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We investigate the labor market effects of a loan guarantee program targeting French SMEs during the financial crisis. Exploiting differences in regional treatment intensity in a border discontinuity design, we uncover a central trade-off for such interventions. While the program has a positive impact on workers' employment and earnings trajectories that translates into positive aggregate employment effects, it dampens the worker reallocation toward more productive firms that happens following recessions, and particularly so for high-skill workers. This labor allocation effect is economically significant and translates into a reduction in aggregate productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper examines the effect of increased import competition and export demand on local labour markets in the context of India’s trading relationship with China. Using an instrumental variables approach, I find that Indian districts exposed to Chinese imports experience decreased manufacturing employment growth relative to their positive pre-existing trend with no offsetting adjustment in services employment or population. The negative employment effect of imports is greater for large establishments. On average, manufacturing employment does not grow in response to export demand shocks, but districts with sufficient development, density, or access to Chinese markets see increased manufacturing employment in response to Chinese export demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a panel of Romanian firms in the manufacturing sector between 2010 and 2019, this paper assesses the impact of utility costs (electricity, gas, water and waste) increases on the economic performance of firms (in terms of employment, exports and productivity). By means of static (fixed effects) and dynamic (GMM) specifications, it finds a relatively moderate, yet negative impact in the case of all variables, under a variety of specifications. Energy costs seem to have a larger contemporaneous effect, which suggests that firms might in the longer-run switch to less energy intensive production processes. Moreover, the more energy intensive sectors are generally also the most impacted in terms of employment and productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article links detailed 24-h diary surveys in the UK for the last four decades, to provide evidence of an increase in work effort in three specific dimensions: timing, nature, and composition. We rule out certain proposed explanations of these trends, finding that the decrease in the frequency of on-the-job leisure is more pronounced for workers in routine task-intensive occupations. Alternative supply-side and demand-side explanations, such as changes in relative preferences for leisure, or an increase in off-shoring, or competition for jobs, cannot explain our results. Our findings suggest that the amount and frequency of on-the-job leisure can be used as a measure of work effort, and that the routine-biased technological changes experienced during this period lie at the root of the increase in work effort in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The aim of this study is to characterise the determinants of the development of the silver economy in the field of care services provided in a residential form for dependent elderly persons in Poland. The analysis was carried out on the basis of statistical and financial background data, including those from the Ministry of Family and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Health, OECD, etc. Although the demand for care services will continue to grow in the coming years, the following barriers to the development of this segment of the silver economy can be identified: lack of employees, unattractiveness of monetary gratification, inefficient financing mechanisms, lack of public investment in the development of care facilities, and increasing costs of providing services in all forms.

The global COVID-19 pandemic triggered a renewed impetus for the countercyclical role of development banks, marked by widespread adoption of diverse instruments to mitigate its impact. Argentina's development bank (BICE, Banco de Inversión y Comercio Exterior, specialized in loan for long term investment, responded to the 2020 health and economic crises implementing a working capital loan program. Amidst a lack of substantial evidence on the efficacy of similar counter-cyclical interventions, we employed a quasi-experimental methodology, incorporating Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Fixed Effects (FE) estimations, to evaluate the program's impact. Our results demonstrate that firms benefiting from the loan maintained employment levels, in stark contrast to a nearly 6 per cent decrease for those without it. The program effectively mitigated the employment impact of the transient shock. Robustness checks, along with falsification tests, bolster our identification strategy. Complementary findings emphasize that the program's success lies in providing credit during adverse conditions, when private sector credit contracts. This insight, rather than the exceptional terms of the credit, offers a crucial lesson for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how technological change affects between‐ and within‐education‐group inequality in the United States. We develop a model with heterogeneous workers and firms in which the demand for skills is characterized by firms' recruiting behavior. We use the model to quantify the relative contribution of two types of technological change that affect the relative demand for skilled labor: technological change in firm‐specific productivity and technological change in labor productivity. We find that technological change in labor productivity, in the form of higher returns to skill in production, is the main driver of the increase in between‐ and within‐group inequality. Technological change in firm productivity, in the form of higher firm productivity dispersion, plays a less important role in explaining rising inequality, except for the increase in within‐group inequality for workers without a college degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In countries with strict employment protection legislation, firms may seek to replace regular by atypical jobs in order to cut wages or to become