Labor Economics Commons^™

Understanding Romania's Poverty: A Historical Overview Of Economics And Politics And Their Implications On Poverty Today, Benjamin Bucur

Senior Honors Theses

Romania is a country with a high-income economy that is experiencing considerable growth following its economic reforms of earlier decades. With growth, tendencies for an unequal society are prevalent. Therefore, appropriate economic policies that are specifically targeted toward bottlenecks are essential. This thesis seeks to outline the major types of poverty in Romania while also offering actionable entrepreneurial and educational insights that practically combat poverty at its roots.

Dampak Pinjaman Mikro Terhadap Kesejahteraan Rumah Tangga Perempuan Pengusaha Mikro Dan Kecil, Dewi Ratna Sjari M, Bonar M. Sinaga, Nunung Kusnadi, Yusman Syaukat

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

This study aims to examine how credit lending can improve MSEs performance, its impact on women micro and small entrepreneurs (PPMK) household welfare, and the determinants of their disinterest in subsidised loans. Using a sample of 82 PPMK households in Depok City and Bogor Regency with the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method, the results showed loans could boost business income. Still, the government’s credit with low-interest rates is not the primary choice due to limited knowledge, an obligation for collateral, and religious issues such as usury. This study also shows government credit assistance can improve the welfare of MSE households.

Inaccessible Interpolated Imagery: How Coffee Farmers In The State Of Chiapas Might Access Political Economic Opportunity Through Representation, Paolo Fiann Bicchieri

Master's Theses

Here is a useful parable to boil down the idea of this project and set the tone: when one goes to the bar to tell a story about a fight at the bar, they would never venture to place themselves as the hero of the brawl, taking out three drunkards in a single punch, unless they were really in the bar, at that time, fighting a good fight. One would never do this as the bartender, locals, and regulars would all know if this were the case or not. Yet transnational corporations, governments, and even consumers do this all the …

Are Small Businesses The Framework For A Successful U.S. Economy?, Carson Clevenger

Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis will investigate the impact of small businesses on the United States’ economy. I will be assessing several impact areas including gross domestic product, employment, and local economy contribution. This thesis will cover a study from the time periods of 1998-2014 of the gross domestic product and employment levels and will use numbers from the years of 2018- present for other impact areas. Furthermore, I will be analyzing certain sectors of the economy, comparing small businesses contribution to corporate contribution, in order to discuss if small businesses are necessary for our country’s successful economy.

Forced Labor In Hong Kong, Kylan Rutherford

Marriott Student Review

Domestic workers are among the most exploited groups, composing 24% of the estimated 45.8 million forced laborers worldwide. The market for domestic workers has expanded especially rapidly in the Asia-Pacific region; in Hong Kong alone, there are currently 360,000 domestic workers—about 10% of Hong Kong’s workforce—mostly originating from the Philippines and Indonesia (Hincks, 2017). 94% of these workers show signs of exploitation or forced labor (Kang, 2017). The nature of their work in a foreign country limits their access to government protection, forces them to comply with illegally high recruitment fees, and can push them to submit to abuse in …

Gdp And Refugees: An Economic Argument For Accepting Refugees, Michael Jarman

Marriott Student Review

This paper examines both the costs and benefits associated with accepting refugees and purports to show that accepting refugees is economically beneficial; increasing GDP in the long run. There is a substantial cost associated with accepting and sustaining refugees, both in providing necessities and in the impact that refugees have on local job markets. However, longitudinal data pulled from Denmark, Germany, and Turkey has shown that local markets do recover from the initial shock. Over time as refugees integrate into their host communities, they provide dividends in the form of increasing demand, greater mobility and wage increases for locals, and …

Entrepreneurship Education Empowers Youth To Change Their Lives, Marianna Brashear, Jason Riddle

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) aims at equipping Title 1 schools with free, hands-on, engaging materials that any teacher can facilitate either individually or in a classroom setting with no background in entrepreneurship necessary. These versatile lessons, courses, and workshops teach the entrepreneurial mindset optimizing opportunities for grades 8-12 students no matter which life/career path they choose.

