The employment effect of reforming a public employment agency

By how much does an increase in operating effectiveness of a public employment agency (PEA) and a reduction of unemployment benefits reduce unemployment? Using a recent labour market reform in Germany as background, we find that an enhanced effectiveness of the PEA explains about 20% of the observed post-reform unemployment decline. The role of unemployment benefit reduction explains just about 5% of the observed decline. Due to disincentive effects resulting from the reform, the reform of the PEA could have had an even higher impact on unemployment reduction if there had been less focus on long-term unemployed workers.     

The effect of temporary help jobs on employment volatility

This study investigates the impact of temporary agency employment on employment volatility outside the sector. Making use of econometric volatility models, we find that enhancing numerical flexibility by temporary agency employment decreases employment volatility of incumbent workers. However, not all subgroups are benefitting equally. While prime‐age permanent workers gain considerably from higher flexibility, young workers, migrants and low‐skilled workers not only are overrepresented among the temps but also do not gain when employed outside the sector.     

The true effect of students’ employment on the duration of studies

We examine the effect of the first-degree students’ employment on the prolongation of their studies. When employing a popular instrumental variable, the regional unemployment rate, we find a negative impact of students’ employment on duration of studies. Then, adding a predetermined IV – the individual’s employment prior to the beginning of academic studies – turns the estimate positive. Furthermore, we find that the relationship between the extent of students’ employment and duration of their studies depends on their age: among the younger students (aged 22–26), the extent of employment has no effect on the duration of studies, while among the older students, the effect is positive and statistically significant.     

The recession's effect on hospital registered nurse employment growth

Recessions are not uncommon in the United States, but the most recent recession is arguably the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although recessions result in increases in national unemployment in most sectors of the economy, they have resulted in increases in registered nurse (RN) employment as many non-working married RNs re-enter the workforce when their spouses lose their jobs. Over the past decade, hospital RN employment increased by more than 400,000 with virtually all of this growth associated with the two recessions that occurred during this period. The most recent recession led to an increase in hospital RN employment that was not only unprecedented in size, estimated at nearly 250,000, but was marked by the employment of large numbers of RNs over 50 years of age. While national unemployment rates remain high, hospitals should prepare for an eventual jobs recovery when many RNs are likely to leave the workforce.     

The employment effect of changes in the composition of fiscal consolidations

This paper assesses the magnitude and nature of fiscal consolidation policies and their impact on employment. In particular, in an attempt to address fiscal imbalances in the near term, countries have been faced with the delicate challenge of doing so without damaging recovery prospects and thus, counter to their original aim, worsening further public finances. In this regard, the paper reviews recent austerity measures adopted by governments and discusses how prolonging fiscal consolidation measures in their current form could be counterproductive for guaranteeing debt sustainability. Moreover, the article shows how poorly designed fiscal cuts – directly or indirectly affecting labour – seem to have been dampening job prospects. The paper sheds light on how fiscal and employment goals can be achieved together. More specifically, it finds that a fiscally-neutral change in the expenditure and revenue composition of fiscal consolidation can boost job creation. In this sense, the paper shows that it is imperative to find the right policy mix and recommends countries to be mindful of the nature and pace of consolidation.     

The effect of sex antidiscriminatory legislation on the variability of female employment in Britain

This paper examines the variability of female employment in the 1970s. It is based on data from the New Earnings Survey so that the behaviour of employment in the manual–nonmanual and manufacturing–nonmanufacturing sectors can be studied separately. At an aggregate level the results are compared to those derived using data from the Department of Employment, to ensure that the results are not simply the product of possible sampling variation of the New Earnings Survey. The findings of this paper, though far from conclusive, indicate that female employment vis-à-vismale employment became more stable after 1976. There may be many reasons for the decrease in relative variability of female employment in the second half of the 1970s; however, the way our sample is split coincides with the implementation of the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act which have become effective since 1976.     

企业培训经费的优化配置研究

该文在分析员工培训投资的风险及防范问题的基础上,通过对员工培训投资效率和投资方向的分析,建立了投资少、回报高的多目标规划模型,并给出了目标规划求解的方法和企业使用该模型时应注意的问题。     

The effect of informal employment and corruption on income levels in Brazil

This paper exploits a unique dataset on corruption and informal sector employment in 476 Brazilian municipalities to estimate whether corruption impacts GDP or income levels once variation in informal economic activity is taken into account. Overall, I find that higher levels of corruption and a large informal economy are generally associated with poor economic outcomes. However, only the size of the informal economy has a statistically significant effect. This effect is robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls and fixed effects, as well as an instrumental variable analysis. Further, these effects are large in magnitude. For example, a one standard deviation increase in the share of total employees that are informally employed explains a decrease in GDP per-capita of about 18%.     

