Labor Economics Commons^™

The Impact Of Sexual Orientation And Sexual Behavior On Wages, Curtis Lowe

Theses and Dissertations

On General Social Survey data from 2008–2018, I estimate the impact of sexual orientation on wages by addressing mismeasurement in sexual orientation that causes the estimates to attenuate towards zero. I use interval regression to estimate wages on reported sexual orientation. I then identify consistent reports of sexual orientation and sexual behavior to estimate wage gaps between individuals whose reported sexual orientation is consistent with their behavior. Removing inconsistent reports reduces the amount of attenuation that biases the estimates. Interacting sexual orientation and sexual behavior improves the wage gap estimates slightly and increases the value in absolute terms, suggesting that …

Improving American Men's Quality Of Life By Economically Empowering American Women, Margot Rosenblatt

Scripps Senior Theses

In this paper, I explore the relationship between women’s economic empowerment and men’s quality of life in the United States. I created an index of women’s economic empowerment based on county-level data on labor force participation rates, rates of pay, teen birth rates, and families in which a woman is the primary income earner. I then created an index of men’s quality of life based on financial, physical, and mental health indicators. Adjusting for income, dominant industry type, age, population density, race variables, and environmental factors, I found a statistically significant positive correlation between women’s economic empowerment and men’s quality …

Yearly Changes In Education Expenditure And Changes In Student Performance, Dale A. Manzo

Undergraduate Economic Review

Using data from the state of Florida in the 2000s, we dispute the findings of the Coleman report. We find that there is a positive relationship between changes in expenditure per pupil and changes in academic performance. This study takes advantage of changes in expenditure resulting from the Great Recession to formulate a quasi-experimental analysis of the relationship between expenditure per pupil and academic performance. Our conclusion is consistent with the theory of decreasing marginal returns to expenditure on education.

Essays On Labor Economics, Gabriel Movsesyan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first chapter, I evaluate the wage impacts from exogenous and endogenous peer effects within different metropolitan areas. I construct comparison groups for workers within the same industry and Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA) residence based on support from existing literature on social networks, and estimate peer and network effects in a spatial auto-regressive model with a network structure that in- corporates group fixed effects. Inclusion of these effects reveals that both observed and unobserved factors within each network have significant effects on individual outcomes. This is the first attempt to estimate the social effects on wages using the …

Labor Market Monopsony And Wage Inequality: Evidence From Online Labor Market Vacancies, Samuel I. Thorpe

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper estimates the effects of employer labor market power on wage inequality in the United States. I find that inequality as measured by interdecile range is 23.7% higher in perfectly monopsonistic labor markets than in perfectly competitive markets, even when controlling for commuting zone and occupation fixed effects. I also decompose these results into 50/10 and 90/50 ratios, finding much larger impacts on inequality among low earners. These results suggest that monopsony power has significant and policy-relevant impacts on wage inequality, and particularly harms the lowest earning subsets of the labor force.

Settling In: The Consequences Of Legal Origins And Institutional Variety For Immigrant Labor Market Integration In Oecd Countries, Jennifer Kuklenski

Dissertations

Drawing upon theories of institutional variety, this research seeks to determine whether or not immigrant labor market outcomes are better in countries with 1) liberal market economies and deregulated labor markets; and 2) countries with supply-driven immigration systems. Non-parametric Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Mann-Whitney U tests are combined with parametric time series, GLS regression analysis of panel data to estimate the impact and significance of legal origins (common versus civil law systems) and merit-based immigration policy on 1) labor market participation; 2) unemployment; and 3) employment by educational attainment in 28 OECD countries between the years 2001-2016. The analysis controls for other …

Feminización De Las Ocupaciones Y Diferencias Salariales Por Género Para Colombia Urbana: 2008-2016, Maria Camila Palacios Riaño

Economía

Evidencia empírica sugiere que, como resultado de la segregación ocupacional en la brecha salarial de género, las ocupaciones mayoritariamente desarrolladas por mujeres ofrecen salarios más bajos para ambos sexos. La concentración constante en grupos de trabajo con salarios bajos perpetúa al mismo tiempo el fenómeno de segregación y la desventaja salarial por género. El presente trabajo sigue la metodología utilizada por Isaza Castro (2013), donde se realiza una clasificación de las ocupaciones para el caso colombiano y una estimación de ecuaciones de salarios para hombres y mujeres controlando por la proporción de mujeres existente al interior de cada ocupación como …

Perón And The Argentine Paradox: An Investigation Into An Economic Mystery, Antonio Luis Gansley-Ortiz

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Essays On The Well-Being Of An Aging Population, Alice Zulkarnain

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three essays that examine health and labor issues among the middle aged and elderly.

