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Full-Text Articles in Economics
Daca, Mobility Investments, And Economic Outcomes Of Immigrants And Natives, Jimena Villanueva Kiser, Riley Wilson
Daca, Mobility Investments, And Economic Outcomes Of Immigrants And Natives, Jimena Villanueva Kiser, Riley Wilson
Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs
No abstract provided.
Daca, Mobility Investments, And Economic Outcomes Of Immigrants And Natives, Jimena Villanueva Kiser, Riley Wilson
Daca, Mobility Investments, And Economic Outcomes Of Immigrants And Natives, Jimena Villanueva Kiser, Riley Wilson
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Exploiting variation created by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), we document the effects of immigrant legalization on immigrant mobility investments and economic outcomes. We provide new evidence that DACA increased both geographic and job mobility of young immigrants, often leading them to high-paying labor markets and licensed occupations. We then examine whether these gains to immigrants spill over and affect labor market outcomes of U.S.-born workers. Exploiting immigrant enclaves and source-country flows of DACA-eligible immigrants to isolate plausibly exogenous variation in the concentration of DACA recipients, we show that in labor markets where more of the working-age population can …
Information, Intermediaries, And International Migration, Samuel Bazzi, Lisa Cameron, Simone Schaner, Firman Witoelar
Information, Intermediaries, And International Migration, Samuel Bazzi, Lisa Cameron, Simone Schaner, Firman Witoelar
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Job seekers face substantial information frictions, especially in international labor markets where intermediaries match prospective migrants with overseas employers. We conducted a randomized trial in Indonesia to explore how information about intermediary quality shapes migration outcomes. Holding access to information about the return to choosing a high-quality intermediary constant, intermediary-specific quality disclosure reduces the migration rate, cutting use of low-quality providers. Workers who do migrate receive better pre-departure preparation and have improved experiences abroad, despite no change in occupation or destination. These results are not driven by changes in beliefs about average provider quality or the return to migration. Nor …
Income Generation Through Entrepreneurship: Seed Initiative, Iliana G. Perez
Income Generation Through Entrepreneurship: Seed Initiative, Iliana G. Perez
External Papers and Reports
No abstract provided.
Labor Market Consequences Of Antitax Avoidance Policies, Katarzyna Bilicka
Labor Market Consequences Of Antitax Avoidance Policies, Katarzyna Bilicka
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
In this paper, I analyze the local labor market consequences of multinational firms reallocating employees across their affiliates in response to antitax avoidance policies. I leverage the introduction of a worldwide debt cap in 2010 in the United Kingdom as a quasi-natural experiment that limited one of the forms of profit shifting—debt shifting—for a group of multinational corporations (MNCs). Multinationals affected by the reform reallocated their employees from the United Kingdom to foreign locations. This affected London-based service sector firms the most. I show that this led to a reduction in the number of jobs available in regions exposed to …
When Labor Enforcement And Immigration Enforcement Collide: Deterring Worker Complaints Worsens Workplace Safety, Amanda M. Grittner, Matthew S. Johnson
When Labor Enforcement And Immigration Enforcement Collide: Deterring Worker Complaints Worsens Workplace Safety, Amanda M. Grittner, Matthew S. Johnson
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Regulatory agencies overseeing the labor market often rely on worker complaints to direct their enforcement. However, if workers face differential barriers to complain, this system could result in ineffective targeting and create disparities in working conditions. To investigate these implications, we examine how the onset of Secure Communities—a localized immigration enforcement program—affected occupational safety and health. Counties’ participation in Secure Communities substantially reduced complaints to government safety regulators, but increased injuries, at workplaces with Hispanic workers. We show that these effects are most consistent with employers reducing safety inputs in response to workers’ decreased willingness to complain.