FDI对中国农产品加工业就业效应检验

运用面板协整检验理论方法分析了1999—2008年间中国农产品加工业外商直接投资与就业的关系。多种协整检验方法表明,中国农产品加工业外商直接投资与就业之间存在着长期均衡关系。并且通过对面板模型的计量回归分析得出,现期的外商直接投资对中国农产品加工业的现期就业存在着明显的挤入效应;上一期的产出对就业存在显著挤入效应。     

Regulating away competition: the effect of regulation on entrepreneurship and employment

Many scholars have worried that regulation deters entrepreneurship because it increases the cost of entry, reduces innovation in the regulated industry, and benefits large firms because they can overcome the costs of complying with regulations more easily than smaller firms. Using novel data on the extent of US federal regulations by industry and data on firm births and employment from the Statistics of US Businesses, we run fixed effects regressions to show that more-regulated industries experienced fewer new firm births and slower employment growth in the period 1998–2011. Large firms may even successfully lobby government officials to increase regulations to raise their smaller rivals’ costs. We also find that regulations inhibit employment growth in all firms and that large firms are less likely to exit a heavily regulated industry than small firms.     

The effects of the new communications media on employment

The post-World War II economic growth happened in a context of significant productivity gains in the industrial sector and an increasing demand for services, where productivity gains remained quite low. This explains the strong expansion of employment in the tertiary sector relatively to the industrial sector. In the 1970s, this growth pattern reached a crisis point: in most Western economies, productivity gains lagged in the industrial sector while no visible changes occurred in productivity in the service sector.With the more widespread use of data processing and the emergence of new communication media, this trend showed signs of reversal. Information handling activities showed considerable productivity gains, rivaling those previously seen in industry. And the spur for technical progress, once limited to the industry, appears to have spread to the services and information sector.With respect to employment, this tendency could lead to a reduction in employment in the tertiary sector. So the new technologies would come about at the worst possible moment, with all time high unemployment rates in Western economies.So it is not surprising to see the current temptation to delay the process, or to adopt a so called “two-speed growth strategy”: the strongest productivity gains would be enhanced in the traded sector (mostly the industrial sector) where foreign competition is most prevalent; and the resulting cost on employment would be offset by maintaining low productivity levels in the protected sector which, to the present, has typically been the services sector.The present analysis takes a more optimistic stand-point on the net effect of technical progress on employment. The authors focus on the interplay between productivity in the exposed sector and productivity in services, with emphasis on the necessity for decreasing unit costs in the protected sector, enabling the traded sector to remain competitive.     

培养青年人才提升国有企业竞争力

加入WTO以后，要提高国有企业的竞争力，必须注意培养青年人才，建立健全人才的培养和激励机制，强化青年人才资源的开发利用，各级政府要为国有企业青年人才资源的开发和利用创造良好的条件。     

The effect of reforms on employment flexibility in Chinese SOEs, 1980–94

This paper tries to document the increased flexibility in employment relations in Chinese SOEs until 1994, as well as the effects this had on productivity and on the allocation of workers. A number of measures were introduced to enhance such flexibility, such as autonomy in the decision to hire and fire workers, and a new contract status which could at least in theory be terminated. This was aimed at improving the motivation as well as the allocation of workers across firms. Both should have improved the productivity of SOEs. The evidence found, however, indicates that these measures had few effects. This conclusion is based first on turnover data where hardly any change is found. Estimates of productivity and allocative efficiency gains lead to the same conclusion. This confirms the view that the Chinese state sector reforms regarding employment decisions remained very limited in scope until 1994. JEL classification: P23, P31, J63.     

信息化对黑龙江省农村劳动力转移就业的影响分析

优先发展重工业的初始路径选择和发展中的结构性特征,是黑龙江省乡城劳动力流动制度在改革后依然保持控制性特征的重要原因。虽然信息化有利于将农村劳动力非永久性迁移所带来的收益内部化,并促进转移过程的完成,但在实践中仍需进一步探索以信息化完善次级劳动力市场就业服务的具体实现形式。     

马克思就业理论与西方就业理论比较研究

对中国失业的研究已是无法回避的一个问题,而寻求理论支持则是进行研究的一个重要方向。检索就业理论的资料,可以发现最有代表性的就业理论是马克思就业理论和西方就业理论。因此,对这两种就业理论加以比较,理解它们形成的不同背景和分析路径,对比它们不同的内容体系,可以发现它们其实发掘的只是失业的一个方面,遵循的是失业发生、发展的一条路径。因此,在比较中更全面地理解失业,并且可以为研究我国的失业提供某些启示。     

A model of employment outcomes illustrating the effect of the structure of information on the level and distribution of income

The purpose of this note is to argue that systems in which actors do not have complete information are unlikely to be Markovian - even if, in some sense, the real process driving the system does have a simple Markovian structure.