GENDER WAGE DIFFERENCES IN AUSTRALIA, SWEDEN AND THE UNITED STATES

In this paper I use microdata from the Luxembourg Income Study t s investigate the contributions of industrial structure, occupational mix and personal and family characteristics to observed gender differences in wages in Australia, Sweden and the United States. A particular effort is made to analyse differences in distribution as well as level of wages. The conclusion reached is that different factors determine the wages of low- and high-wage workers. For higher-wage workers, personal and family characteristics are important explanations for wage variation. For lower-wage workers, occupation plays a more significant role.     

Romanians,Hungarians and their wages,in transition,in Romania

Legally binding treaties or memorandums have been used over time to regulate the issue of national borders of many European countries. As a result, relatively large groups of people have become ethnic minorities in other countries. They may conserve their ethnic identities, and therefore their children may accumulate ethnic human capital (e.g., language, culture, and religion) in addition to the general human capital of the country. Therefore, they can get access to an appropriate occupation linked by tradition or other factors to their ethnic group. This paper uses estimates from a selection model with an endogenous switch among three broad types of occupational groups to analyze the composition of the wage gap between Romanians and ethnic Hungarians in Romania before and during the transition from a planned to a market economy. The results suggest that the institutional settings of the controlled economy allowed Romanians to work in occupations that gave them the best returns, while the changes during the transition years allowed ethnic Hungarians to work in occupations that gave them the best returns.     

Does Ease of Communication Increase Trade? Commonality of Language and Bilateral Trade

Gravity model explanations of trade volumes frequently include dummy variables to account for the commonality of language among trading partners. In this paper we use a data set for the number of people in a country who speak English as a first language or English as a second language (Crystal, 1997) as an indicator of the ease with which trade with the United States occurs. Controlling for commodity fixed effects we use SITC three digit industry data centred on 1995 United States bilateral trade with 33 countries to determine the effect of the degree of language commonality on bilateral trade. Both English as a first language and English as a second language are found to be less important for exports than for imports. This is true for all three digit industries as well as when the specific industry groups identified in Rauch (1999) are considered.     

Occupational Status: Why do some Workers Miss Out?

The difference in socioeconomic status between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' is widening in the Australian labour market. This is reflected in the data on both earnings and occupational status. This paper assesses the factors contributing to differences in the occupational attainment of workers with a marginal attachment to the labour market and workers who are part of mainstream Australia. Overall, 94 per cent of the occupational status differential is attributable to the inferior endowments possessed by workers with a marginal attachment to the labour market. Until the disadvantaged workers improve their skills they will not be able to gain access to high status occupations.     

The assimilation of Australian immigrants: does occupation matter?

This paper utilises the occupational attainment approach to investigate immigrant labour market assimilation, complementing other assimilation approaches such as employability, earnings, skills-match and job satisfaction. Our results show that all immigrant groups suffer from initial occupational attainment disadvantage. Worryingly, no ‘catch-up’ over time is evident – even when disaggregated to reflect different cultures and backgrounds. Nor is there much evidence that the occupational status of younger arrivals matches those of Australian born residents, despite being immersed in local mores and institutions while undertaking schooling in Australia. Newer cohorts of immigrants (those who arrived between 2000 and 2014) are also more prone to suffering an occupational penalty. We recommend policymakers subsidise bridging courses to aid recognition of overseas-obtained qualifications and encourage immigrants to obtain local qualifications that can complement their overseas-obtained work experience. This will increase their ‘Australian-ready’ skill-set and occupational attainment in their new host country.     

Ocupational segregation,labour force participation and the relative earnings of men and women

A model of the labour market is developed in which particiaption rates of men and women,wages rates of men and women and occupational segregation are determined simultaneously. The model is estimated using cross-sectional data from Australia. The most important empirical results are that (a) particiaption rates,wage rates and occupational segregation should be viewed as being simultaneously determined,(b) differences in male and female labour-force attactment and human capital attainment are important determinants of the gender composition of occupations and (c)there is little direct evidence in this study to support discrimination-based theories of occupational segregation.     