Chapter 1. A Delayed Retirement Policy and Male Labor Supply: Evidence from the Entire Dutch Population

This chapter examines the labor supply effects of a national delayed retirement policy introduced in the Netherlands in 2009. The policy offers a reduction in taxes on labor income for each year after the age of 62 in which a person worked. I estimate the average effect of the policy on male labor supply as well as its responsiveness to the size of the incentive. Comparing …

Essays In Health Economics, Aigbokhai Unuigbe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is motivated by changes in health and labor policies of the United States that have occurred over the last two decades. It examines how these policies as well as public programs affect behavior and outcomes. These programs and policies have the potential to impact behavior directly at the individual level and could also have indirect effects at the household level. In addition, the effects on healthcare use and health status are also examined. This dissertation consists of three chapters.

The first chapter looks at the effect of changes in Medicaid policy on legal immigrant parents in the United …

The Effects Of Individual And Employer Characteristics On Hourly Employee Retention: An Empirical Study, Robert Allen Cobb

Masters Theses

This paper argues that employee tenure length is a function of not only firm specific characteristics and policies, but also individual characteristics, which can be identified and used in the pre-employment selection process. The information learned from this study can help hiring managers in identifying potentially high-production workers, by looking at several key factors that can be measured in a pre-employment application. This paper quantifies how the tenure length of employees can be influenced by not only the characteristics of the applicant, but also by decisions made by the employer. Some of these decisions include the starting wage, the number …

The Job Of Human Capital: What Occupational Data Reveal About Skill Sets, Economic Growth And Regional Competitiveness, Lillian Frances Stewart

ETD Archive

A region's workforce has been described as its greatest asset. Guided by human capital theory and new growth theory, regions have pursued economic development policies to increase the number of college-educated workers and expand the pool of STEM -- science, technology, engineering, and math -- talent. Academic literature and policy interventions have focused on a region's human capital in terms of educational attainment instead of a more fine-grained definition of human capital based on skills and competencies. This dissertation integrates economic and business theory and combines three federal databases to explore regional human capital assets. Findings suggest that policymakers may …

Alienation In Capitalism: Rediscovering Fulfillment, Gregory Lee Carter

Honors Theses and Capstones

Many Americans are pessimistic about their country's medium or long-term economic outlook. A century ago, Big Business was born as an economic force, but it has powerfully infiltrated the realm of politics now. The corporate scramble for natural resources has caused global disharmony and domestic economic conflict in the U.S. The capitalist system, which many have come to realize is unsustainable and oppressive, has thus come to fulfill some of the predictions made by earlier critics from Kierkegaard, Rousseau, to Marx. Each believed that a society which is forced to accommodate an oppressive system will inherently display alienation. That …

Rural Non-Farm Employment And Rural Transformation In India, D Narasimha Reddy, A Amarender Reddy, Nagaraj N, Bantilan Mcs

A Amarender Reddy

This study attempts to assess the changing structure of rural production and employment in the last two decades and its implications on rural labor market. The rural labor market has undergone profound structural transformation with labor moving from agriculture towards non-agricultural activities. Currently, non-farm sector is no longer a residual sector, but an emerging driver of rural development and transformation, contributing 65% to the rural Net Domestic Product in 2010. There has been an absolute decline in labor force in recent times with a decline in agriculture employment for both male and female laborers and this decline in female workforce …

Trends In Rural Wage Rates: Whether India Reached Lewis Turning Point, A Amarender Reddy

A Amarender Reddy

After liberalisation of Indian economy in early 1990s, India’s GDP growth rates have been picked up and there is a sign of speeding up of structural transformation in Indian economy with the share of agriculture in GDP reduced to 12%. However, still about 50% of the labor force depends on agriculture, which shows that the structural transformation in employment is slower and productivity differences between agriculture and non-agricultural sector is growing. Some studies that the high economic growth has not been able to translate itself into increase in the wages and earnings of the workforce. Some other studies find that …

State Level Earned Income Tax Credit’S Effects On Race And Age: An Effective Poverty Reduction Policy, Anthony J. Barone

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I analyze the effectiveness of state level Earned Income Tax Credit programs on improving of poverty levels. I conducted this analysis for the years 1991 through 2011 using a panel data model with fixed effects. The main independent variables of interest were the state and federal EITC rates, minimum wage, gross state product, population, and unemployment all by state. I determined increases to the state EITC rates provided only a slight decrease to both the overall white below-poverty population and the corresponding white childhood population under 18, while both the overall and the under-18 black population for …

