Internet usage and the income gap between self-employed individuals and employees: Evidence from China

Using longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies, we investigate the impact of Internet usage on the income gap between self-employed individuals and employees in China, considering the sample selection bias and individual heterogeneity issues. We divided employment statuses into three types―small entrepreneur, own-account worker, and employee. The findings reveal the following: First, the returns from Internet usage differ by employment type, which is lower for self-employed individuals than that for employees. Second, the difference in Internet usage contributes to widening the income gap, whereas the difference in the returns from Internet usage to income contributes to narrowing it. Finally, Internet usage exerts a greater impact on the income gap between employees and small entrepreneurs than that between employees and own-account workers. These empirical results suggest that the division of Internet access may exacerbate the segmentation of the formal and informal sectors in China.     

Life satisfaction and self-employment in different types of occupations

In this research, we investigate whether a positive relationship between life satisfaction and self-employment (versus paid employment) exists while simultaneously considering two occupational dimensions: white-collar versus blue-collar work and high-skilled versus low-skilled work. Using Eurobarometer data for a large number of European countries (2008–2012), our findings confirm that self-employed workers are more satisfied with their lives than paid employees are. A life satisfaction premium is also found when the self-employed and paid employees are compared within similar occupations in terms of collar type and skill level. Finally, self-employment can help to overcome low life satisfaction scores associated with blue-collar and low-skilled work.     

Intrinsic Motivations of Public Sector Employees: Evidence for Germany

We examine differences in altruism and laziness between public sector employees and private sector employees. Our theoretical model predicts that the likelihood of public sector employment increases with a worker's altruism, and increases or decreases with a worker's laziness depending on his altruism. Using questionnaire data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel Study, we find that public sector employees are significantly more altruistic and lazy than observationally equivalent private sector employees. A series of robustness checks show that these patterns are stronger among higher educated workers; that the sorting of altruistic people to the public sector takes place only within the caring industries; and that the difference in altruism is already present at the start of people's career, while the difference in laziness is only present for employees with sufficiently long work experience.     

How credit constraints affect small and medium enterprises' strategic employment decisions and employees' labour outcomes: Evidence from Vietnam1

This study makes use of rich firm-level and linked firm-employee datasets that span the 2009–2015 period in Vietnam to examine how SMEs' credit constraints affect their strategic employment decisions and employees' labour outcomes. Our results show that constrained SMEs enlarge total employment by employing relatively more temporary workers and paying their employees relatively lower wages than unconstrained borrowing firms. Meanwhile, discouraged firms, mostly informal businesses, do not behave differently from unconstrained counterparts. In order to maintain a stable employment portfolio, discouraged firms are relatively more willing to reward their employees with an overtime payment.     

资质过剩员工主动性—被动性创新行为双路径研究

激发资质过剩员工的创新行为能够帮助企业与资质过剩员工实现双赢。但是,如何激发资质过剩员工的主动性—被动性创新行为仍有待探讨。基于自我验证理论和社会交换理论,构建员工资质过剩感与主动性—被动性创新行为双路径整合模型,并探索权变奖励领导行为的调节作用。利用438份员工样本数据进行实证分析,结果表明：资质过剩感正向影响主动性创新行为和被动性创新行为;创新自我效能感作为中介变量一定程度上解释了资质过剩感与主动性创新行为间关系;组织压力作为中介变量一定程度上解释了资质过剩感与被动性创新行为间关系;在高权变奖励领导行为情境下,资质过剩感与创新自我效能感和组织压力之间的正向关系均得到加强;在高权变奖励领导行为情境下,资质过剩感通过创新自我效能感对主动性创新行为的间接作用得到加强;在高权变奖励领导行为情境下,资质过剩感通过组织压力对被动性创新行为的间接作用得到加强。     

Labour market effects of public capital stock: evidence for the Spanish private sector

This paper provides a new rationale for the positive effect of public capital stock on employment and wages. We show that higher levels of public capital reduce wages along the wage equation and enhance employment due to the resulting larger elasticity of labour demand with respect to wages. The estimation of a structural model for the Spanish private sector reveals that this wage channel is empirically relevant. We use the estimated parameters to simulate the recent incidence of the ratio of public to private capital stock on the private sector economic performance. We find (i) sizeable effects on employment, capital stock and gross domestic product, and (ii) that the wage channel is particularly important for employment.     

Does the Effectiveness of Employment Incentive Programs Vary by Firm Size?

This article examines the impact of national employment incentive programs on employment growth of individual firms in the original fifteen member states of the European Union (EU-15). We investigate whether this impact differs among firms of different size classes, and whether the effectiveness of employment incentive programs depends on the business cycle. We find that expenditures on employment incentives have a positive impact on employment growth for firms of all sizes. However, this impact is significantly reduced for smaller firms, suggesting that employment incentive programs are less effective for small firms. We also find that the employment impact of incentive programs is stronger during recessionary periods, but only for firms without any employees (i.e., own-account workers).     

Informal employment relationships and the labor market: Is there segmentation in Ukraine?

