunities in the wage/salary sector as motivating native born women to enter self-employment. We do not find empirical evidence of similar constraints among immigrant women.

Temporary-help jobs offer rapid entry into paid employment, but they are typically brief and it is unknown whether they foster longer-term employment. We utilize the unique structure of Detroit's welfare-to-work program to identify the effect of temporary-help jobs on labor market advancement. Exploiting the rotational assignment of welfare clients to numerous nonprofit contractors with differing job placement rates, we find that temporary-help job placements do not improve and may diminish subsequent earnings and employment outcomes among participants. In contrast, job placements with direct-hire employers substantially raise earnings and employment over a seven quarter follow-up period.

We show how small initial wealth differences between low skilled black and white workers can generate large differences in their labor-market outcomes. This even occurs in the absence of a taste for discrimination against blacks or exogenous differences in the distance to jobs. Because of the initial wealth difference, blacks cannot afford cars while whites can. Car ownership allows whites to reach more jobs per unit of time and this gives them a better bargaining position. As a result, in equilibrium, blacks end up with both higher unemployment rates and lower wages than whites. Furthermore, it takes more time for blacks to reach their jobs even though they travel less miles. Those predictions are consistent with the data. Better access to capital markets or better public transportation will reduce the differences in labor market outcomes.

This paper explores the effects of high skilled immigration to a host country with unionized low skilled labor and an unemployment insurance scheme. We show that such immigration can create a negative immigration surplus due to adverse effects on low skilled employment, provided that fiscal redistribution is not too intense and the elasticity between high and low skilled labor is high as empirical evidence suggests.