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This paper exploits the Mexican Encuesta Nacional de Empleo Urbano (ENEU) to determine the existence of the wage curve|an empirical phenomena rst suggested by Blanch ower and Oswald (1990)|during the period 2000{2003. We propose an innovative approach to the wage curve by estimating the elasticity across the wage dis- tribution. This is applied to the Mexican experience during the early 2000s recession. The evidence indicates that for Mexico during this period there is no wage curve, and that wages are positively a ected by local levels of unemployment. This lends credi- bility to the Harris and Todaro (1970) view which suggests that there is segmentation in the labour market with residual unemployment. We argue that perhaps the power of unions may account for our fndings.

This article analyzes married women's labor supply responses to their husbands' job loss (added worker effect) and worsening of unemployment conditions (discouraged worker effect). We find that married women whose husbands are unemployed or underemployed are more likely to participate in the labor force and work more hours using yearly cross-sectional data from Turkey for the 2000-2010 period. We also construct two year panels based on questions on previous year's labor market outcomes. Panel results provide further support for the added worker effect. Wives whose husbands experience a job loss are more likely to increase their labor force participation. However, a worsening of overall unemployment conditions appears to have a discouraging effect on wives' labor supply response, wives tend to decrease their labor participation when unemployment rate in their region increases.

We reconsider the effect of economic development on urban unemployment by introducing households with nonhomothetic preferences into a sector-specific capital version of the Harris–Todaro model. Contrary to previous studies, this work shows that urban unemployment decreases with urban development but increases with rural development. As for labour growth, it normally increases urban unemployment.

Variables commonly used, in a panel setting, to explain unemployment rate developments (e.g. Bassanini and Duval (2006a, 2006b)) provide similarly good fit for structural unemployment rate, as measured by the Commission services (i.e. the so-called NAWRU). Those variables include labour market structural indicators, thus confirming the impact of labour market structural reforms on the NAWRU. In addition, we find that persistent demand shocks also have a bearing on the NAWRU. Such shocks are related to crisis events (i.e. unwinding of unsustainable developments). In particular, housing boom-bust episodes have statistically significant impacts on the NAWRU. Real interest rate and TFP growth, which controls more generally for the presence of such shocks, also matter. Put together, the explanatory variables account for 90% of the variance of NAWRU, in a 13 EU countries panel covering the period 1985-2009. The tight fit leaves no scope for statistically significant linear trend or period-effects. The paper also presents a new measure of the degree of generosity of unemployment benefit schemes, which has superior explanatory power compared to alternative measures commonly used to account for the role of this variable in similar studies.

The extent to which socioeconomic (dis)advantage is transmitted between generations is receiving increasing attention from academics and policymakers. However, few studies have investigated whether there is a spatial dimension to this intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage. Drawing upon the concept of a neighbourhood biography, this study contends that there are links between the places individuals live in with their parents and their subsequent neighbourhood experiences as independent adults. Using individual level register data tracking the whole Swedish population from 1990 to 2008, and bespoke neighbourhoods, this study is the first to use innovative sequencing techniques to construct individual neighbourhood histories. Through visualisation methods and ordered logit models, we demonstrate that the socioeconomic composition of the neighbourhood children lived in before they left the parental home is strongly related to the status of the neighbourhood they live in 5, 12 and 18 years later. Children living with their parents in high poverty concentration neighbourhoods are very likely to end up in similar neighbourhoods much later in life. The parental neighbourhood is also important in predicting the cumulative exposure to poverty concentration neighbourhoods over a long period of early adulthood. Ethnic minorities were found to have the longest cumulative exposure to poverty concentration neighbourhoods. These findings imply that for some groups, disadvantage is both inherited and highly persistent.

Using data from the universe of Danish manufacturing firms and workers over the period 1995-2007, we estimate output gains linked to productivity spillovers through worker mobility, and calculate the shares in these gains accrued to firms, to the workers who bring spillovers, and to the rest of the workers. Applying our results to the manufacturing sector as a whole, the total output gains average at 0.16% per year, of which 80% is retained by the firms, 15% by the rest of the workers, and only 5% goes to the workers who bring spillovers. We therefore conclude that output gains through worker mobility are largely a positive externality for hiring firms.

This paper investigates whether host society culture affects migrant wage discrimination, i.e. whether migrant wage discrimination is more intense in host societies where culture is more inward-looking. The motivation for this investigation in the Swiss context stems from two stylized facts showing that (i) political preferences on issues related to migration, asylum and naturalization of foreigners are markedly more conservative in the German region and (ii) that average wage differences between migrants and natives are larger in the German region. Building on this, the paper begins with a comparison of returns to factors (for eight migrant groups compared to natives) using a human capital model of wage determination. It then performs an Oaxaca decomposition of wage differentials in order to compare its unexplained component across groups and regions. The last step consists in implementing a regression discontinuity design approach to establish whether host society culture is one of the determinants explaining differences in migrant wage discrimination across the language border. Results show returns to factors of wage-earning migrants are lower in the German region for a preponderant majority of migrant groups. The analysis of wage differentials and the associated unexplained parts also support the hypothesis that wage discrimination is more pronounced in this region of the Swiss labor market. Finally, results of the regression discontinuity design approach confirm that host society culture is one of the determinants of wage discrimination endured by migrants.