Closer Economic Relations with East Asia?

This paper examines Australia's economic links with East Asia and the policy implications of these links. The main issue is whether Australia should join the regional trading arrangements with East Asian countries that have been proposed. It examines the factors which determine the share of East Asia in Australian exports. One of these, the country bias factor, is threatened by proposed regional trading arrangements which might exclude Australia. After considering the costs of exclusion, the paper concludes that Australia should consider developing new bilateral or regional trade arrangements with countries in East Asia.     

Incentives to self-employment decision in Sweden

The objective of this paper is to empirically examine the determinants of the self‐employment decision, with a particular focus on gender differences and occupational choice by using register‐based individual panel data for the period 2003 to 2006. Individuals choose to move into self‐employment out of three possible initial statuses: paid employment, combiner or inactivity. These groups are of specific interest for the Swedish political agenda. The question that we specifically pose is how a set of socio‐economic factors separately induce men and women in these three statuses to enter self‐employment.     

An Analysis of the Impact of Health on Occupation

Maintaining individuals with health limitations in the labour force is a challenge of growing importance. Determining the effect of health on occupation may tell us how people adapt to their limitations, and what types of jobs make this harder or easier. This paper uses the first 14 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to examine the effect of health and changes in health on occupation for the working‐age population. I use dynamic panel models which account for selection into employment. Two measures of occupation are used to capture two aspects of occupation highlighted in the literature as being linked to health: physical job demands and status. The results of the analyses provide some evidence that a health shock reduces the likelihood of manual employment for younger men, suggesting that younger men may adapt to a health shock by reducing physical job demands. Worsening health and work‐limiting long‐term conditions are found to have a negative effect on occupational status for men and women, suggesting health selection into lower‐status jobs, and an adverse effect of poor health on occupational mobility.     

Job mismatches and career mobility

Does over-education assist or hinder occupational advancement? Career mobility theory hypothesizes that over-education leads to a higher level of occupational advancement and wage growth over time, with mixed international empirical evidence. This paper re-tests career mobility theory directly using a rich Australian longitudinal data set. A dynamic random effects probit model is employed to examine upward occupational mobility, considering two-digit occupational rank advancement and wage growth over three-year intervals. The ‘Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia’ data across nine years are employed, and a Mundlak correction model is adopted to adjust for unobserved heterogeneity effects and potential endogeneity, both of which are important to over-education analysis. Contrary to career theory, the results point to job mismatch as an economic concern rather than a passing phase, regardless of whether or not workers are skill-matched. Results further show the importance of adjusting for endogeneity.     

Occupational transition and country-of-origin effects in the early stage occupational assimilation of immigrants: some evidence from Australia

We examine the occupational attainment of recent immigrants at 2 years post migration in order to study their early stage assimilation into the labour market in Australia. Human capital endowments and country-of-origin effects are examined for six occupational groups. We also study transitions across occupations from source to host country. The empirical approach utilizes the Ordered Generalized Extreme Value (OGEV) model which embodies differing utility functions across occupational outcomes, as well as accounting for any ordering in these outcomes. The results suggest that the transferability of knowledge and skills is affected by cultural and social backgrounds, and that non-Western immigrants are disproportionately channelled into inferior jobs post migration. The investigation of the country-of-origin effect on the skilled migrants’ occupational transition process is especially apt in the context of skill shortages in many host countries.     

