Business Commons^™

The Effects Of Population Diversity On The Economic And Household Welfare Of Metropolitan Areas In The U.S., Liria M. Litano

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper was to understand the impact of population diversity on household and economic welfare in all the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in the United States of America (U.S.). We focused on positive views concerning the relationships between population diversity and factors such as human capital, knowledge, and innovation. We established economic growth factors using the Endogenous Growth Theory, which stated that human capital, innovation, and knowledge were significant contributors to economic growth (Romer, 1994). We argued that population diversity affected these contributors; therefore, it helped to create economic growth.

From a human capital perspective, population diversity …

Day Worker Center: Employer And Client Engagement, Anayeli Avalos

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The Day Worker Center of Santa Cruz County is a component of the Community Action Board (CAB), a non-profit organization that has been providing services to eliminate poverty. CAB offers the program, administrative, and fiscal oversight to the Day Worker Center. The County of Santa Cruz is facing a high rate of unemployment, which is affecting the community. What contributes to the problem is low awareness of community knowledge about employment services. Also, the undocumented community that finds it hard to trust services because they think they can get deported. In addition, the issue can cause consequences such as health …

Work-Unit Absenteeism: Effects Of Satisfaction, Commitment, Labor Market Conditions, And Time, John Hausknecht, Nathan J. Hiller, Robert J. Vance

John Hausknecht

Prior research is limited in explaining absenteeism at the unit level and over time. We developed and tested a model of unit-level absenteeism using five waves of data collected over six years from 115 work units in a large state agency. Unit-level job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and local unemployment were modeled as time-varying predictors of absenteeism. Shared satisfaction and commitment interacted in predicting absenteeism but were not related to the rate of change in absenteeism over time. Unit-level satisfaction and commitment were more strongly related to absenteeism when units were located in areas with plentiful job alternatives.

The Employment Problem In Korea, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

What Korea has is not an "unemployment problem" but rather an "employment problem." The employment problem includes continued high unemployment, but it goes well beyond it, also encompassing falling labor earnings, rising poverty and inequality, disproportionate impacts on disadvantaged groups, informalisation of employment, increased job insecurity, and consequent social strains. This paper documents Korea's employment problem, characterizes the problem as deficient aggregate demand rather than frictional or structural unemployment, examines in some detail three of the most important elements of the social safety net (the Employment Insurance System, the Livelihood Protection Program, and public works), and considers four major ways …

Research Brief: "Unemployment, Earnings, And Enrollment Among Post 9/11 Veterans", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This study found that Afghanistan/Iraq era veterans have a higher likelihood of unemployment than non-veterans, with female veterans faring worse than their male counterparts. In practice, female veterans of the post-9/11 era suffer from higher absolute levels of unemployment than male veterans, as well as also experiencing a higher unemployment penalty from their service relative to their civilian counterparts than male veterans do. In policy, policymakers may wish to determine ways to increase utilization of GI Bill benefits among disadvantaged populations to increase their long-term employment and earnings. Suggestions for future study include considering the surge of female veterans, and …

Welfare Reform: The View From New Hampshire And Massachusetts, Richard W. Hurd, Allen Thompson

Richard W Hurd

As he promised during his election campaign, President Carter has proposed a major overhaul of the welfare system. Under the Better Jobs and Income Act, unveiled in August 1977, the major components of the current welfare system would be replaced by a program combining cash assistance and job opportunities. This paper evaluates the Carter proposal based on the experience under existing employment, training and welfare programs and then assesses its potential impact on the states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. In the course of the discussion, we deal with the following questions: (1) Does the proposal effectively address the weaknesses …

Labor Force Migration, Unemployment And Job Turnover, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] In this paper, we show how labor turnover considerations can be integrated into the human investment theory of migration and demonstrate that such a model provides a much better explanation for migration rates into major metropolitan areas than the conventionally-used unemployment rate. The method used here may be of interest as well to researchers working on other human investment problems that also have a multi-period dimension.