This paper examines the endogenous relationship between the economic and cultural integration of migrants in Switzerland or, more precisely, how economic and cultural barriers to integration reinforce each other. Are cultural differences preventing the successful integration of migrants or does the root of integration failures lie in unequal economic opportunities and discrimination? How legitimate are claims arguing migrants are economically discriminated because they don't integrate culturally compared to claims that migrants don't integrate because they are discriminated? And are Muslim communities, which currently often lie at the centre of this debate, different in this regard? Implementing an empirical method to build indices of economic discrimination and cultural differences (\cultural distance"), the findings of this paper show that, at the aggregate level, population groups facing higher economic discrimination are culturally more distant from the natives. Muslim communities are no different in this regard: their specificity resides more in the stronger discrimination they face in the labour market than in cultural differences separating them from natives. Using an instrumental variable approach, evidence at the individual level reveals that there is an asymmetric causal relationship between economic discrimination and “cultural distance", the former clearly dominating the latter. It also shows that the asymmetry is at least twice as acute for second-generation compared to first-generation migrants.

This note is intended to provide an initial assessment of the potentialities of the data reconstruction work, relating to labour market series, carried out as part of the SVIMEZ volume for the Sesquicentennial of the Unification of Italy. To this end, we develop some considerations on a key feature of the Italian labour market, its dualism. Then we identify and illustrate some salient developments occurred over the last thirty years: the increasing importance of tertiary employment and of female labour force. We describe finally some features of the reconstructed statistics for wages, unemployment, vacancies and employment and assess the impact of structural changes on dualism. The actual methods of data reconstruction are described in the Appendix.

We analyze labor market flows and unemployment in the Czech Republic (CR), Slovakia and Poland over the period 2004–2007. Relative involvement of working-age population in gross labor market flows is approximately five times lower in central Europe than in the U.S. /UK. Yet, compared to neighboring countries, the CR suffers more from unemployment rigidity, as evidenced most convincingly by a relatively weakernet flowof workers from unemployment to employment. This net flow alone would cut the unemployment rate in Poland more than twice as fast as in the CR. The CR lags behind in creating jobs forthe unemployed, particularly for men, individuals with primary education, and for the 55–65 age group.

The concerns regarding the economic insecurity stemming from earnings instability and volatility have been gaining momentum in the contemporary political discourse. If earnings instability/volatility is a proxy for risk, for risk-averse individuals, increasing earnings instability/volatility bears substantial welfare costs. Using the European Community Household Panel and the OECD labour market indicators, we explore the cross-national dierences in earnings instability and earnings volatility across 14 European countries in the 1990s and the relationship between earnings instability/volatility, labour market institutions and macroeconomic shocks by means of non-linear least squares. Earnings instability is measured by the variance of transitory earnings, and earnings volatility by the standard deviation of the two-year changes in log earnings. Evaluated for the average country, we nd that the employment protection legislation, the degree of corporatism and the deregulation in the product market are associated with a lower earnings instability and a lower earnings volatility. The institutions are found to shape the distributional eects of macroeconomic shocks on earnings instability and earnings volatility. The institutions which counteract the adverse eects of macroeconomic shocks on both earnings instability and earnings volatility, are a high corporatism, deregulated product markets and generous unemployment benets. The institutions which counteract the adverse effects of macroeconomic shocks only on earnings volatility are the employment protection legislation and low tax-wedges on labour.

This paper describes the evolution of the Uruguayan labor market between 2000 and 2010 based on household surveys data (Encuesta Continua de Hogares, ECH). This period covers the 2002 economic crisis, where labor market conditions substantially worsened - employment rates fell, unemployment peaked and real wages sharply fell - as well as a significant recovery since 2004. At present, unemployment rates are located at a historical minimum. Also, since 2007 labor earning inequality started to decline, reversing the upwards trend observed since the mid 1990s. However, there are still some difficulties thar involve challenges for emplyment policies. First, the possible constraints to economic growth thar could arise due to supply constraints that have already been identified prevailing both in previus studies (Perazzo, 2008; CINVE, 2007, for example) and in the recent national dialogue promoted by the MTSS. Secondly, although total unemployment is no longer considered a concern, it still exhibits hight levels for certain vulnerable groups, such as women and youth. Thirdly, despite the significant dynamism in the economy and policies deplodyed to reduce the levels of non-social security registration, the percentage of workers without pension rights remains high.

Workers displaced from long-tenure jobs often have difficulty finding new employment and can take a substantial drop in earnings when they find reemployment. These losses are large and persistent, and can easily dwarf the transitory losses from the initial period of nonemployment. Policy response for these long-term problems has centred on education, training and skill development. This paper surveys and assesses a variety of strategies that have been employed to determine training effectiveness, using results from field experiments and from econometric work based on non-experimental data. Findings from this large research enterprise are not encouraging. Both experimental and non-experimental research shows that the returns to training for displaced workers are low, almost surely less than the (well-estimated) returns to formal schooling which lie in the 6-9% range. On a cost-benefit basis, the body of evidence does not show that training pays off for most of the displaced population. Alternative means to compensate the losers from economic adjustment might include modified or expanded EI coverage, without any necessary link to training expenditures, and perhaps consideration of alternative policies, such as Wage Insurance. Since evidence on training programs for displaced workers gives only limited promise, it is important to search for other creative ways to ensure that the costs of economic restructuring do not fall disproportionately on a narrow group.

