Worker flows, job flows and firm wage policies

Like many transition economies, Slovenia is undergoing profound changes in the workings of the labour market with potentially greater flexibility in terms of both wage and employment adjustment. To investigate the impact of these changes, we use unique longitudinal matched employer‐employee data that permits measurement of employment transitions and wages for workers and enables links of the workers to the firms in which they are employed. We can thus measure worker flows and job flows in a comprehensive and integrated manner. We find a high pace of job flows in Slovenia especially for young, small, private and foreign‐owned firms and for young, less educated workers. While job flows have approached the rates observed in developed market economies, the excess of worker flows above job flows is lower than that observed in market economies. A key factor in the patterns of the worker and job flows is the determination of wages in Slovenia. A base wage schedule provides strict guidelines for minimum wages for different skill categories. However, firms are permitted to offer higher wages to an individual based upon the success of the worker and/or the firm. Our analysis shows that firms deviate from the base wage schedule significantly and that the idiosyncratic wage policies of firms are closely related to the observed pattern of worker and job flows at the firm. Firms with more flexible wages (measured as less compression of wages within the firm) have less employment instability and are also able to improve the match quality of their workers. JEL Classifications: J23, J31, J41, J61, P23, P31.     

Gross job flows in Ukraine

This paper documents and analyses gross job flows and their determinants in Ukraine using a dataset of more than 2200 Ukrainian firms operating in manufacturing and non‐manufacturing for the years 1998–2000. Job destruction dominates job creation in both 1999 and 2000. Another clear‐cut result of our analysis is the strong positive effect of new private firms on net employment growth. We also find an inverse relationship between job reallocation and size for both manufacturing and non‐manufacturing, while only in the latter sector is employment growth inversely related with size. The main focus of the paper is the effect of trade flows on employment adjustment in manufacturing. Our results show that both employment growth and job reallocation at the firm and two‐digit sector level are affected by strong exposure to import competition and product market competition in export markets. These effects are more pronounced when we consider trade flows to the world at large and to the EU than when the analysis is based on trade flows to the CIS. JEL Classifications: E24, F14, J63, P23.     

Labor reallocation and demographics

We explore data from all transition economies over nearly two decades, providing insights on the mechanisms behind labor force reallocation. We show that worker flows between jobs in different industries are rare relative to the demographic flows of youth entry and elderly exit. The same applies to the flows between state-owned enterprises and private firms. In fact, evidence suggest that changes in the demand for labor were accommodated mostly through demographic flows, with a smaller role left for job transitions. We also show that the speed of changing the ownership structure in the economy has driven exits to retirement, in particular the early exits.     

Measuring worker flows

The study explores differences between two measurement concepts of worker flows widely used in the literature referred to as the turnover and reallocation concepts. It is found that measuring worker flows by the turnover concept leads to substantially (about 5% of total employment) higher worker flow estimates and slightly increases age, size and industry group effects on firm level worker flows as well as differences between growing and declining firms relative to the reallocation concept.     

Job creation and job destruction in the presence of informal markets

In developing economies, the fraction of informal workers can be as high as 70% of total employment. For economies with significant informal sectors, business cycle fluctuations and labor market policy interventions can have important effects not only on the unemployment rate, but also on the allocation of workers across regulated and unregulated jobs. In this paper, using worker flows data from Brazil, we build, calibrate, and simulate a two-sector search and matching labor market model, in which firms have the choice of hiring workers formally or informally. We show that our model can explain well the main cyclical patterns that lead to those cyclical reallocations. We also show how the effect of government interventions in the labor market depend on the magnitude of the reallocation of labor across regulated and unregulated sectors. For our calibration, policies that decrease the cost of formal jobs, or increase the cost of informality, raise the share of formal employment while reducing unemployment.     

Workplace democracy and job flows

This paper investigates the relationship between workplace democracy and job flows by comparing the behavior of worker-managed firms (WMFs) and conventional firms (CFs). The empirical analysis relies on high frequency administrative firm-level panel data from Uruguay over the period April 1996–July 2009. The main findings of the paper are that (1) WMFs exhibit much more stable job dynamics than CFs; (2) both types of firms have decreasing in age and increasing in size gross job creation profiles; (3) there are heterogeneous employment regimes within WMFs: job creation and destruction rates are high for hired workers and very low for members. This paper contributes to the literature on the role of institutions in shaping job flows. Our results have important implications for the understanding of the allocative efficiency effects of worker participation.     

