lay offs as signals the canadian evidence in r gibbons and l f katz 1991 the signaling content of layoffs and the resulting costs to the displaced workers are investigated evidence of this signaling effect is found among displaced workers in the united states in this paper a similar exercise is conducted using canadian data which are better in several respects they provide information on union status search activity and more accurate measures of postdisplacement salaries and displacement length results show evidence of a signaling effect in white collar occupations but not in blue collar jobs regardless of union status also signaling effects persist for the first three years in the postdisplacement job

a review of the recent empirical literature on displaced workers this article reviews the empirical literature on job displacement job displacement is widespread and strongly countercyclical tending to peak during economic downturns but concentrated in indus

does employment protection create its own political support this paper investigates the ability of employment protection to generate its own political support a version of the mortensen pissarides model is used for this purpose if wages are set through nash bargaining workers value employment protection because it strengthens their hand in wage negotiations workers in high productivity matches benefit most from higher wages as they expect to stay employed for longer by reducing turnover employment protection shifts the distribution of match specific productivity toward lower values thus stringent protection in the past actually reduces support for employment protection today introducing involuntary separations reverses this conclusion now workers value employment protection because it delays involuntary dismissals workers in low productivity matches gain most since they face the highest risk of dismissal the downward shift in the productivity distribution is now a shift towards supporters

what happens to wages after displacement faced with limited resources policymakers need to know when and where to target support for displaced workers the academic literature offers little support presenting wide ranging results with no consistent explanation for the observed differences in wages after workers are displaced in this paper we demonstrate that the heterogeneity found in the literature is consistent with varying market conditions the results suggest that support for displaced workers can be more efficiently allocated by considering the timing and location of displacement

wage loss following displacement the role of union coverage using two canadian data sets the authors explore the role of union coverage in displaced workers wage losses while only 32 of the workers had unionized jobs prior to displacement the wage loss suffered by these workers represented about 80 of the wages lost by all displaced workers in both samples losing union status was associated with large losses whether or not a worker switched industries after displacement extrapolating the results to the united states the authors estimate that one third to one half of u s displaced workers wage losses may be due purely to the loss of union coverage

is unemployment really scarring effects of unemployment experiences on wages joblessness leaves permanent scars on individuals they not only lose income during periods of joblessness they are also further scarred by these experiences when they find employment a spell of unemployment is found to carry a wage penalty of about 6 on re entry in britain and after three years they are earning 14 less compared to what they would have received in the absence of unemployment the scars are also carried into their second employment spell the first spell of joblessness is found to cause the most damage redundancy seems to be less stigmatising

lasting or latent scars swedish evidence on the long term effects of job displacement recently improved swedish register data have made it possible to remedy many weaknesses of previous research on displaced workers using linked employer employee data we identify all workers displaced in 1987 due to an establishment closure and follow them over both a predisplacement period of 4 years and a postdisplacement period stretching until 1999 we find that the displaced workers suffer both earnings losses and worsened labor market position not only during a transitory period of adjustment but also in the longer run these longer run effects seem to be driven by an increased sensitivity to subsequent macroeconomic shocks

earnings losses and unemployment of displaced workers in germany data from the german socio economic panel are used to examine the experiences of german workers following job displacement due to plant closure in the year of displacement annual earnings decline

long term impact of minimum wages on workers careers evidence from two decades of longitudinal linked employer employee data i acknowledge the support of the spanish ministry of the economy severo ochoa programme for centres of excellence in r d sev20150563 the aei spain and feder ue grant eco2016 76734 p

measuring the effect of subsidized training programs on movements in and out of employment despite over two decades of u s experience in operating large scale subsidized training programs for low income and unemployed workers the effects of these programs are still highly controversial the controversy arises from the difficulty of specifying the model of participant outcomes in the absence of training that is necessary in any nonexperimental program evaluation in this paper we suggest that some of these difficulties may be overcome by focusing on a very simple measure of outcomes namely the probability of employment we present a variety of estimates of the effect of training on the probability of employment for the 1976 cohort of adult male participants in the comprehensive employment and training act ceta program our methods range from a simple comparison of pre and post training employment probabilities between trainees and nonparticipants to a fully specified first order markov model of employment probabilities with individual heterogeneity there is consistent evidence across methods that ceta participation increased the probability of employment in the three years after training by from 2 to 5 percentage points classroom training programs appear to have had significantly larger effects than on the job programs although the estimated effects of both kinds of programs are positive we also find that movements in and out of employment for trainees and nonparticipants are reasonably well described by a first order process conditional on individual heterogeneity in the context of this model ceta participation appears to have increased both the probability of moving into employment and the probability of continuing employment

job displacement and the transitions to re employment and early retirement for non employed older workers abstract despite the relatively higher frequency of job displacement among older workers in europe little is known about its effect on the work retirement decision employing individual data from the european community household panel for a number of countries with differences in their institutional environments the effect of job displacement for non employed workers is identified separately for the transitions into re employment and retirement the findings suggest that in countries with relatively more generous unemployment insurance provisions for the older unemployed which offer a pathway to early retirement older displaced workers exhibit lower re employment and higher retirement rates compared to the non displaced these results are robust to dynamic selection due to unobserved heterogeneity and to the endogeneity of displacement