"Using administrative linked employer-employee data from Germany, this paper analyses the real wage growth and career patterns of full-time employed low-wage workers between 2001 and 2006. Multivariate models accounting for sample selection demonstrate the relevance of individual characteristics and firm heterogeneity in this context. I observe substantial upward and downward wage mobility in the low-wage sector, with the worst-paid workers having considerably higher relative wage growth than better-paid workers. The majority of those lowwage workers who had escaped the low-wage sector by 2004 were still higher-paid two years later, indicating that their upward mobility is not just a transitory phenomenon." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

We use the differences between life satisfaction and emotional well-being of employed and unemployed persons to analyze how a person's employment status affects cognitive well-being. Our results show that unemployment has a negative impact on cognitive, but not on affective well-being, which we interpret as a loss in identity utility. Living in a partnership strengthens the loss in identity utility of men, but weakens that of women. Unemployment of a person's partner reduces the identity loss of unemployed men, but raises it for women. These results suggest that the unemployed's feeling of identity is affected by traditional gender roles, while this does not seem to be the case for the affective part of their subjective well-being., Working papers series, ISSN 2628-1724, 2012, Heft 19

This paper studies how family firms reacted to the 2008 economic crisis by adjusting employment. In particular, we look at how the geographical distribution of the workforce may have led to divergencies between family and non-family firms. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we provide empirical evidence that paths of adjustment did diverge, with family firms systematically preferring to safeguard workplaces close to headquarters. We offer a new theoretical framework, the social recognition motive, that is consistent with this finding; it is based on contributions in the literature on corporate governance that stress the importance of the non-pecuniary benefits of the owner's control of the family firm. The social recognition motive originates from the psychological relation linking the family-firm owner with his or her community. The theory also offers a clear set of predictions that are all confirmed by the data. Alternative explanations, although theoretically plausible, seem to be ruled out in our setting.

The authors investigate on the basis of primary and secondary data the relationship between individual cognitive skills and the complexity of the particular work those individuals perform. Additionally, the relationship between skills and mobility between more or less complex jobs in an highly homogenous industrial environment is analyzed. The primary data consists of a survey conducted in 2011 of anonymously tested 305 participants in selected factories of four different companies. The survey consists of a newly developed dynamic problem solving test and a standard general intelligence test. Skill measurement is supplemented by information about tasks and personal background. Results are compared to larger scale secondary data sources. Special focus is placed on different employment groups within a company: assemblers, craftsmen, technicians and engineers. Using this data, we can show that non-routine content of individual work is strongly related to cognitive skills. Also, higher cognitive skill levels predict upward occupational mobility. Finally, we demonstrate that the established task-based approach helps to explain why the occupational mobility between some occupational groups is lower than between others. These findings can be useful for the discovery of opportunities for occupational upward mobility in a homogenous environment.

I examine the effect of labour market policies and institutions on the transmission of macroeconomic shocks to the labour market, using both aggregate and industry-level annual data for 23 OECD countries, 23 business-sector industries and up to 29 years. I find that high and progressive labour taxes and generous unemployment benefits amplify labour income fluctuations. By contrast, statutory minimum wages reduce the difference in the sensitivity of wages to aggregate shocks between low-wage and high-wage industries. Dismissal regulations are found to mitigate the impact of shocks on both earnings and employment. Moreover, this mitigation effect is greater in industries where firms have a greater propensity to make staffing changes through dismissals.

Two of the most dramatic aspects of the current economic crisis are with no doubt the experience of high and persistent rates of unemployment and the accelerated pace at which inequalities increase. But high and persistent levels of unemployment and increasing inequality are more than a consequence of scarcer opportunities related to the crisis; they can also be negative determinants for subsequent long-run economic growth. In this work, we consider unemployment and income inequality, and interactions between both, as possible determinants of longrun growth by using cross-sectional international data. Our results suggest that: 1) while initial high unemployment rates do not seem to be statistically significant to explain long-run growth, they do have a negative and significant effect when interacting with increases in inequality. 2) When we differentiate based on levels of urbanization, increasing inequality harms growth in countries with high levels of urbanization, as well as in countries with low levels of urbanization in which there is high and persistent unemployment., Dos de los aspectos más dramáticos de la crisis económica actual son sin duda la experiencia de elevadas y persistentes tasas de desempleo y el ritmo acelerado al que las desigualdades aumentan. Sin embargo, niveles elevados y persistentes de desempleo y aumentos de la desigualdad son más que una consecuencia de oportunidades escasas relacionadas con la crisis; también pueden ser determinantes negativos para un crecimiento económico posterior a largo plazo. En este trabajo, utilizando datos internacionales de corte transversal, consideramos el desempleo y la desigualdad de ingresos, y las interacciones entre los dos, como posibles factores determinantes del crecimiento a largo plazo. Nuestros resultados sugieren que: 1) mientras altas tasas iniciales de desempleo no aparecen como estadísticamente significativas, sí tienen un efecto negativo y significativo cuando interactúan con aumentos en la desigualdad. 2) Cuando diferenciamos basándonos en niveles de urbanización, la desigualdad creciente perjudica el crecimiento tanto en países con altos niveles de urbanización, como en países con bajos niveles de urbanización donde hay desempleo alto y persistente.

