Labor Economics Commons^™

The Future Of State And Local Economic Development Policy: What Research Is Needed?, Timothy J. Bartik

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Vocational Rehabilitation (Vr) Approaches To Job Development, Catherine Ipsen, University Of Montana Rural Institute

Employment

Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) agencies provide a range of services to help people with disabilities become employed. How services are delivered, however, depends on several factors including client interests and abilities as well as economic opportunities within the local community. For better or worse, rural and urban clients face vastly different employment landscapes. For instance, USDA Economic Resource Service data indicate that rural people earn lower wages and experience lower employment rates (ERS, 2012). Rural counties also have fewer full-time jobs per capita, particularly in skilled labor sectors (ERS, 2012; Parker, 2003). Urban areas have higher employment rates in professional and …

Information And Employee Evaluation: Evidence From A Randomized Intervention In Public Schools, Jonah E. Rockoff, Douglas O. Staiger, Thomas J. Kane, Eric S. Taylor

Dartmouth Scholarship

We examine how employers learn about worker productivity in a randomized pilot experiment which provided objective estimates of teacher performance to school principals. We test several hypotheses that support a simple Bayesian learning model with imperfect information. First, the correlation between performance estimates and prior beliefs rises with more precise objective estimates and more precise subjective priors. Second, new information exerts greater influence on posterior beliefs when it is more precise and when priors are less precise. Employer learning affects job separation and productivity in schools, increasing turnover for teachers with low performance estimates and producing small test score improvements. …

Pre- And Post- Wage Differences Of Trade Adjustment Assistance Job Training Participants In Arkansas, Kimberley Hall Gordon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A number of costs are associated with the implementation of trade agreements not the least of which is the cost to the American workforce. The information age ushered in an era of globalization unlike anything the world economy had experienced before. As countries raced forward to dominate emerging markets and grow market share, millions of American workers were left in the wake. A remedy to the plight of the dislocated worker was found in trade adjustment assistance, specifically in job training benefits.

This study examined the wage differences experienced by Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) job training participants served through the …

A Methodology For Setting State And Local Regression-Adjusted Performance Targets For Workforce Investment Act Programs, Randall W. Eberts, Wei-Jang Huang, Jing Cai

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Beginning with PY2009, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA) adopted a regression-adjusted approach for setting national targets for several federal workforce development programs, including WIA Adult, Dislocated Worker, and Youth programs. Prior to that time, national targets were based on past performance and the desire to encourage continuous improvement in the workforce programs. The continuous improvement approach typically increased target levels from year to year without a systematic way of accounting for changes in economic conditions or the ability to meet previous targets. The onset of the 2007–2009 recession drew into question this practice, and the …

Return On Investment In Workforce Development Programs, Kevin Hollenbeck

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Under more and more fiscal scrutiny because of shrinking state and local budgets, workforce development programs are being asked to estimate their return on investment (ROI). This paper introduces basic concepts of ROI in workforce development programs. It distinguishes ROIs estimated for workforce programs from those that are estimated for financial investments or capital projects. The paper furthermore exposits the basic ingredients of an ROI study—identification of the treatment and time periods of analysis, identification of the net impacts of the program, and identification of net costs. Finally, the paper presents results from the estimation of the ROI for postsecondary …

The Labor Supply And Welfare Effects Of Early Access To Medicare Through Social Security Disability Insurance, Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) beneficiaries receive a cash benefit and become eligible for health insurance from Medicare two years after their enrollment. Disabled workers who leave the labor force typically lose health insurance from their employers, and they face significant medical expenditure risk as a result of their disability. Therefore, access to Medicare makes SSDI an especially attractive alternative to remaining employed for workers with disabilities. My research is the first to analyze the importance of medical expenditure risk and Medicare in analysis of SSDI, and it addresses the following questions: (1) How does access to Medicare via SSDI …

Blood, Organs And Other Tissues For Sale: Diamela Eltit's Impuesto A La Carne And The Afterwards Of The Neoliberal Development In Latin America., Wanda I. Ocasio- Rivera

Hispanic Studies Publications

Abstract

Blood, organs and other tissues for sale: Diamela Eltit's Impuesto a la carne and the afterwards of the neoliberal development in Latin America.