do wages rise with job seniority a reassessment the authors provide new estimates of the return to job seniority using a dataset similar to that employed in joseph altonji and robert shakotko do wages rise with job seniority review of economic studies 1987 and robert topel specific capital mobility and wages journal of political economy 1991 they consider the strengths and weaknesses of these studies treatment of economy wide trends their dating conventions for tenure and wages their handling of wage observations that might span multiple jobs and their estimation approaches re estimation points to an effect often years of tenure on the log wage equal to 11 which is above the preferred estimate of altonji and shakotko but far below that of topel changes in earnings distributions and in the employment relationship motivate the examination of more recent data perhaps surprisingly the return to tenure has probably increased over time

the gender gap in early career wage growth in the uk the gender pay gap on entry to the labour market is approximately zero but ten years after labour market entry there is a gender wage gap of almost 25 log points this article explores the reason for this gender gap in early career wage growth considering three main hypotheses human capital job shopping and psychological theories human capital factors can explain about 11 log points job shopping about 1 5 log points and the psychological theories up to 4 5 log points depending on the specification but a substantial unexplained gap remains women who have continuous full time employment have had no children and express no desire to have them earn about 8 log points less than equivalent men after 10 years in the labour market

female leadership and gender equity evidence from plant closure abstract we use unique worker plant matched panel data to measure differences in wage changes experienced by workers displaced from closing plants we observe larger losses among women than men comparing workers who move from the same closing plant to the same new firm however we find a significantly smaller gap in hiring firms with female leadership the results are strongest among women who are displaced from male led plants and from less competitive industries our results suggest an important externality to having women in leadership positions they cultivate more female friendly cultures inside their firms

economic conditions and alcohol problems this study investigates the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and two alcohol related outcomes liquor consumption and highway vehicle fatalities fixed effect models are estimated for the 48 contiguous states over the 1975 1988 time period alcohol consumption and traffic deaths vary procyclically with a major portion of the effect of economic downturns attributed to reductions in incomes rather than employment the intake of hard liquor is the most sensitive to the state of the macroeconomy there is no evidence however that fluctuations in economic conditions have a disproportionate impact on the drunk driving of young adults

the welfare costs of worker displacement abstract recent work has documented the large persistent earnings losses associated with the displacement of high tenure workers in this paper we assess the welfare costs of this risk assuming that workers do not have access to insurance markets we find that the cost is substantial on the same order of magnitude as the cost associated with unemployment risk we also argue that long duration unemployment insurance is likely to exacerbate this cost and that government financed severance payments are a far more effective way of dealing with the displacement risk

a structural model of us aggregate job flows this paper contributes to the analysis of jobs flows dynamics through the explicit modelling of job creations and job destructions we propose a simple matching model extended for endogenous separation and tractable heterogeneity the parameters of the model are estimated using a simulation based estimation method we then test the ability of trade externalities generated by the matching process to i propagate reallocation and aggregate disturbances in the whole labor market and ii generate the observed distribution of aggregate job flows the results clearly indicate that the model is able to match the dynamics of us aggregate job flows copyright 2002 john wiley sons ltd

the signaling role of promotions further theory and empirical evidence an extensive theoretical literature investigates the role of promotions as a signal of worker ability we extend the theory by focusing on how the signaling role of promotion varies with education and then investigate the resulting predictions using a longitudinal data set that contains detailed information concerning the internal labor market history of a medium sized firm in the financial services industry our results support signaling being important for understanding the differences between promotion practices concerning bachelor s and master s degree holders while the evidence concerning the importance of signaling for high school graduates and phds is mixed

sectoral shifts unemployment and vacancies an empirical analysis for the netherlands abstract in this paper the correlation between sectoral dispersion of employment growth and unemployment is analyzed empirical results for the netherlands indicate that fluctuations in unemployment are due to aggregate demand factors with no substantial influence of shifts in sectoral demand

earnings losses of displaced workers revisited recent literature reviews conclude that job displacement results in sustained earnings losses bruce c fallick 1996 lori g kletzer 1998 and that estimates of the size of those reductions vary with the type of data used in the analysis the industry within which displacement occurs and business cycle conditions the largest estimated losses were obtained using administrative data from pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s louis s jacobson robert j lalonde and daniel g sullivan 1993a the data covered a period of high unemployment in a heavily indus trialized state characterized by disproportionate job losses in manufacturing thus the ability to generalize those results to more favorable economic times and states with a greater reliance on service sector employment has been questioned to address these issues administrative data are used to similarly examine the impact of job displacement on earnings losses of workers in connecticut from 1993 to 2004 the work of jacobson lalonde and sullivan jls also provided important methodologi cal advancement by adapting analytical techniques developed for program evaluation james j heckman and v joseph hotz 1989 to the context of job displacement the same techniques fixed effects and time trend estimators as those used in the original jls publication are initially employed here then the methods are extended to include matching estimators developed since their publication both nearest neighbor estimators of average treatment on the treated att and differenced average treatment on the treated datt are adapted to the context of this study heckman hidehiko ichimura and petra todd 1997 heckman et al 1998 and rajeev h dehejia and sadek wahba 1999 2002 the results presented here for connecticut differ in some ways from those found in the work of jls using data from pennsylvania in the period immediately following job loss regardless of the technique employed earnings reductions for workers displaced through mass layoff range from 32 percent to 33 percent jls reported immediate losses of more than 40 percent six years later using the same estimators as jls earnings reductions in connecticut range from 13 percent to 15 percent they report sustained losses in pennsylvania of 25 percent the smaller long term impacts in connecticut demonstrate that under more ordinary economic times esti mated losses from administrative data lie within the range observed using other data sources this finding resolves a long standing conflict among the results of high quality studies that have used differing data sources to study earnings reductions following job loss 1 using two different matching estimators earnings losses six years after mass layoff are 12 percent the matching estimators compare those who experienced mass layoff to compari sons with the same ex ante probability of the event these smaller losses are consistent with the

