automation and labor force participation in advanced economies macro and micro evidence abstract technological advances raise productivity and growth but are also likely to reshape labor markets we examine the impact of automation on aggregate labor force participation rates and individuals attachment to the workforce in advanced economies cross country analysis which leverages the variation in the routinizability of occupations and occupational composition points to significant negative effects of automation on the participation rates of prime age men and women individual level analysis confirms that workers previously employed in routinizable occupations are more likely to drop out of the labor force encouragingly higher spending on active labor market programs and education are however associated with smaller negative effects of technological change on participation

wage and employment growth in america s drug epidemic is all growth created equal the rise in drug overdose deaths in the united states since the turn of the millennium has been extraordinary a popular narrative paints a picture whereby opioid overdoses among white male less educated rural workers have been caused by reduced economic opportunities borne by such people in this article we causally test the validity of this theory by using bartik type variables to explore the relationship between local economic conditions and county opioid overdose death rates we add to the literature by exploring how both employment and wage growth in different types of industries are related to opioid overdose deaths for the population as a whole as well as for rural vs urban male vs female and white vs black populations we find mixed evidence our results confirm that wage and employment growth in industries more likely to employ low skill workers are important protective factors for rural white males however we also find evidence that economic improvements in low skill industries are just as important in protecting blacks and women against opioid overdoses and for workers in metro counties we also find evidence that employment growth in high paying industries has led to increases in opioid overdoes rates

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

count on the growth pole strategy for regional economic growth spread backwash effects in greater central china ke s and feser e count on the growth pole strategy for regional economic growth spread backwash effects in greater central china regional studies this paper investigates spread backwash effects associated with non agricultural gross domestic product and employment growth across 922 cities and counties in central china between 2000 and 2005 simultaneous equation estimates find mixed spread backwash effects from prefecture and higher level cities to comparable or lower level cities and counties spread effects of gross domestic product and employment growths are also indicated between county level cities however county level cities exerted backwash effects on rural counties the paper discusses the implications of these findings in relation to the construction of urban economic growth zones in central china as an important strategy of central rise ke s et feser e devrait on compter sur la strategie de poles de croissance afin d assurer la croissance economique regionale les effets de repartition

facing the crisis toward a new humanistic synthesis for business the economic slowdown still ongoing in many countries has brought about dramatic consequences these continue to be clearly felt in many countries mass foreclosures and evictions non recoverable debts extreme difficulties for individuals and businesses to obtain credit bankruptcies lack of confidence from investors and downturns in stock markets around the world bailouts from governments to banks and other financial institutions in danger of failing in an attempt to save them from insolvency or to avoid contagion in a globalized world no financial institution has escaped damage and many ordinary people around the world are suffering the painful impact with the dramatic increase in unemployment and substantial financial commitments of states toward the financial system public expenditure has progressively increased to the point at which the financial solvency of entire countries is at risk since 2008 and even before the word crisis has been on everyone s lips many people continue to suffer the consequences of this crisis the causes were complex there is abundant literature which cites exclusively technical reasons the housing bubbles evaluation tied to real estate pricing deficient regulation and so on frequently the remedies proposed are also only technical basically suggesting more regulation and more public control however a deeper reflection on the causes of the current crisis indicates that they include not only techno economic aspects but also behavioral moral and cultural aspects all of which are closely interrelated in fact the current crisis would probably not have occurred without certain political decisions related to monetary and economic policies and deficient regulation and monitoring we should not overlook however the personal decisions related with corporate strategies and business policy including strong incentives associated with short term profits and mortgage backed securities trading involving a manifest lack of transparency nor should we forget the credit rating agencies and a number of different professionals civil servants and politicians involved in some way in the unfolding of the crisis it seems that this morass arose not only through insufficient and inadequate structures but also because of faulty human behavior and moral character as lewis et al 2010 pointed out prudence and ethics were pushed aside as greed overcame good judgment among mortgage lenders nationwide of course we can find large scale failure of regulation and government policy in the origin of the crisis but also negligence and greed on the part of the different actors empowered in the process

does retirement age impact mortality the relationship between retirement and mortality is studied with a unique administrative data set covering the full population of norway a series of retirement policy changes in norway reduced the retirement age for a group of workers but not for others difference in differences estimation based on monthly birth cohorts and treatment group status show that the early retirement programme significantly reduced the retirement age this holds true also when we account for programme substitution for example into the disability pension instrumental variables estimation results show no effect on mortality of retirement age neither do estimation results from a hazard rate model

