Do changes in demographic characteristics explain declining male employment rates? Examination of the Australian case using a propensity score re-weighting decomposition approach

Using Australian data spanning the period from 1981 to 2001, we apply a propensity score re-weighting decomposition approach to investigate the extent to which the large decline in the male employment population rate over this period can be attributed to changes in socio-demographic characteristics. We find that changes in observed characteristics account for little of the aggregate decline. However, changes in characteristics are found to be important for population sub groups. In particular, changes in partner status and partner employment status have acted to decrease employment rates of younger males, but increase employment rates of older males. A further finding is that, holding observed characteristics constant, there has been a very large decline in the employment rate of 55–64-year-olds with bachelor degree qualifications. In the course of applying the decomposition method, we illustrate that validity of inferences depends on ‘appropriate’ specification of the reweighting function.     

Female employment and occupational changes in the 1990s: How is the EU performing relative to the US?

This paper provides a comparison of the incidence and composition of female employment both in the EU and in the US. Despite a significant increase in female labour market participation in the EU, about 50% of the difference between the employment rates in the US and the EU can still be attributed to differences in the educational attainments and the employment rates of women aged 25–54. We highlight the main features of female employment in both areas, paying particular attention to the differences across age cohorts and educational levels. Our main findings are as follows: (i) the educational level of the EU female population is slowly converging to that of the US across age cohorts, (ii) the employment rates of less educated women are much lower in the EU than in the US (with the exceptions of the Scandinavian countries) even for women aged 25–34, and (iii) occupational segregation is lower for the younger highly educated women who seem to be entering more typically male occupations and less typically female occupations, although at a higher rate in the US than in the EU.     

What are the drivers of business demography and employment in the countries of the European Union?

ABSTRACT

The aim of this contribution is to establish a typology of European entrepreneurship countries with respect to variables related to entrepreneurial activity and economic development. Using a combination of multidimensional data analyses allows us to extend the concept of ‘entrepreneurial regimes’ and leads to the distinction of five such entrepreneurial regimes. Moreover, in order to better characterize these classes, a wide set of illustrative variables representative of national economic development, labour market functioning, and formal and informal institutional environments, as well as variables specific to the entrepreneurial population, are considered. Finally, discriminant analyses show that the five explanatory themes considered (Innovation, Employment, Formal Institutions, Entrepreneurship and Governance) differentiate the classes, and significantly explain the diversity of entrepreneurial regimes. These findings have important implications for the implementation of public policy, in order to promote entrepreneurial activity and reduce unemployment.     

Do consumers’ home buying attitudes explain the behaviour of US home sales?

This article asks whether consumers’ home buying attitudes explain the behaviour of home sales by focusing on two tranquil and two uncertain periods within 1978–2015. We utilize monthly data to formulate and estimate four augmented autoregressive models with the results indicating that improvements (deteriorations) in consumers’ home buying attitudes lead to higher (lower) home sales. This conclusion remains unchanged when controlling for economic and financial indicators often cited as determinants of home sales. Overall, our article has key implications for future studies aiming to forecast home sales using attitudinal measures.     

Did the pattern of aggregate employment growth change in the euro area in the late 1990s?

This paper examines whether the pattern of growth in euro area employment seen in the period 1997 to 2001 differs from that recorded in the past and what could be the reasons. First, a standard employment equation is estimated for the euro area as a whole. This shows that the lagged impact of both output growth and real labour cost growth, together with a productivity trend and employment ‘inertia’, can account for most of the employment developments between 1970 and the early 1990s. Conversely, these traditional determinants can only explain part of the employment development seen in recent years (1997 to 2001). Second, the paper shows sound evidence of a structural break in the aggregate employment equation in the late 1990s. Third, the paper provides some tentative explanations for this change in aggregate employment developments, using in particular country panels of institutional variables and of active labour market policies but also cross-sectional analyses. Among the relevant factors likely to have contributed to rising aggregate employment in recent years are changes in the sectoral composition of euro area employment, the strong development of part-time jobs, lower labour tax rates and possibly less stringent employment protection legislation and greater subsidies to private employment.     