sectoral shifts and cyclical unemployment a substantial fraction of cyclical unemployment is better characterized as fluctuations of the frictional or natural rate than as deviations from some relatively stable natural rate shifts of employment demand between sectors of the economy necessitate continuous labor reallocation since it takes time for workers to find new jobs some unemployment is unavoidable this paper presents evidence that most of the unemployment fluctuations of the seventies unlike those in the sixties were induced by unusual structural shifts within the u s economy simple time series models of layoffs and unemployment are constructed that include a measure of structural shifts within the labor market these models are estimated and a derived natural rate series is constructed

the impact of an early career recession on schooling and lifetime welfare this paper evaluates the lifetime welfare and labor market consequences of experiencing a recession during youth using a directed search equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents and aggregate shocks in particular the model allows for endogenous schooling decisions over the business cycles the counterfactual analysis shows that experiencing the 1981 1982 recession in youth causes a 1 6 to 2 3 loss in lifetime welfare endogenizing the schooling decision avoids overestimation of welfare loss because of the selection effect and the human capital effect i also decompose lifetime wage changes into different channels changes from schooling work experience and job mobility this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

job displacement s long run effect on access to employer provided health insurance and other fringe benefits abstract this paper investigates the effect of job displacement on access to employer provided fringe benefits we find that displacement is associated with lost access to all seven employer provided benefits investigated these losses increase the cost of displacement by 10 per year

equilibrium wage and dismissal processes i develop and estimate an equilibrium model of the labor market in which inefficient employees are systematically eliminated from the sector of the market characterized by asymmetric information and moral hazard systematic selection on the distribution of productivity characteristics produces wage sequences that are increasing in tenure for employees never previously terminated even in the absence of long term contracting between employees and individual firms i provide sufficient conditions for there to exist a unique termination contract type of equilibrium and i estimate the equilibrium model using microlevel data from the national longitudinal survey of youth panel

scar effects of unemployment an assessment of institutional complementarities this article uses panel data from the survey of income and program participation sipp and the european community household panel echp for a comparative analysis of workers post unemployment earnings trajectories in the united states and 12 western european countries across the study sample of industrialized countries results of difference in difference propensity score matching show post unemployment earnings losses to be largely permanent and particularly significant for high wage and older workers as well as for women the analyses also show that negative effects of unemployment on workers subsequent earnings are mitigated through either generous unemployment benefit systems or strict labor market regulation these effects stem partly from favorable behavioral responses that prevent downward occupational and industrial mobility and partly from changes in the overall structure of labor markets favoring the transferability of worker skills between jobs these positive effects materialize despite t

a dynamic analysis of educational attainment occupational choices and job search this article examines career choices using a dynamic structural model that nests a job search model within a human capital model of occupational and educational choices wage growth occurs in the model because workers move between firms and occupations as they search for suitable job matches and because workers endogenously accumulate firm and occupation specific human capital simulations performed using the estimated model reveal that both self selection in occupational choices and mobility between firms account for a much larger share of total earnings and utility than the combined effects of firm and occupation specific human capital

testing for asymmetric employer learning recent evidence suggests that employers acquire more precise information about a worker s productivity the more time he or she spends in the labor market the following question arises is learning symmetric that is do all employers have the same information about workers productivity or is learning asymmetric that is does the current employer have superior information about workers productivity this article develops a learning model with endogenous mobility that nests both learning hypotheses it then proposes new tests for asymmetric employer learning overall learning appears to be mostly symmetric except possibly when the employees involved are college graduates

when and where does foreign direct investment generate positive spillovers a meta analysis local firms may attract productivity spillovers from foreign investors yet these vary with local firms awareness capability and motivation to react to foreign entry in consequence spillovers vary across countries at different levels of economic development we apply competitive dynamics theory to analyze these contextual moderators of spillovers and test hypotheses thus derived in a meta analysis of the empirical literature on spillovers our analysis suggests a curvilinear relationship between spillovers and the host country s level of development in terms of income institutional framework and human capital

wage growth due to human capital accumulation and job search a comparison between the united states and germany this paper compares the sources of wage growth of young male workers in two countries with very different labor market institutions the united states and germany the author first develops a simple method for decomposing wage growth into components due to general human capital accumulation firm specific human capital accumulation and job search the empirical analysis uses data from administrative records germany and the national longitudinal survey of youth united states for cohorts entering the labor market in the late 1970s and early 1980s although the two countries differed substantially in mobility rates they were similar in the sources of wage growth with general human capital accumulation being the most important single source and job search accounting for an additional 25 or more of total wage growth there is no evidence that returns to firm specific human capital accumulation were higher for german apprentices than for u s high school dropouts or graduates

