Performance Pay and Applicant Screening

Using German establishment data, we show that the relationship between intensity of individual‐based performance pay and intensity of applicant screening depends on the nature of production. In establishments with increased multitasking, performance pay is positively associated with applicant screening. By contrast, in establishments without increased multitasking, performance pay is negatively associated with applicant screening. We do not find a similar pattern of results for group‐based performance pay or profit‐sharing. Our findings fit the hypothesis that individual‐based performance pay induces a positive self‐sorting of employees if jobs are less multifaceted. In this case, employers with a high intensity of performance pay do not need intensive applicant screening to ensure a high quality of matches between workers and jobs. However, if jobs are more multifaceted, individual‐based performance pay can entail problems of adverse self‐sorting. In order to mitigate or overcome these problems, employers making intensive use of performance pay also screen applicants more intensively.     

The Relationship between Delegation and Incentives Across Occupations: Evidence and Theory

A large literature suggests that incentive pay and delegation of worker authority are positively related. Using data from a large cross section of British establishments, we show that the positive relationship found in the empirical literature masks a stark difference across jobs. Classifying jobs into two categories (complex jobs, including professional, technical and scientific occupations, and simple jobs, consisting of all other non‐managerial occupations) we find a positive relationship for simple jobs and a negative relationship for complex jobs. To explain this negative relationship, we develop a model where stronger incentives distort a worker's decisions towards low risk‐return tasks.     

Flexible Contract Workers in Inferior Jobs: Reappraising the Evidence

There is concern that the increase in flexible employment contracts witnessed in many OECD economies is evidence of a growth in low‐pay, low‐quality jobs. In practice, it is difficult to evaluate the ‘quality’ of flexible jobs. Previous research has primarily investigated objective measures of job quality such as wages and training or subjective measures such as job satisfaction. We jointly evaluate these elements of flexible employment contracts using a job quality index. Analysis of this index demonstrates that flexible jobs are of a lower quality. Differences in the subjective and objective assessment of factors like pay and hours are evident.     

Using Incentive Pay and Providing Pay Supplements in U.S. Job Markets

This article investigates whether the earnings premium found with use of incentive pay is offset by lower supplemental pay. More comprehensive measures of employer costs for employee compensation are used to test the hypothesis. These data indicate that bonuses, overtime work, pension provision, and shift differentials can be less common in jobs with incentive pay, but the lower incidence of these forms of compensation does not offset the higher earnings associated with incentive pay.     

The Impact of Suppliers’ Adoption of Voluntary Labour Codes/Certifications on Job Quality in Global Supply Chains: The Sri Lankan Case of Garments without Guilt

Codes of conduct and certifications on labour standards are designed to distinguish export manufacturing suppliers offering higher quality jobs from those offering poor quality jobs. However, previous research suggests that such codes/certifications have a limited impact on job quality. These studies do not differentiate between ‘compliance-based codes of conduct’ that retailers enforce on suppliers and ‘voluntary labour codes/certifications’ that suppliers adopt at their discretion. We examine the relationship between suppliers’ adoption of the Garments without Guilt (GwG) voluntary labour code/certification and job quality using fieldwork and longitudinal data on Sri Lankan export apparel suppliers. We find that GwG adoption is associated with higher base pay and safer work, while base pay is lower for GwG adopters that are simultaneously subject to retailers’ enforcement of compliance-based codes.     

Barriers or Opportunities? The Causes of Contingent and Part‐Time Work Among People with Disabilities

Why are workers with disabilities about twice as likely as nondisabled workers to be in contingent and part‐time jobs? This study finds that disability income program earnings limits and employer discrimination play relatively minor roles, whereas the primary explanation is health problems that make traditional full‐time jobs difficult or impossible for many people with disabilities. Despite the lower pay and other drawbacks of many nonstandard jobs, they enable many people with disabilities to work who otherwise would not be employed. Policy implications are discussed.     

The Effects of Working Time, Segmentation and Labour Market Mobility on Wages and Pensions in Ireland

Most research on pay and benefit differences between full– and part–time work focuses on characteristics of part–time workers and part–time jobs. However, part–time jobs are more open to labour market 'outsiders', and such labour market mobility can influence wages. We analyse the effects of working time, gender, segmentation and mobility on wages and pension benefits in Ireland. Both segmentation and mobility influence wages directly, and controlling for segmentation in a wage model eliminates the negative effect of part–time working. The wage effects of labour market mobility differ by gender and labour market segment. Pension entitlement is strongly influenced by gender, working time, labour market segment and mobility.     