We suggest the use of an index of Internet job-search intensity (the Google Index, GI) as the best leading indicator to predict the US monthly unemployment rate. We perform a deep out-of-sample forecasting comparison analyzing many models that adopt our preferred leading indicator (GI), the more standard initial claims or combinations of both. We find that models augmented with the GI outperform the traditional ones in predicting the unemployment rate for different out-of-sample intervals that start before, during and after the Great Recession. Google-based models also outperform standard ones in most state-level forecasts and in comparison with the Survey of Professional Forecasters. These results survive a falsification test and are also confirmed when employing different keywords. Based on our results for the unemployment rate, we believe that there will be an increasing number of applications using Google query data in other fields of economics.

In central theories of monetary non-neutrality the Ramsey optimal inflation rate varies between the negative of the real interest rate and zero. This paper explores how the interaction of nominal wage and search and matching frictions affect the policy prescription. We show that adding the combination of such frictions to the canonical monetary model can generate an optimal inflation rate that is significantly positive. Specifically, for a standard U.S. calibration, we find a Ramsey optimal inflation rate of 1.11 percent per year.

In this paper we propose an integrated framework for the analysis of earnings inequality and mobility, which enables the analysis of the distributional dimension of inequality reduction from mobility, an assessment of the economic drivers of mobility and a sense of which drivers are equalising and dis-equalising. In particular we are able to capture the extent to which life-cycle characteristics, key life events, job related characteristics, and changes in working time affect overall mobility and inequality. The framework also offers a bounded approach to isolating the underlying inequality reduction resulting from mobility from measurement error which can otherwise lead to a substantial upward bias. Using data from the Australian HILDA survey we find evidence of a sizable degree of earnings mobility in Australia over the years 2001/2 to 2008/9. The raw inequality reduction resulting from economic mobility was 0.148 Gini points from an initial estimate of 0.368, however, the bounded range based on two alternative versions of two stage estimation lies between 0.072 and 0.102 or between 1/4 and 1/3 of original inequality. We show how the inequality reduction from mobility is primarily driven in the bottom part of the initial distribution, with the upper tail being particularly prone to measurement issues. A sizeable part of the identified mobility is simply driven by age-earnings growth that sees more rapid wage increases for younger workers and wage progression among women in notably stronger in reducing inequality because they start lower in distribution. Yet this rather smooth picture of earnings rising with age is shown to be substantially driven by a series of less frequent step changes associated with job-to-job moves, promotions and taking on more responsibility. There are also shocks which run against this equalising process, most notably job loss, which has substantial negative effects on earnings and disproportionately falls on lower waged workers.

The paper explores factors that influence the household decision to leave internal displacement camps in the immediate aftermath of violent conflict. Our analysis is based on two sources of information: household survey data collected in northern Uganda for households that were displaced by the civil conflict, and geo-referenced data on armed conflict events, with which we construct our developed index of recent conflict exposure. We compare households that moved out of camps with those that remained in the camps after the region was declared safe from rebel incursions. The study covers the first few months of the end of conflict, when return was regarded as largely voluntary. We find that a history of conflict both at the place of residence, and at the expected place of return reduces the likelihood of return. Access to camp services overall encourages households to stay in camps, although the effect varies with the proportion of young household members. Results also show that a history of economic skills poses varying effects on return decisions. While experience in cultivation is associated with a high likelihood of moving out of the camp, households with members with recent experience in trading are less inclined to return. From a policy perspective, the results point to the need for recovery initiatives to ensure access to adequate infrastructures in return locations in order to fast-track reintegration.

The objective of this paper is to describe a process through which the original information of an administrative data source (the Spanish Continuous Work History Sample) can be organised in such a way as to permit the accurate study of work histories. It presents a comparison of the information obtained using the procedure we propose (panel data file 2004-2009) and that obtained using retrospectively only one sample (2009 data file) in three empirical applications whose aim is to demonstrate the sample loss and bias which occurs when data regarding the spells and individuals figuring in the database are not processed correctly.

This thesis consists of three essays on the economic and cultural integration of migrants in Switzerland, reverse causation between these two dimensions of the integration process, and the role of host society culture. Whereas each dimension is usually examined separately, this study proposes a systemic approach to investigate both the economic and cultural dimensions of migrant integration, their interaction as well as the influence of the broader social context. Chapter 1 explores the cultural integration paths of eight migrant groups from the first to the second generation by tracing the evolution of selected behaviours and attitudes, which are taken as indicative of cultural integration. It gauges the extent to which behaviours and attitudes of migrants are diverging from or converging with those of natives. Chapter 2 examines the causes of integration failures or, more precisely, how economic and cultural barriers to integration reinforce each other. Are cultural differences preventing the successful integration of migrants or does the root of integration failures lie in unequal economic opportunities and discrimination? Chapter 3 investigates the effect of host society culture on migrant wage discrimination. It examines whether the markedly more conservative political preferences on issues related to migration and asylum of voters in the German-speaking region of Switzerland affect outcomes in the labour market, or whether economic interactions are immune from tensions developing in the society at large.