state dependence individual heterogeneity and the choice of employment status evidence from korea abstractfocusing on the individual heterogeneity this article examines the causes of an individual s employment status choice and the extent of state dependence in the korean labour market we estimate a dynamic multinomial logit model using the panel data drawn from the first to fifteenth wave of the korean labour and income panel study the results suggest the presence of state dependence individual characteristics and growth background have a significant effect on the choice of employment status gender is still an important employment factor males are more likely to be employed and this gender effect is highest for regular employment re one s educational attainment and age operate in opposite directions that is educational attainment age has a positive negative impact on the choice of a regular job and a negative positive impact on the choice of a non regular job contrary to our expectations a wealthy family background reduces the probability of individuals being wage workers and rais

displacement induced joblessness previous research examining the nonemployment of displaced workers suffers from methodological flaws which reinforce widely held but substantially incorrect views about the pattern of postseparation joblessness in particular adjustment difficulties have been overstated for nonwhites long tenure workers and those terminated during periods of high unemployment and underestimated for persons in manufacturing industries or white collar occupations

sectoral shocks and structural unemployment abstract this paper is a first empirical application of the 1988 riordan and staiger paper which showed that in the presence of informational asymmetries between current and potential employees about workers quality abilities sectoral unemployment need not be monotonic in sectoral shocks we find weak evidence in favor of the riordan and staiger model in that the favored sector fills more vacancies the greater is the number of layoffs in the injured sector making use of the empirical implications of the r s model provides no evidence to the suggestive hypothesis that government measures that reduce the number of unemployed workers raise the duration of those who are unemployed in sweden

labour market signalling and unemployment duration an empirical analysis using employer employee data we test the signalling hypothesis using detailed flow based employer employee data from denmark our main findings are the signalling value is proportional to the proportion of employees dismissed from the workplace and the signal is uniform across occupation groups

involuntary layoffs in a model with asymmetric information concerning worker ability this paper examines the contract between a risk neutral firm and its risk averse employees assuming that worker ability is privately learned by the firm after a period of employment employers in an external spot labour market attempt to infer worker quality from the observable actions taken by the firm such as the number of workers it lays off the threat of spot market raids distorts the optimal contract layoffs may be involuntary and can exceed efficient levels a seniority layoff rule may be included in the contract to avoid the adverse selection problems that arise if layoffs are conducted on the basis of ability

classic promotion tournaments versus market based tournaments as initially formulated in the seminal analysis of lazear and rosen 1981 an important perspective for understanding the role of promotions in firms is the tournament perspective that is a promotion and in particular the wage increase associated with a promotion is a prize that serves as an incentive for workers to exert effort and take other actions beneficial to the firm such as the accumulation of human capital in this paper i consider whether the best way to model promotion tournaments is by having firms commit to prizes ex ante as in lazear and rosen s initial formulation or whether promotion prizes should be modeled as arising from the signaling role of promotions and the competition between firms for promoted workers

how destructive is creative destruction effects of job loss on job mobility withdrawal and income we analyze short and long term effects of worker displacement our sample consists of male workers displaced from norwegian manufacturing plants we find that displacement increases the probability of leaving the labor force by 31 the drop out rate from the labor force is particularly high in the first years following displacement the average earnings effects for those who remain in the labor force are moderate a 3 loss relative to non displaced workers after seven years splitting displaced workers on within and between firm movers we find that the estimated earnings loss is entirely driven by between firm movers who experience a 3 6 loss transfers to other plants within multi plant firms upon displacement are quite common our results support the view that human capital is partly firm specific and partly industry specific we find no evidence suggesting that human capital is plant specific

optimal unemployment insurance with human capital depreciation and duration dependence this paper studies the effect of human capital depreciation and duration dependence on the design of an optimal unemployment insurance ui scheme our results partially confirm those obtained in most previous studies benefits should decrease with unemployment duration the optimal program also generates two main novel features which are not present in stationary models first if human capital depreciates rapidly enough during unemployment ui transfers are bounded below by a minimal assistance level that arises endogenously in the efficient program second we study the optimality of imposing a history contingent wage tax after reemployment our numerical simulations based on the spanish and us economies show that the wage tax should decrease with the length of worker s previous unemployment spell and become a wage subsidy for long term unemployed workers as a by product of our study we develop a systematic approach suitable for studying recursively a wide range of dynamic moral hazard problems and other models with similar characteristics

female labour supply and household employment shocks maternity leave as an insurance mechanism this paper investigates the role of unpaid maternity leave in providing household insurance against paternal employment shocks the main outcome is the timing of a mothers return to work after having a child exploiting the us family and medical leave act we find that mothers eligible for maternity leave speed up their return to work in response to a paternal shock with the conditional probability of being in work 49 higher than in households with no unpaid maternity leave further evidence is provided on the insurance role of unpaid maternity leave through i no significant interaction between paid maternity leave and the paternal shock and ii smoothing of consumption effects of the shock for households covered by unpaid leave

do consumers respond to future income shocks evidence from social security reform in taiwan abstract a prediction of the basic permanent income hypothesis life cycle model is that an unexpected increase in future income produces an immediate increase in current consumption this paper tests that prediction using data from taiwan the 1985 labor standards law granted all employees in covered industries a windfall retirement severance benefit my results indicate that consumption did not increase immediately for those who were granted the windfall relative to those who received no windfall moreover consumption for those receiving a greater windfall did not increase relative to those who were granted less