Dead-End Jobs And Youth Unemployment: Comment, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Charles Brown has very ambitiously attempted to analyze whether the existence of "dead-end jobs" contributes to the youth unemployment problem. He assumes that the average rate of wage growth of individuals initially employed in an occupation and the proportion of these individuals who remain employed in the same industry for five years are both inversely related to the probability that individuals initially employed in the occupation find themselves in dead end-jobs. His basic methodological approach involves using data from the 1/100 sample of the 1970 Census of Population to calculate both of these variables for each three-digit occupation, merging …

Editor’S Introduction To The Review Symposium On The Book Myth And Measurement: The New Economics Of The Minimum Wage, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Why has Myth and Measurement engendered so much controversy? In part, because it deals with the minimum wage. The minimum wage was the first piece of protective labor legislation adopted at the national level, and proposals to increase the minimum wage invariably lead to heated debate between labor and business interests. When a book co-authored by the then chief economist in the Clinton Labor Department purports to show that, contrary to received wisdom, minimum wage increases do not appear to have any diverse effects on employment, it is predictable that conservative critics will attack its findings.

Interplant Transfer And Terminated Workers: A Case Study (Reply), David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] The design of policies intended to aid workers who are threatened with displacement involves issues of a complex and difficult nature. The need for careful analysis of the issues is emphasized by Thomas Kochan's comment on my recent article. In that article I tried to point out the limitations of my analysis, the difficulties of generalizing on the basis of a case study, and the tentative nature of my conclusions. Space did not allow a full elaboration of these problems; now Kochan has performed a useful service by heightening our awareness of them. However, I cannot believe he has …

Employment And Unemployment Statistics In Collective Bargaining: Discussion, David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] This writer can't see the potential in the establishment survey data that Mills sees —at least, not for collective bargaining purposes. First, the sample can never be made large enough, except at prohibitive cost, to include a sufficient cross-section of unionized firms. Granted, union and management representatives have some interest in what is happening in nonunion firms; but this writer would guess their principal interest is in what is happening in comparable unionized relationships. Second, the establishment survey is a good source of information on average hourly earnings and the like, but it is hard to believe it provides …

Interplant Transfer And Terminated Workers: A Case Study, David Lipsky

David B Lipsky

Following its decision to close four plants and transfer their operations to a new location, the General Foods Corporation offered jobs in the new plant to all 1,800 affected employees and payment of their transfer expenses. To those electing not to transfer, the Corporation offered severance pay. Less than a fourth of employees transferred to the new location. This study analyzes in detail the characteristics of the movers and nonmovers and the subsequent employment experience of the latter. It concludes that those workers who most needed the job and income protection offered by the transfer plan were least likely to …

Advance Notice Provisions In Plant Closing Legislation: Do They Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg, George Jakubson

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This paper evaluates the cases for and against plant closing legislation. In spite of the growth of legislative efforts in the area, there has been surprisingly little effort devoted to analyzing what the effects are of existing plant closing legislation, of provisions in privately negotiated collective bargaining agreements that provide for advance notice in case of plant shutdowns and/or layoffs, and of voluntary employer provision of advance notice. The paper summarizes the results of previous research, and our own empirical analyses that used the January 1984 Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey of Displaced Workers, on the effects of advance notice …

The Pros And Cons Of Outsourcing, Angela Smith

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Outsourcing has become increasingly popular to the public since the mid-20th century and has become more controversial in the last decade. The United States economy has been under the microscope for the last 4 years due to an economic recession. Outsourcing has been a subject of interest that has been brought up numerous times by economists. Offshore outsourcing is the main type of outsourcing that is of concern in relation to the United States economy. This topic is highly debated because of the unemployment rate in America.

