Labor Economics Commons^™

Fdss Training Manual: Instructions For Using The Frontline Decision Support System, Christopher J. O'Leary, Kim Kornokovich, W.E. Upjohn Institute For Employment Research

Reports

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Trade On Wage Inequality : The Hong Kong Case, Lok Sang Ho, Xiangdong Wei, Wai Chung, Gary Wong

Centre for Public Policy Studies : CPPS Working Paper Series

The dramatic increase in the wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers observed in many developed countries has received much attention from economists in recent years. A similar rise of wage gap has now been observed for some newly developed economies, such as Hong Kong. However, few empirical studies have been carried out to explain the growing wage gap in these newly developed economies. This study uses the time series data to investigate the impact of increased outward processing trade with the Chinese Mainland on the wage inequality of Hong Kong. We found that there is a significant positive association …

Terms Of Trade And Unit Labor Costs In Trade Theories, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes:

• Terms of trade and unit labor costs in trade theories (2003, November 2) [Document].

Job Creation, Job Destruction, And International Competition, Michael W. Klein, Scott Schuh, Robert K. Triest

Upjohn Press

The authors present a picture of how the effects of international trade on employment in U.S. manufacturing industries vary widely. They explore the labor-market dynamics and adjustment costs associated with international factors, particularly the way fluctuations in exchange rates, overseas economic activity, and the altering of trade restrictions contribute to churning-the simultaneous job creation among some firms and job destruction among others.

Labor Standards In The United States And Canada, Richard N. Block, Ronald O. Clarke, Karen Roberts

Upjohn Press

Block, Roberts, and Clarke offer a method for comparing ten labor standards across political jurisdictions. They then apply this method to the United States and Canada, an exercise that allows them to settle the long-running dispute over whether or not Canada has higher standards than the U.S., and if so, to what degree.

Retirement And High Level Human Capital, Irving Gershenberg

Gerontology Institute Publications

Given that demographic trends in economically advanced industrial countries such as our own continue to shift toward increasingly older, formally retired populations, we need to find ways to keep more of this older retired population productive. Economists and others differ in their estimation regarding the ability and/or willingness on part of the retired to retain, let alone utilize the know-how, the human capital accumulated prior to retirement. This is as true for those who have spent their work life engaged in producing and communicating new ideas and synthesizing and diffusing what is known, those who have accumulated what I term …

Data Mining Mining Data: Msha Enforcement Efforts, Underground Coal Mine Safety, And New Health Policy Implications, Thomas J. Kniesner, John D. Leeth

Center for Policy Research

Studies of industrial safety regulations, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in particular, often find little effect on worker safety. Critics of the regulatory approach argue that safety standards have little to do with industrial injuries and defenders of the regulatory approach cite infrequent inspections and low fines for violating safety standards. We use recently assembled data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) concerning underground coal mine production, safety inspections, and workplace injuries to shed new light on the regulatory approach to workplace safety. Because all underground coal mines are inspected at least once per quarter, MSHA regulations …

Pollution Abatement Costs: Hurting Or Helping Productivity?, Jacqueline M. Volkman

University Avenue Undergraduate Journal of Economics

This paper analyzes the effect that regulatory inputs or expenditures for labor, materials, and capital have on productivity for three industries (blast furnaces and steel mills, alkalies and chlorine, and petroleum refining). Data is examined from 1973 to 1994 and the growth rate of total factor productivity (TFP) is considered. The pattern of pollution abatement expenditures for three media, water, air, and solid wastes, is also examined graphically. In addition, the measurement for TFP is adjusted to net out regulatory inputs for labor, materials, and capital. A comparison between the original and adjusted measurement of TFP is made for each …

Nonstandard Work In Developed Economies: Causes And Consequences, Susan N. Houseman Editor, Machiko Osawa Editor

Upjohn Press

This book reveals the considerable variation in the levels of growth in a broad set of nonstandard work arrangements while presenting a comprehensive view of how, as a result, the nature of the employment relationship is changing within and among countries. The international roster of economists, sociologists, and labor law experts who contributed draw on cross-country variations in economic conditions and institutional characteristics to explain why some arrangements have grown faster in some countries than in others and what this means for workers. By considering a broad array of nonstandard work arrangements in a number of economies, the authors provide …

Helping Working Families: The Earned Income Tax Credit, Saul D. Hoffman, Laurence S. Seidman

Upjohn Press

Hoffman and Seidman offer a thorough assessment of the EITC in which they analyze, evaluate, summarize, and critique the state of the program. They find that, overall, the EITC works well, and that it has earned its political popularity. Yet they also uncover several problem areas that they address with specific recommendations based on their analysis.

