rogoff s conservative central banker restored we show that delegation of monetary policy to a weight conservative central banker can be desirable although the government can also use an inflation contract an employment target an inflation target or any combination of these to control the central banker the key feature of our model is a stochastic inflation bias arising when wage setters receive some information about a supply shock prior to signing nominal wage contracts weight conservatism is found to be desirable if fully state contingent delegation is not possible and the stochastic inflation bias cannot be eliminated by optimal choice of the delegation parameters

marriage motherhood and wages we explore several problems in drawing causal inferences from cross sectional relationships between marriage motherhood and wages we find that heterogeneity leads to biased estimates of the direct effects of marriage and motherhood on wages i e effects net of experience and tenure first difference estimates reveal no direct effect of marriage or motherhood on women s wages we also find statistical evidence that experience and tenure may be endogenous variables in wage equations instrumental variables estimates suggest that both ordinary least squares cross sectional and first difference estimates understate the direct negative effect of children on wages

modern theory of unemployment fluctuations empirics and policy applications strong and widely accepted evidence shows that the natural rate of unemployment varies over time with substantial amplitude the frictions in the labor market that account for positive normal levels of unemployment are not simple and mechanical instead as a rich modem body of theory demonstrates the natural rate of unemployment is an equilibrium in which the volumes of job seeking by workers and worker seeking by employers reach a balance controlled by fundamental determinants of the relative prices of the two activities in recessions unemployment rises and job vacancies fall the natural explanation is an economywide fall in labor demand but a compelling model that generates a fall in labor demand without a counterfactual fall in productivity has eluded theorists to date nonetheless policymakers have appropriately adopted the view that the natural rate varies over time and is not a simple benchmark for setting monetary instruments

asymmetric information and search frictions a neutrality result this paper integrates asymmetric information between firms into a canonical model of on the job search workers are heterogeneous in ability but not all employers observe a worker s type wage dispersion caused by search frictions makes the equilibrium wage distribution insensitive to informational asymmetries hence the equilibrium outcome may be the same as when a worker s ability is known to every firm the supportability of the full information outcome depends on market parameters related to productivity knowledge and search the theoretical results elucidate an empirical puzzle about demographic differences in asymmetric information between employers

the age distribution and business cycle volatility international evidence abstract we estimate the age distribution s effect on business cycle fluctuations across a large number of countries a 10 percentage point increase in the middle aged share of the population decreases output volatility by 15 percent for the average country

seasonal concentration of the hotel demand in costa del sol a decomposition by nationalities abstract costa del sol is a mature mediterranean destination in the south of spain with a degree of seasonality that has shown little variation during the last 20 years in this paper we apply the decomposition of the gini index of seasonal concentration by nationalities the main outcome of this decomposition is the estimation of relative contributions to the overall seasonal concentration and marginal effects by nationalities these measures can be of great help in the design of counter seasonal policies our results suggest that planners interested in reducing seasonality may concentrate their efforts in consolidating markets with negative marginal effect over the index of concentration like the british and nordic ones in addition marketing targets may be focused primarily in the winter season for the markets with positive relative marginal effect

why are the returns to schooling higher for women than for men many studies have found that the impact of schooling on earnings is greater for females than for males despite the fact that females tend to earn less both absolutely and controlling for personal characteristics this study investigates possible reasons for this effect using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 one explanation is that education appears to have a double effect on the earnings of women it increases their skills and productivity as it does with men and in addition it appears to reduce the gap in male and female earnings attributable to factors such as discrimination tastes and circumstances the latter appear to account for about half of the differential in the returns to schooling

centralised wage setting inflation contracts and the optimal choice of central banker the paper examines the appropriate design of central banking institutions in an economy in which the nominal wage is set by an inflation averse monopoly union as a positive mark up over its market clearing value the analysis considers both the optimal choice of central banker and the potential role for a linear inflation contract the optimal set of arrangements is a central banker who attaches less significance to inflation than does society combined with an inflation contract where the value of the contract parameter is related to the union s degree of inflationaversion following the important contribution of rogoff 1985 the appointment of a conservative central banker has been widely accepted as a potential albeit partial solution to the time inconsistency problem associated with discretionary policy making in placing a greater weight on inflation than does the government and society as a whole in the setting of monetary policy the central bank s temptation to create inflation surprises is reduced this then leads to a lower inflation rate in equilibrium than would otherwise prevail whilst in rogoff s stochastic framework this reduction in the inflationary bias has to be weighed against an increase in output variability the appropriate choice of central banker ensures a net improvement in welfare an important feature of rogoff s model is the assumption of an atomistic labour market in which nominal wages embodied in single period contracts reflect interaction between agents who hold no market power such a representation of the labour market also characterises most subsequent extensions of rogoff s analysis e g lohmann 1992 and waller 1992 however a number of recent papers in considering the time inconsistency issue have employed the assumption of unionised wage setting assuming either an allencompassing monopoly union or alternatively a number of individual unions each of which has a non negligible impact on macroeconomic variables examples include agell and ysander 1993 bleaney 1996 cubitt 1992 1995 horn and persson 1988 hutchison and walsh 1998 and skott 1997 these contributions have examined the implications of the assumed labour market imperfection from a variety of perspectives but only those of bleaney and skott directly consider its consequences for the appropriate specification of central bank objectives in what follows we explore the significance of unionised wage setting for

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

on input market frictions and estimation of factors demand in this article we explore the impact of imperfectly competitive input markets on production function estimation first order profit maximizing conditions are altered when frictions in input markets cause the elasticity of input supply to the firm to be finite a consequence of this is that the standard econometric model used for production function estimation will be misspecified we prove that in all nontrivial cases finite elasticities of supply to the firm will lead to inconsistent estimates of production function parameters monte carlo simulations show that the resulting bias can be economically significant

