Scarcity in the Danner-MeeksForum exchange: Supplying the demand for clarity

A message coming from the popular culture in recent years has been that a rise in wages in an occupation brings forth not only more workers but better workers as well. In this paper I present reasons for doubting this claim and for suspecting that the very opposite may be true. The higher an agent's minimal acceptable wage in occupation A, the more likely it is that other job opportunities exist. To the extent that this signals other talents which in turn raise the likelihood of competence in occupation A, the “better” such a worker might be assumed to be. I argue that largely overlooked is the possibility that an agent may be unwilling to work at the lower wage because of a low level of personal satisfaction or because of an insufficient belief in the work’s importance. I conclude that it is the person who is willing to work at the low wage who is more apt to achieve satisfaction and believe in the signficance of the work, and that, absent empirical evidence, it is therefore not correct to say that higher wages bring forth better workers.     

Who says a higher wage improves the labor supply?

A message coming from the popular culture in recent years has been that a rise in wages in an occupation brings forth not only more workers but better workers as well. In this paper I present reasons for doubting this claim and for suspecting that the very opposite may be true. The higher an agent's minimal acceptable wage in occupation A, the more likely it is that other job opportunities exist. To the extent that this signals other talents which in turn raise the likelihood of competence in occupation A, the “better” such a worker might be assumed to be. I argue that largely overlooked is the possibility that an agent may be unwilling to work at the lower wage because of a low level of personal satisfaction or because of an insufficient belief in the work’s importance. I conclude that it is the person who is willing to work at the low wage who is more apt to achieve satisfaction and believe in the signficance of the work, and that, absent empirical evidence, it is therefore not correct to say that higher wages bring forth better workers.     

Exit polls,turnout, and bandwagon voting: Evidence from a natural experiment

We exploit a voting reform in France to estimate the causal effect of exit poll information on turnout and bandwagon voting. Before the change in legislation, individuals in some French overseas territories voted after the election result had already been made public via exit poll information from mainland France. We estimate that knowing the exit poll information decreases voter turnout by about 11 percentage points. Our study is the first clean empirical design outside of the laboratory to demonstrate the effect of such knowledge on voter turnout. Furthermore, we find that exit poll information significantly increases bandwagon voting; that is, voters who choose to turn out are more likely to vote for the expected winner.     

Occupational choices of working children in Bangladesh

The article looks into the determinants of occupational choices of working children in Bangladesh. Using data from 6668 Bangladeshi working children aged 5 through 14, the article estimates several binary and multinomial logit regressions, separately for boys and girls. The article confirms that most children work in the informal sector where formal sector’s jurisdiction and regulations are absent. Specifically, the article finds that children are least likely to work in the service occupation and are more likely to work in the textile sector. The findings highlight the diversity in the occupational distribution of child workers by gender and show how their individual and family characteristics influence occupational choices. The service sector, which comprises of mostly maids, is a hidden sector. This sector makes children vulnerable to abuse. Thus, it is suggested that policy makers need to come up with effective legislations that would protect the children who work in the ‘hidden informal’ sector.     

The Impact of Income Taxation on the Labor Supply of Part-time and Full-time Workers

This paper estimates the effect of income taxation on the labor supply of part-time and full-time workers in the United States. Using a model that incorporates the endogeneity of the net wage rate and the virtual income, and correcting for self-selection into part-time and full-time jobs, the results indicate that part-time workers are relatively more responsive to changes in income tax than full-time workers. Estimated wage elasticities are relatively larger for part-time than for full-time workers.The simulation results indicate that income tax has a disincentive effect on both part-time and full-time workers, with part-time and full-time workers reducing their labor supply by 0.87 and 0.58 hours, respectively, if a 5% tax is imposed. However, the percentage reduction in hours of work is very small, and a tax policy may have little effect on the labor supply of workers.The results seem to suggest that female and black part-time workers are more likely to drop out of the labor force at higher levels of income tax. It also tests the hypothesis that the labor supply behavior of parttime and full-time workers differs.The test results indicate that the determinants of the labor supply of part-time workers are different from those of full-time workers. It is noted that there is a significant difference between the labor supply of male part-time and female parttime workers, as well as between the black part-time and white part-time workers. In order to reduce voluntary unemployment in market activities among married females and blacks, the government can encourage part-time work by sponsoring legislation or instituting a scheme that will allow part-time workers to pay relatively less in payroll taxes.     