The link between trade and wages is embodied in the Stolper-Samuelson theorem and its generalizations. The Stolper-Samuelson logic is that trade affects relative factor rewards by changing relative prices. Since in Argentina non-skilled labor was neither as abundant a factor as land nor as scarce as capital it could not be expected to be the big winner in the opening-up process of the Argentine economy nor could it be expected to be a big loser. So, the huge amount of unemployment experienced by the Argentine economy in the 1990s as well as the widening wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor came as a complete surprise. This paper gives some reasons for this unexpected result. In Argentina, trade liberalization meant mainly import liberalization by lowering tariffs that protected labor-intensive industries like textiles. So, the short-run effect was massive destruction of jobs in non-skilled labor-intensive activities. The opening up of the economy significantly lowered the price of capital goods. This encouraged a drastic process of capital for labor substitution as well as promoting an increase in the demand for skilled labor. In those industries in which the import penetration increased the most, the wage inequality widened relatively more between unskilled and skilled workers. The reasons for the persistence of unemployment are discussed, the impact of the increasing unemployment and growing inequality in wage distribution on income distribution is analyzed, the alternatives of shock therapy vs. gradualism are discussed and finally some general conclusions are drawn from the analysis of the Argentine case.

This paper investigates the effects of displacement on outcomes such as annual earnings, unemployment, wages and hours worked. It relies on previously unexplored administrative data on all displaced workers in Sweden in 2002, 2003 and 2004 which are linked to employer-employee matched data at the individual level. By linking the data to military enlistment records, the paper assesses the selection into displacement and finds that workers with low cognitive and noncognitive skills are significantly more likely to be displaced than high-skilled workers. The analysis of displacement effects shows evidence of large and long-lasting welfare costs from displacement. Moreover, studying the heterogenous impacts of job displacement in terms of cognitive and noncognitive skills reveals that although workers with high skills fare better than low-skilled workers in absolute terms, there are no significant differences in the recovery rates between skill groups. Finally, by using administrative data on displacements, it is possible to assess quantitatively the bias that results from not being able to separate quits from layoffs in earlier studies

We estimate Frisch elasticity in a labor market with high job turnover. In a context where only around 18% of the employed labor force has formal and stable jobs, we perform a fixed effects estimation as proposed by MaCurdy (1981) with a Heckman correction for selection into unemployment . We identify the positive slope of the labor supply using firms' size as an instrumental variables for wages. We use Peruvian data from the Permanent Employment Survey of Lima. We find that neglecting wage endogeneity implies a downward sloping labor supply, while the job turnover bias, not accounting for job turnover, overestimates Frisch elasticity. We estimate Frisch elasticity at around 0.38, which indicates fairly adjustable wages and little reaction of hours of work to wage variations. Moreover, we find that the Frisch elasticity is decreasing in income and tended to increase in the last decade.

This short empirical paper examines the unemployment dynamics in Greece both in the long run and during the current crisis. Using monthly data from 2001 until mid-2012 it finds that unemployment fluctuations were predominantly driven by the job finding rate. Nevertheless, during the current unemployment boom, the contribution of the separation rate has increased, indicating that the recent reforms relaxing Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) have amplified the unemployment response to the recession.

We evaluate the elasticity of firms' employment and real average labour compensation to totalfactor productivity (TFP) using firm-level data for Belgium over the period 1997-2005. Ourresults show that the short-run elasticity of average labour compensation and that of labour tofirm-level TFP are positive but relatively low. However, the long-run elasticity of labour ismuch higher than that of average labour compensation, consistent with real wage rigidity.Further, while the elasticity of average labour compensation to firm-level TFP is close to zero,the elasticity with respect to sector-level TFP is substantially higher. Lastly, our results indicatethat adjustment to sector-level TFP occurs through coordinated wage decisions embodied insector-level collective agreements., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The objective of our paper is to highlight and analyse certain aspects related to the education system, labour market and education system graduates employment in Romania. It starts by pointing out the importance of education and some of the transformations the Romanian education system has undertaken after 1989 and during the process of passage to the Bologna system. It then focuses on the Romanian labour market and education system graduates employment. We conclude that the education system, the economic system and the labour market in Romania after 1989 have been very different from the communist regime period and that, during the 2006-2010 period, the Romanian education system graduates employment registered a continuous decrease., peer-reviewed

This paper examines the role of EI in providing support to “displaced workers,†those who permanently lose their jobs because of changing circumstances. Adjusting to change benefits Canadians as a whole. However, some workers suffer much more from job loss than do others. Those who have held their jobs for an extended period experience substantial earnings losses, while those who have been employed for brief periods experience small losses. Like other job losers, long-tenure displaced workers experience earnings losses due to reduced income during unemployment following displacement. However, unlike other job losers, many long-tenure displaced workers become re-employed at significantly lower wages. EI does not take into account these consequences of job loss. Long-tenure displaced workers constitute a small minority of job losers. My analysis indicates that job losers with 5 or more years of job tenure constitute about 5% of unemployment and 15-20% of permanent job losers. The paper makes several policy recommendations. Some address gaps in research and knowledge, while others recommend enhanced EI benefits for those who suffer greatly from job loss. Since most loss from displacement occurs after reemployment, wage insurance seems the most promising approach for insuring against large losses.

