Do volatile firms pay volatile earnings? Evidence from linked worker-firm data

Despite the importance of earnings instability, little is known about its correlates or causes. This article seeks to better understand earnings instability by studying whether volatile firms pay volatile earnings and is the first to directly test the relationship using US linked employer–employee data. The article finds a positive and statistically significant relationship using within-firm variation. In addition, this article finds that lower earning workers are passed significantly more volatility from their employing firms than are higher earning workers.     

Does union membership reduce gender earnings differentials? Evidence from employer–employee matched data in China

This paper examines whether union membership reduces gender earnings differentials in the Chinese labour market using an employer–employee matched data set. We have three main findings. First, union membership helps reduce the gender differentials in hourly wage and monthly allowance, but not in monthly basic wage and yearly bonus. Second, ensuring that female workers receive overtime pay is one way by which union membership helps reduce the gender earnings differentials. Third, controlling for firm fixed effects reduces the effect of union membership on the gender gap in hourly wage and monthly allowance, which means that the unobserved firm characteristics might impact the effect of union membership on gender earnings differentials.     

Earnings mobility in Spain: the role of job mobility and contractual arrangements

This paper analyses the relationship between earnings mobility, job mobility and changes in the contractual arrangement in Spain using a sample of Spanish workers aged 16–60 years extracted from the European Community Household Panel Survey (ECHP 1995–2001). Overall, earnings mobility remains mostly unchanged over time, although clear differences, both in terms of levels and trends, can be perceived among different types of workers. Results show that, in general, job mobility contributes to increase earnings mobility. Switching into permanent contract are associated with the highest probability of upgrading among those workers who remain with the same employer. In contrast, the highest risk of downgrading among stayers appears when changing from permanent to temporary. An analysis on low pay/no low pay transitions reveals that job mobility always increases the probability of moving from low pay to better-paid jobs among females. For males, in contrast, this occurs only when they were initially employed on a temporary basis. Furthermore, for females it is found that either switching into permanent contract while staying with the same employer, or changing employer while being employed on a permanent basis yield a higher chance of upgrading than staying with the same employer with a permanent contract.      

Language training,language proficiency and earnings of immigrants in Norway

This paper uses a simple probit model to determine the impact of language training on the language proficiency of Third World immigrant men in Norway. It also estimates the labour market returns to Norwegian language proficiency. The results show that immigrants who participate in language training programme are more likely to acquire speaking and reading proficiencies in Norwegian language than those who do not. Contrary to expectation, language proficiency has no significant effect on immigrants' earnings. A probable explanation may be that immigrants need Norwegian language proficiency to get into jobs in the Norwegian labour market. Once they are in employment, their wages are not necessarily determined by their proficiency in Norwegian. Consistent with the assimilation hypothesis, earlier waves of immigrants have higher earnings than do more recent waves, and part of the initial earnings deficit experienced by more recent immigrants can be attributed to language deficiency. There was no evidence of sample selection bias in the earnings equation.     

Earnings Dynamics and Profile Heterogeneity: Estimates from Japanese Panel Data

The recent empirical work on earnings processes using US panel data finds that ignoring heterogeneity in earnings profiles among individuals leads to an upward bias in the autoregressive parameter of earnings shocks. It then argues that the existing assumptions in incomplete markets and heterogeneous‐agent models, almost all of which require highly persistent earnings shocks and no individual‐specific and group‐specific differences in earnings growth rates, may be inappropriate. This paper investigates the applicability of this US data‐based debate to other developed countries by using a panel of Japanese male earnings. The results indicate that it is possible to corroborate the recent US arguments, despite some differences in the estimates.     

Disability and earnings: Are employer characteristics important?

We use matched employee–employer data from Britain to assess the influence of disability-specific workplace policies and practices on the earnings of disabled workers. The presence of equal opportunities policies increases the relative wages of disabled workers, but this is partially offset by the negative influence of workplace accommodations.     

