Sibling gender and wage differences

Family influences on economic performance are investigated. In particular, sibship sex composition is related to hourly wages using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. The wages of men are increasing in the proportion of siblings who are brothers, but the wages of women are insensitive to sibling gender. Nonwage outcomes are generally unaffected. Contrasts by age structure and demographic group are also presented. The analysis addresses econometric challenges like the endogeneity of fertility and selection into the workforce. In addition, mechanisms such as labour market interactions, human capital investment and role model effects are documented. A questionnaire on job search indicates a same-gender bias in the use of brothers and sisters in obtaining employment. Developmental and psychological assessments suggest that brothers may be associated with worse childhood home environments and more traditional family attitudes among women. The findings are policy relevant and contribute to an understanding of gender differences and earnings inequality.     

Stakeholders’ relationships and product market competition

In this article, we study the relationships between main stakeholders (shareholders, consumers and employees) when firms are consumer oriented (CO) in the sense of caring about consumers’ interests in the objective function. We let these firms first bargain with labour union over their employees’ wages and then compete either in the quantity space (Cournot competition) or in the price space (Bertrand competition). Our model shows that taking care of the consumers’ interests when determining product market strategies may reverse the traditional ranking between Cournot and Bertrand equilibria. This implies that if shareholders in a CO firm can choose either a quantity or a price strategy, they will surprisingly choose the latter. Moreover, we show that the conflicting interests between main stakeholders are attenuated under Bertrand competition compared to Cournot competition.     

The Role of Inflation Target Adjustment in Stabilization Policy

How and under what circumstances can adjusting the inflation target serve as a stabilization-policy tool and contribute to welfare improvement? We answer these questions quantitatively with a standard New Keynesian model that includes cost-push-type shocks. Our proposed inflation target rule calls for the target to be adjusted in a persistent manner and in the opposite direction to the realization of a cost-push shock, which is essentially a makeup strategy. The inflation target rule, combined with a Taylor-type rule, significantly reduces inflation fluctuations originating from cost-push shocks and mitigates the stabilization trade-off, resulting in a similar level of welfare to that associated with the Ramsey optimal policy.     

Sticky Price Models,Durable Goods,and Real Wage Rigidities

The standard two‐sector New Keynesian model with durable goods is at odds with conventional wisdom and vector autoregression (VAR) evidence: Following a monetary shock, the model generates (i) either negative or no comovement across sectoral outputs and (ii) aggregate neutrality of money when durable goods' prices are flexible. We reconcile theory with evidence by incorporating real wage rigidities into the standard model: As long as durable goods' prices are more flexible than nondurable goods' prices, we obtain positive sectoral comovement and, thus, aggregate nonneutrality of money.     

The Importance of Tax Adjustments When Evaluating Wage Expectations*

Using elicited expectations of future gross salaries, we evaluate characteristics causing German students to make larger or smaller estimation errors. While students seem to underestimate actual salaries by 18 percent, we show that these errors are highly attributable to misconceptions of the progressive income tax. Developing a suitable adjustment procedure, we correct students’ estimates and find that errors decline by 12 percentage points. Conducting regression analyses, we reveal strong connections with students’ age, gender, work experience, secondary school track, and knowledge about student loans. These results change notably if not controlling for students’ misconceptions of the tax system.     

Public pollution abatement and wage inequality

This paper constructs three-sector general equilibrium models to investigate how public pollution abatement affects the skilled–unskilled wage inequality. In the basic model with full employment, we find that a higher degree of public pollution abatement will decrease the wage inequality if the intensity of skilled labor in the urban skilled sector is sufficiently large and expand or narrow down the wage gap if this intensity is sufficiently small. In the extended models, we consider other four cases, and obtain the results similar or dissimilar to that of the basic model.     

Gender wage gaps and economic crisis in Greece

ABSTRACT

We examine gender wage gap (GWG) in Greece for 2013, by using a survey data set. Our findings show first, that the unadjusted GWG is 15.3%, while European Commission reports a value of 15%. Secondly, we derive the ‘adjusted’ GWG, using the Oaxaca and Ransom (OR) and the Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (JMP) methods to be ranging from 10% to 13.6%. Thirdly, looking into the behaviour of the full population, we find a decreasing trend for the discrimination effects, an increasing trend for the residuals effects and a ‘random’ endowments effects while moving to higher deciles. These three effects are associated to the economic crisis 2008–2015. Fourthly, our findings do not show evidence of either a ‘glass ceiling’ effect or a ‘sticky floor’ effect. Finally, that there is strong evidence that investing in higher education reduces the wage discrimination between sexes.     

Informal Employment and the Structure of Wages in India: A Review of Trends

The “alternative”, “atypical” or “informal” workforce has grown in developed and developing countries alike. One of the more recent evolutions of informal employment has been of informal employment within formal enterprises. In the interest of flexibility and cost‐reduction, many formal firms increasingly resort to hiring workers on a temporary or informal basis. Alongside, and perhaps, as a result of the persistence and pervasiveness of informal employment, issues relating to inequality have come to the fore. This paper is motivated by these two intertwining aspects of Indian labor market—informality and wage inequality. Using nationally representative sample data, the paper examines trends in wage inequality among various forms of informal workers, overlaying these findings with broader trends in inequality. Using a regression based inequality decomposition, the paper compares the sources of wage inequality across different employment groups and the reasons for differences in wage inequality.     

Is There a Glass Ceiling over Germany?

This paper analyzes the gender wage gap across the wage distribution using 2010 data from the German Statistical Agency. I investigate East and West Germany and the public sector separately to account for potential heterogeneities in wage gaps. I apply unconditional and conditional quantile regression methods to investigate the differences between highly paid men and women in distributions conditional and unconditional on covariates. The results indicate increasing gender wage gaps in all estimations, suggesting that there is indeed a glass ceiling over Germany even after controlling for a large set of observable characteristics (including occupation and industry). This finding is even more pronounced when also taking bonus payments into account.     

On the heterogeneous short‐term effects of minimum wages on labor demand

A strand of the literature documents no effects or even positive effects of a higher minimum wage on employment. This evidence is frequently linked to the existence of monopsonistic labor markets or search frictions. However, empirical studies show that these findings could be related to a low short‐term minimum wage–employment elasticity in a competitive labor market. We show that mixed theoretical employment effects of a minimum wage policy can be predicted in the short term in assignment economies with price‐taker agents and no search frictions.