Higher education enrolment in Bangladesh: does the wage premium matter?

This paper empirically examines the decisions of individuals to enrol in a course of tertiary education in Bangladesh, focussing on the period 1999 to 2009. Of particular interest is whether the wage premium―the gap in wage earnings between tertiary and secondary school graduates―is associated with decisions to enrol in tertiary education. The analytical framework used here is the human capital theory, which is tested through a discrete choice model. Using data from Bangladesh Labour Force Surveys, empirical results suggest that the wage premium is positively associated with decisions of males to enrol in tertiary education, while for females there appears to be no such association. A battery of robustness tests supports our results.     

Is the Swedish central government a wage leader?

Is the Swedish central government a wage leader? This question is studied empirically in a vector error-correction model using a unique, high quality data set. It is first shown that salaries of white-collar workers in the private sector and central government are cointegrated. It is then found that private sector salaries are weakly exogenous to the system of equations. This means that the private sector is the wage leader in the long-run model. It is also found that changes in central government salaries do not Granger cause changes in private sector salaries. Together, these findings clearly demonstrate that the central government is not placing undue pressure on salaries in the private sector. The central government is not acting as a wage leader.     

Is it China that leads the Asian stock market contagion in 2015?

This article examines the influence of China B-share aggregates on major Asian stock market aggregates during 2015 China crash. Results indicate the China market shows strong negative impact and is highly responsible for leading most markets down during the crash.     

Is there a wage premium for volunteer OSS engagement? – signalling,learning and noise

Volunteer-based open-source production has become a significant new model for the organization of software development. Economics often pictures this phenomenon as a case of signalling: individuals engage in the volunteer programming of open-source software (OSS) as a labour-market signal resulting in a wage premium. Yet, this explanation could so far not be empirically tested. This article fills this gap by estimating an upper-bound composite wage premium of voluntary OSS contributions and by separating the potential signalling effect of OSS engagement from other effects. Although some 70% of OSS contributors believe that OSS involvement benefits their careers, we find no actual labour-market premium for OSS engagement. The presence of other motives, such as fun of play or altruism, renders OSS contributions too noisy to function as a signal.     

Does the minimum wage help the poor?

Conventional economics frequently employs abstract analysis, including questionable assumptions regarding human behavior, together with highly quantitative methodology. While these techniques do not provide a full picture of economic life, conventional economic analysis has provided important insights and predictive power, at least during certain historical periods. The effects of minimum wage laws have been analyzed extensively by conventional economists over the past quarter century. That analysis, much of it empirical, has produced important insights into the effects of the minimum wage on the poor. In this article, I survey that vast body of research and address whether the poor are better off due to the minimum wage. I conclude the minimum wage does not unambiguously help the poor, and may do more harm than good to this segment of the nation's population.     

Is it easier to publish in journals that have low impact factors?

We use publication data from all journals in economics, mathematics, physics and chemistry. We compute the ratio of publications that come from the top 25 US departments for each journal and use it as a measure of difficulty to publish in a journal. We find that there is a rather weak but positive correlation (0.20) between the impact factor and the difficulty measure.     

How is the worker’s weekly hour related to wage over the life cycle? The U.S. evidence

The current study estimates the relationship between weekly hours and weekly wage over the life cycle of a representative sample of workers. Recognizing the endogeneity of these two variables, the study estimates both equations in a simultaneous equations framework and demonstrates that the relationship between weekly hours and weekly wage is not uniform over the worker’s life cycle. These two variables are negatively related when the workers are young and have a positive relationship when they are matured adults. This conclusion remains valid for both men and women. Our robustness check further confirms that workers respond to wage increases differently at different stages of their working career. This has interesting policy implications. Any policy to influence the worker’s hours decision through wage incentive must consider the stage of his/her working career.     

Are children driving the gender wage gap?

We examine how much children and the responsibilities related to them contribute to the divergence of men's and women's wages, and consequently, to the formation of the gender wage gap. To derive the relative contribution of gender‐specific parent gaps to the overall gender wage gap, we provide a modification of the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition and include simultaneous corrections for selection into employment and parenthood. The results show that the fatherhood wage premium contributes most significantly to the gender wage gap, especially in Poland. The motherhood penalty is also significant, while the role of the gender gap among childless individuals is small.     

Are adjustments in the default risk premium asymmetric?

This article employs threshold cointegration and error-correction models to the default risk premium. The approach allows asymmetry in the dynamic process that has not been captured in previous studies of corporate credit spreads. The results indicate that the adjustment process is asymmetric and would be beneficial to investors and macroeconomic forecasters as the default risk premium may signal future business cycles.     

Is there a wage bonus from drinking? Unobserved heterogeneity examined

While the result that drinkers earn more than abstainers has been remarkably persistent, only one paper in the literature on drinking and earnings has been written where individual fixed effects are included. This study improves the current literature by utilizing a much longer panel and focuses on the low end of drinking while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity with the inclusion of individual specific effects. It is found that while OLS specifications yield a positive significant coefficient on current drinking, even when a rich set of covariates is controlled for, including individual fixed effects renders the coefficient statistically insignificant.     

How important are minimum wage increases in increasing the wages of minimum wage workers?

Popular discussion presumes minimum wage increases primarily drive wage gains for minimum wage workers. We investigate this presumption using the Current Population Survey to assess the fraction of minimum wage workers receiving raises after 12 months. This fraction is moderately higher following state minimum wage increases, and positively correlated with several measures of labor market tightness. Finally, wage gains frequently follow industry and/or occupation switches, highlighting the importance of career progression for earnings growth among entry-level workers. Career progression and increases in labor demand rather than minimum wage increases appear to drive most wage gains for minimum wage workers.     

Male wage inequality and marital dissolution: Is there a link?

After almost a century‐long pattern of rising marital instability, divorce rates levelled off in 1980 and have been declining ever since. The timing of deceleration and decline in the rates of marital dissolution interestingly coincides with a period of substantial growth in wage inequality. This paper establishes a novel connection between the two phenomena and discusses potential explanations for the underlying link. Using female marital histories in a duration analysis framework combined with regional and temporal variation in the pattern of male wage dispersion, I show that inequality has a significant stabilizing effect on the marriage. Quantitatively, increases in male wage dispersion can roughly explain up to 30% of the fall in the mean separation probability between 1979 and 1990. Several plausible explanations are discussed: changes in spousal labour supplies, female wage inequality, income uncertainty, social capital as well as a hypothesis where inequality renders the option to divorce less attractive by making remarriage more difficult.