The effect of fertility on labour force participation: The Spanish evidence

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to estimate the effect of fertility on the decision of labour force participation of married females in Spain, allowing for the existence of unobserved characteristics that affect both fertility and participation. We use a pooling of five waves of the European Household Panel for Spain (1994–1998). Results indicate that not taking into account the unobserved characteristics that affect both variables imposes on average a strong downward bias on the true effect of fertility on participation. This bias is especially strong for highly educated females. We are grateful to Raquel Carrasco and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Financial support from Gobierno Vasco (PI-1999-160)), Ministry of Education and Science (BE2000-1394), Instituto de la Mujer and Universidad del País Vasco (UPV 00035.321-13511/2001) is gratefully acknowledged.     

Customer behavior analysis using motion pictures： Research on attractive flier design method

In this report, the authors would like to propose CMP-FDM （Customer Motion Pictures-Flier Design Method） to increase the willingness of consumers to visit the automobile dealership. CMP-FDM is a method of creating attractive fliers while using customer behavior analysis with videos. According to the analysis of how customers see fliers, the authors classify their behavior into three types and create attractive designs so that each guarantees each customer＇s satisfaction. Finally, the authors integrate the three types of fliers into one attractive to all customers by organizing the design features （design elements）, and then validate the method.     

Labour Market Assimilation of Recent Immigrants in Spain

This article provides a preliminary analysis of the employment and occupational assimilation of recent immigrant waves to the Spanish labour market as their residencies lengthen. Using Spanish data from the 2001 Population Census and the 2002 Earnings Structure Survey, we find evidence of immigrant employment and occupational assimilation significantly varying by gender, origin and educational attainment.     

Do ‘Boss Effects’ Exist in Japanese Companies? Evidence from Subordinate–Supervisor Matched Panel Data*

This article investigates whether supervisors can significantly enhance their subordinates' performance using a five‐waves panel dataset from a medium‐sized Japanese firm comprising around 400 employees. The dataset includes all regular non‐managerial employees working in one manufacturing company. About 40 supervisors were matched to their subordinates, and the evaluation outcomes were used to evaluate the worker performance. The results showed that supervisor effects were heterogeneous, displayed a one‐year lag, and lasted for two years. We proved the existence of the supervisor effect on current performance, by using current supervisor dummies or past supervisor dummies. Irrespective of the supervisor being switched, the effect of the past supervisor on workers’ current performance continues to exist. It was also found that these effects remained significant, even when workers were assigned new/different supervisors.     

The immigration surplus and the substitutability of immigrant and native labor: evidence from Spain

How immigration affects the labor market of the host country is a topic of major concern for many immigrant-receiving nations. Spain is no exception, as a consequence of the rapid increase in immigrant flows experienced over the past few decades. We assess the impact of immigration on Spanish natives’ incomes by estimating the net immigration surplus (IS) under the assumption of perfect and imperfect substitutabilities between immigrant and native labor of similar educational attainment. To address the imperfect substitutability between immigrant and native labor, we use information on the occupational distribution of immigrants and natives of similar educational attainment to learn about the equivalency of skilled immigrants to skilled and unskilled natives. The results show that the magnitude of the IS significantly rises with the degree of imperfect substitutability between immigrant and native labor.     

Farmers,institutions and technology in agricultural change processes: outcomes from Adaptive Research on rice production in Sulawesi,Indonesia

International agricultural research centres use approaches which aim to create effective linkages between the practices of farmers, introduced technologies and the wider environment that affects farming. This paper argues that such new approaches require a different type of monitoring as a complement to conventional approaches that tend to favour a quantitative assessment of adoption and impact at the farm level. In this context, we examined monitoring data from an Adaptive Research (AR) project highlighting complementary qualitative analysis. Our emphasis is to capture the improvisational capacities of farmers and to reveal social and institutional constraints and opportunities in a broader innovation system. Our approach provided clear insights into how rice farmers adjusted their practices and how actors involved linked (or not) with others in the innovation system. We also demonstrated how institutions such as policies, religious rituals or service provider arrangements pose conditions that establish or constrain practices aligned with introduced technologies. A broader perspective in monitoring AR therefore provides important additional insights into the factors which shape outcomes in farming communities. To expand outcomes, AR projects should also pay attention to designing and testing new institutional arrangements that create enabling conditions for agricultural innovation.     

Complements or substitutes? Task specialization by gender and nativity in Spain

Learning about the impact of immigration on the labor market outcomes of natives is a topic of major concern for immigrant-receiving countries. Using data from Spain, where the immigrant population has risen from 4% to 13% within a decade, we find that immigration appears to have affected the task specialization of natives without affecting their employment levels. However, the impact of immigration on the relative task supply of natives is twice as great in Spain as in the United States. The magnitude of the immigration impact in a country with a large share of immigrants originating from Spanish-speaking countries suggests that host country language proficiency is not the sole factor driving the observed impact. Additionally, the analysis reveals significant gender differences in the impact of immigration on the relative task supply of natives, possibly resting on the occupational concentration of immigrants and native occupational segregation patterns by gender, among other factors.     

Testing Employment Determination in Unionised Economies as a Repeated Game

This paper is an empirical analysis of alternative bargaining theories of wage and employment determination. Using data from manufacturing sectors of the Spanish economy, we find that unions and firms are not myopic and take dynamic considerations into account in the bargaining process. This work is an empirical test of the bargaining model in Espinosa and Rhee (1989) and provides support for their conclusions.