Labour Economics最新文献

Standard labor market models have mainly focused on human capital theory, which emphasizes the role of education, experience, and individuals’ different skill levels in determining occupational choice. The recent literature, however, has shown that noncognitive (“soft”) skills are also strong predictors for vocational behavior. Economics provides little guidance on the effects of noncognitive skills on occupational choice. In applied psychology, personality/temperament traits and economic preferences refer to the characteristics explaining how individuals may act differently in similar situations related to occupational choice. We utilize the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 (n = 4,731 to 5,882) to explore the value of incorporating temperament traits and economic preferences in occupational choice. We explore whether temperament traits contribute to occupational choice, using data from the NFBC1966 for the years 2004 to 2012, inclusive. Occupational groups are chosen to be distinct with respect to the requisite skills, education levels, and tasks. The novelty of our data allows us to determine whether temperament traits and economic preferences have significant impacts on occupational choice, while controlling for other variables related to the human capital approach. We find that temperament traits and economic preferences are important contributors of vocational behavior. Our analysis highlights that it is important to jointly explore the effects of the human capital model, noncognitive traits and other nonpecuniary factors in analyzing occupational choices among individuals. We reveal distinct temperament traits for different occupations. To our knowledge, there exists no evidence about how individuals’ temperament traits, economic preferences, and the human capital approach jointly are sorted into occupational choices. In addition, the novelty of our data allows us to include education, among other factors, to control our findings. We find significant differences across occupations regarding temperament traits.

This paper examines the relationship between house prices and fertility rates during the global fertility transition. We establish an analytical framework that considers the complementary nature of children and housing, leading to the hypothesis of a negative effect of house prices on fertility when they are highly complementary. We utilize a newly published house prices dataset spanning 1870 to 2012, covering multiple countries, and employ fixed effect and dynamic panel estimations to address identification challenges including unobserved heterogeneity and dynamic effects. Results show that surging house prices discourage fertility, with a ten percent increase in real house prices associated with a reduction of 0.01 to 0.03 births per woman. These effects are comparable to the impact of increased female education. Our findings offer insights into the evolving patterns of global fertility trends, underscoring the role of increased housing costs in shaping demographic changes.

This paper investigates the effect of a mandatory activation program on crime. Although the effects of ALMPs on labor market outcomes are often assessed, theorized effects on crime are seldom analyzed. We exploit age-based policy variation and estimate a regression discontinuity model, using individual-level administrative data on the entire Dutch population around a 27-year-old age threshold. The results show a 12% reduction in crime among non-natives, a relatively vulnerable group. Our findings suggest that crime is mainly reduced on weekdays, which points towards incapacitation as the underlying causal mechanism. Due to program participation, individuals have less time to commit crime.

Numerous countries mandate comportment grades rating students’ social and work behavior in the classroom from teachers, yet their impact on student outcomes remains unclear. We exploit the staggered introduction of comportment grading across German federal states to estimate its causal effect on students’ school-to-work transitions, non-cognitive skills, and reading skills. Analyzing two different household surveys and student assessment data, point estimates of causal effects are close to zero for all outcomes. However, while confidence intervals for school-to-work transitions and non-cognitive skills allow us to reject meaningful effect sizes, those for reading skills are wider and need to be interpreted more cautiously. We use additional data sources to investigate potential explanations.

Female physicians remain underrepresented in surgical specialties in Japan. The 2004 New Postgraduate Medical Education Program mandated a two-year rotating residency that allowed residents to choose their specialty after training in multiple fields, including surgery. Following this reform, there was a 2.7 percentage points increase in female physicians choosing general surgery and a 1.5 percentage points increase in urology being chosen, compared to male physicians, as well as a 3.4 percentage points decrease in internal medicine being chosen. This shift of female physicians toward male-dominated surgical specialties is primarily seen in breast surgery, catering to female patients, and in urology, known for its shorter workweeks.

This paper proposes IV-based estimators for the semiparametric distribution regression model in the presence of an endogenous regressor, which are based on an extension of IV probit estimators and the idea of control functions. We discuss the causal interpretation of the estimators and two methods (monotone rearrangement and isotonic regression) to ensure a monotonically increasing distribution function. Asymptotic properties and simulation evidence are provided. An application to income equations with German SOEP data reveals statistically significant and heterogeneous differences to the inconsistent non-IV-based estimator.

We examine the role of financial aid in shaping the formation of human capital. We study the impact of a large merit-based scholarship for graduate studies in affecting individuals’ occupational choices, career trajectories, and labor market outcomes of a generation of Italian economists, with special focus on gender gaps and the role of social mobility. We construct a unique dataset that combines archival sources and includes microdata for the universe of applicants to the scholarship program and follow these individuals over their professional life. We discuss five main results: (i) it is easier to become a high achiever for individuals from households with a lower socio-economic status if they reside in high social mobility provinces; (ii) women are less likely to be shortlisted for a scholarship as they tend to receive lower scores in the most subjective criteria used in the initial screening of candidates; (iii) scholarship winners are much more likely to choose a research career and this effect is larger for women; (iv) women who work in Italian universities tend to have less citations than men who work in Italy. However, the citation gender gap is smaller for candidates who received a scholarship and (iv) women take longer to be promoted to the rank of full professor, even after controlling for academic productivity.

This study explores the spillover effects of students under academic pressure on their peers’ mental well-being in high school. I approximate students who are under such pressure by whether they attended private educational institutes before entering primary school. To conduct the analysis, I employ the random assignment of high school students to classrooms within schools in South Korea. I find that students who attended private institutes in early childhood have greater exam-related pressure in grade 10 and exhibit negative externalities on their classmates’ mental well-being. The subgroup analysis reveals that students whose parents have higher expectations of their children's education and those who attend schools in highly competitive regions are largely influenced by these negative externalities.

We study the decision to pursue an advanced degree from an internationally renowned academic institution, which greatly facilitates access to top jobs. Relying on unique data on applications to a highly selective program that provides graduate fellowships to Spanish students, we show that women in non-STEM fields apply to the fellowships at lower rates than males with the same GPA and in the same field of study. On the contrary, our estimates imply that females in STEM apply at equal, or higher, rates than comparable males in the same fields. We also find that female students are relatively less interested in doctoral programs and less willing to study abroad than males. To shed light on the mechanisms, we surveyed college students about their post-graduation plans. The lower geographic mobility of female students (in non-STEM fields) appears linked to females’ lower earnings expectations and a gender-asymmetric detrimental effect of involvement in romantic relationships.