french unemployment a transatlantic perspective french unemployment why france and the usa are alike the paper compares the french and us labour markets it shows that differences in unemployment rates are especially acute for young and old workers but appear to be negligible for middle aged workers all french workers however experience job flows that are quite distinct from their american counterparts as they are exposed to long spells of infrequent unemployment which is the opposite to the us case critical differences across ages and skills regarding the patterns of exit from and entry into employment are also displayed the paper dispels the view that these differences originate from the behaviour of the unemployed or the set of institutions that guide their decisions and that this is new to the french labour market daniel cohen arnaud lefranc and gilles saint paul

an empirical model of sectoral movements by unemployed workers using canadian data i investigate the relationships among sectoral mobility unemployment spells and total unemployment recent north american evidence suggests that incidence shifts toward high wage high tenure workers may increase equilibrium unemployment through decreasing sectoral mobility and increasing spells using a multiple spell transition model i find that while shifts toward such workers may have these effects composition changes that lead to higher mobility can also increase unemployment a further investigation into the relative roles of mobility and spell lengths in driving total unemployment indicates that the influence of the former is comparatively small

how does fdi affect domestic firms exports industrial evidence using a heckman sample selection model estimated using pooled four year firm level data this paper explores the export spillovers from the fdi in the cultural educational and sporting product manufacturing industry of the manufacturing sector in china from 2000 to 2003 the manufacturing sector contributes around 40 per cent of the gdp in the chinese economy and the cultural educational and sporting product manufacturing industry has a significant proportion of fdi activities and firms in this sector are active in exporting through the empirical exercise we find that there exist export spillovers from fdi in the industry for which the magnitude depends on firms geographical location sale cost and revenue ratio and ownership structure on average domestic firms located in western china suffer from a foreign presence irrespective of whether they are privately owned or state and collectively owned for firms in central china both the privately owned and state and collectively owned firms appear to benefit from foreign presence regarding firms located in coastal china the privately owned firms suffer from the foreign presence while in contrast the state and collectively owned firms benefit from the foreign presence in addition in this industry there are more firms that benefit from the presence of fdi than those that suffer which to some extent justifies the government s policy to attract the fdi inflow

evidence on adverse selection and establishment size in the labor market a commonly suggested explanation for the finding that laid off workers have greater mean post displacement earnings losses than workers who lose theirjobs through plant closings is that the former are of lower quality than the latter but there is also an alternative explanation for this result laid off workers suffer larger earnings losses because as a group they have more to lose in the first place having been displaced from larger higher wage establishments an analysis of data from the national longitudinal survey of youth confirms this hypothesis accounting for establishment size removes virtually all of the difference in wage losses for the two groups of displaced workers an adverse selection framework has been employed by many authors to explain various phenomena in the labor market spence 1973 harris and holmstrom 1982 greenwald 1986 recently several authors gibbons and katz 1991 doiron 1995 grund 1997 have investigated whether the postjob loss experiences of two different types of displaced workers those who are laid off from their jobs and those who are displaced by a plant closing reflect adverse selection specifically do laid off workers exhibit larger post job loss wage

interpreting panel data on job tenure tenure responses in the panel study of income dynamics psid and the national longitudinal surveys are often inconsistent with calendar time these inconsistencies pose special problems in the psid because job changes cannot be identified directly so researchers must infer them from error ridden tenure data we use alternative rules for partitioning psid data into jobs and then estimate several wage and mobility models to assess the sensitivity of parameter estimates to the partitioning method we also assess the importance of replacing raw tenure data with imputed measures that are internally consistent

declining labor turnover and turbulence abstract the rate of job loss has been on a secular decline for the last four decades or longer changes in demographics or industry composition do not account for the trend this paper seeks to identify the possible sources of the decline using a simple search and matching model with two types of workers experienced and inexperienced where the former type faces a risk of skill loss during unemployment the calibrated model suggests that a higher risk of skill loss during unemployment results in a lower job separation rate because workers accept lower wages in exchange for job security various other potential hypotheses are also examined

the budget contraction effect how contracting budgets lead to less varied choice how do consumers adjust their spending when their budget changes a common view is that the allocation of one s current budget should not depend on previous budget allocations contrary to this the authors find that when the budget contracts to a particular level consumers select less variety as measured by the number of different items with some of the budget allocated to them than when their budget expands to that same level this budget contraction effect stems from a reduction in variety under the contracting budget not from variety expansion under the expanding budget evidence from five experiments indicates that the effect is driven by a desire to avoid feelings of loss associated with spreading allocation cuts relative to reference quantities from previous allocations across many items

worker displacement and the added worker effect this article examines the added worker effect which is the labor supply response of wives to their husbands job losses unlike past studies which focused on the husbands current unemployment status this article analyzes wives responses before and after job losses to examine the life cycle labor supply adjustments using panel study of income dynamics data reveals small predisplacement effects and large persistent postdisplacement effects the timing of the responses differs with type of displacement possibly because of differences in the information acquired before job loss long run labor supply increases compensate for over 25 of the husbands lost income