The Role of Market Sentiment in Asset Allocations and Stock Returns

Abstract

The authors investigate the role of mutual fund flows in incorporating market sentiment into asset prices. They show that retail investors adjust their investments among mutual fund categories in response to changes in market sentiment. Consistent with sentiment-induced price pressure through fund flows, they further find that firms favored by mutual funds, such as large-cap, dividend payers, and firms with high institutional ownership are sensitive to market sentiment. The authors construct a pricing factor representing sentiment risk and find that the sentiment factor is significant in standard asset pricing models and robust to various sorting procedure.     

Microdynamics,granularity and populism: The Finnish case

We study how measures of microdynamics such as job and worker flows, the job reallocation rate and the labor market churning rate are related to populism support. Moreover, we investigate the relation between employment shocks to large firms, granular shocks, and populism. To measure populism, we look at the municipal-level support toward the Finns Party, the Finnish right-wing populist party, during the 2011 and 2015 parliamentary elections. We find that the labor market churning rate and the granular shocks are negatively associated with support for populism. Hirings in continuing establishments are negatively correlated with populism, while hirings due to the entry of new establishments and the job reallocation rate are positively related with populism, a possible consequence of economic restructuring. We complete our analysis by looking at the link between local labor market conditions and the supply of populist candidates, and by examining the usefulness of microdynamics indicators in a predictive setting.     

Partial privatization and yardstick competition

We analyse the dynamics of public and private sector employment in Bangladesh, using the natural experiment provided by the partial privatization of the jute industry. The public sector had substantial excess employment of workers initially, but this excess was substantially eroded by the end of the period we studied. The extent of erosion differs between white‐collar and manual worker categories, with excess employment persisting only in the former. Our findings suggest that partial privatization increases the efficacy of yardstick competition in the regulation of public firms, because heterogeneous ownership undermines collusion between public sector managers, and also makes excess employment more transparent to the general public.     

Employment,job turnover,and trade in producer services: UK firm‐level evidence

Abstract We provide the first firm‐level evidence of the impact of the trade in producer services (‘offshoring’) on the labour market. Using a new data set from the UK that measures trade in services at the firm level, we find no evidence that importing intermediate services is associated with job losses or greater worker turnover. Using regression to control for observable differences between firms that import service inputs and those that do not, we show that firms that start importing intermediate services experience faster employment growth than equivalent firms that do not. This seems likely to be the result of positive demand shocks, which cause a simultaneous increase in employment, output, and use of imported service inputs.     

Concentration and Inefficiency in the Defense Sector: Policy Options

This article, which is a part of a larger comprehensive study of the effects of employee ownership and worker participation on productivity in the United States, focuses on and documents the lack of worker participation in employee-owned firms [Rooney 1987]. It is estimated that more than 7,000 U.S. firms covering some 10 million employees have some degree of employee ownership [Rosen, Klein and Young 1986, p. 15]. By employee ownership, we simply mean that most of the employees own some shares of stock in the company in which they work. While most employee-owned firms have less than a majority ownership stake, several hundred U.S. firms are majority emp10yeeowned, and are the target of this study.     

Does Price Stability Exacerbate Labour Market Rigidities in the EMU?

How will the commitment to price stability affect labour market rigidities in the European Monetary Union? I explore a model where firms choose between fixed wage contracts (where the employer cannot lay off the worker, and the wage can only be changed by mutual consent), or contracts where employment is at will, so that either party may terminate employment (with strong similarities to temporary jobs). A fixed wage contract provides better incentives for investment and training, while employment at will facilitates efficient mobility. Inflation erodes the real value of a fixed contract wage over time, and badly matched workers are more likely to quit for other jobs. Disinflation has opposing effects on labour market rigidity: fixed wage contracts become more rigid in real terms, but fewer firms will choose fixed wage contracts.     

Economic transition, higher education and worker productivity in China

We investigate the role of education on worker productivity and firms' total factor productivity using a panel of firm-level data from China. We estimate the returns to education by calculating the marginal productivity of workers of different education levels based on estimates of the firm-level production function. We also estimate how the education level of workers and CEO contributes to firms' total factor productivity. Estimated marginal products are much higher than wages, and the gap is larger for highly educated workers. Our estimate shows that an additional year of schooling raises marginal product by 30.1%, and that CEO's education increases TFP for foreign-invested firms. Estimates vary substantially across ownership classes, the effect of schooling on productivity being highest in foreign-invested firms. We infer that market mechanisms contribute to a more efficient use of human capital within firms.     