Why Warn? The Impact Of Recent Plant-Closing And Layoff Prenotification Legislation In The United States, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, George H. Jakubson

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] WARN was passed only after a decade of strenuous debate. We can now look back and address a number of issues it raised. What benefits did its proponents think would arise from the notice legislation, and what costs did its opponents think there would be? What public policies toward advance notice do other nations have? Did displaced workers in the United States receive advance notice before the passage of WARN? What do we know empirically about the effects on workers and firms of the provision of advance notice? What has experience under WARN taught us? Finally, what research issues …

Retirement Policies, Employment, And Unemployment, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] There is a growing consensus among economists that reliance on aggregate demand policies alone will not be sufficient to move the economy to full employment with a nonaccelerating inflation rate, and that policies which alter the structure of labor markets will be required. While obvious structural policies such as public sector employment programs and training programs are the focus of current debate, many other public policies affect labor markets in subtle ways which may well adversely affect the level and distribution of employment and unemployment. To help improve the inflation-unemployment tradeoff, policymakers should seek to marginally modify these policies, …

The Impact Of Retirement Policies On Employment And Unemployment, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This paper has focused on the impact of retirement policies on the level and distribution of employment and unemployment. All of the policies discussed, except for early retirement provisions in privately negotiated collective bargaining contracts were seen to have adverse effects on the level and distribution of employment. Hence, the paper illustrates the more general point that policies designed to promote one social goal may well detract from achieving other goals and suggests that more explicit attention should be given to the employment effects of social programs and legislation prior to their adoption.

Black Youth Nonemployment: Duration And Job Search: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Holzer's paper has a number of attributes that I find very appealing. It focuses on an important topic and uses two different data bases to test the robustness of its findings. It uses alternative specifications of the variable of interest (reservation wages), examines the sensitivity of the results to alternative sets of control variables, uses a variety of statistical methods to confront a number of statistical issues, and honestly reports cases in which any of the above leads to differences in results. Finally, the paper does not claim more than the evidence warrants—a feature not present in enough academic …

[Review Of The Book Why The Garden Club Couldn’T Save Youngstown: The Transformation Of The Rust Belt], Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] As economic crisis once again grips the land, it is valuable to ponder the lessons of attempts to recover from past downturns. For example, the economic dislocations of the 1970s and 1980s transformed the industrial heartland of America into the “Rust Belt” and forced communities to grapple with how to recover from a lost standard of living revolving around good paying jobs in industries like steel production that were unlikely ever to return. In his interesting and highly readable book, Sean Safford examines the diverging economic trajectories of two similar rust belt communities, Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Youngstown, Ohio. Both …

Labor, Industry Fighting Over Unemployment Benefits — Sounds A Lot Like The 1960s, Charles A. Scontras

Bureau of Labor Education

Current legislative efforts to reform the unemployment compensation law (LD1725) by increasing penalties for fraud and tightening qualifications for benefits, e.g., removal of the exemption of vacation time as a factor in assessing benefits and lengthening the search for employment after six weeks rather than the current requirement of twelve weeks, triggers some historical images.

Poor Relief, Informal Assistance, And Short Time During The Lancashire Cotton Famine, George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

[Excerpt] This paper presents new evidence concerning the importance of poor relief as a source of income assistance for unemployed operatives during the Lancashire cotton famine. My comparison of weekly data on the number of relief recipients in 23 distressed poor law unions with estimates of weekly cotton consumption for the period November 1861 to December 1862 suggests that the average length of time between becoming unemployed and receiving poor relief was less than 2 months. This result is shown to be consistent with available evidence on working class saving. Given the meager amount of informal assistance available to them, …

[Review Of The Book Interwar Unemployment In International Perspective], George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

[Excerpt] The book redresses two imbalances in the recent literature on interwar unemployment: its almost exclusive focus on the United States and Britain, and its predominantly macroeconomic nature. To achieve these goals, the editors encouraged the authors of the country studies to address a set of microeconomic issues, including the extent to which the incidence and duration of unemployment varied across economic and demographic groups, and the effect of unemployment on labor force participation and poverty. Two macroeconomic issues also are addressed in several of the papers: the effects of real wages and of unemployment insurance on unemployment. These two …