the gini coefficient structure and its application for the evaluation of regional balance development in china abstract the evaluation of balanced regional development should consider not only the economic and ecological benefits but also regional differences a nongrouped gini index is constructed based on a continuous distribution function to evaluate the regionally balanced development of the economy and the environment and the applicability of the method is analyzed given the data characteristics combining the difference in the regional economic base and ecological carrying capacity a multigroup overall gini index mgo gini with regional spatial heterogeneity is further developed along with its decomposition structure this work evaluates and analyses the regional balance in china s development with regard to regional industrial output energy consumption and pollution emissions from 2000 to 2015 using both the nongrouped and the mgo gini the results show that the gini index constructed in this paper can be well adapted to fat tailed data which is a typical feature of china s regional economic and ecological benefits data the regionally balanced development of china does not obviously promote industrial output whereas the regional balance of energy consumption shows the same upward trend when evaluated with both the nongrouped and the mgo gini from 2000 to 2015 in recent years after a period of improvement the regional balance of pollution emissions has experienced a downward trend there is disparity in cleaner production efficiency between regions of china as well as an upward trend in this disparity in recent years china s interregional balance has been enhanced in terms of energy consumption and pollution emissions considering regional spatial heterogeneity whereas the balance of economic output has been further reduced the balance in regional energy consumption plays a supporting role in balanced development among regions the imbalance within developed areas is the main source of regional economic output and energy consumption imbalances and the imbalance in developing areas is the main source of the regional pollution imbalance in china

an estimate of the age distribution s effect on carbon dioxide emissions i introduction we exploit temporal and geographic demographic variation to estimate the relationship between a population s age distribution and carbon dioxide c o sub 2 emissions in a panel of 46 countries from 1990 to 2006 to reduce potential omitted variable bias we instrument for the age distribution with lagged birth rates and control for total population and total gross domestic product gdp a higher share of prime working age 35 49 individuals within a country leads to higher c o sub 2 emissions while younger and older populations have lower c o sub 2 emissions according to our results emissions of c o sub 2 account for about half of the radiative forcing from anthropogenic sources that are considered the primary contributors to global warming the intergovernmental panel on climate change 2007 predicts increases in average surface temperatures in the range of 1 1 6 4 degrees c 2 11 5 degrees f by the end of the century climate change has created the threat of substantial environmental damage with the possibility of catastrophic consequences for many throughout the world as a result both academics and policy makers are interested in c o sub 2 emissions the literature aimed at explaining c o sub 2 emissions usually focuses on the size and affluence of the population this approach can be traced back to the seminal work by ehrlich and holdren 1971 the biologist and physicist who argued that population size has a disproportionate impact on the environment the impact is generally assumed to depend upon technology leading to the well known ipat identity or kaya identity for c o sub 2 emissions i p x a x t where i is environmental impact p is population size a is affluence gdp per capita and t is a technology index more recent literature has focused on models of the technology index and how the index changes over time e g due to improvements in abatement technology the widely cited intergovernmental panel on climate change studies use several variations of the ipat model to produce regional emissions forecasts which are then aggregated to the global level structural studies by economists e g nordhaus 2009 have also attempted to forecast global c o sub 2 emissions using estimates of gdp from production functions and world population size although these studies have frequently used geographic density of the population as well as its size as explanatory variables and have allowed for nonlinearity in size most have ignored the age distribution within the population 1 a few papers have begun to address this potential oversight by explicitly including the age distribution in studies of c o sub 2 emissions dalton et al 2008 build a structural overlapping generations model to forecast u s c o sub 2 emissions 2 in their model simulations population aging has a big effect on future emissions our empirical findings support dalton et al 2008 but our approach is most closely related to cole and neumayer 2004 3 cole and neumayer 2004 also use a cross country panel to estimate the effect of demographic change on c o sub 2 emissions in an ipat type regression model while cole and neumayer 2004 include age group shares as controls the groups younger than 15 15 64 and 65 are too wide to capture the effect we posit and they do not instrument for the age distribution as we do cole and neumayer 2004 mainly focus on changes in total population whereas we are interested in the age distribution effect for a given population size our ordinary least square ols estimates indicate that a country s level of c o sub 2 emissions depends on its age distribution in addition to population size the regressions include total gdp and a full set of time and country dummies as controls we use the fraction of the population aged 35 49 or working share as the main explanatory variable changes in the working share across time not common to all countries and independent of gdp and total population provide the variation used to estimate the age distribution s effect

sticky prices and costly credit we develop a theory of money and credit as competing payment instruments then put it to work in applications agents use cash and credit because the former latter is subject to the inflation tax transaction costs frictions that make the choice of payment method interesting also imply equilibrium price dispersion we derive closed form solutions for money demand and show how to simultaneously account for the price change facts cash credit shares in micro data and money interest correlations in macro data the effects of inflation on welfare price dispersion and markups are discussed as are nonstationary equilibria with dynamics in the price distribution

separate and unequal occupation establishment sex segregation and the gender wage gap the authors report the first large scale empirical investigation of within job wage differences between men and women in the same occupation and establishment using data first on blue collar and clerical employees from 16 u s industries in 1974 83 and second on employees in 10 professional and administrative occupations the authors report three findings first wage differences at the occupation establishment level were small even without controls for individual level characteristics hence within job wage discrimination was much less important than occupation establishment segregation for observed wage differences second establishment segregation was an important cause although not as important as occupational segregation of wage differences third establishment segregation was extensive as was occupational segregation

wage differences in the hospitality sector abstract the article examines the origin of differences between wages in the hospitality sector and the rest of the private sector in spain the evidence obtained for the 2002 2010 period shows that the wage disadvantage of hospitality presents an increasing profile along the wage distribution so that it is particularly relevant for those earning comparatively higher salaries in contrast with other low wage sectors lower wages in hospitality are explained almost entirely by the specific characteristics of its workers and jobs particularly their lower educational qualifications and their higher presence in low skilled occupations and not by the existence of lower rewards to those characteristics highly qualified individuals are however an exception since they suffer a wage penalty for working in the sector furthermore the analysis shows that pay inequality is substantially lower in the hospitality sector and that it is not due to the relative characteristics of its workers and jobs

on the demographic adjustment of unemployment the unemployment rate is one of the most important business cycle indicators but its interpretation can be difficult because slow changes in the demographic composition of the labor force affect the level of unemployment and make comparisons across business cycles difficult to purge the unemployment rate from demographic factors labor force shares are routinely used to control for compositional changes this paper shows that this approach is ill defined because the labor force share of a demographic group is mechanically linked to that group s unemployment rate as both variables are driven by the same underlying worker flows we propose a new demographic adjustment procedure that uses a dynamic factor model for the worker flows to separate aggregate labor market forces and demographic specific trends using the u s labor market as an illustration our demographic adjusted unemployment rate indicates that the 2008 2009 recession was much more severe and generated substantially more slack than the early 1980s recession