more flexible. In Germany, the number of unprotected temporary jobs is comparatively low. During the past decades, temporary agency employment, however, has increased considerably and the share of agency workers is now above the EU average. Using German establishment data, the analysis draws on longitudinal (generalized method of moments) and cross-sectional (matching and difference in differences) methods to evaluate whether agency workers replaced or supplemented regular workers during and after the Great Recession of 2008/2009. The study finds that hiring (more) agency workers made it possible for user firms among Germany's core manufacturing industries to employ a larger number of regular workers at the same time. In specific sectors and regions, temp agencies therefore provided an alternative to government-sponsored instruments such as short-time work schemes. Obviously, from the view of workers, many disadvantages remain, even more so as it is rare for temp spells to offer a stepping stone into regular employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether or not immigration negatively affects the labor market outcomes of natives is an ongoing debate. One challenge for empirical evidence is the simultaneity of supply- and demand-side effects. To isolate the demand side, we focus on refugees in Germany who are exogenously allocated to districts and excluded from the labor market. We leverage quasi-random variation in the local refugee share as an instrument to show that an influx of 1000 asylum-seekers creates almost 300 jobs in a district, on average. This effect is mainly driven by a demand for additional (female) labor in service, public administration and social work. The results are robust to various sensitivity checks and an alternative difference-in-differences identification strategy. Moreover, we show that employment effects largely offset the financial burden on the public. Quantifying the demand side of immigration adds to our understanding of local labor market dynamics in an increasingly mobile world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I investigate the impact of the inflow of Syrian refugees to Jordan on school enrollment rates of 16–21-year-old Jordanians. Using an instrumented difference-in-differences identification strategy that utilizes the variation in the share of refugees across time and space, I show that the refugee influx resulted in a decline in school enrollment, primarily among males and youths with less educated parents. Next, I show that the effect would have been larger in the absence of post-influx investments in educational infrastructure in the most impacted areas. Finally, I show an increase in employment among Jordanian youths, pointing to a potential labor market mechanism for the estimated impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how the exposure to robots and its heterogeneous effects on the labor market opportunities of men and women affected demographic behavior. We focus on the United States and find that in regions that were more exposed to robots, gender gaps in income and labor force participation declined, reducing the relative economic stature of men. Robot penetration also triggered an increase in both divorce and cohabitation and a decline—albeit nonsignificant—in the number of marriages. While there was no change in the overall fertility rate, marital fertility declined, and there was an increase in nonmarital births. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I study hiring age discrimination under two different hiring procedures. In one, age is revealed simultaneously with other applicant information, and the job offer rates are much lower for older than for younger job applicants. In the second, interview selections are based on detailed, age-blind online applications, while subsequent interviews are not age-blind. In this case, older applicants are not underselected for interviews, but face a lower job offer rate after in-person interviews. The combined evidence is consistent with age discrimination. The smaller age difference in job offer rates under the second hiring procedure suggests that "blinding" part of the selection process may reduce discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting rural household agricultural entrepreneurship is a key way to increase farmers’ income and achieve rural revitalization. In the growing digital economy, the ability to use the internet to access information is crucial for agricultural entrepreneurship. Based on the data of China Land Economic Survey, this paper uses the panel Logit fixed-effects model to investigate the impact of digital skills on farmers’ agricultural entrepreneurship and the underlying mechanisms. The findings indicate that digital skills have a statistically significant positive influence on farmers’ agricultural entrepreneurship. Furthermore, digital skills can enhance farmers’ agricultural entrepreneurship by increasing factor availability, including production credit, modern technology, and social capital. The positive effect of digital skills on farmers’ agricultural entrepreneurship is more pronounced for farmer groups with more farming experience, greater land resources, no major adversities experienced and lack optimistic expectations for the future. Additionally, this research revealed differences in the impact of different types of digital skills on farmers’ agricultural and non-agricultural entrepreneurship. This study contributes to the micro analysis from the perspective of farmers’ agricultural entrepreneurship, which provides policy implications for developing countries worldwide to enhance agricultural entrepreneurship by improving digital skills.

The H-2A temporary agricultural workers visa program is a federal program allowing agricultural employers to bring in foreign workers on a seasonal basis. The extent to which H-2A workers earn more compared to their domestic unauthorized counterparts is of interest for both producers and workers. Using novel data on citrus harvest workers in the state of Florida, we estimate hourly earnings differentials by legal status using Classical and Bayesian inference. Findings suggest that participation in the H-2A program is associated with 18–23% higher hourly earnings for migrant harvesters in Florida after controlling for observable demographic and work-related variables.