The Economic Role Of The English Poor Law, 1780-1834, George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

[Excerpt] Over the 85-year period from 1748/50 to 1832/34, real per capita expenditures on poor relief increased at an average rate of approximately 1 percent per year. There were also important changes in the administration of relief with respect to able-bodied laborers during the period. Policies providing relief outside of workhouses to unemployed and under-employed able-bodied laborers became widespread during the 1770s and 1780s in the grain-producing South and East of England. The so-called Speenhamland system of outdoor relief flourished until 1834, when it was abolished by the Poor Law Amendment Act. The aim of the thesis is to provide …

The Evolution Of Unemployment Relief In Great Britain, George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

[Excerpt] Relatively little has been written about unemployment relief during the period between the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834 and the adoption of national unemployment insurance in 1911. This study is an attempt to help fill the gap in the literature. It examines the changing roles played by poor relief, private charity, trade unions, and public employment in the lives of the urban unemployed during cyclical downturns from 1834 to 1911. The story that emerges offers no support for a "Whig theory of welfare." Public assistance for the unemployed was more generous, and more certain, from …

The Poor Law, Migration, And Economic Growth, George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

The loss to the English economy caused by decreased migration resulting from relief payments to agricultural laborers is estimated. I conclude that, at worst, the Poor Law had a small negative impact on national product. If poor relief and wages were substitutes, the Poor Law may have had a positive impact on capital formation and economic growth.

Unemployment And The Uk Labour Market Before, During And After The Golden Age, Timothy J. Hatton, George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

During the ‘golden age’ of the 1950s and 1960s unemployment in Britain averaged 2 per cent. This was far lower than ever before or since and a number of hypotheses have been put forward to account for this unique period in labour market history. But there has been little attempt to isolate precisely how the determinants of wage setting and unemployment differed before, during and after the golden age. We estimate a two-equation model over the whole period from 1872 to 1999 using a newly constructed set of long-run labour market data. We find that the structure of real wage …

New Estimates Of British Unemployment, 1870-1913, George R. Boyer, Timothy J. Hatton

George R. Boyer

We present new estimates of the British industrial unemployment rate for 1870- 1913, which improve on the Board of Trade's prior estimates. We use similar sources, but our series includes additional industrial sectors, allows for short-time working, and aggregates the various sectors using appropriate labor-force weights from the census. The resulting index suggests a rate of industrial unemployment that was generally higher, but less volatile, than the board's index. We then adjust our series to an economywide basis, and construct a consistent time series of overall unemployment for 1870-1999.

Labour Institutions And Economic Development: A Conceptual Framework With Reference To Asia, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] In this chapter, I set forth a framework for analysing how labour markets function under existing institutional arrangements and predicting how they would respond to alternative changes and policy interventions. I seek to blend logical rigour with institutional realism in a stylized way. My approach borrows from orthodox neoclassical analysis where relevant, and departs from those characterizations when the standard assumptions are empirically untenable.

Labor Retrenchment Laws And Their Effect On Wages And Employment: A Theoretical Investigation, Kaushik Basu, Gary S. Fields, Shub Debgupta

Gary S Fields

Many countries have legislation which make it costly for firms to dismiss or retrench workers. In the case of India, the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, requires firms that employ 50 or more workers to pay compensation to any worker who is to be retrenched. This paper builds a theoretical model to analyze the effects of such anti-retrenchment laws. Our model reveals that an anti-retrenchment law can cause wages and employment to rise or fall, depending on the parametric conditions prevailing in the market. We then use this simple model to isolate conditions under which an anti-retrenchment law raises wages and …

The Employment Problem In South Africa, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

South Africa is experiencing a major employment problem that includes not only unemployment, but also low labour market earnings. In this article, Gary Fields discusses what can be done to alleviate South Africa's employment problem.