One of the most important factors that determine individuals’ quality of life and wellbeing is their position in the labor market and the type of jobs that they hold. When workers are rationed out of the formal segment of the labor market against their will, i.e., the labor market is segmented, their quality of life is limited, and their wellbeing is reduced. When they can freely choose between a formal or informal employment relationship, i.e., the labor market is integrated, their wellbeing can reach high levels even in the presence of informal employment. We, therefore, test whether the Ukrainian labor market is segmented along the formal-informal divide, slicing the data by gender and age. The analysis that we perform consist in the analysis of short-term and medium-term transitions between five employment states, unemployment and inactivity. We also analyze wage gaps of mean hourly earnings and across the entire hourly earnings distribution, controlling for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity. According to our results segmentation is present for dependent employees: for a large part of informal employees informal employment is used as a waiting stage to enter formal salaried employment and is not voluntarily chosen. As far as self-employment is concerned the evidence is mixed regarding segmentation in the Ukrainian labor market. This heterogeneity in outcomes implies that not all informal work is associated with a low quality of life and reduced wellbeing in post-transition economies.     

中国非农自雇活动的转换进入分析

本文利用中国健康与营养调查的微观面板数据,分析了我国非农自雇活动转换进入的决定因素。本文把初始状态区分为工资雇佣和失业,最终状态则划分为无雇工自雇和有雇工自雇,另外,对无雇工自雇转入有雇工自雇也进行了剖析。结果显示:不管初始状态如何,代际人力资本传递在自雇进入中发挥了重要作用;年龄和性别变量只对失业转入自雇有影响;由失业转入自雇的概率比由工资雇佣转入自雇的概率高;工资雇佣转入有雇工自雇的概率与失业转入有雇工自雇的概率相差不大,但工资雇佣转入无雇工自雇的概率与失业转入无雇工自雇的概率之间存在巨大差异;高等教育在无雇工自雇转入有雇工自雇的工作岗位创造过程中起到了显著的推动作用。     

Innovation and job creation in a dual labor market: evidence from Spain

This paper studies the effect of product and process innovations on job creation in the Spanish manufacturing sector over the period 1991–2005. We use a change in the employment protection legislation (EPL) in 1997 to study the effect of innovations on permanent and temporary workers before and after that change. We find that (i) product and process innovation created jobs, (ii) before the change in the EPL in 1997 innovations did not affect the number of permanent workers and all the increase in employment was explained by the increase in the number of temporary workers, (iii) after the change in the EPL, innovations increased both the number of temporary and permanent employees, and (iv) while the increase in temporary workers takes place after one year of the innovations, the increase in permanent workers occurs mainly two years after the innovations.     

UNEMPLOYMENT POLICIES IN AN ECONOMY WITH ADVERSE SELECTION

This paper studies the effects of unemployment policies in a simple static general equilibrium model with adverse selection in the labour market. Firms offer a contract that induces the self‐selection of workers. In equilibrium, all unskilled workers are screened out and some skilled workers are rationed out. It is shown that the provision of unemployment insurance raises involuntary unemployment by encouraging adverse selection, while unemployment assistance – or subsidy to unemployment – reduces involuntary unemployment. A simple efficiency wage model is also presented to show that either of the two policies reduces employment by taxing effort and subsidizing shirking. The key is whether the social role of unemployment is a sorting device or a worker discipline device.     

Does public‐sector employment fully crowd out private‐sector employment?

Employment matters for development because it can raise household income, lower inequality, promote economic growth, and contribute to political stability. Many countries have high rates of public employment, but what effect does this have on overall employment and unemployment rates? This paper investigates if and to what extent public‐sector employment crowds out (reduces) private‐sector employment. In particular, we estimate regressions of unemployment or private‐sector employment on two measures of public‐sector employment. The study uses an especially assembled dataset, which is novel for its coverage of a large sample of developing countries as part of a panel of rich and poor countries. Our results point to full or just about full crowding‐out for the entire sample. Unlike previous cross‐country studies, which were restricted to advanced economies, we are able to show that these results also apply to developing countries, although crowding‐out may not be quite as high as in advanced economies. The results mean that high rates of public employment have an offsetting large negative impact on private employment rates and do not reduce overall unemployment rates. With the qualifier that government activities may help the economy in other ways, our results imply that, rather than creating public‐sector jobs, scarce fiscal resources could be better spent on other developmental needs.     

Labor Law in China: How Does It Contribute to the Economic Security of the Workforce? A Commonsian Reading

By adopting the “reasonable value” notion applied to the labor relationship as proposed by John R. Commons, I study the way in which labor legislation in China can be understood as the search for a status of employment security for rural migrant workers. However, the Chinese labor market is experiencing growth in a particular form of informal labor: delegated and temporary labor. I analyze this contradiction not as a failure of the legislation itself, but as the product of a particular institutional context which provides a way to skirt the law, and thereby diminish its effectiveness. Finally, in a non-democratic state, labor law — which has been instrumentalized and mobilized within a form of state corporatism — reveals that very significant challenges exist for building a truly secure status for employees.     