This article studies the long run patterns and explanations of wage mobility as a characteristic of regional labor markets. Using German administrative data we describe wage mobility since 1975 in West and since 1992 in East Germany. Wage mobility declined substantially in East Germany in the 1990s and moderately in East and West Germany since the late 1990s. Therefore, wage mobility does not balance recent increases in cross-sectional wage inequality. We apply RIF (recentered influence function) regression based decompositions to measure the role of potential explanatory factors behind these mobility changes. Increasing job stability is an important factor associated with the East German mobility decline.

This article studies the long run patterns and explanations of wage mobility as a characteristic of regional labor markets. Using German administrative data we describe wage mobility since 1975 in West and since 1992 in East Germany. Wage mobility declined substantially in East Germany in the 1990s and moderately in East and West Germany since the late 1990s. Therefore, wage mobility does not balance recent increases in cross-sectional wage inequality. We apply RIF (recentered influence function) regression based decompositions to measure the role of potential explanatory factors behind these mobility changes. Increasing job stability is an important factor associated with the East German mobility decline.

In this paper we appraise the existence of a negative relationship between the wage level and the unemployment rate (the wage curve) across Italian regions, using data from the Bank of Italy’s Survey on Household Income and Wealth. The main advantage of this data-set is the availability of information on human capital characteristics of individuals (such as gender, age and education) and, more importantly, on hours worked. Our main finding is that, even though a wage curve exists in Italy, at least after the 1992-93 wage reforms, for annual and monthly wages, no such relationship exists for hourly wages. Consistently, after the reforms we find a negative elasticity of annual hours and months worked with respect to the unemployment rate.

In this note, we extend the traditional search and matching framework to take account of the different levels at which negotiations may take place. We show that, in the absence of any distortion, sector-level bargaining ought to be less efficient than bargaining taking place at the other levels. This type of inefficiency leaves room for labor market policies. We show that a well designed combination of employment protection, hiring subsidy and payroll tax is able to restore efficiency. In addition, this result suggests that the relationship between the labor market performance and the level at which bargaining takes place is conditional on labor market institutions.

The scope of the paper is to estimate post-program effects in fostering good transitions from unemployment to work. Such an issue implies that besides job finding rates, qualitative variables related to work have to be included as well. The evaluation is based on a comprehensive transversal dataset of Danes who ended an activation program in the year 2002, merged with individual characteristics and yearly information related to their labour market status until 2004. To control for unobserved heterogeneity treatment-effects models have been applied. As regards transitions to work and labour market integration, main results show fairly large positive effects for private sector employment programs. It is worthwhile to be aware that job opportunities for private sector employment participants are highly dependent on the business cycle. Besides, the "creaming effects" minimize the positive impact of this type of programs as unemployed with longer work experience benefit the most from the private sector. Smaller positive impacts are found for labour market training and intensive job seeking, whereas negative coefficients are assigned to public sector employment programs. Long-term effects on wages are the most positive for those who involved into labour market training., L'objectif de ce papier est d'estimer les effets du passage par les dispositifs d'activation sur les transitions entre chômage et emploi. A côté du taux de retour à l'emploi, il est important d'intégrer des variables qualitatives telles que le niveau de salaire, le type de contrat de travail et les épisodes d'emploi. L'analyse s'appuie sur des données danoises transversales incluant l'ensemble des personnes qui ont achevé leur participation à un programme d'activation fin 2002. A côté des caractéristiques individuelles, nous disposons d'informations annuelles jusqu'en 2004 par rapport au statut occupé sur le marché du travail. Afin de contrôler l'hétérogénéité inobservable, nous avons eu recours aux modèles à effets de traitement. Nos résultats mettent en évidence que les programmes pour l'emploi dans le secteur privé enregistrent les meilleures performances quant au retour et au maintien dans l'emploi. Il convient de préciser que, pour les participants à ce type de programmes, les opportunités d'emploi après la période d'activation dépendent fortement de la situation conjoncturelle. Par ailleurs, l'impact positif des programmes pour l'emploi dans le secteur privé est atténué par "les effets d'écrémage", dans la mesure où ils profitent davantage aux personnes possédant une plus grande expérience professionnelle. L'analyse montre que les programmes renforcés d'aide aux chômeurs et les programmes de formation hors de l'emploi ont des effets positifs plus faibles sur les transitions vers l'emploi, tandis que les programmes pour l'emploi dans le secteur public ont des effets négatifs. Les effets de long terme des programmes de formation hors de l'emploi sont les plus positifs sur les niveaux de salaire.

Average earnings vary widely across the regions of Britain, a fact that has prompted many decades of policies aimed at reducing regional disparities. But as Henry Overman and Steve Gibbons demonstrate, such variation reveals little, especially if we ignore regional differences in the cost of living and availability of local amenities.