Multigenerational Mobility Among Males in India

Most studies of intergenerational mobility focus on adjacent generations, and there is limited knowledge about multigenerational mobility—status transmission across three generations. We examine multigenerational educational and occupational mobility in India, using a nationally representative data set the India Human Development Survey that contains information about education and occupation for three generations. We find that mobility has increased over generations for education, but not for occupation. We also find that there are stark differences across social groups, with individuals belonging to socially disadvantaged communities lagging behind in social progress. Multigenerational mobility for Muslims in education and occupation has decreased in comparison to Hindus over the three generations. While we find that there is an increase in educational mobility for other disadvantaged groups such as Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes compared to General Castes, we do not find evidence of increased occupational mobility over the three generations.     

Occupational mobility in Australia: A quantitative approach

The major aim of this paper is to formulate and estimate a model to explain occupational mobility in Australia. The main hypotheses advanced in the development of the theoretical model are that occupational mobility varies with excess demand (or supply) in the aggregate labour market, that segmentation occurs within individual markets for specific occupations, and that net mobility between occupations is responsive to changes in relative occupational wage rates after adjustment for differential risks of unemployment. The empirical results support the hypothesis that net mobility is a function of changes in relative occupational certainty equivalent wage rates. Further, the statistical properties of the estimates suggest that the structural approach can be highly successful in comparison to previous reduced-form studies in this area.     

Immigration, Language and Multiculturalism in Australia

This paper uses a unique survey on multiculturalism in Australia to explore attitudes towards immigration and multiculturalism. The ethnic backgrounds of immigrants are shown not to matter as long as immigrants are perceived as wanting to become Australian, rather than remaining apart. Australians support government programs to assist the adjustment process, but oppose programs that encourage distinct language and cultural maintenance or foster linguistic/ethnic concentrations. The apprehension that Australians have towards multiculturalism is that they see it as a mechanism for separate cultural preservation. Linguistic enclaves are shown to reduce the acquisition of English language skills among immigrants, whereas positive attitudes among immigrants towards Australia are associated with greater proficiency in speaking, reading and writing English.     

Strengthening Intellectual Property Rights in Asia: Implications for Australia

Asian developing economies are both the greatest target of pressure for stronger intellectual property rights (IPRs) and the region of most significant change. These countries have enacted numerous improvements in their laws. I discuss how higher standards might affect economic activity in East Asia and Australia and the importance of adopting mechanisms for ensuring that they promote effective competition.
Stronger standards in the region could affect the Australian economy in a number of ways. More rapid Asian growth should increase the demand for Australian exports, perhaps by as much as $350 million per year. Further, Australian consumers could gain from imports of higher-quality Asian products. Australian firms also have an emerging comparative advantage in supplying technologies, designs, and services to Asian partners.
However, there may be some costs as well, including higher regional prices of protected products and additional competition for inward foreign direct investment. Thus, Australia would be advised to improve its attractiveness as a location for investors. Australia also has an interest in maintaining effective competition in its own market as IPRs are strengthened regionally. Australia could take a leading role in countering attempts by the United States and Europe to erect excessively protectionist new standards.     

Unfinished Business

Abstract This article is about three phases in Australian trade policy: protectionism, unilateral liberalisation, and participation in regional trade liberalisation. Australia used to have one of the most protected economies in the world. The last dozen years have seen a radical transformation of Australian economic policy: Australia is in the process of becoming one of the most open economies in the world. The last five-to-ten years have also seen a related transformation of Australian foreign economic policy. This policy is now centrally concerned with promoting the process of international economic integration within the Asian region; particularly through the APEC process. Should Australia be pursuing ‘open regionalism’ in the Pacific? or promoting an Asia Pacific trading bloc? or concentrating on its own unilateral trade liberalisation? or using its energy to press for global liberalisation through the GATT? I argue that there remains a deep contradiction in the APEC process; that ‘open regionalism’ is in Australia's interests, and that the critical test of Australia's conversion to liberalisation will come in this third phase, in the future answers that it gives to these questions.     