Minimizing Competition? Entry-Level Compensation in Japanese Firms

This is the first empirical study of the determinants of pay for entry-level jobs among Japanese firms. Pay data of 1,382 companies obtained from the Nikkei survey was matched with company size, performance, industry, and foreign ownership data from Toyo Keizai's Japan Company Handbook. I found that unlike the results based on U.S. data, company size is not related to entry-level pay. Firm performance is positively related, but its effect is minimal. Industry membership and foreign ownership are related. I believe that these findings highlight the influence of the Japanese employment context and information sharing in Japan. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Institutional Aspects of Youth Employment and Training Policy in Britain

Public policy towards youth employment and training in Britain during the past decade has been dominated by two themes: the quest to reduce youth relative pay, as part of a wider deregulation of the labour market, in order to increase access to jobs and training: and the neglect of apprenticeship in favour of the Youth Training Scheme. This paper analyses these policies in an institutional framework informed by the results of a recent research project on youth activity in industry in major EC economies (Marsden and Ryan 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991).
The policy debate in Britain has tended to focus upon the effectiveness of lower youth pay at improving youth access to jobs and training (Wells 1983; Jones 1985; Junankar and Neale 1987). We accept the efficacy of lower youth pay but question its institutional viability. Youth employment and training policies must be well grounded in labour market institutions in order to achieve success. We argue that neglect of the institutional context accounts for the lopsided and partial success resulting from current policies in Britain, and that the revitalization of apprenticeship, either as such or in the equivalent form of a strongly upgraded public training scheme, has a great deal to offer.
We begin with an outline of the relevant institutions. We trace their implications for outcomes in the youth market, contrast the divergent institutional directions taken by West Germany and the UK, and finally assess contemporary British policy towards youth activity in general and apprenticeship in particular.     

Employers' Search and the Efficiency of Matching

Unskilled workers in low productivity jobs typically experience higher labour turnover. This article shows how this finding is related to variation in the efficiency of the matching process across occupations. If employers find it less profitable to invest in search and screening activities when recruiting for low‐productivity jobs, matches at the lower end of the occupation distribution will be more prone to separation. The analysis of a unique sample of British hirings, containing detailed information about employers' recruitment practices, shows that more intensive recruitment leads to matches of better quality that pay higher wages, last longer and make employers more satisfied with the person taken on.     

Major Matters: A Comparison of the Within‐Major Gender Pay Gap across College Majors for Early‐Career Graduates

I use data from the 1993 National Survey of College Graduates and appended 1990 Census on about 11,000 men and women college graduates (8400 with bachelor's degrees only, and 2800 with graduate degrees) who earned degrees in a 5‐year period (1984–1988), to address questions regarding the link between college major and early‐career gender pay differentials. I look at within‐major gender pay differentials for two groups of college graduates: those whose highest degrees are bachelor's and those who hold graduate degrees. Among those whose highest degrees are bachelor's, I find that within‐major gender pay penalties are virtually zero for professional majors. Gender pay penalties are large for general studies majors: social sciences, history, and humanities, and business administration (except accounting). For these, jobs account for a large portion of the unexplained gap. Among individuals who hold graduate degrees, I find that within‐major gender pay penalties are zero for all fields. My findings suggest that pay penalties to women in the aggregate can be traced to relatively large penalties in a couple of key fields (bachelor's degree–level general studies fields): social sciences and humanities, and business administration (except accounting). These findings are important, as they contradict the prevailing view. Existing empirical research suggests that women are uniformly disadvantaged compared to men regardless of field of study and, thus, field of study explains little or none of the gender gap in pay. I conclude that supply‐side mechanisms are important factors in producing gender inequality among college graduates, and suggest that we further focus our attention on the “supply side” in understanding segregation and gender pay inequality.     

When a Gain Comes at a Price: Pay Attitudes after Changing Tier Status

This study compares attitudes toward pay and work of employees who changed from the high tier to the low tier after transferring jobs from low-to high-paying departments with those who similarly transferred but did not change tiers. The former had lower Pay Satisfaction than the latter, but they did not differ in Job Satisfaction and Union and Employer Commitment. The findings suggest that the change-tier employees' loss of high-tier status was a likely reason for their pay dissatisfaction.     

The Financial Costs of Caring in the British Labour Market: Is There a Wage Penalty for Workers in Caring Occupations?

Recent evidence from the USA suggests that people engaged in occupations involving providing care for others, such as childcare and teaching, suffer a wage penalty. After taking into account job and individual characteristics such as level of education and work experience, people in these occupations in the American study earned about 6 per cent less than their peers in other types of occupation. However, we do not yet know if people working in similar occupations in other countries also suffer the same degree of disadvantage. The issue is important because, despite the perception that people in caring jobs place a relatively low weight on the level of remuneration when making career decisions, a number of studies have shown clear evidence of an association between pay and the propensity to give up working in a caring occupation. There are implications too for social inequality as many caring jobs are done by women and associated wage penalties could contribute to the persistent gender gap in pay. This study compares and contrasts the predictions of neoclassical economics, cultural feminist theory and social closure theory. Data are taken from 17 waves of the British Household Panel Survey and include a total of 23,773 individuals, giving 110,677 person‐year observations. These data are analysed using multi‐level linear regression. The results show clear evidence of a statistically significant wage penalty associated with working in some caring occupations. Those occupations requiring lower levels of educational qualification, such as nursing assistants and auxiliaries, are particularly hard‐hit by the wage penalty. On the other hand, some occupations, such as medicine and teaching, have fared better than comparable non‐caring occupations over the same period. We discuss the implications of these results for the gender gap in pay, poverty, social inequality and the future supply of caring workers.     