This paper analyses the impact of the global economic crisis on unemployment and long term unemployment in the OECD. It uses simple econometric models using panel data (quarterly) and time series data. In general, we find that long term unemployment increases with the unemployment rate, there is persistence in long term unemployment, and that the employment protection variable and the replacement rate are statistically insignificant. Overall, the findings of our research are that there are many differences between the impact of the Great Recession on different countries. Countries that faced a significant financial crisis and a collapse of the housing market bubble have had large increases in unemployment and long term unemployment. There was a big fall in employment in the (especially) construction and manufacturing industries. The financial collapse led to an increase in unemployment in the financial and business sector. As a result of these twin shocks labour mobility of the unemployed is likely to be affected: with negative equity in housing, unemployed workers are unlikely to move regionally. With a loss of wealth (in housing and financial assets, including superannuation) there will be a fall in consumer spending which will slow down the recovery of economies. This means that, especially for some countries, there will be a long period of high unemployment and long term unemployment.

While macroeconomic volatility in the US economy decreased since the early 1980's, individual earnings volatility and wage inequality increased. This paper argues that increasing financial development can contribute to both changes. I develop a real business cycle model with sectoral productivity shocks and labor as well as credit market frictions. Credit market frictions take the form of collateral-based credit constraints. It is shown that there are interactions between the labor and the credit market that matter for the development of wages and output. When workers are not perfectly mobile between sectors, financial development comes along with an increase in the volatility of individual earnings and in wage inequality, although aggregate output volatility is lower.

Using individual level data from Turkstat Household Labor Force Survey for 2005-2009 period and a variety of parametric and semi-parametric techniques, we test two hypothesis regarding formal and informal labor markets: whether there is a wage gap between formal and informal workers and whether this gap is sensitive to variations in unemployment rates across regions and over time, where the formality of employment is defined with respect to registry status of the individuals to compulsory Social Security System. In line with most studies, the formal workers earn more than informal workers, as suggested by standard wage regressions, conditional on workers' observed individual characteristics. On the other hand, considering the limitations of parametric methods and possibility of misleading results due to the different distributional characteristics of formal and informal workers, we alternatively implement propensity score matching. In contrast with the recent studies for other developing countries showing that the wage gap estimates with propensity score matching is insignificant, we do find large and sizable wage gaps between formal and informal workers in Turkey. While parametric methods give similar estimates for formal-informal wage gap within gender groups, the semi-parametric estimates suggest that the observed formal-informal wage gap is larger among females compared to males. Finally, we show that although the parametric methods, such as wage curve regressions, suggest that wages of informal workers decreases and wages of formal workers do not change with higher unemployment rates, the semi-parametric methods show that these gaps are insensitive to unemployment rate variations across regions or over time. Keywords: Formal/Informal Employment, Wage Gap, Propensity Score Matching, Regional Labor Markets. JEL classification: C14; J30; J42; J60; O17

The empirical analysis carried out in this paper represents the basis for the construction of the labour market module in the dynamic microsimulation model CAPP_DYN. Using LFS longitudinal data for the period 1993-2007, we describe the recent trends on the Italian labour market and provide an international comparison with other European countries. In order to investigate the determinants of labour market transitions, multinomial logistic regressions are implemented, and the estimated parameters are then used to model transition probabilities in the dynamic microsimulation model.

The informational society is not innocuous for corporations and organizations. The assortment of allomorphic phenomenon that are taking place in corporations and on the implicit human resources management (i.e. persons) cannot set aside any indifference among entrepreneurs, workers or social partners. The corporation’s frameworks, the structure and performance, the person’s management, the labour relations and other new dimensions are analyzed on the present paper, trying to preview some trends. We make an attempt to shape the behaviors and forthcoming procedures of the social actors in order to forecast the management and the labour, with the certainty that the uncertainty is part of the future.

It is commonplace in Australian policy debate for groups presumed to be adversely affected by proposed policies to provide estimates of the undesirable consequences of change. A fashionable form relates to predictions of job losses for the group affected, usually accompanied by counter-claims made by the government of the day or other groups in favour of the policy. A highly public example of the above is the claim by the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), based on work done in 2009 by Concept Economics (2009) that the then-planned Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) would result in 23,510 fewer jobs in Australian mining than would otherwise be the case. Our research reports on findings using three different data series and methods to put into context the supposed jobs loss figure. Our results should not be taken to mean that economic policy reform is costless to all employees who might be affected by sectoral changes in the labour market, and there remain clear roles for government to minimise the personal costs for those so disadvantaged. As well, the details of this research cannot be translated into precise analyses of the employment effects of the carbon price policy being developed by the current government. But the essential points concerning the size and meaning of mining sector employment effects should not be in dispute; the alleged "jobs losses" aspect of the climate change policy debate is not in any sense important to the overall discourse.

Assortative matching between workers and firms provides evidence of the complementarities or substitutes in production. The presence of complementarities is important for policies that aim to achieve the optimal allocation of resources, e.g. unemployment insurance. We argue that using wage data alone, it is virtually impossible to identify whether assortative matching is positive or negative. Even though we cannot identify the sign of the sorting, we can identify the strength, i.e. the magnitude of the cross-partial and the associated welfare loss. We first show that the wage for a given worker is non-monotonic in the type of his employer. This is due to the fact that in a sorting model, wages reflect the opportunity cost of mismatch. We analytically show that this non-monotonicity prevents standard firm fixed effects to correlate with the true type of the firm. We then propose an alternative procedure that measures the strength of sorting in the presence of search frictions. Knowing the strength of sorting facilitates the measurement of the output loss due to mismatch. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.

