Estimates of a labour supply function using alternative measures of hours of work

Depending on data source, estimates of hours of work give widely different results both as to level and change. In this paper three alternative measures of hours worked are used to estimate a simple labour supply function to investigate if the estimated wage rate and income effects are data dependent as well. The measures used include those from time-use surveys and those from regular surveys. The latter are based on the responses to a question about normal weekly hours of market work. The results suggest that the estimates of the wage rate effects become much smaller when measures of normal hours are used compared to data collected for a well-defined time period close to the date of interview, such as time-use data. The income effects appear less sensitive to the choice of data.     

Routine

Temporal routine - maintaining the same schedule from day to day - saves time. It is also boring and inherently undesirable. As such, the amount of temporal routine a person engages in is partly an economic outcome, affected by variations in the price of time, household income and the ability to generate variety. Using time-budget data from Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, I show that men engage in more routine behavior than women, because they spend more time in (routine) market work. More educated people engage in less routine behavior; higher household incomes enable people to purchase more temporal variety. Spouses’ temporal routines are highly complementary. The positive income effects and impacts of schooling indicate yet another avenue by which standard measures of inequality understate total economic inequality.     

Time-use data in economics

This project on time-use data in economics is one of the first in a series of new initiatives taken by the Board of Editors of the European Economic Review to publish research in newly developing areas in economics. The symposium shows the diversity of potential applications of time-budget data, a major new resource for household economics, labor economics, welfare economics, and other areas. Jacobsen and Kooreman examine how a change in shop opening-hours legislation altered consumers’ time allocations. Hamermesh shows that consumers with higher full incomes enjoy more temporal variety. Klevmarken demonstrates that conventional estimates of labor-supply elasticities change substantially when time-budget data are used. Fahr shows the immensity of informal education activities and their positive correlation with formal education.     

Permanent versus transitory wage differentials and the inequality-hours hypothesis

This paper disentangles the effect of inequality in permanent and transitory wages on hours worked by, first, estimating the two components for Swedish industries and, second, using the resulting estimates as explanatory variables in an hours-worked equation. Consistent with Bell and Freeman’s (2001) inequality-hours hypothesis, permanent wage differentials are found to have a positive effect on individuals’ hours of work while transitory wage differentials have no effect. However, the analysis also shows that, in estimated hours-worked equations, inequality in observed wages is potentially a good approximation for inequality in permanent wages.     

The Intergenerational Effects of Paternal Migration on Schooling and Work: What Can We Learn from Children's Time Allocations?

This paper explores the short-run effects of a father's U.S. migration on his children's schooling and work outcomes in Mexico. To get around the endogeneity of paternal migration, I use individual fixed effects and instrumental variables estimation (FEIV) where the instrumental variables are based on U.S. city-level employment statistics in two industries popular with Mexican immigrants. Overall, the estimates suggest that in the short-run, children reduce study hours and increase work hours in response to a father's U.S. migration. Decomposing the sample into sex- and age-specific groups suggests that this is mainly driven by the effects of paternal migration on 12-15 year-old boys. These results are consistent with a story in which the immediate aftermath of a father's migration is one of financial hardship that is borne in part by relatively young children.     

Hidden consequences of a first-born boy for mothers

Women whose first child is a boy work less than women with first-born girls. After a first-born boy the probability that women have more children increases. Higher fertility is a possible explanation for the lower labor supply of mothers.     

Taxation In The Two‐Sector Neoclassical Growth Model With Sector‐Specific Externalities And Endogenous Labour Supply*

This paper examines the long‐run impacts of selective (or sector‐specific) commodity, payroll, and profit taxes in a two‐sector endogenous growth model with sector‐specific production externalities, in which one sector produces consumption goods and the other produces investment goods. The novelty of the model is that it allows not only for endogenous labour supply but also for the intersectoral allocation of resources, which may together lead to indeterminacy. We analytically show that the stability properties of the long‐run equilibrium critically affect the long‐run effects of these selective taxes, which may reverse the standard results of the growth effects of distortionary taxes.     

A three state model of worker flows in general equilibrium

We develop a simple model featuring search frictions and a nondegenerate labor supply decision along the extensive margin. The model is a standard version of the neoclassical growth model with indivisible labor and idiosyncratic productivity shocks and frictions characterized by employment loss and employment opportunity arrival shocks. We argue that it is able to account for the key features of observed labor market flows for reasonable parameter values. Persistent idiosyncratic productivity shocks play a key role in allowing the model to match the persistence of the employment and out of the labor force states found in individual labor market histories.     