Income And Influence: Social Policy In Emerging Market Economies, Ethan B. Kapstein, Branko Milanovic

Upjohn Press

The authors study the connection between economic reform and social policy, and why such reforms failed to produce the tide needed to lift all boats in the transition economies of eastern and central Europe and of Asia.

Training That Works: Lessons From California's Employment Training Panel Program, Richard W. Moore, Daniel R. Blake, G. Michael Phillips, Daniel Mcconaughy

Upjohn Press

The authors provide an in-depth analysis of an incumbent worker training program funded through California's unemployment insurance taxes.

Bargaining For Competitiveness: Law, Research, And Case Studies, Richard N. Block Editor

Upjohn Press

This book offers an analysis of the relationship among collective bargaining, firm competitiveness, and employment protections and creation in the United States. The contributors provide an overview of the legal framework and the economic and industrial relations research on collective bargaining, competitiveness, and employment, then follow with four case studies that provide insights into the process of collective bargaining and its current status in the evolving U.S. labor-management system.

The Decline In Employment Of People With Disabilities: A Policy Puzzle, David C. Stapleton Editor, Richard V. Burkhauser Editor

Upjohn Press

The book begins with a documentation of the employment rate decline and ends by spelling out the implications of this decline for public policy. However, the bulk of the book provides a detailed examination of the various explanations for the puzzling decline in employment among the working-aged population with disabilities.

Workplace Education For Low-Wage Workers, Amanda L. Ahlstrand, Laurie J. Bassi, Daniel P. Mcmurrer

Upjohn Press

This study reports on employers' practices and decision-making procedures with regards to workplace education and training for low-wage workers.

The Labor Market Experience Of Workers With Disabilities: The Ada And Beyond, Julie L. Hotchkiss

Upjohn Press

This book focuses on the labor market provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It provides a comprehensive analysis of the current labor market experience of American workers with disabilities and an assessment of the impact the ADA has had on that experience.

Human Capital In The United States From 1975 To 2000: Patterns Of Growth And Utilization, Robert H. Haveman, Andrew Bershadker, Jonathan A. Schwabish

Upjohn Press

This study enhances the existing measures of the nation’s human capital and the extent to which that capital is utilized. Haveman, Bershadker, and Schwabish develop an indicator of the value of the human capital stock held by the nation’s working-age population called Earnings Capacity (EC), and use it to study the time trends in aggregate human capital in the United States and human capital per worker. They also use EC to evaluate utilization of the nation’s human capital stock, thereby demonstrating the usefulness of the EC indicator in measuring the size and strength of the U.S. economy.

Agglomeration, Labor Supply, And The Urban Rat Race, Stuart S. Rosenthal, William C. Strange

Center for Policy Research

This paper establishes the existence of a previously overlooked relationship between agglomeration and hours worked. Among non-professionals, hours worked decrease with the density of workers in the same occupation. Among professionals, a positive relationship is found. This relationship is twice as strong for the young as for the middle-aged. Moreover, young professional hours worked are shown to be especially sensitive to the presence of rivals. We show that these patterns are consistent with the selection of hard workers into cities and the high productivity of agglomerated labor. The behavior of young professionals is also consistent with the presence of keen …

Entrepreneurship And Economic Growth: The Proof Is In The Productivity, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Chihwa Kao

Center for Policy Research

Popular and policy discussions have focused extensively on "entrepreneurship." While entrepreneurship is often viewed from the perspective of the individual's benefits--an increase in standard of living, flexibility in hours, and so forth--much of the policy interest derives from the presumption that entrepreneurs provide economy-wide benefits in the form of new products, lower prices, innovations, and increased productivity. How large are these effects? Using a rich panel of state-level data, we quantify the relationship between productivity growth--by state and by industry--and entrepreneurship. Specifically, we use state-of-the-art econometric techniques for panel data to determine whether variations in the birth rate and death …

On The Measurment Of Job Risk In Hedonic Wage Models, Dan Black, Thomas J. Kniesner

Center for Policy Research

We examine the incidence, form, and research consequences of measurement error in measure of fatal injury risk in United States workplaces using both BLS and NIOSH data. We find evidence of substantial measurement errors in the fatality risk researchers attach to individual workers when estimating the implicit price of risk and the value of a statistical life. We first examine possible classical attenuation bias in the fatality risk coefficient. However, because we also find non-classical measurement error that differs across multiple risk measures and is not independent of other regressors, more complex statistical procedures than a standard instrumental variables estimator …