Trade Policy As An Exogenous Shock: Focusing On The Specifics, Andrew Greenland, John W. Lopresti
Trade Policy As An Exogenous Shock: Focusing On The Specifics, Andrew Greenland, John W. Lopresti
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper proposes a novel strategy for identifying the effects of import competition on economic outcomes that avoids standard concerns related to the endogeneity of trade policy and provides a consistent measure of exposure to trade over time. Conditioning on the level of import tariffs, our approach exploits cross-industry differences in the relative importance of specific rather than ad valorem tariffs. As they are expressed in per unit terms rather than as a share of value, the effective protection provided by a given specific tariff varies with price levels. Using digitized tariff line data between 1900 and 1940, we relate …
Globalization, Trade Imbalances, And Labor Market Adjustment, Rafael Dix-Carneiro, João Paulo Pessoa, Ricardo Reyes-Heroles, Sharon Traiberman
Globalization, Trade Imbalances, And Labor Market Adjustment, Rafael Dix-Carneiro, João Paulo Pessoa, Ricardo Reyes-Heroles, Sharon Traiberman
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We study the role of global trade imbalances in shaping the adjustment dynamics in response to trade shocks. We build and estimate a general equilibrium, multicountry, multisector model of trade with two key ingredients: 1) consumption-saving decisions in each country commanded by representative households, leading to endogenous trade imbalances, and 2) labor market frictions across and within sectors, leading to unemployment dynamics and sluggish transitions to shocks. We use the estimated model to study the behavior of labor markets in response to globalization shocks, including shocks to technology, trade costs, and intertemporal preferences (savings gluts). We find that modeling trade …
Strategic Reshoring: A Literature Review, Kathleen Bolter, Jim Robey
Strategic Reshoring: A Literature Review, Kathleen Bolter, Jim Robey
Reports
No abstract provided.
Understanding The Decline Of U.S. Manufacturing Employment, Susan N. Houseman
Understanding The Decline Of U.S. Manufacturing Employment, Susan N. Houseman
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
U.S. manufacturing experienced a precipitous and historically unprecedented decline in employment in the 2000s. Many economists and other analysts—pointing to decades of statistics showing that manufacturing real (inflation-adjusted) output growth has largely kept pace with private sector real output growth, that productivity growth has been much higher, and that the sector’s share of aggregate employment has been declining—argue that manufacturing’s job losses are largely the result of productivity growth (assumed to reflect automation) and are part of a long-term trend. Since the 1980s, however, the apparently robust growth in manufacturing real output and productivity have been driven by a relatively …
Understanding The Effects Of Legalizing Undocumented Immigrants, Joan Monràs, Javier Vázquez-Grenno, Ferran Elias
Understanding The Effects Of Legalizing Undocumented Immigrants, Joan Monràs, Javier Vázquez-Grenno, Ferran Elias
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper investigates the consequences of the legalization of around 600,000 immigrants by the unexpectedly elected Spanish government of Zapatero following the terrorist attacks of March 2004 (Garcia-Montalvo, 2011). Using detailed data from payroll-tax revenues, we estimate that each newly legalized immigrant increased local payroll-tax revenues by 4,189 euros on average. This estimate is only 55 percent of what we would have expected from the size of the influx of newly documented immigrants, which suggests that newly legalized immigrants probably earned lower wages than other workers and maybe affected the labor-market outcomes of those other workers. We estimate that the …
Charles Ballard Interview, Justin Carinci
Charles Ballard Interview, Justin Carinci
External Papers and Reports
Professor Charles Ballard of Michigan State University delivered the lecture “The Fall and Rise of Income Equality in the United States” Sept. 27, 2017 as part of the Werner Sichel Lecture Series at Western Michigan University. Ballard detailed the “Great Convergence” of income equality in the United States that grew out of policies of the 1930s and 1940s and a “Great Divergence” of inequality starting about 1980. Ballard called this income gap, which is now greater than during the Gilded Age, “the largest economic phenomenon of our lifetimes.”