wage differentials employer size and unemployment the unique equilibrium solution to a game in which a continuum of individual employers choose permanent wage offers and a continuum of workers search by sequentially sampling from the set of offers is characterized wage dispersion is a robust outcome provided that workers search while employed as well as when unemployed the unique nondegenerate equilibrium distribution of wage offers is constructed for three cases 1 identical workers and employers 2 identical employers and an atomless distribution of worker supply prices and 3 identical workers and an atomless distribution of job productivities copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

employment efficiency and sticky wages evidence from flows in the labor market i consider three views of the labor market in the first wages are flexible and employment follows the principle of bilateral efficiency workers never lose their jobs because of sticky wages in the second wages are sticky and inefficient layoffs do occur in the third wages are also sticky but employment governance is efficient i show that the behavior of flows in the labor market strongly favors the third view in the modern u s economy recessions do not begin with a burst of layoffs unemployment rises because jobs are hard to find not because an unusual number of people are thrown into unemployment

an empirical model of wage dispersion with sorting we estimate an equilibrium on the job search model with endogenous search intensity workers differ by skill firms by productivity workers respond to mismatch by intensive search and sorting may result from complementarities in the match level production function the model is estimated on danish matched employer employee data firms are ranked through revealed preference by the fraction of hires that is poached from other firms the poaching rank identification is obtained by firm rank conditional mobility and wage patterns wage variation is decomposed into four sources sorting 40 worker heterogeneity 32 firm heterogeneity 18 and frictional competition 10 a social planner can improve output net of search cost by 1 5 relative to the decentralized solution

gender wage gaps reconsidered a structural approach using matched employer employee data in this paper we study the extent to which wage differentials between men and women can be explained by differences in productivity disparities in friction patterns segregation and wage discrimination for this purpose we propose an equilibrium search model that features rent splitting on the job search and two sided heterogeneity in productivity the model is estimated using german matched employer employee data overall the results reveal that female workers are less productive and more mobile than males in addition female workers have on average slightly lower bargaining power than their male counterparts

aggregate demand shocks central bank preferences and macroeconomic outcomes with imperfect information abstract assuming imperfect information regarding aggregate demand shocks the paper shows first the distribution of the impact of such shocks between employment and prices depends crucially on central bank preferences second optimal stabilization is achieved by a conservative central banker

understanding the family gap in pay for women with children as the gender gap in pay between women and men has been narrowing the family gap in pay between mothers and nonmothers has been widening one reason may be the institutional structure in the united states which has emphasized equal pay and opportunity policies but not family policies in contrast to other countries that have implemented both the authors now have evidence on the links between one such family policy and women s pay recent research suggests that maternity leave coverage by raising women s retention after childbirth also raises women s levels of work experience job tenure and pay

sorting and the output loss due to search frictions we analyze a general search model with on the job search ojs and sorting of heterogeneous workers into heterogeneous jobs for given values of nonmarket time the relative efficiency of ojs and the amount of search frictions we derive a simple relationship between the unemployment rate mismatch and wage dispersion we estimate the latter two from standard micro data our methodology accounts for measurement error which is crucial to distinguish true from spurious mismatch and wage dispersion we find that without frictions output would be about 9 5 higher if firms can commit to pay wages as a function of match quality and 15 5 higher if they cannot noncommitment leads to a business stealing externality which causes a 5 5 drop in output

training turnover and search this article explores a model of firm specific training in a job search environment with labor turnover the main substantive finding is a positive association between training and wages when dispersed the article then precisely characterizes how both wage dispersion and firm profitability depend on the flow value b 0 of workers unmatched time it is shown that i for all high values b no equilibrium exists ii for intermediate values b multiple equilibria arise where firms earn zero profits and choose from a general wage distribution iii for all lower values b there is a unique equilibrium with firms earning positive profits and choosing from an atomless set of wages

the impact of the 1962 repatriates from algeria on the french labor market this paper uses census data to examine the impact on the french labor market of the 900 000 people repatriated from algeria in 1962 repatriates settled in regions culturally and climatically simil

frictional labour mobility we build a dynamic model of migration where in addition to standard relocation costs workers face spatial frictions that decrease their ability to compete for distant job opportunities we estimate the model on a matched employer employee panel dataset describing labour market transitions within and between the 100 largest french cities our identification strategy is based on the premise that frictions affect the frequency of job transitions while mobility costs impact the distribution of accepted wages we find that 1 controlling for spatial frictions reduces mobility cost estimates by one order of magnitude 2 the urban wage premium is driven by better opportunities for local job to job transitions in larger cities 3 migration reduces lifetime inequalities by providing insurance against unsatisfactory initial location draws 4 labour mobility policies based on relocation subsidies are inefficient unlike switching from nationwide to local minimum wages

are you experienced british evidence on age earnings profiles using uk data evidence is provided that the widely used quadratic earnings function may fare badly as indicated by recent work in the usa using data from pooled time series of cross sections from the general household survey the suitability of the quadratic specification alongside higher order polynomials is investigated on samples of men and for the first time in work of this type women working full time it is found that the quadratic specification understates earnings growth at low levels of experience especially for those workers with few formal qualifications the usage of higher order polynomials provides a better fit

the gap between male and female pay in the spanish tourism industry abstract this paper analyzes wage differentials between male and female workers in the spanish tourism industry using a large administratively matched employer employee data set obtained from a representative sample of companies this allows us to control for unobserved firm specific factors likely to affect the magnitude of the gender wage gap our findings indicate that male workers earn on average 6 7 higher monthly wages than their socially comparable female counterparts in particular the type of contract held the qualifications required for the job and the specific sub sector of employment are very important variables in explaining this gender wage difference we also find that only around 12 of the mean wage difference in the tourism industry cannot be explained by differences in observable characteristics which is well below the average for the rest of the industries in spain 87 our interpretation is that minimum wage legislation provides a particularly effective protection to women in the tourism industry which is characterized by a large number of low wage earners