As Marx elaborated in Capital: Volume I at the moment human labour is sold, the subject participates in an ominous plot where she/he becomes a commodity. In a capitalist mode of production, the subject’s alienation from his/her humanity occurs because the individuals can only express labor through a privately-owned system of production in which he/she is an instrument, an object. This dehumanization process submits the subject under the exchange transactions of the market, where labor value …

Brains Over Brawn: Are There Lower Levels Of Wage Discrimination Between The Sexes In Industries That Require Less Physical Strength And More Cognitive Skill?, Jessica Baier

Award Winning Economics Papers

With the advent of technological innovations, cognitive abilities have become increasingly valued in the workplace, while physical strength, an important requirement for manual labor, has become less important. One might expect, therefore, the gender wage gap to be lower in occupations that require more cognitive skills, as men’s comparative advantage should be lower in those industries. Using 2010 individual data from the PUMS, I test whether the gender wage gap varies by industry or occupation, grouped according to skill level. I decompose the gaps using the Oaxaca decomposition, and find that, while there is not a clear pattern of wage …

Understanding Child Work And Child Labor In The 21st Century: A Focus On Malawi And Tanzania, Courage Chikomborero Mudzongo

Faculty Publications - Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) Program

Child labor is on the increase and this is exacerbating an already desperate situation in Africa. Past research has focused on which levels of determinants are most effective in influencing the decision on children’s activities. Using the Malawi Integrated Household Survey and the Tanzania National Panel Survey, this research seeks to unearth the factors that influence the number of hours that child workers and laborers work. I can conclude that the greatest degrees of change are at the individual level as child’s enrollment status is significant for child workers from Malawi and Tanzania and laborers from Tanzania. At the community …

Estimating The Economic Impact Of Garvan Woodland Gardens, Katherin A. Deck, Viktoria Riiman

Publications and Presentations

The study is organized as follows. First, the facilities and programs at Garvan Woodland Gardens are described in detail. Next, information on visitor and member counts, employment and volunteers, and financial information from the Gardens are provided. Finally, the results of the economic impact analysis from the IMPLAN input‐output model are presented for employment, value‐added, and output impacts on the Hot Springs area and the state of Arkansas. The detailed employment and output impacts by industry are available in the Appendix. Estimated employment impacts are compared to the county and state employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to …

Vocational Rehabilitation Service Delivery Using Telecommunication, Rebecca Goe, Catherine Ipsen, University Of Montana Rural Institute

Employment

Telecommunication offers a low cost solution to increasing client and counselor contact during the vocational rehabilitation (VR) process, particularly for clients at a distance from the VR office. Despite the advantage telecommunication provides, however, counselors report using email with fewer rural as compared to urban clients (Ipsen, Rigles, Arnold, & Seekins, 2012). In part, this may relate to counselor perceptions that rural clients have less Internet access than their urban counterparts (Ipsen et al., 2012). This disparity may be diminishing, however. Government incentives and public access in libraries and community centers are improving telecommunication infrastructure across the country, especially in …

Implementation Of The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act: Workforce Development And Unemployment Insurance Provisions, Burt S. Barnow, Jing Cai, Yvette Chocolaad, Randall W. Eberts, Richard A. Hobbie, Joyce Kaiser, Tara Smith, John Trutko, Wayne Vroman, Stephen A. Wandner

External Papers and Reports

No abstract provided.

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.

Part-Time And Short Hours In Retail In The United States, Canada, And Mexico: How Institutions Matter, Françoise Carré, Chris Tilly

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Data Analysis Of The Implementation Of The Recovery Act: Workforce Development And Unemployment Insurance Provisions, Randall W. Eberts, Stephen A. Wandner

Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Spillover Effects Of Metro Academic R&D On Non-Metro Labor Market Conditions, Pedro J. Sarsama, Subhra Baran Saha

Undergraduate Research Posters 2012

Research regarding spillover effects of academic innovation tends to focus on the effects innovation from metro areas on metro area labor markets. The results suggest that innovation in big cities generates migration to metros from non metros, thereby reducing available labor supply. As a result metro innovation reduces non metro employment but increase earning for people who reside in non metros. We have evidence that higher innovation in metros increase human capital in non metro areas

Vocational Rehabilitation (Vr) Outreach To Rural Businesses, Rebecca Goe, University Of Montana Rural Institute

Employment

In the 1990s, new regulations within the Americans with Disabilitites Act (ADA) and concern over the changing labor market led rehabilitation experts to advocate for greater attention to employer needs within the job development process. (Gillbride & Stensrud, 1992). The resulting model is often called the dual customer approach becuase it positions both employers and people with disabilities as vocational rehabilitation (VR) customers. The goals of the dual customer approach were discribed in the 32nd Institute of Rehabilitation Issues (IRI) outlining the steps for developing a national VR business network (Anderson et al., 2006). These steps included delivering expertise and …

The Educated Middle Class, Their Economics Prospects, And The Arab Spring, Davin Chor, Filipe R. Campante

Research Collection School Of Economics

The recent uprisings in the Arab World carry a broader lesson, highlighting the importance of sustaining an economy that provides sufficient job opportunities for an increasingly educated and skilled middle class.

The State Of Ohio's Steel Industry, Edward W. Hill, Iryna Lendel, Fran Stewart

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

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.