Although the self-employed represent 16.7% of the Dutch labor force (OECD 2020), their internal heterogeneity in profiles regarding motivations, characteristics and career trajectories remains unclear. Yet, understanding self-employment profiles and their spatial distribution may help understand differences in career progression of the self-employed. This study identifies and describes patterns in long-term career trajectories of the Dutch self-employed, and it explores spatial differences along the urban hierarchy. The study uses a life-course approach and register data of the whole population to find common patterns of careers among a sample of Dutch self-employed (N = 42,028) and their spatial distribution. We investigated careers through sequence and cluster analysis of individuals' socio-economic statuses between 2003–2018. The analysis identifies 7 career clusters that collapse into three main career profiles: Mixed self-employment careers that combine self-employment with wage-employment, stable self-employment, and precarious self-employment. The clusters differ importantly in terms of the individual characteristics of the self-employed including age, gender, educational level and income. In terms of spatial distribution, the study shows that self-employment career profiles follow the urban hierarchy. Urban regions give way to all types of self-employment, while rural regions mainly exhibit stable self-employment. Precarious self-employment presents differently in urban and rural areas; in urban labor markets, we find self-employed individuals vulnerable to economic shocks, losing their jobs as a consequence of the financial crisis in 2007/08. In rural regions, formerly inactive workers become self-employed following the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to conduct research to examine the impact of Internet adoption on the productivity of firms in non-urban China. Design/methodology/approach: The study investigates the impact of Internet adoption on firms' productivity in non-urban China. More specifically, the authors conduct a comprehensive and rigorous study while addressing concerns related to firm-level endogeneity by utilizing firm-level panel data. Information on firms in non-urban areas is collected from China's Annual Surveys of Industrial Firm data. For robustness, the authors implement the instrumental variables approach and propensity score matching estimations to strengthen the evidence for suggestive causal inference. Furthermore, the authors also examine the mechanisms and group heterogeneity. Findings: Evidence indicate that the adoption of Internet technology positively impacts the total factor productivity (TFP) of firms in non-urban areas. According to the heterogeneity analysis, the marginal effect of Internet adoption is more significant and pronounced for labor-intensive, private and small-scale manufacturing firms. Moreover, additional evidence suggest that Internet adoption is beneficial for non-urban firms in expanding their business and enlarging their market. It has also been found that the positive effect of Internet adoption on firms' TFP is amplified by expanding public infrastructure. Originality/value: The current study supports that the informatization strategy benefits non-urban firms and promotes rural revitalization. The findings suggest the possibility of firms borrowing market size from the closest cities and supporting the ongoing policies of investing in broadband infrastructure to narrow the urban-rural digital gap in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines inter-industry patterns of the employment of older workers over the last 20 years to understand where employment opportunities have grown the most. The underlying premise is that firms strategically align their age mix depending on production function and labor cost parameters. The industries that had the largest increases in the percentage of older workers were those that had the broadest pension coverage and those that made the greatest use of high-tech capital. There also is evidence in 2001–07 that the percentage of older workers increased more in the industries most exposed to increased Chinese imports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unemployment theory of Pissarides-Mortensen-Diamond is applied to the close-by geographic comparison identification strategy to analyze the effect of the minimum wage in New York State. The increase in the minimum wage in 2018 is estimated to raise the natural rate of unemployment almost 20 percent. The elasticity of the unemployment rate with respect to the minimum wage is 2.11 in New York City and 3.3 in the suburbs. To account for varying local labor market conditions, the minimum wage rise was phased in and geographically differentiated, which permits a within-state comparison. A labor market matching function and a Beveridge-type market tightness equation are estimated in an environment of low and falling unemployment rates, thus posing a strong natural experiment test of the hypothesis that the minimum wage causes negligible employment effects. It is estimated that the higher two of the three wage tiers caused a loss of about 39,000 jobs, which is in contrast to the dominant narrative of no effect when using the geographic comparison technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For released prisoners, the minimum wage and earned income tax credits (EITCs) can influence their ability to find employment and their potential wages relative to illegal sources of income, affecting the probability they are reincarcerated. Using administrative prison release records we identify the effects of state variation in minimum wages and EITC policies on recidivism. We find that a minimum wage increase of $0.50 reduces the probability an individual returns to prison within three years by 2.15 percent; these reductions come mainly from returns for property and drug crimes. The availability of state EITCs also reduces recidivism, but only for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We document that, since 1980, higher-paying occupations in the United States have experienced increases in the importance of tasks requiring social skills compared to lower-paying ones. Economic theory indicates that the occupational sorting of workers depends on their comparative advantage in performing occupational tasks. Hence, changes in the relative importance of tasks across occupations change sorting. We document that the increasing relative importance of social tasks in high-paying occupations can account for an important fraction of the increased sorting of women relative to men towards these occupations in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]