Testing The Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek Theory With A Natural Experiment, Assaf Zimring
Testing The Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek Theory With A Natural Experiment, Assaf Zimring
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper uses the historical episode of the near-elimination of commuting from the West Bank into Israel, which caused a large and rapid expansion of the local labor force in the West Bank, to test the predictions of the Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek (HOV) mode of trade. I use variation between districts in the West Bank to test these predictions, and find strong support for them: Wage changes were not correlated with the size of the shock to the district labor force (Factor Price Insensitivity); Districts that received larger influx of returning commuters shifted production more towards labor intensive industries (Rybczynski effect); And …
Trade Reform And Regional Dynamics: Evidence From 25 Years Of Brazilian Matched Employer-Employee Data, Rafael Dix-Carneiro, Brian K. Kovak
Trade Reform And Regional Dynamics: Evidence From 25 Years Of Brazilian Matched Employer-Employee Data, Rafael Dix-Carneiro, Brian K. Kovak
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We empirically study the dynamics of labor market adjustment following the Brazilian trade reform of the 1990s. We use variation in industry-specific tariff cuts interacted with initial regional industry mix to measure trade-induced local labor demand shocks, and then examine regional and individual labor market responses to those one-time shocks over two decades. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we do not find that the impact of local shocks is dissipated over time through wage-equalizing migration. Instead, we find steadily growing effects of local shocks on regional formal sector wages and employment for 20 years. This finding can be rationalized in a …
Offshoring And The State Of American Manufacturing, Susan N. Houseman, Christopher Kurz, Paul A. Lengermann, Benjamin R. Mandel
Offshoring And The State Of American Manufacturing, Susan N. Houseman, Christopher Kurz, Paul A. Lengermann, Benjamin R. Mandel
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The rapid growth of offshoring has sparked a contentious debate over its impact on the U.S. manufacturing sector, which has recorded steep employment declines yet strong output growth—a fact reconciled by the notable gains in manufacturing productivity. We maintain, however, that the dramatic acceleration of imports from developing countries has imparted a significant bias to the official statistics. In particular, the price declines associated with the shift to low-cost foreign suppliers generally are not captured in input cost and import price indexes. To assess the implications of offshoring bias for manufacturing productivity and value added, we implement the bias correction …
Outsourcing, Offshoring, And Productivity Measurement In U.S. Manufacturing, Susan N. Houseman
Outsourcing, Offshoring, And Productivity Measurement In U.S. Manufacturing, Susan N. Houseman
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
I discuss reasons why manufacturing productivity statistics should be interpreted with caution in light of the recent growth of domestic and foreign outsourcing and offshoring. First, outsourcing and offshoring are poorly measured in U.S. statistics, and poor measurement may impart a significant bias to manufacturing and, where offshoring is involved, aggregate productivity statistics. Second, companies often outsource or offshore work to take advantage of cheap (relative to their output) labor, and such cost savings are counted as productivity gains, even in multifactor productivity calculations. This fact has potentially important implications for the interpretation of productivity statistics. Whether, for instance, productivity …
Ownership And Wages: Estimating Public-Private And Foreign-Domestic Differentials With Leed From Hungary, 1986-2003, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy
Ownership And Wages: Estimating Public-Private And Foreign-Domestic Differentials With Leed From Hungary, 1986-2003, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
How do state, domestic, private, and foreign ownership of firms differ in average wages? We address these questions using linked employer-employee panel data containing 1.35mln worker-year observations for 21,238 firms from 1986 to 2003 in Hungary. Our econometric methods exploit the long panel together with the presence of 3,700 switches of ownership type in the postsocialist Hungarian transition to estimate these wage differentials.
Manufacturers' Outsourcing To Employment Services, Matthew Dey, Susan N. Houseman, Anne E. Polivka
Manufacturers' Outsourcing To Employment Services, Matthew Dey, Susan N. Houseman, Anne E. Polivka
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We estimate the effects of manufacturers' use of employment services—comprised primarily of temporary help and professional employer organizations—on measured employment and labor productivity in manufacturing between 1989 and 2004. A major contribution of the paper is the construction of panel data on employment by occupation and industry from the Occupational Employment Statistics program. We use these data to document the dramatic rise of production and other manual occupations within the employment services sector and, in conjunction with information from the Contingent Worker Supplements, to estimate the number of employment services workers assigned to manufacturing over the period. Although measured employment …
Complementarity And Custom In Wage Contract Violation, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter
Complementarity And Custom In Wage Contract Violation, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We analyze a model of wage delay in which strategic complementarity arises because each employer's costs of violating its contracts decrease with the arrears in its labor market. The model is estimated on panel data for workers and firms in Russia, facilitating identification through fixed effects for employees, employers, and local labor markets, and instrumental variables based on policy interventions. The estimated reaction function displays strongly positive neighborhood effects, and the estimated feedback loops - worker quits, effort, strikes, and legal penalties - imply that costs of wage delays are attenuated by neighborhood arrears. We also study a nonlinear case …
Final Project Report: Plan For A Model Pims, Christopher J. O'Leary, Lillian Vesic-Petrovic
Final Project Report: Plan For A Model Pims, Christopher J. O'Leary, Lillian Vesic-Petrovic
Upjohn Institute Technical Reports
Development of the performance information and management systems (PIMS) to monitor labor market outcomes of program participants, and guide program management of active labor market programs (ALMPs).