the effects of aggregate and gender specific labor demand shocks on child health we estimate the relationship between local labor market opportunities and child health using state unemployment rates and demand induced changes in mothers and fathers employment opportunities in contrast with studies of adult health we find little evidence that aggregate economic conditions are correlated contemporaneously with children s health however we find important patterns by gender in particular improvements in women s employment opportunities are consistently associated with worse child health while better labor market conditions for men have positive effects these patterns suggest that both family income and maternal time are important inputs to child health abstract from author

a note on the effect of unemployment on mortality in this note we test if unemployment has an effect on mortality using a large individual level data set of nearly 30 000 individuals in sweden aged 20 64 years followed up for 10 17 years we follow individuals over time that are initially in the same health state but differ with respect to whether they are employed or unemployed controlling also for a number of individual characteristics that may affect the depreciation of health over time unemployment significantly increases the risk of being dead at the end of follow up by nearly 50 from 5 36 to 7 83 in an analysis of cause specific mortality we find that unemployment significantly increases the risk of suicides and the risk of dying from other diseases all diseases except cancer and cardiovascular but has no significant effect on cancer mortality cardiovascular mortality or deaths due to other external causes motor vehicle accidents accidents and homicides

the mortality effects of retirement evidence from social security eligibility at age 62 abstract social security eligibility begins at age 62 and approximately one third of americans immediately claim at that age we examine whether age 62 is associated with a discontinuous change in aggregate mortality a key measure of population health using mortality data that covers the entire u s population and includes exact dates of birth and death we document a robust two percent increase in male mortality immediately after age 62 the change in female mortality is smaller and imprecisely estimated additional analysis suggests that the increase in male mortality is connected to retirement from the labor force and associated lifestyle changes

aggregation and the estimated effects of economic conditions on health this paper considers the relationship between economic conditions and health with a focus on different approaches to geographic aggregation after reviewing the tradeoffs associated with more and less disaggregated analyses i update earlier state level analyses of mortality and infant health and then consider how the estimated effects vary when the analysis is conducted at differing levels of geographic aggregation this analysis reveals that the results are sensitive to the level of geographic aggregation with more disaggregated analyses particularly county level analyses routinely producing estimates that are smaller in magnitude further analyses suggest this is due to spillover effects of economic conditions on health outcomes across counties

the role of economic shocks on health evidence from german reunification sudden economic shocks impact the everyday lives of people from one day to the next a number of studies have examined the association between economic fluctuations and health however no consensus on the nature of this relationship has been established by exploiting the dramatic economic fluctuations following the german reunification of 1990 which included a sudden change from a socialist to a capitalist system in east germany this study examines the association between broad negative economic shocks and health the article finds that increases in state unemployment rates are associated with large and statistically significant declines in health outcomes estimates are stronger for people who became unemployed shortly after reunification for low income individuals and for east germans a group confronted with larger economic fluctuations when examining potential mechanisms that could explain the observed health deteriorations the study finds significant reductions in exercise frequency and increases in economic uncertainty and overall stress

mortality and the business cycle evidence from individual and aggregated data there has been much interest recently in the relationship between economic conditions and mortality with some studies showing that mortality is pro cyclical while others find the opposite some suggest that the aggregation level of analysis e g individual vs regional matters we use both individual and aggregated data on a sample of 20 64 year old swedish men from 1993 to 2007 our results show that the association between the business cycle and mortality does not depend on the level of analysis the sign and magnitude of the parameter estimates are similar at the individual level and the aggregate county level both showing pro cyclical mortality

explaining social policy preferences evidence from the great recession to what extent do personal circumstances as compared to ideological dispositions drive voters preferences on welfare policy addressing this question is difficult because a person s ideological position can be an outcome of material interest rather than an independent source of preferences the article deals with this empirical challenge using an original panel study carried out over four years tracking the labor market experiences and the political attitudes of a national sample of americans before and after the eruption of the financial crisis the analysis shows that the personal experience of economic hardship particularly the loss of a job had a major effect on increasing support for welfare spending this effect was appreciably larger among republicans than among democrats a result that was not simply due to a ceiling effect however the large attitudinal shift was short lived dissipating as individuals employment situations improved the results indicate that the personal experience of an economic shock has a sizable yet overall transient effect on voters social policy preferences