earnings differentiation in the tourism industry gender human capital and socio demographic effects abstract this paper draws attention to a somewhat neglected field within tourism research namely the production side of tourism set within a human capital framework the purpose of the study is to examine if and how the variables education work experience and the socio demographic variables parenthood and marriage affect norwegian tourism employees annual wages in the 1994 2002 period furthermore the study specifically examines how the variables gender and time affect these wages among several findings four are of major importance 1 male tourism employees receive about 20 higher wages annually than their female counterparts ceteris paribus 2 there is a concave i e inverted u relationship between work experience and annual wages for both female and male employees but this pattern is much less distinct for females 3 both parenthood and marriage affect wages but their effects differ between male and female employees 4 all tourism employees experience a positive annual wage development in the period studied

job and wage mobility with minimum wages and imperfect compliance we propose a job search model with minimum wage regulations and imperfect compliance to explain the doubling of the mean and variance of hourly earnings of white males during the first 18 years of labor market experience the model encompasses job mobility and on the job wage growth as sources of wage dynamics and is estimated by simulated generalized method of moments using data from the national longitudinal survey of youths 1979 our estimates provide a good fit for the observed levels and trends of the main job and wage mobility data and for the increase in the mean and variance of wages over the life cycle as well as for the fall in the fraction of workers paid below the minimum wage job mobility explains 40 50 of the observed wage growth increases in the minimum wage and or compliance deliver small effects on the wage distribution and the nonemployment rate

monopsony in the low wage labor market evidence from minimum nurse staffing regulations this paper provides direct evidence on the extent of monopsony power in the low wage labor market by estimating the firm level elasticity of labor supply for nurse aides in the long term care nursing home industry using exogenous variation in hiring induced by the passage of a state minimum nurse staffing law i find that facilities initially out of compliance with the new law did not have to raise their wage offers relative to their competitors in order to hire more nurses while this is consistent with perfect competition in simple monopsony models of the labor market i discuss how the results may be more ambiguous in more complicated models

equilibrium price distributions equilibrium price distributions for a homogeneous product consistent with individual incentives are investigated they arise in informationally imperfect markets in which the only primitive datum is the distribution of search costs it is shown that single multi and continuous price distributions are all viable long run phenomena depending on the nature of search costs a method for computing equilibrium price distributions is also provided jevons law of one price has long been an accepted dictum in economic theory in a classroom presentation it still serves sometimes implicitly as a major premise in many micro models of market interaction much of the descriptive theory as well as welfare analysis hinges on this assumption yet one s day to day experience reveals that price differentials are a viable phenomenon and that looking for lower prices may very well be a rewarding activity the prospects of eventually hitting a bargain and the resulting price reduction would more than compensate for the cost incurred during the search process moreover the existence of price dispersions appear to be an empirically stable phenomenon snapshots of markets for relatively homogeneous products reveal substantial and recurring price differentials stigler 1961 and pratt wise and zeckhauser 1979 for example report some evidence supporting this claim an important article by stigler 1961 focused economists attention on the crucial role played by the informational structure of markets it gave rise to the study of the

the marriage earnings premium as a distributed fixed effect wage equations using cross sectional data typically find an earnings premium in excess of 10 percent for married men one leading hypothesis for the premium is that marriage facilitates specialization that enables married men to become more productive than single men another is that the premium is attributable to an unobserved fixed effect married men possessing qualities that are valued in the labor market as well as the marriage market this paper suggests that the premium is attributable to an unobserved timedistributed fixed effect that emerges and grows with the approach of marriage and continues to grow for some years after marriage a similar distributed fixed effect is found in the case of women but it is smaller and declines after a few years of marriage the results appear to cast doubt on the specialization hypothesis

wages and informality in developing countries we develop an equilibrium wage posting model with heterogeneous firms that decide to locate in the formal or the informal sector and workers who search randomly on and off the job we estimate the model on brazilian labor force survey data in equilibrium firms of equal productivity locate in different sectors a fact observed in the data wages are characterized by compensating differentials we show that tightening enforcement does not increase unemployment and increases wages total output and welfare by enabling better allocation of workers to higher productivity jobs and improving competition in the formal labor market jel e26 j24 j31 j46 o15 o17

yearly monthly and weekly seasonality of tourism demand a decomposition analysis abstract annual seasonal variations in tourism demand have been a central theme in literature however annual seasonality is not the only time based inequality in tourism flows that has important implications on policy making decisions at destinations within the context of tourism this study aims to make an in depth analysis of intra monthly and intra weekly tourism demand using the entropy and relative redundancy measures as alternative seasonality indicators to the gini coefficient in order to provide new tools to manage tourism and propose new action policies at these frequencies in comparison with the gini coefficient the entropy measure is simpler to compute and it is easily decomposable using the case study of air arrivals and departures to and from the balearic islands results show the appropriateness of entropy and relative redundancy as seasonal indicators but also as a new information tools for tourism seasonality analysis

searching for the effect of immigration on the labor market we compare two approaches to analyzing the effects of immigration on the labor market and find that the estimated effect of immigration on u s native labor outcomes depends critically on the empirical experiment used area analyses contrast the level or change in immigration by area with the level or change in the outcomes of non immigrant workers factor proportions analyses treat immigrants as a source of increased national supply of workers of the relevant skill the different effects of immigration on native outcomes in the area and factor proportions methodologies appear to result from the diluting effect of native migration flows across regions and failure to take adequate account of other regional labor market conditions in area comparisons excerpt

cross section estimation of the matching function evidence from england and wales this paper analyses how the levels of unemployment and vacancies affect the rate at which unemployed workers find employment the worker firm matching function in particular we test the robustness of previous empirical work by checking whether we obtain the same estimated function using cross section data rather than aggregate time series data we find strong evidence of constant returns to scale similar to previous work we also find larger cities have higher wages this provides indirect support for increasing returns but where those returns are taken in the form of better quality matches

the low skill trap recently it has become popular to argue that certain workers have fallen into a trap in which they have poor skills few job opportunities and a low return on training while others have not this paper demonstrates how such a trap can occur within a simple matching model with rent sharing rent sharing diminishes the worker s incentive to acquire skills however since firms also benefit from training rent sharing likewise induces job creation the subsequent improved matching prospects may offset the initial disincentive to invest however for this mechanism to be effective firms and workers must coordinate their actions if they do not the trap occurs