Self-employment,financial development,and well-being: Evidence from China,Russia, and Ukraine

This study investigates the association between financial development and entrepreneurs’ well-being in China, Ukraine, and Russia. We find that Chinese and Russian entrepreneurs have a higher level of well-being, while Ukrainian self-employed individuals have more dissatisfaction. The link between financial development and the utility of entrepreneurs varies as well. The utility differences between the self-employed and paid workers in Russia reduce with financial development and the effect is stronger for job satisfaction. However, financial development barely correlates with Ukrainian entrepreneurs’ happiness while having no correlation with life satisfaction of Chinese self-employed. Further investigation suggests that the financial development – entrepreneurial utility association works through both monetary and non-monetary channels.     

中国农民工就业状态的调研

为了解国际金融危机发生近一年后对中国农民工就业的影响,笔者的课题组组织学生在全国19个省(直辖市、自治区)从流出地和流入地对农民工就业状态进行了调研。在对农民工就业状态的描述性统计、交互分类分析、对应分析的基础上得出以下结论:农民工转移就业、稳定就业的任务依然艰巨,供求的结构性矛盾突出与农民工就业不足将继续并存;农民工权益缺失,距离体面就业、生活和权益平等尚远;化解农民工就业问题的难点来自政策和社会管理体制上的问题,解决农民工就业问题需要实现经济发展方式的转变,需要作为中长期完善发展政策、机制和推进制度创新的一个核心问题。     

Group and individual risk preferences: A lottery-choice experiment with self-employed and salaried workers

This paper focuses on decision making under risk, comparing group and individual risk preferences in a lottery-choice experiment. In the individual treatment, subjects make choices individually; in the group treatment, each subject placed in a group made lottery choice via voting. In the choice treatment, subjects choose whether to be on their own or in a group. The originality of this research lies in the fact that we introduced variability in socio-demographic characteristics by recruiting salaried and self-employed workers. Our main findings indicate that groups are more likely than individuals to choose safe lotteries. Our results also show that individuals risk attitude is correlated with both the type and the sector of employment.     

高技术产业就业增长粘性:“无就业增长”

通过分析高技术产业厂商及其雇员的经济行为变化和特点,并基于创业型雇员是进入市场唯一威胁的前提假设,可证明两个命题:(1)当新进入者进入成本较低时,在位者缺乏雇用雇员的积极性;(2)雇员由于被在位者设定的跳槽壁垒套牢而缺乏进入动机,即自我创业的动机。由此还可产生以下逻辑推论:(1)政府实施的各种优惠政策无助于激励为高技术产业在位者扩大就业规模;(2)在位者设定的跳槽壁垒所导致的高工资刚性降低了高技术产业就业需求。     

Employment Protection Versus Flexicurity: On Technology Adoption in Unionised Firms*

We analyse how different labour‐market institutions – employment protection versus ‘flexicurity’– affect technology adoption in unionised firms. We consider trade unions’ incentives to oppose or endorse labour‐saving technology and firms’ incentives to invest in such technology. Increased flexicurity – interpreted as less employment protection and a higher reservation wage for workers – unambiguously increases firms’ incentives for technology adoption. If unions have some direct influence on technology, a higher reservation wage also makes unions more willing to accept technological change. Less employment protection has the opposite effect, as this increases the downside (job losses) of labour‐saving technology.     

Has the Affordable Care Act increased part-time employment?

We examine the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on part-time employment. Because the ACA’s employer health insurance mandate applies to individuals who work 30 or more hours per week, employers may try to avoid the mandate by cutting workers’ hours below the 30-hour threshold in order to avoid having to provide them with health insurance. Although the employer mandate only went into effect in 2015, many observers have argued that forward-looking employers began to shift towards a part-time workforce well in advance of the mandate. To test this hypothesis, we examine relative shifts across two categories of part-time workers (25–29 hours and 31–35 hours). We find some evidence of a shift from the 31–35-hour category into the 25–29-hour category after the passage of ACA in March 2010. However, that shift is not more pronounced among low-wage workers or among workers in industries and occupations most likely to be affected by the mandate. Thus, there is little evidence that the ACA has caused the shift across hours categories, or led to an increase in part-time employment. However, the ACA could cause a shift towards part-time work in the future as the mandate takes effect.     

Temporary employment,work quality,and job satisfaction

Using European Working Conditions Survey, this paper shows that being employed on a temporary, rather than an open-ended, contract has a negative bearing for job satisfaction. While this effect has been established previously, the novelty of this paper is to show that the effect propagates both directly and indirectly, through working conditions and work quality. Accounting for this indirect effect allows to obtain the effect of the contractual status on job satisfaction that is substantially larger in magnitude as compared to simple direct effects, confirming the importance of accounting for unobservable individual, company-specific, and job-specific heterogeneity when addressing this relationship. Moreover, the extent of co-determination of poorer working conditions and temporary contractual status, as well as the resulting bias in estimating only a direct effect of temporary employment on job satisfaction without accounting for such co-determination, vary depending on a country setting. It is shown that in transition economies, this co-determination is larger than in non-transition economies, possibly because of the workers’ weaker bargaining power, strategic use of temporary employment to circumvent labor regulations, the absence of regulations prescribing equal treatment of workers with different contractual arrangements, or lack of compliance with such regulations.