Where the Grass Is Greener: Voluntary Turnover and Wage Premiums

Standard economic and compensation theories suggest that voluntary turnover should decline when a firm pays wages that are higher than those of its competitors. Turnover behavior in the State of California's Civil Service, however, does not support this prediction. Using a fixed-effects estimator to control for job-specific characteristics, I find that the wages California pays relative to those of its competitors has little or no effect on turnover. In addition, estimates of the elasticity of turnover with respect to alternative wages indicate that higher wage rates do not pay for themselves through lower turnover costs. Instead, the absolute wage level and wage growth have large effects. In other words, it appears that workers are less likely to quit jobs that pay high wages and have larger wage increases no matter how their wages compare with those paid by other employers.     

The Role of Job Attributes in Understanding the Public-Private Wage Differential

This study uses a unique data set for Great Britain to investigate the impact of differences in job attributes on the public-private wage differential. The study reveals that (1) there are substantial differences in wage structure between the two sectors, particularly finding that the public-sector wage structure is less sensitive to differences in the attributes of jobs, and (2) differences in job attributes play in a major role in accounting for pay differences across sectors.     

Public- and Private-Sector Occupational Pay Structures

Data from a representative sample of wage and salary workers are used to estimate wage equations that provide for direct estimates of the differences between public and private occupational pay structures. The results show that at the state and local levels of government in particular, the public/private wage differential tends to decline as occupational skill requirements increase. Public employees who work on jobs unique to the public sector are paid a wage premium. There is little support for the idea that degree of union coverage in the private sector affects public wages for an occupation.     

Scheduling deteriorating jobs with CON/SLK due date assignment on a single machine

This paper considers the problem of scheduling deteriorating jobs and due date assignment on a single machine. The actual processing time of a job is a linear increasing function of its starting time. The problem is to determine the optimal due dates and the processing sequence simultaneously to minimize costs for earliness, due date assignment and weighted number of tardy jobs. We present polynomial-time algorithms to solve the problem in the case of two popular due date assignment methods: CON and SLK.     

Hazardous Occupations Within the Job Hierarchy

Firms using hazardous technologies face strong incentives to reduce job skill and training requirements so as to minimize the level of compensating wage differentials they must pay. This note examines the outcome of this process in terms of the location of hazardous occupations within the overall structure of jobs. Using four independent sources of data for the period 1974 to 1982, hazardous Occupations are found to offer significantly less worker autonomy, less on-the-job training, poorer promotion possibilities, greater risk of temporary and permanent layoff, and lower wage levels than safe occupations.     

Jobs and agricultural policy: Impact of the common agricultural policy on EU agricultural employment

This paper investigates the relationship between EU agricultural subsidies and the outflow of labor from agriculture. We use more representative subsidy indicators and a wider coverage (panel data from 210 EU regions over the period 2004-2014) than has been used before. The data allow to better correct for sample selection bias than previous empirical studies. We find that, on average, CAP subsidies reduce the outflow of labor from agriculture, but the effect is almost entirely due to decoupled Pillar I payments. Coupled Pillar I payments have no impact on reducing labor outflow from agriculture, i.e. on preserving jobs in agriculture. The impact of Pillar II is mixed. Our estimates predict that an increase of 10 percent of the CAP budget would prevent an extra 16,000 people from leaving the EU agriculture sector each year. A 10 percent decoupling would save 13,000 agricultural jobs each year. However, the budgetary costs are large. The estimated cost is more than € 300,000 per year (or more than € 25,000 per month) per job saved in agriculture.     

Capital investment and employment in the information sector

Estimation of the employment effects of changes in capital investment is a standard tool in public policy debates. Typically, such predictions are based on employment multipliers derived from Input–Output analysis. In this paper, we measure the employment effects of changes in capital investment in the U.S. information sector by econometrically estimating an “employment multiplier” from historical data. The estimated multiplier is 10 information sector jobs for each million dollars in expenditure, and perhaps 24 new jobs per million dollars invested across the entire economy. Employment multipliers derived from the Input–Output methodology average about 16 jobs per million, but the multiplier includes jobs outside the information sector. Including employment spillovers, our estimates suggest the multipliers from Input–Output models are plausible. We also note that information sector jobs have substantially higher median earnings than the private sector average, so the economic significance of changes in information sector employment are greater than might first appear. Our findings may be useful in debates over changes in industry regulation that could affect investment.