measuring earnings inequality and median earnings in the tourism industry abstract the purpose of this paper is two fold to measure the degree of earnings inequality in tourism employees in south korea using the gini coefficient and the lorenz curve and to examine the level of earnings based on median earnings the results show that tourism generates a moderately equal distribution of earnings in general tourism performs earnings distribution better than secondary and tertiary industries but it performs poorly as compared with primary industry the results also indicate that tourism is more likely to improve living standards for the lower income class than secondary and tertiary industries the analysis of median earnings however indicates that tourism is a low wage industry the labor intensive nature of the tourism industry absorbing many unskilled and semi skilled workers might be attributed to its low wage structure it is interesting to note that tourism was found to be advantageous to female workers in terms of earnings inequality and the level of earnings

the sullying effect of recessions previous work has established that recessions involve a cleansing effect so that in downturns only high productivity jobs remain but empirical evidence suggests job quality is procyclical jobs created in recessions are likely to be low paying and temporary this paper modifies previous models by adding on the job search which leads to an additional sullying effect calibration of the model suggests this offsetting sullying effect is likely to be much larger than the cleansing effect and can account for the procyclical match quality we observe in the data

counterfactual decomposition of changes in wage distributions using quantile regression we propose a method to decompose the changes in the wage distribution over a period of time in several factors contributing to those changes the method is based on the estimation of marginal wage distributions consistent with a conditional distribution estimated by quantile regression as well as with any hypothesized distribution for the covariates comparing the marginal distributions implied by different distributions for the covariates one is then able to perform counterfactual exercises the proposed methodology enables the identification of the sources of the increased wage inequality observed in most countries specifically it decomposes the changes in the wage distribution over a period of time into several factors contributing to those changes namely by discriminating between changes in the characteristics of the working population and changes in the returns to these characteristics we apply this methodology to portuguese data for the period 1986 1995 and find that the observed increase in educational levels contributed decisively towards greater wage inequality copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

estimating the effect of the age distribution on cyclical output volatility across the united states abstract i exploit the variation in demographic change across the united states to estimate the relationship between the age distribution in the population and the magnitude of cyclical output volatility according to panel regression estimates the relative supply of young workers or youth share has a statistically significant effect on the volatility of state by state gdp moreover changes to the age distribution can account for up to 58 of the recent reduction in business cycle fluctuations indicating a critical link between the youth share and output volatility

seasonal concentration of tourism demand decomposition analysis and marketing implications abstract this paper analyzes seasonality in the united kingdom specifically the english regions in relation to tourists place of origin and main travel motivation the method used is a decomposition of the gini index which provides relative marginal effects that facilitate the identification of market segments open to counter seasonal marketing efforts this method has been combined with a graphical multivariate technique biplot which groups segments according to their seasonality characteristics seasonal patterns associated with particular segments differ significantly when studied on a disaggregated basis therefore an adequate level of disaggregation is essential in the design of counter seasonal strategies although this study focuses on british destinations this methodology could be used as a control and monitoring measure in the regional analysis of any destination facilitating regular adjustment of regional tourism marketing campaigns to minimize seasonality effects specifically by targeting the types of tourists less prone to seasonality

firm level contracting and the structure of wages in spain in many european countries sectoral bargaining agreements are automatically extended to cover all firms in an industry employers and employees can also negotiate firm specific contracts the authors of this paper use a large matched employer employee data set from a 1995 survey in spain to study the effects of firm level contracting on the structure of wages they estimate a series of wage determination models including specifications that control for individual characteristics coworker characteristics the bargaining status of the workplace and the probability that the workplace was covered by a firm level contract they find that firm level contracting was associated with a 5 10 wage premium with larger premiums for more highly paid workers although they cannot decisively test between alternative explanations for the firm level contracting premium they find that workers with firm specific contracts had substantially longer job tenure than other workers suggesting that the premium was at least

public sector wage policy and labor market equilibrium a structural model we develop and estimate a structural model that incorporates a sizable public sector in a labor market with search frictions the wage distribution and the employment rate in the public sector are taken as exogenous policy parameters overall wage distribution and employment rate are determined within the model taking into account the private sector s endogenous response to public sector employment policies job turnover is sector specific and transitions between sectors depend on the worker s decision to accept alternative employment in the same or different sector by comparing the value of employment in the current and prospective jobs the model is estimated on british data by a method of moments we use the model to simulate the impact of various counterfactual public sector wage and employment policies

metrics to measure the geographic characteristics of tourism markets an integrated approach based on gini index decomposition abstract compared to the metrics of tourism seasonality or tourism income distribution metrics of tourism spatiality remains under explored our principal aim is to enhance the way we measure the geographic dispersal of visitors by developing a gini index inspired dispersal metric we discuss the theoretical criteria for an ideal spatial metric and use these criteria to highlight the important links and differences between gini and the common ratio approach applying the methods to inbound australian tourism data we find that considering only one method in isolation not only increases the risk of incorrectly measuring the spatial performance of markets but also ignores interesting and often offsetting heterogeneous influences in the data we expect the outcomes to aid tourism researchers and managers wanting to widen their repertoire in spatial measurement methods and aid the choice of most appropriate method based on criteria firmly grounded in theory

return to experience and initial wage level do low wage workers catch up summary this paper estimates the relationship between initial wage and return to experience we use a mincer like wage model to non parametrically estimate this relationship allowing for an unobservable individual permanent effect in wages and unobservable individual return to experience the relationship between return to experience and unobservable individual ability is negative when conditioning on educational attainment while the relationship between return to experience and educational attainment is positive we link our findings to three main theories of wage growth namely search unobserved productivity and learning and human capital we devise several empirical tests in order to separate the theories we find evidence in favor of the unobserved productivity and learning model and mixed evidence regarding the search model we find no evidence in support of the human capital model copyright 2013 john wiley sons ltd

the nairu in theory and practice airu stands for the nonaccelerating ine ation rate of unemployment it is beyond dispute that this acronym is an ugly addition to the english language there are however two issues that fail to command consensus among economists which we address in this essay the e rst issue is whether the concept of the nairu is a useful piece of business cycle theory we believe it is and we begin this paper by attempting to explain why in our view the nairu is approximately a synonym for the natural rate of unemployment this concept follows naturally from any theory that says that changes in monetary policy and aggregate demand more generally push ine ation and unemployment in opposite directions in the short run once this short run tradeoff is admitted there must be some level of unemployment consistent with stable ine ation the second issue is why the nairu changes over time and in particular why it fell in the second half of the 1990s this question is more dife cult and the answer is open to debate most likely various factors are at work including demographics and government policies yet one hypothesis stands out as particularly promising e uctuations in the nairu appear related to e uctuations in productivity in the 1970s the nairu rose when productivity growth slowed in the 1990s the nairu fell when productivity growth sped up developing and testing models that explain the links among ine ation unemployment and productivity remains a challenge for students of business cycle theory