Wages, Layoffs, And Privatization: Evidence From Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Volodymyr Vakhitov
Wages, Layoffs, And Privatization: Evidence From Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Volodymyr Vakhitov
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper estimates the effects of privatization on worker separations and wages using retrospective data from a national probability sample of Ukrainian households. Detailed worker characteristics are used to control for compositional differences and to assess types of observable "winners" and "losers" from privatization. Preprivatization worker-firm matches are used to control for unobservables in worker and firm selection. The results imply that privatization reduces wages by 5 percent and cuts the layoff probability in half. Outside investor ownership reduces separations but leaves wages unaffected. Winners from privatization tend to be higher-skilled employees of larger firms, but there is no discernible …
Nonstandard Forms And Measures Of Employment And Unemployment In Transition: A Comparative Study Of Estonia, Romania, And Russia, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Vladimir Gimpelson, Rostislav Kapeliushnikov, Hartmut Lehmann, Álmos Telegdy, Irina Vantu, Ruxandra Visan, Alexandru Voicu
Nonstandard Forms And Measures Of Employment And Unemployment In Transition: A Comparative Study Of Estonia, Romania, And Russia, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Vladimir Gimpelson, Rostislav Kapeliushnikov, Hartmut Lehmann, Álmos Telegdy, Irina Vantu, Ruxandra Visan, Alexandru Voicu
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper looks behind the standard, publicly available labor force statistics relied upon in most studies of transition economy labor markets. We analyze microdata on detailed labor force survey responses in Russia, Romania, and Estonia to measure nonstandard, boundary forms and alternative definitions of employment and unemployment. Our calculations show that measured rates are quite sensitive to definition, particularly in the treatment of household production (subsistence agriculture), unpaid family helpers, and discouraged workers, while the categories of part-time work and other forms of marginal attachment are still relatively unimportant. We find that tweaking the official definitions in apparently minor ways …
The Incidence And Cost Of Job Loss In The Ukrainian Labor Market, Hartmut Lehmann, Norberto Pignatti, Jonathan Wadsworth
The Incidence And Cost Of Job Loss In The Ukrainian Labor Market, Hartmut Lehmann, Norberto Pignatti, Jonathan Wadsworth
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We examine the effects of economic transition on the pattern and costs of worker displacement in Ukraine, using the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS) for the years 1992 to 2002. Displacement rates in the Ukrainian labor market average between 3.4 and 4.8 percent of employment, roughly in line with levels typically observed in several Western economies, but considerably larger than in Russia. The characteristics of displaced workers are similar to those displaced in the West, in so far as displacement is concentrated on the less skilled. Around one third of displaced workers find re-employment immediately while the majority continues into …
Evaluating Job Training In Two Chinese Cities, Benu Bidani, Chor-Ching Goh, Niels-Hugo Blunch, Christopher J. O'Leary
Evaluating Job Training In Two Chinese Cities, Benu Bidani, Chor-Ching Goh, Niels-Hugo Blunch, Christopher J. O'Leary
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Recent years have seen a surge in the evidence on the impacts of active labor market programs for numerous countries. However, little evidence has been presented on the effectiveness of such programs in China. Recent economic reforms, associated massive lay-offs, and accompanying public retraining programs make China fertile ground for rigorous impact evaluations. This study evaluates retraining programs for laid-off workers in the cities of Shenyang and Wuhan using a comparison group design. To our knowledge, this is the first evaluation of its kind in China. The evidence suggests that retraining helped workers find jobs in Wuhan, but had little …
Do Government Sponsored Vocational Training Programs Help The Unemployed Find Jobs? Evidence From Russia, Anton Nivorozhkin, Eugenity Nivorozhkin
Do Government Sponsored Vocational Training Programs Help The Unemployed Find Jobs? Evidence From Russia, Anton Nivorozhkin, Eugenity Nivorozhkin
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The study estimates the employment effect of vocational training programs for the unemployed in urban Russia. The results of propensity score matching indicate that training programs had a non-negative overall effect on the program participants relative to non-participants.
