WAGES,HOURS OF WORK AND JOB SATISFACTION OF RETIREMENT‐AGE WORKERS*

I analyse, theoretically and empirically, the effects of pension benefits, family conditions and the personal characteristics of older individuals on their labour supply, wages, hours worked and job satisfaction, in the framework of the Nash bargaining condition whereby an older worker and a firm bargain over employment conditions such as wages, hours of work and job investment. It is stressed that as workers become older they tend to give greater priority to the number of hours worked, work environment and type of job than to wages, and try to improve these through job investment, even at the cost of lower wages.     

Tenure, business cycle and the wage-setting process

We analyze the interaction between job tenure and external labor market conditions in wage determination. First, we introduce a model that combines job matching with business-cycle effects. As the employment relationship progresses, the worker appropriates a portion of the value of the match-specific human capital she accumulates, gradually becoming shielded from the cyclical variations in external labor market conditions: the employment relationship is progressively “internalized”. Then, we present empirical evidence supporting this prediction: the elasticity of wages to the unemployment rate decreases with tenure. This finding is robust to different specifications that allow for job heterogeneity, and it contributes to the interpretation of recent evidence of changes in the effect of the business cycle on wages.     

Happily Ever After? A Study of Job Satisfaction in Australia

The present paper investigates issues of job satisfaction and gender. In particular, the finding that women are significantly happier in work than their male counterparts is examined. To shed light on this issue, smaller subgroups of the total sample are analysed and more subjective variables (in addition to more traditional objective variables) are incorporated. It is found that differences in reported job satisfaction are more pronounced when looking at individuals with lower levels of education in lower skilled jobs. The determinants of job satisfaction for men and women in this group are significantly different; this was not found to be the case when looking at higher skilled, higher educated individuals. Women in this latter group exhibit similar (i.e. lower) levels of satisfaction to their male counterparts. It is conjectured that this result is due to differences in expectations of work among men and women and also among women themselves.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF LATENESS: EVIDENCE FROM BRITISH WORKERS

Using a sample of male and female workers from the 1992 Employment in Britain survey, we estimate a generalised grouped zero‐inflated Poisson regression model of employees' self‐reported lateness. Lateness is higher for males, private sector workers and in service industries. Reflecting theoretical predictions from both psychology and economics, we model lateness as a function of incentives, the monitoring of, and sanctions for, lateness within the workplace, job satisfaction and attitudes to work. Various aspects of workplace incentive and disciplinary policies turn out to affect lateness; however, controlling for these, an important role for job satisfaction remains.     

Non-pecuniary Advantages Versus Pecuniary Disadvantages; Job Satisfaction Among Male And Female Academics In Scottish Universities

This paper considers job satisfaction in the academic labour market drawing upon a particularly detailed data set of 900 academics from five traditional Scottish Universities. Recent studies have revealed that in the labour force as a whole women generally express themselves as more satisfied with their jobs than men. Our results show that reports of overall job satisfaction do not vary widely by gender. This result is explained through the nature of our dataset, limited as it is to a highly educated workforce, in which female workers are likely to have job expectations comparable to their male counterparts. Ordered probit analysis is used to analyse the determinants of an academic's overall satisfaction at work as well as satisfaction with promotion prospects, job security and salary. Comparison salary is found to be an important influence on academics' overall job satisfaction although evidence suggests that academics place a lower emphasis on pecuniary relative to non pecuniary aspects of work than other sectors of the workforce.     

TRAINING, JOB SECURITY AND INCENTIVE WAGES

This paper considers the optimal level of firm‐specific training by taking into account the positive effect of training on the expected duration of workers' current employment. In the framework of an efficiency wage model, a short expected job tenure represents a disamenity that reduces the penalty from shirking. As this disamenity increases, workers have an incentive to continue providing a positive level of effort only if they are compensated by a higher wage. We endogenize the employment separation rate by introducing firm‐specific training. Firm‐specific training creates a rent that is lost if the worker is separated from the firm. As a result, the firm will be more reluctant to fire its trained workforce in a recession. This implies that firm‐specific training can decrease current wages because it represents a commitment to lower future labour turnover.     