OCCUPATIONAL EARNINGS BEHAVIOR AND THE INEQUALITY OF EARNINGS BY SEX AND RACE IN THE UNITED STATES*

This paper examines differences in earnings by occupations, and within occupations by sex and by race, on the basis of the 1/100 Public Use Samples of the 1960 and 1970 U.S. Population Censuses. It employs interval analysis to establish 32 categories of occupations with similar characteristics. Little relation was found between mean earnings of occupational groups and the degree of earnings inequality within them. When the figures are examined by sex, it was found that men, on average, earned over twice as much as women in both years, but women's earnings were more unequally distributed (as measured by the Gini coefficient). Women are concentrated in the traditional “female” occupations, which tend to be those at the bottom of the earnings scale, and men have a monopoly of the higher paid occupations. But mean earnings for men exceeded those for women in all occupational groups except one, even in the primarily female occupations. Standardizing first for occupational distribution and then for earnings by occupation, it was found that earnings differences between males and females within occupation had a greater impact on the overall male-female earnings ratio than did differences in occupational distribution by sex. In contrast, when the figures are examined by race, the change in occupational distribution (primarily the movement of blacks out of farming and of blacks and Spanish speakers out of personal services) was the major factor. There was also a considerable degree of earnings inequality within demographic groups. The degree of inequality was in the main reduced when the demographic groups were subdivided into occupations, but it was still substantial. Additional factors like time worked, schooling, and experience must be taken into consideration in understanding this phenomenon.     

Revisiting Gender Variation in Training

The purposes of this current study are twofold. First, inspired by data emerging from the United Kingdom and Australia, we seek to confirm whether the incidence of training was higher for US women than for US men during the 1990s. Second, we explore the relationship between the comparatively greater incidence of training for women and occupational segregation. Our data confirm that overall levels of training participation were higher for women than for men in 1995. Further, when training is broken down by type, women also participated more than men did in the three possible categories: on-the-job training, employer-supported off-the-job training, and off-the-job training without employer support. These results challenge conventional expectations derived from human capital theory. Finally, our estimates indicate that occupational segregation accounted for more than one-third of the gender differences in training in 1995 and for more than 40 percent in on-the-job and employer-supported, off-the-job training categories.     

Regional culture and adaptive behavior of physicians

We examine the possibility that regional differentiation of occupations may shed light on how professional behavior adapts to environmental change. Based on the relative prevalence of occupational categories, we defined five geographic regions within the 48 contiguous United States. 77 psychometric, demographic and cultural metrics that covaried significantly with geographic regions by ANOVA were subjected to principal component analysis (PCA), from which three primary clusters emerged. A panel of judges scored the occupations in these clusters for three primary characteristics: generation of variance (Va), reconciliation of variance with institutional procedures (Re) or implementation of standard institutional practice (Pr). By plotting composites of the clustered elements in a 3-dimensional (Va, Re, Pr) matrix, substantially overlapping regional composites emerged for psychological, cultural and occupational metrics. Based on this putative psychological and cultural differentiation of geographic regions, we asked whether adaptive change in physician??and, by extension, of other professional??behavior might be more strongly correlated with intrinsic (e.g. psychological) or extrinsic (e.g. cultural) factors. Based on significant regional differences in patient behavior and minimal regional differences in physician psychology, we suggest that extrinsic factors may play a more direct role in changing professional behavior than intrinsic factors.     

Made for the job or by the job? A lab-in-the-field experiment with firefighters

A large body of evidence supports a negative association between risk aversion of workers and the level of risk they face in their occupations. This relationship could be explained by the self-selection of workers into jobs according to their risk preferences or by the effect on risk attitudes of occupations in which people face or witness dangerous situations. We use incentivized experiments to measure risk preferences among three different groups: experienced firefighters, novice firefighters, and students. We find that experienced firefighters are less risk-averse than novice firefighters, and these in turn are less risk-averse than students. The effects remain significant even after controlling for other relevant differences between these groups. Our findings suggest that the observed relationship between risk aversion and high-risk occupations is not only a result of self-selection but also of people’s preferences being shaped by their work lives.