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TRAINING IN THE PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SECTORS: EVIDENCE FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM AND THE UNITED STATES

Formal training programs are one of the main channels through which workers become more productive and experience wage growth. So far, however, most of the results on the effects of employer‐provided training come from studying the training received by private sector workers only. We extend the literature by identifying and comparing the effects of private‐employer‐provided and public‐employer‐provided training in the United States and the United Kingdom. We address this question using two independent data sets from the British Household Panels Surveys and the American National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1979. (JEL J24, J31, J40)     

Four decades of Asian American women's earnings: Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino American women's earnings 1960–1990

This article examines the earnings progress of Asian American women from 1960 through 1990 by comparing their actual hourly wage and salary earnings to simulated earnings. The simulated earnings are obtained by using parameter estimates obtained from human capital models of white women corrected for sample selection bias. Data come from the decennial census Public Use Micro Samples data. American-born Asian American women appear to have made dramatic gains in the 1970s. The 1980s and 1990s show some fluctuations in actual earings relative to simulated earnings between Asian American and white women. These fluctuations may be due to problems measuring experience as opposed to differences in discrimination over time.     

The treatment of uncertainty in the application of rational expectations to the analysis of economic policy

This study uses a familiar set of variables to characterize the determinants of training (based around individual characteristics, qualifications, and workplace characteristics). However, it goes further by using data drawn from a recent quarter of the UK Labour Force Survey, and thus contains an up-to-date and extensive set of core variables. The dependent variable used covers three subgroups: those who have never been offered training by their current employer; those who have been offered but did not receive training in the last three months; and those workers who received training within the last three months. The hypothesis that large employers not only provide more work-related training, but that they are also more willing to train workers with characteristics that indicate a lower probability of obtaining a return on any investment outlay, is tested. This was confirmed (especially for male workers), along with a range of results that mostly accord with previous studies into the determinants of UK employer-based training.     

Training and employee mobility in the British private and public sectors

The realization of the value of training for employees can take time as the training contributes dynamically to an extended development process. This research examines the empirical returns to training in three post-training situations: when the employee remains in the same job and with the same employer; when the employee transfers to a different job but remains with the same employer (internal mobility); and when the employee moves to a different employer (external mobility). Panel data and fixed effects (FE) methodology are used to quantify the joint effects of in-job training and mobility, while minimizing the potentially biasing effect of unobserved ability. In a period when public sector employment in Britain was contracting sharply, the short-term returns to training are nonetheless greater in the public sector, while the medium-term returns for both public sector and private sector employees depend on remaining within sector. The general/specific training mix, institutional influences, adverse selection, and the concept of ‘transferable’ training, all contribute to interpretation.     

The Impact of Computer Use On Earnings in the UK

The effect of new technology on relative demands for workers has been the subject of much research in economics. Krueger (1993) and others have studied the impact of computers on earnings in the US and elsewhere. Such studies have been criticised for ignoring the possibility of bias due to unobserved heterogeneity between computer users and non‐users, resulting in computer users not being a random sub‐sample of all workers. As well as looking at the effects of computers on earnings in the UK, this paper extends previous analyses by using a sample selection framework to deal with the bias problem. Results indicate not only that returns to computer use are positive but that it is important to correct for the sample selection bias.     

Asymptotic bias reduction for a conditional marginal effects estimator in sample selection models

In this article we discuss the differences between the average marginal effect and the marginal effect of the average individual in sample selection models, estimated by the Heckman procedure. We show that the bias that emerges as a consequence of interchanging the measures, could be very significant, even in the limit. We suggest a computationally cheap approximation method, which corrects the bias to a large extent. We illustrate the implications of our method with an empirical application of earnings assimilation and a small Monte Carlo simulation.     

Firm-financed training: Firm-specific or general skills?

In this article we analyse the specificity and generality of firm-financed training in Norway. Compared to most other OECD countries Norway has a compressed wage structure. According to non-competitive theories of training we should expect to find much firm-sponsored training in such an economy, and furthermore we should expect to find relatively much firm-sponsored general training. The results in this paper suggest that firm-financed training in Norway contain much general skills. We find that training paid for by previous employers has a positive effect on current wages, and the effect is at least on par with the impact on wages from training paid for by the present employer. We use two methods to control for selection bias in training; an instrument variable (IV)-approach and a fixed-effect approach. The IV-approach suggests that the original training estimate is biased downward. However, our training variable may be subject to measurement error, and recent research has shown that the IV-estimate will be biased upward when a mismeasured variable is binary (as in our case). This finding receives support when using a fixed-effect approach. The IV-estimate for training considerably exceeds the fixed-effect estimate. The fixed-effect estimate is also lower than the original OLS-estimate indicating that some selection bias in training is present.First revision received: January 2002/Final revision received: October 2003The paper is financed by grant 108728/510 from the Norwegian Research Council. The financial support is gratefully acknowledged. The author thanks Erling Barth and Hege Torp at the Institute for Social Research, Yngve Willassen at the Department of Economics, University of Oslo, Håkan Regnér at the Swedish Institute for Social Research, two anonymous referees, and participants at the Seminar for education and labour market in Stavern June 2000 for valuable comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are my own     