Does complexity explain the structure of trade?

This paper analyzes whether complexity, measured by the number of skilled tasks that are performed in production, explains countries’ commodity trade structure. We modify the Romalis ( 2004 ) model to incorporate advantage differences in complexity across commodities together with differences in the number of mistakes made by workers in the production process in developed and developing countries as a source of comparative advantage. Our model predicts that the share of developed countries in world trade increases with products’ complexity. Empirical tests confirm this prediction. Moreover, we find that complexity complements the explanation provided by skill‐intensity on countries’ commodity trade structure.     

Labor market assimilation of immigrants in Spain: employment at the expense of bad job-matches?

During the last decade, Spain has experienced an unprecedented increase of immigration from three localized areas: Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa. Using data from the Labour Force Survey for the period 1996–2006, we study the labour characteristics of recent immigrants, identifying the major differences with the native population at arrival and tracking whether these differences fade away as their years of residence in Spain increase. We allow the returns to human capital and the sensitivity to the business cycle to differ between immigrants and natives. Overall, our results show that, compared to natives, immigrants face initially higher participation and unemployment rates, as well as higher incidence of overeducation and temporary contracts. However, 5 years after arrival immigrants’ participation rates start to converge to natives’ rates, unemployment rates decrease to levels even lower than those of natives, and the incidence of overeducation and temporary contracts remains roughly constant: no reduction of the gap with Spanish workers is observed. We are grateful to Christian Dustmann, Juan F. Jimeno, Claudio Michelacci, an anonymous referee, and seminar participants at the 2006 EALE Conference, 2006 Simposio de Análisis Económico, BBVA Economic Research Department, FEDEA, CReAM, INSIDE and LECG for helpful comments and suggestions.     

Can the difference in ageing across cities explain the divergence of human capital across cities in Korea?

This article uses Korean census data to investigate the divergence of human capital levels across cities in Korea and the role of ageing in explaining the divergence. Our analysis shows that the proportion of adults with a college degree has increased more in cities with a higher initial schooling level in Korea. This finding is consistent with what Berry and Glaeser (2005) and others found for the USA. However, if we control for the difference in ageing across cities, the relationship between the initial schooling level and the proportion of adults with a college degree does not hold any longer. It is argued that the difference in ageing across cities can largely account for the divergence of human capital levels across cities in Korea.     

Does skill obsolescence increase the risk of employment loss?

In this article, we analyse whether technological change induces skill obsolescence and early labour market exit, and to what extent training participation and on the job learning reduce these risks. Using panel data on older workers, we find that workers report skill obsolescence more often when learning is a structural characteristic of the job. This perceived skill obsolescence is not related to a higher probability of losing employment. Instead, workers who experience skill obsolescence appear to learn more on the job and participate more often in training, which decreases the risk of losing employment. These results are consistent with the dynamic model of skill obsolescence and employment loss we develop in this article. Moreover, we find that when workers with long job tenures decrease their training participation, this is an early indicator of future job loss.     

Assets versus Autonomy? The Changing Face of the Gender-Caste Overlap in India

Inter-group disparity in India is multifaceted; this paper focuses on gender and caste as two important indicators of disadvantage. An assessment of the contemporary state of the gender-caste overlap suggests that the economic condition of women continues to be defined and constrained by their caste status. At the same time, the traditional distinction between lower caste and upper caste women, based on the relative egalitarianism and greater freedom of movement of the latter, needs to be revised. The Dalit (low caste) women are the worst off, as they belong to a group that is materially at the bottom of the ladder; their relative deprivation is compounded by low levels of autonomy and greater exposure to domestic violence.     

Do cheaters in the lab also cheat in the field?