spillovers from foreign direct investment within or between industries this paper contributes an estimation framework to measure both technological and linkage externalities from foreign direct investment fdi empirical research dealt mainly with intra industry spillovers from fdi with restrictive treatment of inter industry effects until recently however as optimal organization of the multinational corporation mnc involves minimization of profit losses due to leakage of technical information to competitors host country firms within the mnc s sector experience limited productivity gains ensuing fdi host country producers in other sectors may benefit for example mncs transfer knowledge to local downstream clients or outsource to local upstream suppliers hence fdi substitutes within sector domestic investment but complements it across sectors the net impact on aggregate capital formation by host country producers hinges on the interaction between linkages and spillovers estimations based on the colombian manufacturing census yield the sectoral pattern of fdi spillovers displaying knowledge propagation between but not within industries the findings reveal outsourcing relationships of mncs with local upstream suppliers as the channel of diffusion

are children really inferior goods evidence from displacement driven income shocks abstract this paper explores the causal link between income and fertility by analyzing women s fertility response to the large and permanent income shock generated by a husband s job displacement i find that the shock reduces total fertility suggesting that the causal effect of income on fertility is positive a model that incorporates the time cost of children and assortative matching of spouses can simultaneously explain this result and the negative cross sectional relationship i also find that a husband s displacement accelerates childbearing which is consistent with lifecycle models of fertility in which the incentive to delay is driven by expected earnings growth

employment risk and job seeker performance using detailed labor recruitment data in combination with randomized variation in individuals outside job opportunities i show that providing job certainty during recruitment leads to substantial job seeker performance gains job seeker performance is highest and effort lowest among those assigned to receive a guaranteed outside job offer where employment risk is eliminated while performance is lowest and effort highest among those receiving no chance of an outside job offer performance among those assigned uncertain outside job offers consistently lies between the two extremes i conjecture that the pattern of results is most consistent with stress induced performance reductions attributable to job uncertainty i rule out several other competing theories

the cost of job loss this article identifies an equilibrium theory of wage formation and endogenous quit turnover in a labour market with on the job search where risk averse workers accumulate human capital through learning by doing and lose skills while unemployed optimal contracting implies the wage paid increases with experience and tenure indirect inference using german data determines the deep parameters of the model the estimated model not only reproduces the large and persistent fall in wages and earnings following job loss a new structural decomposition finds foregone human capital accumulation while unemployed is the worker s major cost of job loss

unemployment fluctuations in the united states further tests of the sectoral shifts hypothesis this paper presents further evidence on the importance of sectoral shifts by examining unemployment fluctuations in the united states over the period 1960 to 1991 extending previous research in three directions first by using a thirty industry decomposition of quarterly nonagricultural employment second by employing modern time series econometric techniques and third by using dispersion measures purged of both monetary and aggregate demand influences the authors findings support the view that sectoral shifts have been an important element of fluctuations in u s employment and also indicate that a given amount of dispersion has been associated with more unemployment during downturns than upturns copyright 1995 by mit press

stigma effects of layoffs abstract based on a signaling model of gibbons and katz 1991 journal of labor economics 9 351 380 this paper compares the development of the wages of dismissed employees to those who lost their job because of plant closings in contrast to the us and canada there is no evidence for a stigma effect of layoffs in germany some explanations of the divergent results are pointed out

accounting for unemployment a labour market perspective i examine whether prolonged high unemployment in canada can be attributed to various structural causes rather than to demand deficiency as found by macro econometric models the answer is largely negative neither the dispersion of sectoral growth rates nor excessive and rigid real wages can convincingly account for most unemployment contentions to the contrary are based upon inappropriately partial analyses enduring shifts in industrial structure have if anything been declining labour mobility is high much unemployment lasts too long to be frictional fuller quantitative understanding of the nature of unemployment can be achieved only in a more general framework

penalized or protected gender and the consequences of nonstandard and mismatched employment histories millions of workers are employed in positions that deviate from the full time standard employment relationship or work in jobs that are mismatched with their skills education or experience yet little is known about how employers evaluate workers who have experienced these employment arrangements limiting our knowledge about how part time work temporary agency employment and skills underutilization affect workers labor market opportunities drawing on original field and survey experiment data i examine three questions 1 what are the consequences of having a nonstandard or mismatched employment history for workers labor market opportunities 2 are the effects of nonstandard or mismatched employment histories different for men and women and 3 what are the mechanisms linking nonstandard or mismatched employment histories to labor market outcomes the field experiment shows that skills underutilization is as scarring for workers as a year of unemployment but that there are limited penalties for workers with histories of temporary agency employment additionally although men are penalized for part time employment histories women face no penalty for part time work the survey experiment reveals that employers perceptions of workers competence and commitment mediate these effects these findings shed light on the consequences of changing employment relations for the distribution of labor market opportunities in the new economy

is unemployment insurance addictive evidence from the benefit durations of repeat users the author finds evidence that the past occurrence of a spell of insured unemployment lengthens the duration of future spells descriptive statistics from canadian administrative data covering mid 1971 to early 1990 suggest that unemployment insurance ui claimants tend to spend a longer and longer time collecting benefits with each additional claim they make this finding contradicts the implication of static neoclassical models that successive ui spells should be of the same length the author hypothesizes that the stigma attached to receiving unemployment benefits erodes with each new ui claim an individual files