Population ageing,time allocation and human capital: A general equilibrium analysis for Canada

This study explores the long-term impact of population ageing on labour supply and human capital investment in Canada, as well as the induced effects on productive capacity. The analysis is conducted with a dynamic computable overlapping generations model where in the spirit of Becker [Becker, Gary (1965), A theory of the allocation of time, The Economic Journal, Vol. 75, pp. 493–517.] and Heckman [Heckman, James (1976), A life-cycle model of earnings, learning and consumption, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 84, pp. 511–544], leisure has a quality-time feature and labour supply and human capital investment decisions are endogenous. The role of human capital in the growth process is based on the framework used by Mankiw et al. [Mankiw, N. Gregory, Romer, David and Weil, David N. (1992), A contribution to the empirics of economic growth, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 107, no. 2, pp. 407–437]. The paper indicates that population ageing creates more opportunities for young individuals to invest in human capital and supply more skilled labour at middle age. Consequently, the reduction in labour supply of young adults initially lowers productive capacity and exacerbates the economic costs of population ageing. However, current and future middle-age cohorts are more skilled and work more, which eventually raises productive capacity and significantly lowers the cost of population ageing. Finally, these results suggest that the recent increase in the participation rate of older workers might be the beginning of a new trend that will amplify over the next decades.     

Micro and macro elasticities in a life cycle model with taxes

We build a life cycle model of labor supply that incorporates changes along both the intensive and extensive margin and use it to assess the consequences of changes in tax and transfer policies on equilibrium hours of work. We find that changes in taxes have large aggregate effects on hours of work. Moreover, we find that there is no inconsistency between this result and the empirical finding of small labor elasticities for prime age workers. In our model, micro and macro elasticities are effectively unrelated. Our model is also consistent with other cross-country patterns.     

Exploring the big jump in the Spanish unemployment rate: Evidence on an ‘added-worker’ effect

Spain is destroying more jobs than any other European country. In the third quarter of 2009, the unemployment rate stood at 17.9%, the second-highest rate in the 27-nation EU and the highest rate in the euro area (EA-16). The exponential growth of the Spanish unemployment rate is the by-product of falling employment rates. However, there is a second explanation which is often overlooked by unemployment forecasters: changes in labour force participation rates. On the one hand, in times of recession participation rates tend to increase in order to safeguard sustainable household incomes. This phenomenon is known as the ‘added-worker’ effect. On the other hand, there is also an opposite effect in that individuals leave the labour force in recessions because chances to find employment are low. This is the ‘discouraged-worker’ effect. Applying a threshold cointegration model to Spanish quarterly data over the period 1976-2008, we find that the added-worker effect dominates the discouraged-worker effect, but only when unemployment is below 11.7%. Above this threshold, the two effects cancel each other out so that the participation rate is not influenced by further deteriorations of economic conditions. Since Spain recently passed the 11.7% unemployment threshold, our model predicts that there will be no further increases in the participation rate in the near future.     

THE ESTIMATION OF THE INCIDENCE OF EMPLOYER CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIAL SECURITY IN JAPAN*

The present paper estimates the incidence of the employer portion of social security contributions in Japan. One of the purposes of the paper is to examine whether the employer portion is shifted entirely or partly in many industrialized countries. The paper concludes, based on our estimation method, that there is very little apparent backwards shifting on to employees and, therefore, employers bear nearly all of their portion of social security contributions. Firms in Japan could use their contributions to social security for other purposes to reduce the financial burden on firms.     

Reforming Social Welfare in Germany: An Applied General Equilibrium Analysis

Abstract. In this paper, the effects of social assistance reform proposals are discussed for the case of Germany using a computable general equilibrium model that incorporates a discrete choice model of labour supply. This allows us to identify general equilibrium effects of the reforms on wages and unemployment. The simulation results show that general equilibrium wage reactions mitigate labour supply effects and that unemployment in fact decreases. Wage reactions are thus sufficiently strong to prevent additional labour supply from translating into higher unemployment. The simulations indicate that major cuts in welfare payments are necessary to produce substantial employment effects.     

The effect of fertility on labour force participation: The Spanish evidence

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to estimate the effect of fertility on the decision of labour force participation of married females in Spain, allowing for the existence of unobserved characteristics that affect both fertility and participation. We use a pooling of five waves of the European Household Panel for Spain (1994–1998). Results indicate that not taking into account the unobserved characteristics that affect both variables imposes on average a strong downward bias on the true effect of fertility on participation. This bias is especially strong for highly educated females. We are grateful to Raquel Carrasco and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Financial support from Gobierno Vasco (PI-1999-160)), Ministry of Education and Science (BE2000-1394), Instituto de la Mujer and Universidad del País Vasco (UPV 00035.321-13511/2001) is gratefully acknowledged.     

The propensity to return: Theory and evidence for the Italian brain drain

Return migration is the positive counterpart of the brain drain. The effects of the brain drain in Italy could be negative: this paper shows that highly skilled migrants decide not to return to their native country.