wage dispersion over the business cycle abstract in this paper i provide robust evidence that fluctuations in wage dispersion are independent of the business cycle while residual wage dispersion i e dispersion of wages within narrowly defined demographic and skill groups of workers increases during booms and lessens during recessions moreover i show that the procyclical fluctuations in residual wage dispersion are mainly generated by cyclical changes in the upper half of the residual wage distribution

age effects in swedish local labor markets abstract the paper studies age structure effects on local labor market performance results show that young workers benefit from large youth cohorts and that a one standard deviation increase in the share of workers aged 50 60 years raises overall unemployment by 1 1 percentage points

the beveridge curve a survey important progress has been made in economists understanding of the beveridge curve from its measurement to its expression in canonical labor market models yet enduring puzzles remain chief among these are the empirical role of vacancies in the recruitment process the amplitude comovement and persistence of cyclical unemployment vacancy dynamics and the sources of lateral shifts in the beveridge curve the synthesis of these themes identifies several priorities for ongoing research including the role of entry costs into vacancy creation in shaping beveridge dynamics the cyclicality of search intensity both off and on the job and its relation to participation and job to job transitions the theory and measurement of mismatch and the sources of hysteresis in unemployment flows

equilibrium price dispersion with sequential search abstract the paper studies equilibrium pricing in a product market for an indivisible good where buyers search for sellers buyers search sequentially for sellers but do not meet every seller with the same probability specifically a fraction of the buyers meetings lead to one particular large seller while the remaining meetings lead to one of a continuum of small sellers in this environment the small sellers would like to set a price that makes the buyers indifferent between purchasing the good and searching for another seller the large seller would like to price the small sellers out of the market by posting a price that is low enough to induce buyers not to purchase from the small sellers these incentives give rise to a game of cat and mouse whose only equilibrium involves mixed strategies for both the large and the small sellers the fact that the small sellers play mixed strategies implies that there is price dispersion the fact that the large seller plays mixed strategies implies that prices and allocations vary over time we show that the fraction of the gains from trade accruing to the buyers is positive and nonmonotonic in the degree of market power of the large seller as long as the large seller has some positive but incomplete market power the fraction of the gains from trade accruing to the buyers depends in a natural way on the extent of search frictions

job search with bidder memories this paper revisits the no recall assumption in job search models with take it or leave it offers workers who can recall previously encountered potential employers in order to engage them in bertrand bidding have a distinct advantage over workers without such attachments firms account for this difference when hiring a worker when a worker first meets a firm the firm offers the worker a sufficient share of the match rents to avoid a bidding war in the future the pair share the gains to trade in this case the diamond paradox no longer holds

labor flows across firm size age and economic sector in colombia vs the united states this paper compares labor market flows between a developing economy colombia and a developed one the united states us in a comparative framework we explore measures of labor market flows across dimensions such as firm size age and economic sector this comparison allows us testing for both countries a series of interesting hypothesis suggested in the literature namely the negative systematic relationship between firm size age and employment growth rate we find that labor market fluidity in the us labor market is substantially higher than in colombia and that the churning rate is twice as high for the us market as it is for the colombian one we argue that this fluidity gap between the two economies can be explained by among other factors the rigid nature of colombian labour market institutions

happy birthday you re fired the effects of an age dependent minimum wage on youth employment flows in the netherlands the dutch minimum wage for workers aged 15 to 23 is defined as a stepwise increasing function of a worker s calendar age using dutch administrative records the author shows that the birthday disc

the right man for the job this paper describes a search model with a continuum of worker and job types free entry and transferable utility we apply a second order taylor expansion to characterize the equilibrium derive the cost of search and show that it is decreasing in the substitutability of worker types this cost of search is then decomposed into three components unemployment vacancy costs and mismatch our contact technology rules out congestion effects between different worker types and therefore exhibits increasing returns to scale one third of those increasing returns in contacts are shown to be absorbed by firms and workers being more choosy the resulting equilibrium is not efficient unemployment benefits can reduce the loss by serving as a search subsidy numerical simulations of the model show that our taylor expansions are quite accurate 2004 the review of economics studies limited

an equilibrium model of search unemployment this paper develops a simple general equilibrium model with sequential search in which a nondegenerate wage offer distribution is endogenously determined we use this model to analyze the comparati

aggregate demand shocks private signals and employment variability can better information be harmful abstract the consequences of private information concerning the realization of aggregate demand shocks are investigated in the context of a standard macroeconomic model it is found that an improvement in information quality can be damaging in the sense of amplifying employment fluctuations the source of this result is an externality arising from individual firm wage decisions which leads to a collective over reaction to private information

age specific dynamic labor demand and human capital investment abstract to study the optimal age specific labor demand and human capital investment at the firm level we extend the standard dynamic labor demand model by introducing age as a second dynamic variable and distinguish between two types of workers low skilled and high skilled applying an age structured optimal control model we derive qualitative features of the optimal age specific hiring and training effort for the case of a linear revenue and production function we prove that firms do not anticipate changes in adjustment costs in their optimal decisions this result no longer holds if a nonlinear revenue or production function is considered

inflation targets and contracts with uncertain central banker preferences within a standard model of monetary delegation the authors show that the optimal linear inflation contract performs strictly better than the optimal inflation target when there is uncertainty about the central banker s preferences the optimal combination of a contract and a target performs best and eliminates the inflation bias and any variability not associated with supply shocks however variability due to shocks is enhanced by uncertain central banker preferences quadratic contracts are shown to overcome this problem partly but the advantages of delegation may still be dominated by the excess variability due to shocks hence the credibility stabilization tradeoff is restored

new evidence on sex segregation and sex differences in wages from matched employee employer data we use new matched employer employee data to estimate the contributions of sex segregation and wage differences by sex within occupation industry establishment and occupation establishment cells to the overall sex gap in wages in contrast to earlier data used to study this question our data cover all industries and occupations across all regions of the united states we find that segregation of women into lower paying occupations industries establishments and occupations within establishments accounts for a sizable fraction of the sex gap in wages nonetheless approximately one half of the sex gap in wages remains attributable to the individual s sex