In this paper, we study the correlation between cheating in the lab and cheating in the field. We conduct a laboratory experiment using a variant of the Mind game (Jiang, 2013). Payoffs above a certain threshold are indicative of cheating behavior. Subjects are paid their earnings by bank transfer. A fraction of the subjects is deliberately paid more than their earnings. We send subjects a reminder e-mail stating their earnings and asking them if they have received their payment. We find a significant correlation of 0.31 between cheating in the lab and in the field. Subjects with higher payoffs in the Mind game are also less likely to report the overpayment. Our results speak to the lab-field generalizability of cheating behavior.     

Can the affordable care act provisions explain the recent wave of acquisitions in the health insurance industry?

This research shows that the ACA health insurance exchanges have generated more merger activity in the health insurance market. The impact is robust to control for an extensive set of factors suggested by both neoclassical and behavioural frameworks. The economic impact of this ACA provision is substantial with 3.8 more months of unusually high merger activity or 52 more merger bids per year.     

Do population age groups matter in the energy use of the oil-exporting countries?

This study examines the impacts of the population age groups of 20–34, 35–49, 50–64 and 65–79 on the per capita energy use of the oil-exporting countries of Commonwealth Independent States: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia employing the modified-STIRPAT framework. Considering that estimations using non-stationary data may yield spurious results, unlike many prior STIRPAT studies, we explore integration and cointegration properties of the data and then estimate long- and short-run elasticities as well as speed of adjustment coefficients. Since our time series analysis covers only 23 observations (1990-2012), as a robustness check, we also conduct panel data analysis by pooling the mentioned countries data with that for members of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. We apply the Autoregressive Distributed Lags Bounds Testing approach in the time series analysis and Pooled Mean Group estimator in the panel analysis, both are superior in small samples. The findings from the time series analysis are supported by those from the panel data analysis. According to the results, there is cointegrated relationship among the variables. The age groups together with affluence and oil prices have statistically significant impacts on the per capita energy use in the selected countries. Moreover, we find the speed of adjustments exhibiting different magnitudes for different countries depending on which population age group is considered. The findings suggest that policymakers should pay special attention to the population age groups of 35–49 and 50–64, as they have a large effect on per capita energy use. Since these groups are the main part of the working age population, increase in their energy consumption is likely to lead to economic growth. Furthermore, the policymakers should take into consideration the finding that speed of adjustments towards an equilibrium path is quite high. It implies that any policy related shocks to the per capita energy use relationship could disappear within a year or even sooner.     

Do the best go west? An analysis of the self-selection of employed East-West migrants in Germany

Since the inequality of earnings in East Germany has approached West German levels in the late 1990s, the standard Roy model predicts that a positive selection bias of East-West migrants should disappear. Using a switching regression model and data from the IAB-employment sample, we find however that employed East-West migrants remain positively self-selected with respect to unobserved abilities. This result is consistent with the predictions of our extended Roy model which considers moving costs that are negatively correlated with labour market abilities of individuals. Moreover, we find that wage differentials as well as differences in employment opportunities are the central forces which drive East-West migration after unification.

What Do the Elderly Do?

The most direct way to find out what elderly Americans do is to study how they occupy their time and, if they are still in the labor force, in what occupations can they be found. This essay focuses on three key issues regarding the activities of those 65 and over: their average use of time in 41 different activities, especially how they employ the greater discretionary time available to them in comparison to younger adults; the factors underlying their rising participation in the labor in the first decade of the twenty-first century; and the occupations that elderly men and women are most likely to be found and how this has changed.     