中国情境下多层面体面劳动测量指标体系研究

体面劳动不仅是社会文明与进步的发展目标,也是企业的社会责任和劳动者的基本权益,构建合理的体面劳动测量指标体系具有重要的意义。体面劳动的实现是一项复杂的系统工程,需要国家、企业和劳动者的共同努力。因此,需要结合我国具体国情,在国家政府、企业、劳动者个人三个层面上分别从就业、权利、社会保护和社会对话四个维度构建更为科学的测量指标体系。     

Assessing the impact of different workplace flexibilities on workplace stress in the presence of varying degrees of job control

We apply probit and propensity score matching to 1667 respondents from the 2008 National Survey of the Changing Workforce to quantify how workers’ self-reported stress levels vary under two different workplace flexibilities and varying degrees of job control. The first workplace flexibility considered is the ability to easily take time off for personal and family matters; the second is the option of a compressed work week. Our findings suggest that the first flexibility correlates with lower stress reports regardless of job control level. The second flexibility, however, correlates with lower stress levels only for workers with low levels of job control. This suggests that a compressed work week does not reduce stress for workers that already have high levels of job control. The more general conclusion is that some flexibilities are substitutes for job control whereas other are not, assuming the larger goal is the reduction of workplace stress and the various maladies exacerbated by stress.     

The Political Economy of Domestic Labor Mobility: Specific Factors,Landowners, and Education

Political actors today seek to influence labor mobility via education just as they have for centuries. Landowners in countries with large industrial sectors attempt to suppress education levels to maintain their labor supply, as educated workers are able to move into industrial work more easily than uneducated workers. However, the relationship between large landowners and education is more complex than has been previously theorized. Using a specific‐factors model, I show that large landowners in countries with little economic development actually have an incentive to increase education levels. They realize the returns of an educated workforce without fearing their mobility because competing industrial opportunities for the workers do not exist. In either case, the ability of landowners to achieve their political goals is a function of their ability to overcome the collective action problem and effectively influence the state's provision of education. Powerful landowners successfully deny education in industrialized countries and provide it in agricultural countries. An analysis of panel data covering 77 countries from 1975 to 2000 confirms the conditional nature of the relationship.     

Minutes of Business Meeting,December 30, 1953

Corporations institutionalize managerial and professional positions in a hierarchical pyramid in which many young professionals begin work at a lower and wider level of the pyramid where positions are numerous. However, as the professionals start climbing up the pyramid in their careers, the number of positions rapidly declines at higher levels. The pyramid gets narrower as the professionals climb up into fewer and fewer positions. Since they usually either move up or out in their career climb, as the young professionals begin aging, more and more of them are forced out to look for jobs elsewhere or eventually, to retire. This article develops a simple model that shows how this particular way of organizing work results in premature retirement and aging for many workers. Alternative ways of organizing work are discussed in which premature aging and retirement do not take place. Furthermore, a number of implications are explored and various projections made all of which show that the so-called future crisis in the Social Security and Medicare Systems in the United States is exaggerated. If reform is really needed, what is called for is adjustment in the way work is organized, not abandonment of security for the elderly.     

The impact of gender quotas on electoral participation: Evidence from Italian municipalities

We analyze the effect of gender quotas on electoral participation by using a dataset regarding Italian municipal elections. Gender quotas were in force in Italy from 1993 to 1995. Given the short period covered by the reform, some municipalities never voted using a gender quota. We identify a treatment and a control group and estimate the effects of gender quotas by using a Difference-in-Differences estimation strategy. Electoral turnout shows a decreasing trend, but turnout decreased significantly less in municipalities affected by the reform, suggesting that gender quotas produced an increase in electoral participation. The effect on electoral turnout is driven by an increase in valid ballots. The effect is smaller in the southern part of the country, which typically manifests more traditional gender roles. We also find that female electors react more than males.     

Immigration,ethnic diversity and voting: The role of individual income

We exploit a unique panel dataset merging data on individual socio-economic characteristics and individual turnout in an Italian municipality to investigate the relationship between ethnic diversity in residential neighborhoods and propensity to vote. Using these data, we document for the first time a differential effect of diversity on electoral turnout depending on household equivalent income. Specifically, we show that ethnic diversity in the neighborhood reduces the political participation of the poor, while it fosters that of the more affluent. These results highlight a potential democratic deficit stemming from reduced and unequal electoral turnout in increasingly heterogeneous neighborhoods.     

HOW MUCH DO VOTERS KNOW? AN ANALYSIS OF MOTIVATION AND POLITICAL AWARENESS

Downs argued that instrumental individuals have no incentive to incur costs to turn out to vote. High turnout rates are explained in terms of intrinsic value derived from action. But if it is important to individuals that they participate, surely it matters how they participate? This paper tests the proposition that voters acquire more political information than those who abstain because they believe they have a duty to participate in collective decision‐making processes. It also considers the relevance of civic duty when explaining systematic differences between preferences expressed by those who vote and by those who abstain. Choice expressed at the ballot box is not the same as demand revealed in markets.     

Spillover effects of a minimum wage increase – evidence from Slovenia

This article Analysis the effects of a large increase in Slovenia’s minimum wage in March 2010 on the wage distribution using an administrative matched employer–employee panel database. We find that the minimum wage hike increased the concentration of low-paid workers, creating a much more pronounced spike at the minimum, particularly in market services, and for the young, the least educated and those with the least work experience. Our analysis also shows that the March 2010 minimum wage increase also produced sizeable spillover effects. The spillover effects were higher among young and older workers, especially for wage levels near the new minimum wage. The results are based on a difference-in-differences approach comparing changes in wages during the control and treatment periods as experienced by workers in the wage group immediately above the level of the new minimum wage and workers in wage groups higher up in the wage distribution.     