labor market search and optimal retirement policy a popular and long standing view is that social security is a means for young unemployed people to purchase jobs from older workers can social security by encouraging retirement and hence creating job vacancies for the young improve the allocation of workers to jobs maybe according to a standard model of labor market search but public retirement programs currently pay the elderly substantially more than their jobs are worth an important effect is that retirement reduces the value of other vacant jobs our results imply that recent reforms aimed at reducing retirement incentives are likely to improve labor market efficiency i introduction the objective of this article is to formalize a popular argument about the economic rationale for social security and public pension programs in the united states and other countries we construct a model in which there can be significant frictions slowing the process of matching workers with firms and social security is a labor market policy designed to remove old workers from the labor market in this sense it can be said that social security is a means for young unemployed individuals to purchase jobs from older employed workers president franklin d roosevelt in particular in one of his fireside chats suggested that this would be an important goal for social security the program for social security now pending before the congress is a necessary part of the future unemployment policy of the government it proposes by means of old age pensions to help those who have reached the age of retirement to give up their jobs and thus give to the younger generation greater opportunities for work and to give all a feeling of security as they look toward their old age roosevelt 1938 134 35 this position on social security continues to receive some support at least enough to receive serious consideration in recent social security debates in recent discussion about the retirement earnings test in congress many agreed with the following perspective social security when it was created in 1935 sought to achieve two goals moving older workers out of the workforce to make way for younger workers and to partially replace lost income due to retirement testimony of honorable john j rhodes iii in social security retirement test 1991 these debates are not unique to the united states as is well known european countries have recently devoted much attention to youth unemployment as a result public pension programs have become more generous and increasingly used to encourage labor force withdrawal among older workers although public pension programs have been used in many countries as age targeted employment policies there has been little work aimed at understanding their implications for the market at the aggregate level in this article we begin to address whether policies aimed at discouraging work among the elderly and thereby creating job vacancies for the young can improve the allocation of workers to jobs in the labor market in particular the idea that continued employment by the old contributes to increased youth unemployment implies that the life cycle contributes to congestion problems in the labor market accordingly an important aspect of a modeling approach aimed at addressing these issues should be a setting in which unemployment is an equilibrium phenomenon and the labor market participation decisions of workers impose a negative externality on the pool of the unemployed we introduce a simple model of labor market search along the lines of mortensen 1982 and pissarides 2000 extended to include retirement decisions and show how the optimality of induced retirement depends on the model s parameter values some of which imply that the social value of retirement exceeds the private value while other parameter values imply that the private value exceeds the social value

unravelling the mystery of regional unemployment in finland b ockerman p 2003 unravelling the mystery of regional unemployment in finland reg studies 37 331 340 the study explores the determination of regional unemployment in finland the evaluation of regional labour markets is based on unique linked panel data that is created by matching the conventional economic fundamentals with the measures based on gross flows of jobs and workers the striking empirical finding is that the reorganization of labour markets lowers the unemployment rate in the finnish regions in other words the reallocation of labour resources seems to be good for regional employment b ockerman p 2003 demystifier le chomage re gional en finlande reg studies 37 331 340 cette etude cherche a examiner la determination du chomage regional en finlande l evaluation des marches du travail est fonde e sur des donnees uniques rassemblees aupres des e chantillons permanents liees et obtenues en mettant en rapport les fondements economiques conventionnels avec les mesures basees sur l

gender and trade aspects of labour markets we provide a comprehensive up to date review of the large body of theory and evidence on the linkages between trade liberalisation and gender inequality in income as well as two of the latter s key underlying determinants wages and employment on balance the evidence for developing countries points to an overall beneficial impact of trade expansion on female employment both relative to male employment and in absolute terms although largely concentrated in unskilled manufacturing by contrast the bulk of the evidence suggests a widening gender wage gap as a result of freer trade

what should i be when i grow up occupations and unemployment over the life cycle abstract why is unemployment higher for younger individuals we address this question in a frictional model of the labor market that features learning about occupational fit in order to learn the occupation in which they are most productive workers sample occupations over their careers because young workers are more likely to be in matches that represent a poor occupational fit they spend more time in transition between occupations through this mechanism our model can replicate the observed age differences in unemployment which as in the data are due to differences in job separation rates

empirical age earnings profiles the human capital earnings function in which earnings are expressed as a quadratic in potential experience is probably the most widely accepted empirical specification in economics in spite of its widespread acceptance the human capital earnings function provides a very poor approximation of the true empirical relationship between earnings and experience the standard formulation understates early career earnings growth by about 30 50 and overstates midcareer growth by 20 50 however simple alternative specifications that fit the data are available

taxation and redistribution of residual income inequality this paper studies the optimal redistribution of income inequality caused by the presence of search and matching frictions in the labor market we study this problem in the context of a directed search model of the labor market populated by homogeneous workers and heterogeneous firms the optimal redistribution can be attained using a positive unemployment benefit and an increasing and regressive labor income tax the positive unemployment benefit serves the purpose of lowering the search risk faced by workers the increasing and regressive labor tax serves the purpose of aligning the cost to the firm of attracting an additional applicant with the value of an application to society

thick market effects and churning in the labor market evidence from u s cities using u s census microdata we show that on average workers change occupation and industry less in more densely populated areas the result is robust to standard demographic controls as well as to including aggregate measures of human capital and sectoral mix analysis of the displaced worker surveys shows that this effect is present in cases of involuntary separation as well on the other hand we actually find the opposite result higher rates of occupational and industrial switching for the subsample of younger workers these results provide evidence in favor of increasing returns to scale matching in labor markets results from a back of the envelope calibration suggest that this mechanism has an important role in raising both wages and returns to experience in denser areas

search mismatch and unemployment abstract this paper explores the efficiency of the equilibrium allocation in a matching model with heterogeneous workers and jobs in the basic setup there are two types of workers with different skill levels both types can perform the simple tasks of unskilled jobs while the complex tasks of skilled jobs require a high ability worker we demonstrate that the equilibrium outcome with random search and ex post bargaining is never efficient under the hosios condition the average wage is correct but bargaining compresses the wage distribution relative to workers shadow values this feature distorts the relative profits of jobs making it too attractive for firms to create skilled jobs furthermore due to the low skill premium the high ability workers may accept too many jobs finally in an extension we show that the introduction of separate markets for the two types of jobs is not sufficient to guarantee efficiency