unemployment insurance and cigarette smoking abstract we provide evidence for the causal relationship between unemployment insurance ui and individuals smoking behavior using the 1995 2011 current population survey tobacco use supplement data our identification relies on the exploitation of the exogenous variations of the maximum ui weekly benefits across states and over years instead of focusing on all unemployed people we concentrate on those who are eligible for ui benefits we find that when the maximum ui weekly benefit level increases by 100 smoking cessation increases by approximately 2 9 percentage points among the ui eligible unemployed the results are robust to various model specifications we also explore the mechanism and find suggestive evidence that the increase in the maximum ui weekly benefit leads to a decrease in the probability of over work of the respective spouse moreover the unemployed who are less educated are more responsive to the increasing ui benefits

does job loss shorten life this paper examines the impact of job loss on overall and cause specific mortality using linked employer employee data we identified the workers displaced due to all establishment closures in sweden in 1987 and 1988 hence we have extended the case study approach which has dominated the plant closure literature the overall mortality risk among men increased by 44 percent during the first four years following job loss while there was no impact on either female overall mortality or in the longer run for both sexes however there was an about twofold short run increase in suicides and alcohol related mortality

the survival and growth of new establishments in sweden 1987 1995 the aim of the study is to examine the survival of new establishments and to identify factors affecting their survival probability and their employment growth this study uses a unique data set on all new establishments that were created in sweden 1987 and 1988 with the exception of the construction industry the results show among others that i new establishments face a high risk of closing down ii the probability of establishment survival increases with the age and size of the establishment iii variables that are assumed to measure access to resources being a part of a multi unit firm and being new due to merger or dispersal have a positive effect on survival iv the number of employees at the start up year has a negative effect on the employment growth and v demographic and educational factors are important in explaining survival and growth

losing heart the effect of job displacement on health job reallocation is considered a key characteristic of well functioning labor markets as more productive firms grow and less productive ones contract or close despite its potential benefits for t

job loss firm level heterogeneity and mortality evidence from administrative data this paper estimates the effect of job loss on mortality for older male workers with a strong labor force attachment using dutch administrative data we find that job loss due to firm closure increased the probability of death within five years by a sizable 0 60 percentage points importantly this effect is estimated using a model that controls for firm level worker characteristics such as lagged firm level annual average mortality rates on the mechanism driving the effect of job loss on mortality we provide evidence for an effect running through stress and changes in life style

pro cyclical mortality across socioeconomic groups and health status abstract using variation across geographic regions a number of studies from the u s and other developed countries have found more deaths in economic upturns and less deaths in economic downturns we use data from regions in norway for 1977 2008 and find the same pro cyclical patterns using individual level register data for the identical population we find that disadvantaged socioeconomic groups are not hit harder by pro cyclical mortality than advantaged groups we also find that other indicators of deteriorated health than death like becoming disabled are pro cyclical overall our analysis suggests that pro cyclical mortality is rather related to deaths of people already in deteriorated health than to people of low socioeconomic status

international regimes and alliance behavior explaining nato conventional force levels with the end of the cold war the military posture of the north atlantic treaty organization nato has entered a period of profound change prior to the recent dramatic political events in europe however nato conventional force levels in the central region had been remarkably stable for some three decades this article seeks to explain this record of stability in terms of three widely used theories of international relations it argues that balance of power theory and public goods theory cannot alone provide a satisfactory account rather these traditional approaches for understanding alliance behavior must be supplemented by regime theory which emphasizes the constraining effects of enduring institutional factors even in the face of structural change specifically it shows how an international regime has influenced the provision of conventional forces in the central region by alliance members more generally this analysis seeks to contribute to the literature on international regimes in three ways first it demonstrates that regimes do matter by providing an example of their importance for explaining state behavior and international outcomes second it extends regime theory to relations among military allies third it elaborates a comprehensive model for understanding why states actually comply with regime injunctions the model stresses both the ways in which regimes effectively modify the international environment within which states operate altering the costs and benefits associated with different courses of action and the ways in which participating states may internalize regime norms and rules thereby making compliance increasingly automatic