The Role of Gender among Low-Paid and High-Paid Workers

Using data from the 2001 Australian Census of Population and Housing Household Sample File, this article analyses the gender wage gap across the wage distribution by using a quan‐tile regression approach. The results show that there is a much larger gender wage gap among high‐paid workers than there is among low‐paid workers. Moreover, this wage gap tends to increase reasonably uniformly when one is moving up through the wage distribution. Institutional factors, the work environment and social norms are all areas that may require attention in order to redress the undervaluation of women's skills.     

Turnout and Closeness: Evidence from 60 Years of Bavarian Mayoral Elections

One prediction of the calculus of voting is that electoral closeness positively affects turnout via a higher probability of one vote being decisive. I test this theory with data on all mayoral elections in the German state of Bavaria between 1946 and 2009. Importantly, I use constitutionally prescribed two‐round elections to measure electoral closeness and thereby improve on existing work that mostly uses ex post measures that are prone to endogeneity. The results suggest that electoral closeness matters: a one standard deviation increase in closeness increases turnout by 1.27 percentage points, which corresponds to 1/7 of a standard deviation in this variable. I also evaluate how other factors such as electorate size or rain on election day affect turnout differentially depending on the closeness of the race. While rain decreases turnout on average, this effect is mitigated in close elections, as indicated by a positive interaction effect of the two variables.     

Poverty traps in a frictionless world: The effects of learning and technology assimilation

We study an endogenous growth model of technology assimilation through an adaptive learning process defining the accumulation of technological knowledge among both workers and industrial clusters. The assimilation of new technology and the arrival rate of innovations are both based on the distance from the technological frontier to the current technological development level of the country. We illustrate how, even if technological innovations become immediately available to all countries, and absent educational and institutional frictions among countries, differences in technological development levels allow for the existence of poverty traps leading to the economic stagnation of technological laggards.     

主观社会地位对制造业工人工匠精神的影响：基于认知-情感个性系统理论

以制造业工人为研究对象,基于认知-情感个性系统理论,构建主观社会地位影响工匠精神的双路径模型,检验心理所有权与和谐式工作激情在主观社会地位与工匠精神之间的中介作用,以及关怀型伦理氛围的调节作用。通过对收集的538份有效数据进行统计分析,研究结果表明：(1)主观社会地位对制造业工人工匠精神有显著正向影响;(2)心理所有权与和谐式工作激情在主观社会地位对工匠精神的影响关系中起部分中介作用;(3)关怀型伦理氛围在心理所有权、和谐式工作激情与工匠精神的关系中发挥正向调节作用。研究结果揭示了主观社会地位对制造业工人工匠精神的双路径影响机制,丰富了工匠精神的前因变量研究,并为培育制造业工人工匠精神提供指导。     

Liquidity constraints and labor supply

In this paper we shed some light on how restrictions in financial markets, the so-called liquidity constraints, might act in affecting labour supply decisions of Italian workers. One way to neutralize the existence of binding liquidity constraints is simply by supplying additional labor, instead of reducing consumption. We estimate whether resorting to additional labor supply as a smoothing consumption device is at work by using the Italian Survey of Households Income and Wealth (SHIW). The longitudinal dimension of the SHIW dataset allows us to control for individual unobserved heterogeneity. We also use an IV strategy to address the endogeneity of our measure for credit constraints in labor supply equations due to time varying factors.Our results show that liquidity constraints increase the intensity in the supply of men׳s labor. Constrained men work, on average, 4 hours more than their unconstrained counterpart. Self-employed workers turn out to be more sensitive to binding liquidity constraints, possibly because they are more flexible in adjusting the intensity of their labor supply.     

The causal effect of compulsory voting laws on turnout: Does skill matter?

A very important, yet unsettled, question is whether mandatory voting affects political participation. This paper exploits a natural experiment to assess the causal impact of compulsory voting on turnout and, more importantly, to test whether the impact is different across skill groups. I find that compulsory voting increases voter turnout by 18 percentage points (28%) and the increase is twice as much in the unskilled citizens than that in the skilled citizens. This study is the first to show, with rigorous empirical evidence, that compulsory voting laws are effective in reducing the skill/socioeconomic gap in political participation. Furthermore, by shaping the electorate, these laws have relevant consequences in terms of the economic policies applied.     

Mandatory sick pay provision: A labor market experiment

The question whether a minimum rate of sick pay should be mandated is much debated. We study the effects of this kind of intervention with student subjects in an experimental laboratory setting rich enough to allow for moral hazard, adverse selection, and crowding out of good intentions. Both wages and replacement rates offered by competing employers are reciprocated by workers. However, replacement rates are only reciprocated as long as no minimum level is mandated. Although we observe adverse selection when workers have different exogenous probabilities for being absent from work, this does not lead to a market breakdown. In our experiment, mandating replacement rates actually leads to a higher voluntary provision of replacement rates by employers.