Earnings Instability and Tenure

We study the effect of tenure on earnings instability in Italy using the reforms of temporary employment contracts, which affected the average tenure of workers differentially across cohorts. We develop a model of earnings dynamics, and we exploit the variation of tenure and instability over time and across birth cohorts to estimate policy‐relevant parameters. Our results indicate that each year of tenure on the job reduces earnings instability by 11 percent; the drop is faster in the first three years of the match. Workers on a temporary contract have an earnings instability up to 100 percent higher than workers on a permanent contract.     

Wage distribution in Japan, 1989–2003

Abstract. This study examines the recent trend of the Japanese wage distribution based on a micro‐level data set from the Basic Survey on Wage Structure (1989–2003). We perform several decomposition analyses of changes in the distribution of the hourly wage. We observe that lower returns to education and years of tenure contribute to a diminishing income disparity between groups for both sexes. A larger variance within a group contributes to the wage disparity for males, while an increased heterogeneity of workers' attributes contributes to the wage disparity for females. The Dinardo, Fortin, and Lemieux decomposition confirms the basic findings with a parametric variance decomposition.     

Job Satisfaction,Work Time,and Well-Being Among Married Women in Japan

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between paid work time and other time use of working married women with children in Japan and two aspects of well-being: job satisfaction and stress. The study demonstrates that rather than the amount of daily paid work time, both the gap between actual and desired work time and the intrinsic utility derived from paid work as an activity appear to be the key time-related variables affecting Japanese women's job satisfaction. The paper also shows that paid work time has multiple spillover effects on stress. It discusses the tradeoffs that married women with children in Japan make to stay in employment and the consequences for employer strategies and public policy.     

JOB REALLOCATION, EMPLOYMENT CHANGE AND AVERAGE JOB TENURE: THEORY AND WORKPLACE EVIDENCE FROM AUSTRALIA

We explore determinants of job reallocation, employment change and average job tenure in this paper. A model which associates technological advances with the process of economic growth is modified and analysed. The features of this model allow for the possibility of asymmetric behaviour when looking at the net change in employment. Workplace data from Australia (AWIRS95) are used to test the predictions generated from the model for both employment change and average job tenure. Results are presented that provide clear evidence as to the nature of workplaces in which net employment growth is concentrated. We find that employment growth is asymmetrically related to expected changes in demand for the output of the workplace. We also find that employment is lower for workplaces that are larger, older, have greater union density, offer higher relative earnings, or are operating in a more competitive environment. The impacts on average tenure are as expected from the model and from these changes in employment. Overall there is a substantial degree of agreement between the predictions of the model and our empirical results.     

Happiness in the arts—International evidence on artists’ job satisfaction

Many artists are prone to high unemployment and low incomes suggesting low job satisfaction. Our analysis including 49 countries paints a different picture. On average artists enjoy higher job satisfaction than other employees, mainly due to more autonomy.     

Job satisfaction and disability: lower expectations about jobs or a matter of health?

This article focuses on the analysis of the reported differentials of job satisfaction for disabled and non-disabled individuals. Using the Spanish data of the European Community Household Panel during the period 1995–2001, we estimate a job satisfaction equation for each group and evaluate job satisfaction differentials through the Oaxaca-Blinder methodology. The results show that disabled individuals are more likely to be more satisfied in their jobs than non-disabled ones, but only after controlling for other variables. Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition shows the greater importance of the returns in job satisfaction for disabled people, which is supported by explanations based on the lower expectations about jobs of disadvantaged groups.      

Wage/tenure contracts with heterogeneous firms

This paper investigates equilibria where firms post wage/tenure contracts and risk averse workers search for new job opportunities whether employed or unemployed. We generalize previous work by assuming firms have different productivities. Equilibrium implies more productive firms always offer more desirable contracts. Thus workers never quit from more productive firms for less productive firms. Nevertheless turnover is inefficient as employees with long tenures at low productivity firms may reject outside job offers from more productive firms. A worker who quits to a more productive firm may accept a wage cut. Such wage cuts are compensated by faster “promotion” rates to higher wage levels in the future. We also generalize previous arguments by showing equilibria exist where the distribution of offers contains interior mass points and find equilibrium wage/tenure contracts need not be smooth.     

