Labour Economics最新文献

The rapid growth of the home care industry coincides with increases in the proportion of the population over 65 years of age and more likely to need assistance with basic daily activities due to illness or disability. Yet, the growth in home care use has been accompanied by concerns about the quality of the care provided. Higher wages and better legal protection might improve the quality of home health care services. This study examines the 2013 Home Care Rule promulgated by the Department of Labor, which added home care workers to the groups covered under the federal minimum wage with minimum hourly and overtime rates. The results show large effects (7–9 %) on part-time employment increase, small effects on work hour reduction (by 2–4 %), and non-negative effect on overall employment level following the expansion. Despite the decline in hours worked, there is no negative impact on earnings among homecare workers.

High temperatures can have a negative effect on work-related activities because workers may experience difficulties concentrating or have to reduce effort in order to cope with heat. We investigate how temperature affects performance of professional tennis players in outdoor singles matches in big tournaments. We find that performance significantly decreases with ambient temperature. This result is robust to including wind speed and air pollution in the analysis. There are no differences between men and women. However, there is some heterogeneity in the magnitude of the temperature effect in other dimensions. In particular, we find that the temperature effect is smaller when there is more at stake. Our findings also suggest that the negative temperature effect is smaller if the heat lasts, i.e. there is some adaptation to high temperatures.

This paper examines the seasonality in the U.S. Social Security disability applications, and shows that the monthly disability applications exhibit a double-peak seasonal pattern which lags a similar seasonal pattern in unemployment and unemployment insurance initial claims by one to two months. The broad seasonal patterns in disability applications are remarkably similar across states but with significant heterogeneity in amplitudes, which seems to be associated with climatic factors. We utilize this inter-state heterogeneity to show that the seasonal patterns in disability applications and labor market conditions are correlated even after controlling for climatic effects. We also show that the seasonally in disability applications generated by the automatic settings of the widely used seasonal adjustment program X13 ARIMA-SEATS are distorted during the COVID-19 pandemic and the pattern of the distortion is similar to that in employment data.

This paper presents evidence from a large-scale study on gender differences in expected wages before labor market entry. Based on data for over 15,000 students, we document a significant and large gender gap in wage expectations that resembles actual wage differences, prevails across subgroups, and along the entire distribution. Over the life-cycle this gap amounts to roughly half a million Euros. Our findings further suggest that expected wages relate to expected asking and reservation wages and that a difference in plans about “boldness” during prospective wage negotiations pertains to gender difference in expected and actual wages. Given the importance of wage expectations for labor market decisions, household bargaining, and wage setting, our results provide an explanation for persistent gender inequalities.

We use detailed administrative data to study how acquisitions – specifically the acquisition of a plant by a firm with a similar plant in the same local labor market – affect workers. Using an event study framework with a control group of workers at unaffected plants, we find that acquisitions lead to employment losses for workers initially employed at the acquired firm, mainly associated with labor force withdrawals by older female workers. At the same time we find evidence of a rise in wages for workers initially employed at targets and at the acquiring firm who remain with the combined enterprise, concentrated among lower-wage workers. Our findings suggest that consolidations lead to a reduction in overall employment but a rise in rents per worker that lead to a pattern of losers and winners in the labor market.

A vast literature on gender wage gaps has examined the importance of selection into employment. However, most analyses have focused only on female labour force participation and gaps at the median. The Great Recession questions this approach because of the major shift in male employment that it implied. This paper uses the methodology proposed by Arellano and Bonhomme (2017) to estimate a quantile selection model over the period 2007–2018. Using a tax and benefit microsimulation model, I compute an instrument capturing both male and female decisions to participate in the labour market: the potential out-of-work income. Since my instrument is crucially determined by the welfare state, I consider three countries with notably different benefit systems – the UK, France and Finland. My results imply different selection patterns across countries and a sizeable male selection in France and the UK. Correction for selection bias lowers the gender wage gap and reveals a substantial glass ceiling with different magnitudes. Findings suggest that disparities between these countries are driven by occupational segregation and public spending on families.

We construct an aggregate labor input series from 1979 to 2019 to adjust for changes in the experience and education levels of the workforce using the Current Population Survey’s Outgoing Rotation Groups. We compare the cyclical behavior of labor input to aggregate hours — finding that labor input is about 9% less volatile over the business cycle and that the quality of the workforce is countercyclical. We show that the decrease in labor productivity beginning in 2004, the “productivity slowdown,” is understated by 12 percentage points when using aggregate hours instead of labor input to calculate productivity, as compared to the 1990–2003 growth rate. Moreover, 39% of the average quarterly growth rate of labor productivity can be attributed to increases in education and experience since 2004.

We measure the extent of discrimination against homosexual parents by schools in Colombia using a matched-pair correspondence study. We send requests to visit private schools from parents of various sexual orientations as conveyed by their names. We track the response rate from schools and the time to reply. We find that schools are 12 percentage points (22.3 %) less likely to respond to a request sent by a homosexual couple than one sent by a heterosexual one. When no information about sexual orientation is provided, the response rate decreases by 20 pp. (37 %) compared to an explicitly heterosexual couple. Our findings suggest that, despite a solid legal framework that protects LGBTQ+ rights, discrimination against homosexual parents is pervasive and can have intergenerational consequences.

Cross-country differences in the gender gap of higher education attainment are large. In this paper, we study the role of gender norms for this particular gender gap. To isolate the effect of gender norms from institutional and economic factors, we investigate the decisions of second-generation immigrants in the United States to achieve at least a bachelor’s degree. We measure gender norms using economic outcomes as well as beliefs prevailing in the migrants’ parents’ country of origin. We find that gender norms explain part of the observed differences in the gender gap in attaining at least a bachelor’s degree. There is also a sizable effect of gender norms on gender gaps in higher educational attainment levels, such as a master’s degree or a Ph.D. We confirm the gender norms effect using a sample of siblings, which allows us to hold unobservable and observable household characteristics constant.

I analyze the effect of local unemployment rates on fertility rates, abortion rates, and the abortions to pregnancies ratio, combining population statistics and administrative data on induced abortions performed in Italy between 2004 and 2016. Using a shift-share instrument measuring labor demand, I exploit demand-driven shocks to unemployment. The findings indicate that both childbearing and abortions behave pro-cyclically, thus suggesting that changes in fertility rates arise not just from changes in planned pregnancy but also from a higher incidence of abortions. These effects are driven by women above 25 years old, and are particularly large in the 35–49 age group, while younger women are largely unaffected.