行业分析师盈利预测偏差的新解释

对于卖方行业分析师(简称分析师)盈利预测偏差的现象,本文提出一个新假说,即作为理性投资的代表者——分析师的盈利预测偏差会受到投资者情绪或噪音交易的影响,并通过我国的数据证实了该假说。首先,通过实证研究,发现国内行业分析师盈利预测存在系统性的偏差。其次,构造月度投资者情绪指数,通过非参数和参数的统计方法,针对盈利预测偏差的时间序列和面板数据两组数据,证明了情绪是分析师盈利预测偏差的一个重要因素。国际文献中对分析师偏差的绝大多数理论解释通常是基于经典金融学的框架,即假设分析师是完全理性的,其偏差主要来自利益驱动(他们供职的机构或个人利益最大化)。而本文认为情绪和利益驱动因素相结合才能更好地解释分析师预测的偏差。     

Does director affiliation lead to analyst bias?

This study examines the ability of security analysts to provide objective earnings forecasts for firms with which the analyst’s brokerage firm has a director affiliation. The affiliation that we examine is where the brokerage firm has, on its board of directors, a director or an upper management individual from the firm which an analyst at the brokerage firm provides coverage. We find that affiliated analysts tend to provide earnings forecasts that are insignificantly different from unaffiliated analysts in terms of accuracy. However, we also find that forecasts provided by affiliated analysts tend to be significantly more pessimistic than those provided by their unaffiliated counterparts. This pessimistic bias in their earnings forecast will more easily allow the covered firm to beat earnings expectations when earnings are realized. We find that this bias surfaced after the Global Settlement decision, an enforcement agreement between large investment banks and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding issues surrounding conflicts of interest.     

The Curse and Blessing of Training the Unemployed in a Changing Economy: The Case of East Germany After Unification

Abstract. We analyse the effects of government-sponsored training for the unemployed conducted during East German transition. For the microeconometric analysis, we use a new, large and informative administrative database that allows us to use matching methods to address potential selection bias, to study different types of programmes and to observe labour market outcomes over eight years. We find strong evidence that, on average, the training programmes under investigation increase long-term employment prospects and earnings. However, as an important exception, the longer training programmes are not helpful for their male participants. At least part of the explanation for this negative result is that caseworkers severely misjudged the structure of the future demand for skills.     

The impact of job mobility on earnings: using occupational and industrial classifications to identify job changes

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median number of years that a US worker has been with their current employer is 4.4 years. Although many job changes may not be classified as ‘career changes,’ any type of job change may have an impact on a person’s future earnings. In the present study, the following three types of job changes are examined in order to determine which ones result in higher incomes: a change in occupational status; a change in industry; or a change in both. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a log-linear wage regression with a correction for self-selection is estimated. Results suggest that changing jobs within the same industry or within the same occupation both increase a person’s income. However, a job change that is characterized by both a change in industry and occupation reduces a person’s income. The present study is one of the few studies to examine the effects of job mobility on earnings when mobility is defined in the context of changes in occupational and/or industrial classification.     

LABOUR‐MARKET ATTACHMENT AND TRAINING PARTICIPATION*

This paper examines how expected attachment to the labour market and expected tenure at a specific firm affect training participation. The results, based on cross‐sectional data from Japan, indicate that expected attachment to the labour market affects participation in both employer‐ and worker‐initiated training, while expected tenure at a specific firm mainly explains participation in employer‐initiated training. These two attachment indices explain more than two‐thirds of the sex gap in training participation. Employers in less‐competitive labour markets are more likely to offer employer‐initiated training to their workers.     

长期资产减值与盈余管理方式选择

以2007年长期资产减值的政策变化为背景,研究上市公司盈余管理方式的选择偏好变化。通过研究发现,应计项目和真实活动盈余管理是公司可选择的盈余管理方式,公司会基于两种盈余管理方式的成本来选择具体的盈余管理方式;禁止长期减值损失的转回会对应计项目盈余管理有遏制作用,同时极有可能存在企业管理者偏向使用真实活动盈余管理的趋势。