structural unemployment in the united states the effects of interindustry and interregional dispersion structural unemployment in the united states the effects of interindustry and interregional dispersion the effects of sectoral shifts measured by dispersion in the growth rates of employment or earning across industries or regions on unemployment are tested in a specification controlling for the effects of other labor market variables and shifts in the demographic composition of the labor force interindustry and geographical shifts in labor demand have significant unemployment effects with adult males the group most strongly affected the estimated equations imply that most of the fluctuation in unemployment over the period 1956 87 was been due to microeconomic causes rather than aggregate demand i introduction the unemployment rate in the united states increased from an average of 4 9 percent for 1956 73 to 7 2 percent for 1974 87 it is of considerable importance for purposes of economic policy to evaluate the contributions of various microeconomic and macroeconomic factors to this increase in the unemployment rate if the primary cause is deficient aggregate demand then the appropriate policy response may include stimulative monetary and fiscal policy if microeconomic factors are most significant then the appropriate policies would be microeconomic in nature job training programs restructuring of minimum wage laws and unemployment insurance programs etc the period from 1974 to 1987 differed from the earlier postwar period in several widely recognized ways oil prices increased dramatically in 1974 and 1979 and decreased substantially beginning in 1982 the steady postwar increase in the female labor force participation rate became more rapid in the 1970s the large population cohort associated with the postwar baby boom began reaching maturity and entering the labor market in the early 1970s inflation in the united states was sustained at levels higher than ever before the dollar began floating against the currencies of other industrial countries following the collapse of the bretton woods system in 1971 and fluctuated considerably in both nominal and real value first west germany then japan and most recently taiwan and south korea developed impressive manufacturing bases in industries in which u s exports had formerly faced far less competition government expenditures on income transfer programs accelerated dramatically in the 1970s while regulatory policies were changed in many industries the influence of these disturbances on the natural rate of unemployment has been modeled through three main channels 1 the effects of labor market distortions such as minimum wage laws unemployment insurance and unions 2 the effects of changes in the demographic composition of the labor force and 3 the effects of shifts in the sectoral composition of production and employment a growing literature has emerged following david lilien s 1982a finding that sectoral shifts measured by interindustry dispersion in rates of employment growth explain much of the increase in unemployment in the late 1970s however the studies relating unemployment to dispersion measures have largely ignored the effects of demographic changes and other traditional labor market variables the present paper tests whether dispersion variables help to explain unemployment when the effects of several market distortion variables and changes in the demographic composition of the labor force are taken into account i also examine the relative explanatory power of several alternative measures of both interindustry and interregional dispersion the second section of the paper summarizes the literature on the effects of dispersion on unemployment the results of my empirical analysis are presented in section iii and applied to current economic policy issues in section iv the final section of the paper summarizes my conclusions

interrelationship among foreign presence domestic sales and export intensity in chinese manufacturing industries abstractusing panel data on six chinese manufacturing industries over the period 2005 2007 this article explores the interrelationship among foreign presence domestic sales and export intensity of local firms we find that the domestic sales and exports are complementary for local firms in china s pharmaceutical industry whereas in the case of the textile transportation equipment beverage communication equipment and general equipment manufacturing industries domestic sales and exports are substitutes an increase in the average domestic sales increases foreign presence in all industries the same applies to an increase in the average export intensity an increase in the level of competition in china s textile industry increases the export intensity as well as domestic sales of local textile firms however an increase in the level of competition in the pharmaceutical industry leads to a very large decrease in export intensity of local pharmaceutical firms in the case of china s transportation equi

job changes and interregional migration of graduates abstractusing panel data from a german graduate survey we analyse determinants of graduates decisions to out migrate from a region and how the importance of these determinants varies over job changes estimating heckman and fixed effects heckman selection models we find that the propensity to out migrate significantly varies with graduates migration experience as well as individual study related and regional characteristics while previous migration remains a strong determinant of migration over job changes the importance of other covariates decreases the origin region perspective of our study provides insights into the public provision of higher education as its returns depend on graduates interregional migration

the income losses of displaced workers abstract we use a new matched worker firm dataset for the united kingdom to estimate the income loss resulting from firm closure and mass layoffs we track workers for up to nine years after the displacement event and the availability of predisplacement characteristics allows us to implement difference in differences estimators using propensity score matching methods income losses during the first five years after the displacement event are in the range 18 35 percent per year for workers whose firm closes down and 14 25 percent for workers who exit a firm which suffers a mass layoff these losses are largely due to periods of nonemployment which is consistent with previous work from europe but contrasts with that from the united states

the long run consumption effects of earnings shocks although prior studies of job displacement and disability have measured the impact of these shocks in terms of lost earnings no previous research has linked these permanent earnings shocks to the

gender differences in displacement cost evidence and implications this paper uses a unique and newly available data set on displaced workers to estimate differences in the wage costs of displacement between women and men while predisplacement wages rise at about the same rate with tenure for women as men in this data set women lose more from displacement than men and the magnitude of this loss increases with tenure overall we interpret our results as not supportive of the specific capital hypothesis that women accumulate less firmspecific human capital than men and we suggest that future attempts to explain our result focus on gender differences in the process of search for a new job

the economics of new blood abstract we construct a dynamic general equilibrium model of search and matching where public knowledge grows through time and workers accumulate a fraction of this knowledge through education retraining due to search delays the unemployment pool is populated by vintages of workers of differing productivities through intergenerational rivalry the human capital of older generations is rendered obsolete relative to that of the new blood higher knowledge growth exacerbates intergenerational competition thereby lowering education and growth while raising unemployment and inequality these findings help explain wage compression expansion and the hump shaped wage tenure profile across cohorts