Workplace accidents are an important economic phenomenon. Yet, the pro-cyclical fl uctuations in workplace accidents are not well understood. They could be related to fluctuations in effort and working hours, but workplace accidents may also be affected by reporting behavior. Our paper uses unique data on workplace accidents from an Austrian matched worker-firm dataset to study in detail how economic incentives affect workplace accidents. We find that workers who reported an accident in a particular period of time are more likely to be tired later on. And, we find support for the idea that recessions in fluence the reporting of moderate workplace accidents: if workers think the probability of dismissals at the firm level is high, they are less likely to report a moderate workplace accident.

"This study investigates how the effects of low-wage employment and non-employment on wage prospects vary depending on qualification. We apply dynamic multinomial logit models with random effects and include interactions of the lagged labor market state with qualification to estimate heterogeneity in state dependence. We find that low-wage jobs are stepping stones to high-paid jobs for low qualified workers. In contrast, the chances of workers with a university degree to obtain a high-paid job are the same when being low-paid or non-employed (whereas their risk of non-employment is lower when having a low-paid job). Furthermore, our results suggest that for workers with university degree low-wage jobs are associated with negative signals." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

It is commonplace in Australian policy debate for groups presumed to be adversely affected by proposed policies to provide estimates of the undesirable consequences of change. A fashionable form relates to predictions of job losses for the group affected, usually accompanied by counter-claims made by the government of the day or other groups in favour of the policy. A highly public example of the above is the claim by the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), based on work done in 2009 by Concept Economics (2009) that the then-planned Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) would result in 23,510 fewer jobs in Australian mining than would otherwise be the case. A major background issue is that most economists would argue that any changes in the relative price of carbon-producing output must also be associated with offsetting increases in employment as a result of the higher level of activity in, for example, alternative energy production, and this is perhaps the critical point in the jobs debate concerning the consequences of policy reform. While we acknowledge this fact, the very large "job loss" figure might be a frighteningly large number for many observers, so we address the question: how many jobs is 23,510, really? Our research reports on findings using three different data series and methods to put into context the supposed jobs loss figure. The paper presents analyses of different data sets aimed at improving the understanding of, and putting into an aggregate economy context, the projected mining sector "job losses" as a result of the 2009 planned ETS. While the focus is on the ETS and mining, the illustrations apply to almost all public and political debate concerning the meaning of job loss projections from anticipated policy reform in an aggregate labour market context. It matters, for example, for the Murray Darling Basin Plan. We recognise that there are some weaknesses with respect to the data and methods used. Even so, a very clear and consistent message has come through. It is that the projected job losses from the ETS, particularly when considered over a 10 year time horizon, are in a statistical sense close to invisible with respect to employment and unemployment stocks, and trivial with respect to aggregate flows in the labour market. Also, it is apparently the case that with respect to mining sector employment the projected losses are a very small proportion of overall inflows to and outflows from mining. Further, it seems to be the case that those leaving mining periods of growth are not then entering a protracted period, and more likely any period at all, of unemployment. Our results should not be taken to mean that economic policy reform is costless to all employees who might be affected by sectoral changes in the labour market, and there remain clear roles for government to minimise the personal costs for those so disadvantaged. As well, the details of this research cannot be translated into precise analyses of the employment effects of the carbon price policy being developed by the current government. But the essential points concerning the size and meaning of mining sector employment effects should not be in dispute; the alleged "jobs losses" aspect of the climate change policy debate is not in any sense important to the overall discourse.

In this paper, we review the evidence base for social mixing in neighbourhoods, which is used as a strategy to tackle assumed negative neighbourhood effects. We discuss in detail the theoretical links between neighbourhood characteristics, and outcomes of individuals living in concentrations of poverty. Through this we identify the theoretical case for promoting socially mixed communities. We then review the empirical evidence base, focusing on outcomes of the American poverty deconcentration initiatives including the Moving to Opportunity and HOPE VI programs. We identify that the evidence from these programs is at best inconclusive. Turning to the European experience we identify problems associated with using observational data to assess individual outcomes in relation to their neighbourhood context. We conclude by suggesting that the evidence base for social mixing is far from robust, and that many of the current empirical papers suffer from serious analytical shortcomings. Ultimately, the process of creating more socially mixed neighbourhoods is unlikely to create more opportunities in life for the original residents. Socially mixing neighbourhoods through tenure mixing will only change the population composition of neighbourhoods, increasing average incomes because more affluent (and employed) residents will move into the owner occupied housing replacing social housing.

This paper is the first to present empirical evidence consistent with models of signaling through unemployment and to uncover a new stylized fact using the 1988-2006 DWS, namely that, among white-collar workers, post-displacement earnings fall less rapidly with unemployment spells for layoffs than for plant closings. Because high-productivity workers are more likely to be recalled than low-productivity ones, they may choose to signal their productivity though unemployment, in which case the duration of unemployment may be positively related to post-displacement wages. Identification is done using workers whose plant closed as they cannot be recalled, and no incentives to signal arise.