Job Reallocation And Productivity Growth In The Ukrainian Transition, J. David Brown, John S. Earle
Job Reallocation And Productivity Growth In The Ukrainian Transition, J. David Brown, John S. Earle
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We analyze the pace and patterns of job reallocation in Ukraine using 1992-2000 panel data on nearly the surviving universe of manufacturing firms inherited from the Soviet Union. Employment growth displays substantial increase in heterogeneity during this transition period, with a corresponding rise in excess job reallocation. Unlike data for Soviet Russia in the 1980s, Ukrainian job reallocation in the 1990s was clearly productivity-enhancing, both within and cross industries. The paper also estimates the effects of firm and market characteristics on the magnitude of reallocation and on the extent to which it has contributed to aggregate productivity growth.
Community Norms And Organizational Practices: The Legitimization Of Wage Arrears In Russia, 1992-1999, John S. Earle, Andrew Spicer, Klara Sabirianova Peter
Community Norms And Organizational Practices: The Legitimization Of Wage Arrears In Russia, 1992-1999, John S. Earle, Andrew Spicer, Klara Sabirianova Peter
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
What role do community norms play in the diffusion and persistence of new organizational practices? We explore this question through an examination of the widespread practice of wage arrears, the late and non-payment of wages, in Russia during the 1990s. Existing research on wage arrears most often examines this practice as a means of flexible wage adjustment under difficult economic conditions. We develop an alternative theory that explains wage arrears through their acceptance as a legitimate form of organizational behavior within local communities. Our empirical analysis finds some support for the neoclassical position that wage arrears reflect adjustment to negative …
Job Reallocation And Productivity Growth Under Alternative Economic Systems And Policies: Evidence From The Soviet Transition, J. David Brown, John S. Earle
Job Reallocation And Productivity Growth Under Alternative Economic Systems And Policies: Evidence From The Soviet Transition, J. David Brown, John S. Earle
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
How do economic policies and institutions affect job reallocation processes and their consequences for productivity growth? This paper studies the extreme case of economic system change and alternative transitional policies in the former Soviet Republics of Russia and Ukraine. Exploiting annual industrial census data from 1985 to 2000, we find that Soviet Russia displayed job flow behavior quite different from market economies, with very low rates of job reallocation that bore little relationship to relative productivity across firms and sectors. Since liberalization began, the pace, heterogeneity, and productivity effects of job flows have increased substantially. The increases occurred more quickly …
How Late To Pay? Understanding Wage Arrears In Russia, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter
How Late To Pay? Understanding Wage Arrears In Russia, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We organize an empirical analysis of Russian wage arrears around hypotheses concerning factors that create incentives for firms to pay late and for workers to tolerate late payment, both reinforced by a prevalent environment of overdue wages. Our analysis draws upon nationally representative household panel data matched with employer data to show substantial interfirm variation with the probability of arrears positively related to firm age, size, state ownership, and declining performance. Estimation of a constrained multinomial logit model also reveals intrafirm, variation related to job tenure and small shareholdings in the firm. Workers tend to have higher arrears in rural …
Has Training Helped Employ Xiagang In China? A Tale From Two Cities, Benu Bidani, Chor-Ching Goh, Christopher J. O'Leary
Has Training Helped Employ Xiagang In China? A Tale From Two Cities, Benu Bidani, Chor-Ching Goh, Christopher J. O'Leary
Reports
This study evaluates the effectiveness of training programs for workers retrenched from Chinese state-owned enterprises in the cities of Shenyang and Wuhan. A variety of impact estimators were applied, however ordinary least squares (OLS) controlling for observable characteristic s was robust. We find that training dampens reemployment prospects in Shenyang but improves them in Wuhan. Training impact estimates computed by propensity score and log odds ratio matching imposing various support condition rules, yielded estimates very similar to those from the OLS. The estimates suggest that participation in training reduces the probability of being employed one year after participation by about …