Economics Commons^™

Employment And Development In The Developing World: Taking Stock Of What Research Can Teach Us, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Productivity growth and structural change are generally considered to be important determinants of economic growth. However recent research revealed that they do not necessarily lead to higher growth and employment rates. Recent studies, drawing on data from developing countries, showed that only the “right” kind of productivity growth resulted in higher employment rates. Enterprises in Africa and Latin America caught up in matters of technology; however, this process resulted in a substitution of employment by technology. The same is true for structural change; only the “right” kind of structural change caused more growth and employment. Whereas in Asia, labour shifted …

Aid, Growth And Jobs, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Various development objectives are worthy, but one objective merits special attention: reducing the scourge of absolute economic misery in the world. This study focuses on an important but relatively underemphasized approach to poverty reduction: helping the poor earn more in the labour market for the work they do, so that they can buy the goods and services they need to move up out of poverty. The core of the study is divided into three sections: defining the global poverty challenge and the world’s employment problem, presenting policy options for improving employment outcomes for the poor, and suggesting ways of choosing …

Earnings Mobility, Inequality, And Economic Growth In Argentina, Mexico, And Venezuela, Gary S. Fields, Robert Duval-Hernandez, Samuel Freije, Maria Laura Sanchez Puerta

Gary S Fields

This paper examines changes in individual earnings during positive and negative growth periods in three Latin American economies: Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela. We ask two major questions. First, do panel income changes favor the income recipients who started at the top of the income distribution (“divergent mobility”) or those who started at the bottom (“convergent mobility”)? And second, are the groups that are found to gain the most when the economy is growing those that are found to lose the most when the economy is contracting (“symmetry of mobility”) or is the pattern asymmetric in the sense that the same …

Falling Labor Income Inequality In Korea’S Economic Growth: Patterns And Underlying Causes, Gyeongjoon Yoo, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Over the last twenty-five years, the economy of the Republic of Korea achieved a remarkable growth rate of 7 percent per year in real per capita income, causing it to be labeled, justifiably, as a “miracle economy.” This exceptional economic growth has been accompanied by an even more exceptional fall in labor income inequality. Using a newly-developed methodology, we use data from Korea’s Occupational Wage Surveys to quantify the importance of various factors that have contributed to the fall in labor income inequality in Korea. We find the most important factors explaining the level of income inequality are job tenure, …

Immigration, Employment Opportunities, And Criminal Behavior, Matthew Freedman, Emily Owens, Sarah Bohn

Matthew Freedman

Are State Unemployment Insurance Reserves Sufficient For The Next Recession?, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kenneth J. Kline

Christopher J. O'Leary

Regular state unemployment insurance (UI) benefits are paid from state reserves held in unemployment trust fund accounts at the U.S. Treasury. Employers covered by the federal-state UI system make contributions to reserve accounts based on taxable wages. The federal government provides incentives for forward funding of benefits to support UI as an automatic macroeconomic stabilizer in the economy. However, the Great Recession exhausted UI reserves for the majority of states, and not all of them have yet replenished those reserves. Based on patterns observed over the past 40 years, in this paper we simulate the effects on state and systemwide …

The Impact Of The 1990'S Economic Boom On Less Educated Workers In Rural America, Elizabeth E. Davis, Stacie Bosley

Stacie Bosley

This study uses National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) data to investigate whether the effect of local labor market conditions on the earnings of workers differs by gender, education level, or metropolitan/nonmetropolitan location. The results suggest that local economic conditions in the late 1990s did have a positive effect overall on wages for men with no more than a high school degree and for women regardless of education. Further, there is evidence of a difference between metro and nonmetro labor markets, suggesting that the 1990s boom helped urban less-educated workers but not those in rural areas. The metro-nonmetro difference is …

Your Friends And Neighbors: Localized Economic Development And Criminal Activity, Matthew Freedman, Emily G. Owens