Essays On Informal Labor Markets, Javier Cano Urbina

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis consists of three related papers. The first paper examines whether informal sector jobs are a source of training for young less-educated workers. Controlling for worker and job characteristics, it is found that in the early years of workers' careers in Mexico, wage growth in the informal sector is higher than in the formal sector. This result is consistent with general human capital investment on-the-job if the informal labor market is more competitive than the formal labor market due to frictions generated by labor regulations. These results motivate a deeper analysis of the informal labor market which is presented …

A Theory Of Socioeconomic Disparities In Health, Titus Galama

Titus Galama

Detailed understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the substantial socioeconomic disparities in health is necessary to design policies effective in reducing those disparities. This requires a unifying theory of socioeconomic status and health, which is currently absent. This thesis in economics aims to develop, in several steps, a theoretical framework of disparities in health by socioeconomic status over the life cycle, using economic principles and founded in health capital theory. The first part of this thesis addresses several serious technical issues with life-cycle models of health, medical care, and socioeconomic status. The second part presents the theoretical framework.

Passive Discrimination: When Does It Make Sense To Pay Too Little?, Jonah B. Gelbach, Jonathan Klick, Lesley Wexler

All Faculty Scholarship

Economists have long recognized employers’ ability to construct benefits packages to induce workers to sort themselves into and out of jobs. For instance, to encourage applications from individuals with a highly valued but largely unobservable characteristic, such as patience, employers might offer benefits that patient individuals are likely to value more than other individuals. By offering a compensation package with highly valued benefits but a relatively low wage, employers will attract workers with the favored characteristic and discourage other individuals from applying for or accepting the job. While economic theory generally views this kind of self-selection in value neutral terms, …

Immigration Restriction As Redistributive Taxation: Working Women And The Costs Of Protectionism In The Labor Market, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, I argue that tax and transfer policies are more efficient than immigration restrictions as instruments for raising the after-tax incomes of the least skilled native workers. Policies to protect these native workers from immigrant competition in the labor market do no better at promoting distributive justice and are likely to impose a greater economic burden on natives in the country of immigration than the tax alternative. These immigration restrictions are especially costly given the disproportionate burden that they place on households with working women, which discourages female participation in the labor force. This burden runs contrary to …

Guest Workers And Justice In A Second-Best World, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay offers a defense of guest-worker programs and a critique of the objections raised by Michael Walzer and by other critics of such programs. Although critics commonly complain that guest workers are vulnerable to exploitation by employers, we can design guest-worker programs that minimize the risk of such exploitation. Ready access for relatively unskilled guest workers to citizenship and to public benefits, however, generates a fiscal burden for the public treasury. A right to equal treatment for aliens yields perverse results unless aliens are also entitled to equal concern when the host country decides whether to admit the alien …

The Decline And Rise Of Interstate Migration In The United States: Evidence From The Ipums, 1850-1990, Joshua L. Rosenbloom, William A. Sundstrom

Joshua L. Rosenbloom

We document long-run trends in interstate migration rates, using individual-level data from the U.S. Census for the period 1850–1990. Two measures of migration are calculated. The first considers an individual to have moved if she is residing in a state different from her state of birth. The second considers a family to have moved if it is residing in a state different from the state of birth of one of its young children, allowing us to estimate the timing of moves more precisely. Overall migration propensities have followed a U-shaped trend since 1850, falling until around 1900 and then rising …

An Economic Analysis Of Occupational Diversification Among Households In Andhra Pradesh, A Amarender Reddy

A Amarender Reddy

The study examined occupational diversification among rural households in Andhra Pradesh. The specific objectives of the study are: (i) To examine the occupational structure of households in different regions of rural Andhra Pradesh (ii) To assess the level of unemployment, underemployment and poverty in different categories of households (iii) To find out various socio-economic factors affecting employment pattern in different regions and among households, and (iv) To suggest policy measures to reduce unemployment and underemployment. The study is based on National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) unit household data from its 50th and 55th rounds on employment and unemployment surveys for …

Liberal Ideals And Political Feasibility: Guest-Worker Programs As Second-Best Policies, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Critical Wage, Unemployment Duration, And Wage Expectations: The Case Of Chile, A. Studenmund, Sholeh Maani

A. H. Studenmund

This study tests the relevance of the job search model to understanding unemployment in developing countries by utilizing a 1982 data set describing unemployed men in Chile. The findings indicate that the model is relevant to a developing country: the job seekers studied based their critical wages on their perceptions of their own productivity, economic resources, and search costs, and they reduced their wage requirements as the duration of their unemployment increased. The authors also show, in the first direct test of this question, that the critical wage and the expected wage are determined jointly and that the expected wage …