Low-Wage Employment Subsidies In A Labor-Turnover Model Of The `Natural Rate, Hian Teck Hoon, Edmund S. Phelps

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Temporary Agency Employment In Tight Labor Markets, Susan N. Houseman, Arne L. Kalleberg, George A. Erickcek

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper examines the reasons why employers used and even increased their use of temporary help agencies during the tight labor markets of the 1990s. Based on case study evidence from the hospital and auto supply industries, we evaluate various hypotheses for this phenomenon. In high-skilled occupations, our results are consistent with the view that employers paid substantially more to agency help to avoid raising wages for their regular workers and to fill vacancies while they recruited workers for permanent positions. In low-skilled occupations, our evidence suggests that temporary help agencies facilitated the use of more "risky" workers by lowering …

A Model Of Industrialization And International Wage Convergence Based On Multi-Plant Foreign Direct Investment, Hian Teck Hoon, Irene Ng

Research Collection School Of Economics

We show that for industrialization and international wage convergence through multi-plant foreign direct investment (FDI) to occur, the measure of the quality of the social infrastructure in the South relative to that in the North must be at least as large as the South-North wage ratio. We also show that if profitable FDI flows already take place from the North to the most productive economy in the South, then less productive Southern economies can also become recipients of FDI, provided that they are integrated into the world trading system, and there are no impediments to the decline of their wage …

Comments On: Procedure For Profiling Unemployed Citizens In Russia, Christopher J. O'Leary

Reports

No abstract provided.

Do Temporary Help Jobs Improve Labor Market Outcomes? A Pilot Analysis With Welfare Clients, David H. Autor, Susan N. Houseman

Reports

We draw upon administrative data from an unusual policy experiment in the state of Michigan to study the effects of temporary agency employment among welfare-to-work clients on job retention, program recidivism, and earnings. To identify these effects, we exploit the fact that welfare-to-work clients in one Michigan county were randomly assigned to service providers who had substantially different placement rates in temporary agencies but otherwise similar policies. Our findings indicate that moving welfare clients who otherwise would have been unemployed into temporary agency jobs provides some benefits to these workers, primarily by increasing their short-term earnings. Temporary agency jobs also …

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 …

Kentucky Labor Supply And Demand Surveys, Mark C. Berger, Paul A. Coomes, Christopher Bollinger, Bruce Gale, Ronald E. Langley, Barry Kornstein, Jonathan M. Roenker, John Perry, Roy Sigafus, Eric C. Thompson

CBER Research Report

Excerpt from the executive summary:

The Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Kentucky (CBER), along with its partners, the Survey Research Center at the University of Kentucky (UK-SRC), the Survey Research Center in the Urban Studies Institute at the University of Louisville (UL-SRC), and the Department of Economics at the University of Louisville, is pleased to present this final report on the findings of the Kentucky labor supply and demand surveys sponsored by the Kentucky Cabinet for Workforce Development. The two universities have put together a consortium including some of the best scholars in the region …

The Impact Of A Large Wage Increase On The Workforce Stability Of Ihss Home Care Workers In San Francisco County, Candace Howes

Economics Faculty Publications

This study is one of the very few large-scale empirical investigations of the effect of wages on labor market outcomes in any direct care industry, and possibly the only such study specifically addressing conditions in the homecare industry. It records the impact of the nearly doubling of wages for IHSS homecare workers in San Francisco County over a 52 month period. The project is based on a unique database, which matches approximately 18,000 San Francisco County homecare workers in 26,115 unique matches to 15,500 service recipients between November 1997 and February 2002.

Washington's Workforce Development System Pays Off, Kevin Hollenbeck

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Income Replacement And Reemployment Programs In Michigan And Neighboring States, Stephen A. Woodbury

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Governments in every developed industrial economy administer programs that partially replace the earnings of workers who suffer job loss or on-the-job injury. In addition, governments administer programs to help job losers gain reemployment, either through direct job placement (for those who are job-ready) or through retraining (for those who are not). This chapter describes and discusses current policy issues surrounding the main social insurance and reemployment programs in Michigan: Unemployment Insurance (UI), which partially replaces lost earnings following loss of a job; Workers' Compensation (WC), which pays for medical treatment, vocational rehabilitation, and lost earnings following a work-related injury or …