Essays In Labor Economics, Adam Blott

All Dissertations

The three chapters of this dissertation are closely related to one another and pertain to work flexibility. The first chapter uses an occupational choice model to estimate how workers value schedule flexibility in terms of other on the job characteristics. The second chapter also estimates how workers value flexibility using a hedonic wage approach. This method provides an estimate of how workers value schedule flexibility in terms of real wages. In the third chapter I estimate the impact of family structure on the probability that men choose a flexible job.
Flexible work schedules are becoming an increasingly important characteristic for …

An Analysis Of The Employment Effects Of The Washington High Technology Business And Occupation (B&O) Tax Credit: Technical Report, Timothy J. Bartik, Kevin Hollenbeck

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper estimates the effects of an R&D tax credit in the state of Washington on job creation. The research uses micro-data on the job creation and tax credits received by individual firms in the state of Washington from 2004 to 2009. We correct for the endogeneity of R&D tax credits received by individual firms by using instrumental variables based in part on national industry factor shares for R&D. We estimate that this tax credit created jobs, but at a high cost. The cost per job-year created is estimated to be between $40,000 and $50,000. The credit was so high …

[Unemployment Insurance: The Path Back To Work]: Testimony Before The Senate Finance Committee, Stephen A. Wandner

Testimonies

No abstract provided.

An Alternative To Temporary Staffing: Considerations For Workforce Practitioners, Linda Kato, Françoise Carré, Laura E. Johnson, Deena Schwartz

Center for Social Policy Publications

As the national economy inches toward recovery, risk-averse employers are increasingly turning to temporary workers to fill their hiring gaps. In fact, the temporary staffing industry has been a fixture of the US economy for decades. But the industry added a striking 557,000 jobs from June 2009 to November 2011 — more than half of the jobs created during that period. Growth is likely to continue: A 2011 McKinsey survey of 2,000 firms of differing sizes and across various sectors found that more than a third foresaw their companies increasing their use of temporary workers over the next five years. …

Neoliberalism, Piven And Cloward's Bargaining Theory, And Wages In The United States, 1965-2006, Thomas W. Volscho

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The political economy of the United States during the last thirty years has been described as neoliberal. Part of the neoliberal turn involves reducing or eliminating income support programs such as AFDC/TANF, waging war against organized labor, and increasingly conservative (i.e., neoliberal) public policies. Following an analysis by Lewis (2001) which showed that wages increased in response to higher average monthly AFDC payments, I update and expand this test of Piven and Cloward's bargaining power theory of wages by looking at other factors which may influence worker bargaining power: unions, interest rates, policy liberalism, and economic growth. I use time-series …

Discrimination And The Effects Of Drug Testing On Black Employment, Abigail Wozniak

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Nearly half of U.S. employers test job applicants and workers for drugs. I use variation in the timing and nature of drug testing regulation to study discrimination against blacks related to perceived drug use. Black employment in the testing sector is suppressed in the absence of testing, consistent with ex ante discrimination on the basis of drug use perceptions. Adoption of pro-testing legislation increases black employment in the testing sector by 7–30 percent and relative wages by 1.4–13.0 percent, with the largest shifts among low skilled black men. Results suggest that employers substitute white women for blacks in the absence …

Immigrants, Medicaid, And The Deficit Reduction Act, Nicholas T. Fritsch

Undergraduate Economic Review

This study examines the effects of the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) on immigrant Medicaid participation using data from the 2005 and 2007 March supplements of the Current Population Survey. The DRA made changes to Medicaid coverage laws by requiring proof of citizenship for eligibility rather than a sworn statement, as was the case prior to the DRA, thus reducing the non-citizen/non-legal permanent resident use of Medicaid. A difference-in-difference methodology is used, and the research finds that the laws were effective in decreasing non-citizen use of Medicaid relative to citizens, though there is a possibility of “chilling effects” on eligible non-citizens.

Public Pension Crisis And Investment Risk Taking: Underfunding, Fiscal Constraints, Public Accounting, And Policy Implications, Nancy Mohan, Ting Zhang

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

Public pension funds that cover retirement benefits for almost 20 million active or retired employees have been significantly underfunded. An important, though largely overlooked, issue related to pension underfunding is the excessive investment risk levels assumed by public plans. Our analysis suggests government accounting standards strongly affect public fund investment risk, as higher return assumptions (used to discount pension liabilities) are associated with higher investment risk. Public funds undertake more risk if they are underfunded and have lower investment returns in previous years, consistent with the risk transfer hypothesis. Furthermore, pension funds in states facing fiscal constraints allocate more assets …

Revisiting The Economic Impact Of The Natural Gas Activity In The Fayetteville Shale: 2008-2012, Katherine A. Deck, Viktoria Riiman

Publications and Presentations

In 2008, the Center for Business and Economic Research released a study that estimated the economic impact of projected Fayetteville Shale activities from 2008 to 2012. This updated report revisits the assumptions of the initial study, reviews the impact of actual activities in the Fayetteville Shale from 2008 to 2011, and delivers some insights into projected impacts for 2012.

Exploration and production of natural gas in the Fayetteville Shale area generates direct effects from drilling wells and causes the need for supporting activities such as construction, transportation, storage, and distribution. Moreover, investments made by oil and gas companies produce indirect …