The gender wage gap among recent post‐secondary graduates in Canada: a distributional approach

Using the National Graduates Survey, we examine the trends in the gender wage gap among recent post‐secondary graduates in Canada between 1988 and 2007. Female graduates earn on average 6–14% less than males during the period two to five years after graduation. Decompositions show that observable personal characteristics and job attributes can explain only a small portion of the wage gap. We also find that men earn more than women at every point of the distribution. Interestingly, the wage difference shrank in the lower half of the distribution in recent years, while it increased in the upper half.     

Incentives in academic tenure under asymmetric information

This paper examines the incentives in academic tenure under asymmetric information where neither types nor actions of the agents are observable. The different contractual forms are compared, including short-term non-tenured contract and tenure contract with or without probationary period. It is shown that tenure track may help reduce information rent for the department in the situation where a smaller portion of high productive researchers are entitled to undertake very costly and time-consuming research project with a high potential value. However, when the probationary period cannot efficiently screen out the low productive researchers, providing both short-term non-tenured contract and tenure contract without probationary period or merely providing short-term non-tenured contract will be more likely taken by department. Therefore, the coexistence of different contractual forms in higher educational system, including the growing use of non-tenure track in some academic sectors can be economically explained.     

THE RESEARCH ASSESSMENT EXERCISE AND THE REFORM OF ACADEMIC TENURE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

In this article the reform of academic tenure is examined in the United Kingdom. We test the hypothesis that reforming tenure may have reduced performance in the universities. The years following the 1988 Education Reform Act provide an interesting natural experiment, as the broad effect of the legislation was to soften (though not to remove) tenure in universities in the United Kingdom. It is concluded that the act has not adversely affected efficiency as some writers have predicted it would.     

Job search and academic achievement

The paper develops a structural model for the labor market behavior of students entering the labor market. We explicitly model the trade-off between devoting effort to studying and to job search. Furthermore, we allow for on-the-job search. The model is estimated using a unique data set of individuals who completed undergraduate education in the Netherlands between 1995 and 2001. Our estimation results show that labor market returns of high grades are low. Wage increases between jobs are explained by labor market friction rather than returns of early work experience. Our results indicate that a 1 percentage point decrease in the unemployment rate increases wage offers on average by 3 percent, but that the amount of job search effort is not very sensitive to business cycle fluctuations. Policy simulations show that study effort and hence academic achievement are much more sensitive to financial incentives than job search effort and labor market outcomes.     

HOW DO HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES IN JAPAN COMPETE FOR REGULAR,FULL‐TIME JOBS? AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS BASED UPON AN INTERNET SURVEY OF THE YOUTH*

We use a survey of Japanese youth within 10 years after high school graduation to investigate impacts of academic and social skills on their success in the job market. We find three major factors account for the job market outcome immediately after school: school characteristics and job‐placement services, academic performance, and social skills, including negative impacts of problematic behaviors at school. Second, when we run a probit regression on whether or not the surveyed individuals hold regular, full‐time jobs, we find the persistent but declining (over age) impact of the job placement immediately after school. Moreover, we find that the impact of variables pertaining to social skills remain significant even after controlling for the job‐placement outcome after school, whereas other variables, such as grade point average or attributes of high schools, are largely irrelevant to the current employment status.     

员工主动性人格与创新行为:工作满意度、工作水平及组织任期的调节作用

主观变量是影响个体创新行为的重要因素。通过对16省份59家生物医药企业的问卷调查,探讨主动性人格、工作满意度、工作水平和组织任期等变量与员工创新行为的关系。结果发现,主动性人格对员工创新行为具有正向影响,工作满意度对二者关系具有非线性调节作用,工作水平和组织任期也起调节作用。     

Employment discrimination in a former Soviet Union Republic: Evidence from a field experiment

We provide the first experimental evidence about ethnic and gender discrimination in the labor market of a former Soviet Union country, Georgia. We randomly assign Georgian and non-Georgian, male and female, names to similar resumes and apply for jobs as advertised on help-wanted websites in Georgia. We find that gender has no effect on the probability of callback, but a job applicant who is ethnically Georgian is more than twice as likely to be called for a job interview than an equally skilled ethnic non-Georgian (Azerbaijani or Armenian). The 113% ethnic gap in callbacks (167% among males and 79% among females), which is substantially larger than the gap typically documented in the existing literature for both developed and developing countries, is statistically significant and cannot be abridged by having more experience or education. There is no evidence of gender discrimination in callbacks, both within the Georgian group and the non-Georgian group.