Foreign-owned firms around the world: A comparative analysis of wages and employment at the micro-level

This paper provides the first microeconomic cross-country analysis of the effects of foreign ownership on wages, employment and worker turnover rates. Using firm-level and linked worker-firm data, we apply a standardised methodology for three developed (Germany, Portugal, UK) and two emerging economies (Brazil, Indonesia). We find that wage effects are larger in developing countries, and that for each country the largest effect on wages comes from workers who move from domestic to foreign firms. Employment growth after foreign takeover is concentrated in high-skill jobs. In contrast to widespread fears, there is no evidence that wage gains come at the expense of greater job insecurity; separation rates actually fall slightly after takeover. We conclude that the positive effect of foreign ownership on wages is not primarily driven by its impact on incumbent wages, but by its impact on the creation of high-wage jobs.     

INCENTIVES AND THE COST OF FIRING IN AN EQUILIBRIUM LABOR MARKET MODEL WITH ENDOGENOUS LAYOFFS*

I study the effects of firing costs in an equilibrium model of the labor market with moral hazard. Layoff is an incentive device, modeled as termination of the optimal long‐term contract. When the economy’s stock of firms is fixed, firing costs could reduce layoffs and increase worker welfare. In the long run when firms are free to enter and exit the market, firing costs generate not only lower employment, longer unemployment durations, and lower aggregate output, but also lower welfare for both employed workers and new labor market entrants.     

Foreign ownership wage premia in emerging economies

In this article we examine the relationship between wages, labour productivity and ownership using a linked employer–employee dataset covering a large fraction of the Czech labour market in 2006. We distinguish between different origins of ownership and study wage and productivity differences. The raw wage differential between foreign and domestically‐owned firms is about 23 percent. The empirical analysis is carried out on both firm‐ and individual‐level data. A key finding is that industry, region and notably human capital explain only a small part of the foreign–domestic ownership wage differential. Both white and blue collar workers as well as skilled and unskilled employees obtain a foreign ownership wage premium. Foreign ownership premia are more prevalent in older and less technologically advanced firms. Joint estimation of productivity and wage equations show that, controlling for human capital, the difference in productivity is about twice as large as the wage differential. Overall, results indicate that the international firms share their rents with their employees.     

New evidence on wages and employment in worker cooperatives compared with capitalist firms

This article presents new econometric evidence on the comparative behavior of worker cooperatives and capitalist firms, highlighting the differences in wages and employment responses. We use a comprehensive panel data set that covers the entire population of cooperatives and their capitalist counterparts registered in the social security records in Uruguay from April 1996 to December 2005. We analyze the data to study the employment and wage decisions in both types of enterprises, the results of which suggests that their adjustment mechanisms to idiosyncratic price changes and macroeconomic shocks may differ greatly. The data set also allows us to estimate wage and employment variations for members and non-members of cooperatives separately, and provides an empirical test for the so-called degeneration hypothesis. Our findings are broadly consistent with previous studies for Italian cooperatives and plywood cooperatives in the United States. As studies of this kind are so few, our research provides a significant contribution to the empirical literature on labor managed firms. Moreover, comparing worker cooperatives and capitalist firms offers an exceptional opportunity to determine how control by workers may lead to different organizational behavior.     

Competition and ownership structure: Substitutes or complements? Evidence from the Warsaw Stock Exchange

In this paper we analyse the impact of product market competition and ownership structure on firm performance. Our results show that product market competition has a positive and significant impact on performance. Concerning the effect of ownership concentration, we find a U–shaped relationship with performance. Firms with relatively dispersed and relatively concentrated ownership have higher productivity growth than firms with an intermediate level of ownership concentration. This correlation between concentration of ownership and productivity growth is not explained by the type of the controlling shareholder. Finally, product market competition and good governance tend to reinforce each other rather than to be substitutes. Competition has no significant effect on performance for the firms with ‘poor’ governance; on the contrary, it has a significant positive effect in the case of firms with ‘good’ corporate governance. JEL classification: D24, G32, L1, P2.     

Social Preferences, Skill Segregation, and Wage Dynamics

We study the earning structure and the equilibrium assignment of workers to firms in a model in which workers have social preferences, and skills are perfectly substitutable in production. Firms offer long-term contracts, and we allow for frictions in the labour market in the form of mobility costs. The model delivers specific predictions about the nature of worker flows, about the characteristics of workplace skill segregation, and about wage dispersion both within and across firms. We show that long-term contracts in the presence of social preferences associate within-firm wage dispersion with novel "internal labour market" features such as gradual promotions, productivity-unrelated wage increases, and downward wage flexibility. These three dynamic features lead to productivity-unrelated wage volatility within firms.