the impact of young workers on the aggregate labor market an increase in the share of youth in the working age population of one state or region relative to the rest of the united states causes a sharp reduction in that state s relative unemployment rate and a modest increase in its labor force participation rate this is inconsistent with many theories of the labor market but can be easily explained by a model of frictional unemployment with on the job search the theory makes strong predictions regarding the behavior of wages which are shown to be consistent with the data the paper also reconciles its findings with an existing body of apparently contradictory empirical evidence

employer size or skill group size effect on wages the authors analyze explanations for firm or establishment size effects on wages one theory is that each firm faces an upward sloping supply curve for labor implying that the number of any particular type of worker should matter for his or her level of pay rather than the total number of workers in the firm to test this hypothesis the authors add the log of skill group size to the standard log wage equation results indicate that the traditional employer size effect on wages dwindles away once control for the number of workers of the same skill group educational type as the observed individual within the establishment is added to the equation the skill group size effect on wages is substantial after controlling for both individual and establishment specific heterogeneity a dwindling employer size effect and a significant group size effect remain

long term partnership formation marriage and employment of course marriage and employment are different nevertheless a worker looking for a job a rm looking for worker or a single person looking for a marriage partner face similar problems as all are seeking a long term partner indeed forming long term partnerships is a common occurrence in life there are many other examples business people search for other business people to form a pro table relationship bridge players seek to nd a suitable partners students search for a good university we would all like to nd a good friend etc the problem becomes signi cant if there are substantial differences in the return obtained from forming a partnership with different partners for example employers differ in the wages they offer or in the work environment they provide in such a situation a worker may reject some job offers similarly as many have learned to their cost some make better marriage partners than others the problem is two sided while a worker is evaluating a potential employer the employer is also evaluating the worker it is this two sided aspect of the problem that generates a signi cant interest a worker s willingness to accept employment at a rm depends not only on the characteristics of the rm but also the other possible options open to the worker the better an individual s opportunities elsewhere the more selective he or she will be in evaluating a potential partnership an academic who believes harvard may make an offer in the near future will be more selective in evaluating offers from lesser universities in this way expectations play a role if a single man believes that few if any women will nd him an acceptable marriage partner then he may accept the rst opportunity that presents itself partnership formation typically does not comply with a classic market situation where all participants know everything and all trades take place at zero cost finding a job nding a husband or wife or nding a business partner is a time consuming activity where opportunities typically arrive over time at uncertain intervals of time of course we can act in ways that in uence the arrival rate of potential partner workers go to employment agencies or read help wanted advertisements in newspapers singles of a certain age go to discos or join tennis clubs the literature on search and matching sm see mortensen 1982 and pissarides 1990 for early examples 1 provides an excellent framework for the economic journal 109 june f307 f334 royal economic society 1999 published by blackwell publishers 108 cowley road oxford ox4 1jf uk and 350 main street malden ma 02148 usa

on the job search in a matching model with heterogeneous jobs and workers this paper considers a matching model with heterogenous jobs unskilled and skilled and workers low and high educated which allows for on the job search by mismatched workers the latter are high educated workers who transitorily accept unskilled jobs and continue to search for skilled jobs our findings show that on the job search introduces an additional source of between and within group wage inequality furthermore the higher quit rate of mismatched workers exerts a negative externality on unskilled jobs and weakens the labour market position of low educated workers this last feature changes the effects of skill biased technological change and it alters the response of the labour market to shifts in the skill distribution this paper has been written for presentation as an invited lecture at the annual conference of the european association of labour economics eale 2003 seville 18 21 september 2003 we are very grateful to maite blazquez for excellent research assistance we also wish to thank barbara petrongolo participants in seminars at uc3m core essex and lse for helpful comments and especially j albrecht for his insightful discussion on a preliminary draft of this paper the usual disclaimer applies

search in cities the aim of this paper is to expose the recent developments of urban search models which incorporate a land market into a search matching framework using these models we will be able to explain why unemployment rates vary within a city how city structure affects workers labor market outcomes how unemployment benefits and the job destruction rate affect the growth of cities and why workers living far away from job centers search less intensively and experience higher unemployment rates than those residing closer to jobs we are also able to explain why as compared to whites black workers spend more time commuting to work but travel less miles and search for jobs over a smaller area

viewpoint male female wage differentials how can that be abstract the paper outlines the main empirical procedures that are used to document the male female wage differential and the extent to which it reflects discrimination it then discusses the evidence on male female wage differentials their existence the extent to which they reflect discrimination their changes over time and the factors that influence the gap particular attention is paid to more recent studies that control for a wider range of conventionally unobserved factors theoretical perspectives are then outlined focusing on the issue of how discriminatory wage differentials can survive given the forces of competition the impacts of policy initiatives are also discussed

labor market institutions and long term effects of youth unemployment graduating from a school during a time of adverse economic conditions has a persistent harmful effect on workers subsequent employment opportunities an analysis of panel data from oecd countries during the 1960 2010 periods reveals that a worker who experiences a 1 percentage point higher unemployment rate while the worker is 16 24 years old has a 0 14 percentage point higher unemployment rate at ages 25 29 years and 0 03 percentage points higher at ages 30 34 years the persistence of this negative effect is stronger in countries with stricter employment protection legislation a composite index for labor market rigidity is constructed and the index is shown to have positive correlation with the persistence moderating macroeconomic fluctuations is more important in countries that have more persistent labor market entry effects on subsequent outcomes

repeated common value auctions with asymmetric bidders abstract this paper considers a first price common value auction with one sided private information among bidders an object is rented each period to the highest bidder without revealing the bids made in previous periods the paper extends single crossing arguments used in static games to show the existence of equilibrium in this repeated auction the model predicts that bidders bid more aggressively in a repeated auction than in a static auction because a higher bid increases the amount of information learned through bidding the aggressive bidding behavior also implies that the per period revenue of the repeated auction is higher than that of the one period counterpart this bidding behavior leads to a theoretical explanation for the winner s curse in repeated auctions in addition the model yields predictions like an increasing wage schedule over time and the institution of a signing bonus that are consistent with labor market observations