Matthew Freedman

The Urban Density Premium Across Establishments, R. Jason Faberman, Matthew Freedman

Matthew Freedman

Domestic Outsourcing In The United States: A Research Agenda To Assess Trends And Effects On Job Quality, Annette Bernhardt, Rosemary L. Batt, Susan Houseman, Eileen Appelbaum

Susan N. Houseman

The goal of this paper is to develop a comprehensive research agenda to analyze trends in domestic outsourcing in the United States—firms’ use of contractors and independent contractors—and its effects on job quality and inequality. In the process, we review definitions of outsourcing, the available scant empirical research, and limitations of existing data sources. We also summarize theories that attempt to explain why firms contract out for certain functions and assess their predictions about likely impacts on job quality. We then lay out in detail a major research initiative on domestic outsourcing, discussing the questions it should answer and providing …

Do Recessions Accelerate Routine-Biased Technological Change? Evidence From Vacancy Postings, Brad J. Hershbein, Lisa B. Kahn

Brad J. Hershbein

We show that skill requirements in job vacancy postings differentially increased in MSAs that were hit hard by the Great Recession, relative to less hard-hit areas, and that these differences across MSAs persist through the end of 2015. The increases are prevalent within occupations, more pronounced in the non-traded sector, driven by both within-firm upskilling and substitution from older to newer firms, accompanied by increases in capital stock, and are evident in realized employment. We argue that this evidence reflects the restructuring of production toward moreskilled workers and routine-labor saving technologies, and that the Great Recession accelerated this process.

Women, The Recession, And The Impending Economic Recovery, Jennifer W. Keil

Jennifer Keil

Would female investment bankers, mortgage lenders, and chief executive officers have taken the same risks given the same expected returns? Maybe not. The purpose of this article is to explore the impact of the U.S. recession on women and to help readers gain useful knowledge about women’s role in the economy.

Testimony Of John M. Abowd Before The House Committee On Energy And Commerce, Subcommitte On Commerce, Manufacturing And Trade, United States House Of Representatives, John Abowd, Lars Vilhuber

Lars Vilhuber

We focus attention on gross flows in the labor market and their role in economic reallocation. Economists distinguish between movements of individuals (gross worker flows) and those associated with businesses (gross job flows). The gross worker flows are accessions (hiring and recalls) and separations (quits, layoffs, retirements, and firings). The gross job flows are creations (increases in the employment of a given business establishment) and destructions (decreases in employment of a given business establishments). In our testimony, we discuss the different flows and the regional variation therein over the last recession.

Presentation: Did The Housing Price Bubble Clobber Local Labor Market Job And Worker Flows When It Burst?, John Abowd, Lars Vilhuber

Lars Vilhuber

We integrate local labor market data on worker flows, job flows, employment levels, and earnings with MSA-level data on housing prices and local area unemployment, to study the local labor market dynamics associated with the U.S. housing price bubble of the late 2000s. We proceed to study the magnitude and timing of the relation between the changes in local housing prices and local worker and job flows, and local labor market earnings.In addition to the unique contribution of using both local labor and housing market data, the paper also considers the contributions of the aggregate movements in the worker and …

The Quality Of Jobs Created By Entrepreneurs, Adam Seth Litwin, Philip Phan

Adam Seth Litwin

Few dare to challenge the conventional wisdom that small business is the engine of job creation. Indeed, in the United States, the image of the small business owner left largely unfettered to create novel products and services sits on the same cultural plane as baseball and apple pie, and one would be hard-pressed to find a policymaker who would openly question the wisdom that most new jobs arise either directly or indirectly from these small businesses. This near religious belief in the small business owner as job creator yields a steady stream of policies offering tax relief to small businesses, …

Undergraduate Labor Economics (Econ 336), Matthew Freedman

Matthew Freedman

The Effect Of Population Aging On Economic Growth, The Labor Force And Productivity, David Powell

David Powell