Are the choices of people stochastically rational? A stochastic test of the number of revealed preference violations

Revealed preference tests are frequently used to check data on the behavior of agents for consistency with economic theory. Unfortunately these tests lack a stochastic element and thus one violation of revealed preference causes a rejection of the behavior being tested. To remedy this lack of a stochastic element in revealed preference analysis, we suggest a general, simple, and intuitive statistical procedure to test whether the observed number of violations is more consistent with a pre-specified type of non-degenerate behavior than with rational behavior. We illustrate this general procedure with an example using uniform random behavior that allows researchers to test whether the actual number of violations of revealed preference is more consistent with uniform random behavior than rational behavior. This statistical test takes advantage of the fact that nonparametric revealed preference tests involve known prices and expenditures. Our illustrative example is accompanied by some Monte Carlo exercises showing that the uniform test performs very well. We implement our test using datasets from two well-known economic experiments. One is a dataset on altruistic choices from Andreoni and Miller (Econometrica 70:737–753, 2002). The second is a dataset on the choices made by subjects who act within a token economy from Battalio et al. (West Econ J 11:411–428, 1973) and Cox (Econ J 107:1054–1078, 1997). We find that for a majority of subjects in one altruistic behavior sub-experiment uniform random behavior can be rejected in favor of rational behavior at the 10 % level of significance. For all but one subject, living in the token economy, uniform random behavior cannot be rejected. For that one subject in the token experiment uniform random behavior is rejected in favor of perverse economic behavior.     

Does the presence of high-skilled employees increase total and high-skilled employment in the long run? Evidence from Austria

Studies conducted for the US have found a positive effect of human capital endowments on employment growth, with human capital endowments diverging at the same time. In contrast, studies for European countries have found convergence of human capital endowments. This paper tests these relationships for the 99 Austrian districts for the observation period 1971–2011 by estimating how the presence of high-skilled employment affects total, low-skilled and high-skilled employment growth. To this end, OLS, fixed-effects and first-difference regressions are estimated. The results indicate continuous convergence of high-skilled employment which, however, slowed down significantly since the 1990s. In contrast to previous studies, evidence for positive effects of high-skilled on total and low-skilled employment is only weak and varies over time. Furthermore, the results show that total and high-skilled employment in suburban areas grew faster than in other regions, while districts which bordered the Eastern Bloc were disadvantaged. Nevertheless, spatial neighbourhood effects within Austria are only weak.     

Reduction of child poverty in Serbia: Benefit or employment strategy?

Based on the Serbian Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) and tax benefits and structural microsimulation models, we evaluate the labour supply and distributive effects of several reform strategies concerning two major social transfers in Serbia: child allowance and social monetary assistance. Our results show that, in a context of a low labour participation rate, and high unemployment and informality rates, a benefit strategy is by far the more cost‐effective option for reducing child poverty than an employment strategy that aims to raise the work incentives for parents. Both proposed reforms are found to be progressive.     

Evaluating the participation of an ethnic minority group in informal employment: a product of exit or exclusion?

This paper critically evaluates competing explanations for the participation of ethnic minority groups in informal employment. These interpret their participation either through a structuralist lens arising out of ‘exclusion’ from formal employment or through a neo-liberal and/or post-structuralist lens driven by voluntary ‘exit’ from formal institutions. To evaluate critically these competing explanations, this paper reports a survey of the experiences of Pakistani immigrants in informal employment in Sheffield, including fifty face-to-face interviews and two focus groups. The findings highlight informal employment amongst this Pakistani ethnic minority group is neither universally driven by exclusion nor exit. Instead, some participate mostly due to exclusion, others mostly for exit rationales and some for a combination of the two, with different mixtures across different groups and types of informal employment. The outcome is a call for greater appreciation of the multifarious character of undeclared work and a move beyond simplistic explanations and policy responses.     

Graduate employment: Does the type of higher education institution matter?

The paper analyses whether the type of institution from which students graduate has an impact on their unemployment propensity. It uses official data on the Portuguese higher education system, for 2018, at the program/institution level, which provides information on graduate unemployment, as well as demographic and socioeconomic background information. A fractional probit model on graduates’ propensity for unemployment is estimated. Results suggest that polytechnic graduates face higher unemployment propensity than university graduates, maintaining inequalities present in students’ previous trajectories. Policies targeting socioeconomic segregation need to address not only access to higher education but also the transition to the labor market.