Labour Economics最新文献

This paper analyzes subsidies for the domestic services sector, an increasingly popular policy to create employment opportunities for low-skilled workers. Using Belgian administrative data, a differences-in-differences approach, and a shift-share instrumental variable, we estimate the local effects of the policy in targeted industries as well as overall effects on the labor market. We find that domestic service subsidies can increase female employment in the subsidized industries as well as the overall employment rate. This increase in employment is primarily driven by an increase in (formal) labor market participation and, to a lesser extent, a reduction in the rate of participation in unemployment insurance and in other social welfare programs. We also find that these subsidies can lead to an increase in the rate of work incapacity, likely due to the fact they broaden the population that can access the social safety net.

In many Western countries, a sizeable group of people live on welfare benefits for a long time. Many of them suffer from mental health issues. This paper studies the labor market and mental health effects of an activation program targeting these long-term inactive people. We exploit the staggered implementation of the program in a difference-in-differences design. We find that the activation program does not affect labor market outcomes of men and women. However, among men who were on mental health medication prior to the start of the program, we find a substantial drop in mental health drug prescriptions in the years following the start of the program.

This study investigates whether the minimum wage affects the uptake of Supplemental Security Income (SSI). To disentangle the effect of the minimum wage from underlying macroeconomic conditions, I use a triple-differences-type model that exploits cross-state and temporal differences in the minimum wage and its differential effects on those individuals with and without a high school diploma. I find that a one percent increase in the minimum wage leads to a 0.33 percent decline in SSI uptake. The effect is concentrated in unmarried individuals, who are more likely to face financial constraints and thus meet income and resource thresholds for collecting SSI.

Fluctuations in house prices generate substantial heterogeneity in the price of purchase of similar dwellings depending on the time of purchase. These differences in the price of purchase have large effects on income-net-of-housing-costs. We document these effects using the large house price fluctuations during the recent housing boom-bust in Spain. Households can mitigate these impacts through changing labour supply. Men work more subsequent to paying higher house prices at purchase , whereas the correlation of house prices and labour supply for women is driven by selection: households where women work more, buy more expensive houses.

This paper assesses the impact of the Employment Protection Programme (EPP) on employment outcomes in Brazil. The EPP was a work-sharing programme with a reduced work schedule that featured wage subsidies. It was created to preserve jobs during a recession that started in 2014. Using administrative data of the programme, the results of this study show that establishments that participate in the programme present higher employment levels than non-participant establishments during and after the programme. Furthermore, the effect of the EPP on employment increases over time. These findings suggest that the programme was an effective tool to sustain employment levels.

We investigate the impact of working for a temporary help agency (THA) compared to being directly hired on the employment transitions of low-skilled male temporary workers aged 20 to 45. Using data from Spanish administrative records, we employ competing risk discrete-time duration models to analyze multiple temporary employment spells. Our analysis reveals the importance of accounting for short-duration dependence and workers’ unobserved heterogeneity. We find that, across all durations, agency workers are more likely to transition either to unemployment or to a new THA contract than their direct-hire counterparts. Transitions to permanent positions, although infrequent in our sample, are also more likely for agency workers. Our qualitative findings hold when unobserved heterogeneity is not controlled for. However, this model underestimates the effect of agency contracts on the risk of entering unemployment and overestimates the impact on the probability of re-entering THA. This suggests that positive self-selection plays a relevant role in explaining the higher persistence of THA employment, but not the associated higher risk of unemployment.

Exploiting an exogenous change in information disclosure on one of the largest online labor platforms worldwide, we assess how the provision of more information on the employers’ willingness to pay (WTP) and the required experience level of workers affects the gender gap in bidding behavior. We find that female workers make lower wage proposals than male workers if the employers’ WTP for a project, as given by its budget, is disclosed in addition to the (exogenously enforced) experience level of workers that employers deem necessary for the job, i.e., low, intermediate, or high. In addition, we do not find robust empirical support for the hypothesis that female workers’ under-confidence in their skills increases the gender gap in bidding behavior. Finally, we find a statistically significant gender wage gap of 16.8 %, which is reduced to 1.5 % when we control for employer, worker, and project characteristics. Once we include workers’ wage proposals in our agreed-upon wage regressions, the gender wage gap virtually disappears (0.2 %) and is statistically insignificant. This suggests that gender differences in wage expectations pertain to gender differences in wages.

We study how large shocks impact individuals’ skilling decisions using data from a large, government-sponsored, online learning platform in Saudi Arabia. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a massive increase in online skilling, and demand shifted towards courses that offered skills, such as telework, likely to be immediately valuable during the pandemic. Consistent with a model where individuals trade off reskilling costs with their expectations of future labor market conditions and their duration of work, we find that shifts into telework courses were largest for older workers. In contrast, younger workers increased enrollments in courses related to new skills, such as general, occupation-specific, and computer-related skills. Using national administrative employment data, we provide descriptive evidence that these investments in skills in early 2020 helped users maintain employment over the course of the pandemic.

We study subjective unemployment expectations and their influence on economic behavior. We utilize a longitudinal data set combining survey elicited subjective unemployment expectations with administrative data on income, savings, and unemployment insurance. Our findings indicate that subjective expectations hold valuable predictive information about subsequent unemployment experiences. We find that individuals tend to overestimate their risk of unemployment. Moreover, higher unemployment expectations lead to a greater likelihood of enrolling in unemployment insurance and accumulation of liquid savings.

We examine how shocks to parents’ careers affect the children’s educational choices and career outcomes. Using Finnish administrative data, we find that a father’s job loss decreases the likelihood of a child choosing the father’s study field. Children of displaced fathers have lower earnings and are more likely to choose study fields with lower predicted earnings; however, we find no effects on the outcomes measured before study choices are made, such as school grades, inactivity and juvenile delinquency. The results suggest that labor market shocks can carry over to the next generation through children’s career choices.