Unbundling Freedom In The Sharing Economy, Deepa Das Acevedo

Faculty Articles

Courts and scholars point to the sharing economy as proof that our labor and employment infrastructure is obsolete because it rests on a narrow and outmoded idea that only workers subjected to direct, personalized control by their employers need work-related protections and benefits. Since they diagnose the problem as being our system’s emphasis on control, these critics have long called for reducing or eliminating the primacy of the “control test” in classifying workers as either protected employees or unprotected independent contractors. Despite these persistent criticisms, however, the concept of control has been remarkably sticky in scholarly and judicial circles.

This …

Vocational Training Programs And Youth Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence From Nepal, S Chakravarty, M Lundberg, Plamen Nikolov, J Zenker

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Lack of skills is arguably one of the most important determinants of high levels of unemployment and poverty. In response, policymakers often initiate vocational training programs in efforts to enhance skill formation among the youth. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we examine a large youth training intervention in Nepal. We find, twelve months after the start of the training program, that the intervention generated an increase in non-farm employment of 10 percentage points (ITT estimates) and up to 31 percentage points for program compliers (LATE estimates). We also detect sizable gains in monthly earnings largely driven by women who start self-employment …

In Brownsville, A Struggle For Revitalization Without Displacement, Katherine Warren

Capstones

As many parts of Brooklyn buzz with a startling rate of economic resurgence, Brownsville seems like a neighborhood left behind.

Struggling with poverty, poor health statistics, unemployment and high crime rates, and with the highest concentration of public housing in the city, it has not seen the same commercial and real estate revival as Williamsburg, Bushwick, Crown Heights and other areas of Brooklyn.

“In Brownsville, which has had challenges battling negative perceptions of this community, most of the residents are lower income and investors in the past have deemed this community as not being as good as an investment as …

Preventative Policy Measures To Tackle Undeclared Work In Croatia, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Sewing Garments, Sowing Lives: Two Generations Of Migrant Workers' Back And Forth To The Chinese Coast, Alice Tzou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Migrant workers in China have been at the center of popular news media and scholarly attention for three decades, since they started to migrate to work in factories on the coast in the post-1978 Economic Reform era. As western and central China has developed and work opportunities have arisen in these migrant-sending regions, internal migrants have started to return home. Push and pull factors of internal migration have been reversed. Poverty and lack of job opportunities used to be the push factors; they are now replaced by new push factors—long hours of work and long-distance travel to and from the …

Essays In Entrepreneurship, Innovation And Labor, Andres Gonzalo Hincapie Norena

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I explore the role of experimentation on the career choices of individuals deciding whether to be paid employees or entrepreneurs, and on the decisions of consumers deciding what medical treatment to buy. In the labor market, experimentation entails the accumulation of information that allows individuals to improve their occupational choices. In the product market, experimentation entails discovering the quality of new products and it may have an effect on the evolution of technology: less experimentation by individuals may slow down the process of innovation. I start in Chapter 2 with the observation that most individuals do not start a business …

Democracy Ends Here: U.S. Collective Bargaining Decline And An Alternative Policy Approach To Business Ownership, Sara Estep

Senior Honors Projects

In the United States, it seems that we cannot talk about democracy without discussing capitalism and vice versa. However, as soon as we step into work these ideals are simply thrown out the door. If we seek to govern our country democratically, should we also not have a democratic governance structure in our day to day workplaces? Unions have existed in the United States for over 150 years, but as the types of jobs that make up our economy and the demographics of the labor force have changed dramatically, the basic concept of the union has remained static. In turn, …

Women’S Work: Labor Market Outcomes And Female Entrepreneurship In Ghana, Loretta Agyemang

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

This paper is an investigation of female entrepreneurship in Ghana. It seeks to answer the following question: Why are Ghanaian women so heavily concentrated in microenterprise in the informal economy? The literature review explores labor market trends for women on three different scales including an overview of developing countries, Sub-Saharan Africa regional, and Ghana-specific analysis. After exploring issues women face in formal employment, the study delves into business operations of informal, urban-based market participants by analyzing data pertaining to Ghanaian microenterprise. Additionally, the paper details the experiences and views of female entrepreneurs through in-depth interviews and participant observations with thirty …

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, …

Designing Survey Methods To Evaluate The Undeclared Economy: A Review Of The Options, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