do past unemployment spells affect the duration of current unemployment abstract on the basis of monthly labor force histories of respondents constructed from the panel study of income dynamics this paper finds no occurrence dependence in unemployment spells positive occurrence dependence in unemployment insurance spells and substantial heterogeneity in occurrence dependence

unemployment in regional labor markets using structural theories to understand local jobless rates in west virginia the author uses a range of structural labor market models to understand differing regional jobless rates in a state affected by pockets of structural unemployment four theories of regional structural unemployment are presented and their hypotheses are statistically evaluated using west virginia county panel data the author then presents case study evidence to compare these statistical results with the realities of the county labor markets both types of empirical evidence suggest that a segmented non market clearing model in which structural unemployment stems from queuing for above market clearing wages in both a high wage primary sector and a lower wage secondary sector can shed the most light on regional unemployment rates in west virginia

sectoral shifts and aggregate unemployment additional empirical evidence 1990 sectoral shifts and aggregate unemployment additional empirical evidence applied economics vol 22 no 3 pp 331 346

unemployment and subsequent earnings estimating scarring among british men 1984 94 this paper estimates the impact of unemployment on earnings following re employment for a large and representative sample of british men 1984 94 unemployment incidence is found to have only a temporary effect an average earnings setback of 10 on initial re engagement largely eroding over two years the effect of unemployment duration by contrast is permanent a one year spell adding a further penalty of 10 percentage points these wage penalties are least for young men and the low paid those most at risk of unemployment and greatest for prime age and highly paid men

the effects of unemployment and underemployment on employment opportunities results from a correspondence audit of the labor market for college graduates the authors use data from a resume audit to estimate the impact of unemployment and underemployment on the employment prospects of recent college graduates they find no statistical evidence linking unemployment spells of different durations to employment opportunities by contrast college graduates who are underemployed have callback rates that are 30 lower than those of applicants who are adequately employed the null effects associated with unemployment and the adverse effects associated with underemployment are robust across cities with relatively tight and loose labor market conditions internship experience obtained while completing one s degree substantially reduces the negative effects of underemployment the data support the proposition that employers view underemployment as a strong signal of lower expected productivity

can immigrants insure against shocks as well as the native born we examine the impact of job displacement and serious health problems on multiple measures of individual and household well being using longitudinal data we extend the previous literature by exami

sectoral shifts and canadian unemployment in this paper lilien s 1982 hypothesis that sectoral shifts in employment raise aggregate unemployment is tested using canadian quarterly data lilien s framework is extended to investigate regional labour market rigidities and to distinguish between industry shifts that are correlated with changes in aggregate activity and those which are exogenous to the overall level of activity the robustness of the results to various changes in model specification is also investigated i find that in canada exogenous shifts in employment between sectors do not have a significant effect on the aggregate unemployment rate this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

does foreign investment benefit the exporting activities of vietnamese firms using firm level data this paper examines the effects of foreign investment on the exporting behaviour of domestic firms in the vietnamese manufacturing and service sectors applying the heckman selection model on panel data and following the wooldridge approach we find that investment by foreign firms has a significant positive effect on the decision of domestic firms in the same and upstream sectors to export the proportion of exports of domestic firms declines through horizontal and forward linkages but increases through backward linkages in the manufacturing sector however there is only weak evidence in support of export spillovers on domestic firms in the service sector we also find that the presence of foreign firms has differing effects on the exporting activities of low versus high tech firms in the manufacturing sector

income after job loss the role of the family and the welfare state that displaced workers suffer long lasting earnings losses is a stylized fact raising the question whether these losses are replaced by other means for married men increased labour supply by the wife may be one way another possibility is that the public welfare system offsets the same losses i used a swedish longitudinal data set containing married couples where the husband was either employed or made redundant in 1987 by an establishment closure there was no evidence that husbands job loss positively affected wives annual earnings although husbands utilization of unemployment insurance increased significantly government transfers including also sickness insurance disability insurance and means tested social benefits did not fully replace husbands long run earnings losses hence displaced workers seem to suffer also from long lasting losses in family income which in many respects is a better measure of economic welfare than individual earnings or wages

minimum wage effects in the longer run exposure to minimum wages at young ages could lead to adverse longer run effects via decreased labor market experience and tenure and diminished education and training while beneficial longer run effects could arise if minimum wages increase skill acquisition evidence suggests that as individuals reach their late 20s they earn less the longer they were exposed to a higher minimum wage at younger ages and the adverse longer run effects are stronger for blacks if there are such longer run effects of minimum wages they are likely more significant than the contemporaneous effects on youths that are the focus of research and policy debate

are workers permanently scarred by job displacements this paper investigates whether workers suffer lasting scars following job displacements using david t ellwood s 1982 terminology scars represent persistent effects whereas blemishes are transitory adjustments which dissipate over time more precisely dislocated individuals are defined as scarred if they continue to earn less or to be unemployed more than their nondisplaced counterparts even after the conclusion of a several year adjustment period

unemployment history and frictional wage dispersion abstract recent evidence shows that baseline search models struggle to match the observed levels of wage dispersion this paper studies a random matching search model with human capital losses during unemployment wage dispersion increases as workers accept lower wages to avoid long unemployment spells the model explains between a third and half of the observed residual wage dispersion when adding on the job search the model accounts for all of the residual wage dispersion and generates substantial dispersion even for high values of non market time the paper thus addresses the trade off between explaining frictional wage dispersion and the cyclical behavior of unemployment