This Working Paper is part of the GREY project which is developing capacities and capabilities in tackling undeclared work. In this Working Paper, the various options available to researchers when designing surveys to tackle undeclared work are evaluated. These issues include the unit of analysis used, the data collection methodology, an array of questionnaire design issues (including the reference period, whether to define the phenomenon for participants, a direct versus gradual approach to sensitive issues, whether to do a supply- and/or demand-side survey; whether to examine the relationship between purchasers and sellers, how to discourage social desirability bias), sample size, …

Tackling The Undeclared Economy In Fyr Macedonia: A Baseline Assessment, Rositsa Dzhekova, Josip Franic, Lyubo Mishkov, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

This report provides a detailed review of available evidence on the extent and nature of the undeclared economy in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), as well as on the institutional actors involved in tackling the phenomenon and their policy approach and measures used.

Extent and nature of the undeclared economy

Some widely cited international measurements that cover FYROM find that the share of its undeclared economy is larger than in all EU Member States, estimated at 35% of GDP in 2007 (Schneider et al, 2010). Data from the most recent national Labour Force Survey suggests that in 2012 …

Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Why are most capitalist enterprises of any size organized as authoritarian bureaucracies rather than incorporating genuine employee participation that would give the workers real authority? Even firms with employee participation programs leave virtually all decision-making power in the hands of management. The standard answer is that hierarchy is more economically efficient than any sort of genuine participation, so that participatory firms would be less productive and lose out to more traditional competitors. This answer is indefensible. After surveying the history, legal status, and varieties of employee participation, I examine and reject as question-begging the argument that the rarity of genuine …

Tackling Undeclared Work In Croatia, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.

The Shadow Economy, Colin C. Williams, Friedrich Schneider

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.

Tackling Undeclared Work In Montenegro, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.

Tackling Undeclared Work In Turkey, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.

Tackling Undeclared Work In Iceland, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.

Tackling Undeclared Work In Croatia And Four Eu Candidate Countries, Colin C. Williams, Marijana Baric, Piet Renooy

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.

Summary Report: The State Of Black Entrepreneurship In The United States: Education, Labor Activity, And Access To Capital, Rebecca Tekula, Mary Tracy

Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship

No abstract provided.

Wage-Vacancy Contracts And Coordination Frictions, Nicolas L. Jacquet, Serene Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider a directed search model with risk-averse workers and risk-neutral entrepreneurs who can set up firms that post wage-vacancy contracts, i.e., contracts where firms can make payments to more than one applicant, and where the payments can be different for each applicant and be contingent on the number of applicants. We establish that the type of contracts the literature focuses on are not offered if firms can post wage-vacancy contracts. We show that there exists an equilibrium satisfying a Monotonic Expected Utility property which is efficient. Furthermore, we investigate the role of wage-vacancy contracts on welfare and competition.

Employment Growth From Public Support Of Innovation In Small Firms, Albert N. Link, John T. Scott

Upjohn Press

Link and Scott provide a statistical assessment of the employment growth associated with public support of R&D in small, entrepreneurial firms through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

Explaining The Persistence Of The Informal Economy In Central And Eastern Europe: Some Lessons From Moscow, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

To evaluate critically the competing explanations for the persistence of the informal economy that variously represent this sphere as a residue, by-product, alternative and/or complement to the formal economy, this paper reports a survey of livelihood practices in 313 Moscow households. The finding is that the majority of households primarily depend on informal work to secure their livelihood and that although each and every theorisation is wholly valid with regard to particular types of informal work and/or specific population groups, no one articulation fully captures the diverse nature and multiple meanings of the informal economy in contemporary Moscow. The paper …

Theorizing The Self-Service Economy: A Case Study Of Do-It-Yourself (Diy) Activity, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Recently, it has become increasingly recognised that self-servicing is a growing rather than declining phenomenon. To explain this, a range of competing theories have emerged which variously portray those engaged in self-servicing either as rational economic actors, dupes, seekers of self-identity, or simply doing so out of necessity or choice. This paper evaluates critically the validity of these rival explanations. To do this, the extent of, and reasons for, self-servicing in the domestic realm is empirically evaluated through an internet survey of 5,500 people living in the city of Sheffield in England. This resulted in 418 valid responses (a 7.6 …