The dynamic impact of immigration on natives' labor market outcomes: Evidence from Israel

This paper studies the short and medium run impact of highly skilled immigrants from the Former Soviet Union to Israel on natives' wages and employment. If immigrants are relatively good substitutes for native workers, the impact of immigration will be largest immediately upon the immigrants' arrival, and may become smaller as the labor market adjusts to the supply shock. Conversely, if immigrants upon arrival are poor substitutes for natives, the initial effect of immigration is small, and increases over time as immigrants acquire local labor market skills and compete with native workers. We empirically examine these alternative hypotheses using data from Israel between 1989 and 1999.We find that wages of both men and women are negatively correlated with the fraction of immigrants with little local experience in a labor market segment. A 10 percent increase in the share of immigrants lowers natives' wages in the short run by 1–3 percent, but this effect dissolves after 4–7 years. This result is robust to a variety of different segmentations of the labor market, to the inclusion of cohort effects, and to different dynamic structures in the residual term of the wage equation. On the other hand, we do not find any effect of immigration on employment, neither in the short nor in the medium run.     

Caste discrimination and transaction costs in the labor market: Evidence from rural North India

This paper is an empirical attempt to quantify caste-based discrimination in the labor market using household data taken from rural North India. In the regression analysis, transaction costs associated with entry into the labor market and reservation wages are estimated simultaneously along with market wages. The estimation results provide evidence of the existence of transaction costs in the labor market and discrimination against backward classes with regard to access to regular employment. In line with previous studies, the results suggest that the achievements of India's reservation policy so far have at best been limited. In addition, a comparison between the estimates from the model employed in this paper and conventional (reduced-form) approaches shows that discrimination in labor market entry is likely to be underestimated in the conventional reduced-form approaches.     

Pro-market institutions and labor market outcomes: A panel-data analysis of U.S. metropolitan areas

We expand previous U.S. state-level research on the relationship between pro-market institutions and labor market outcomes by examining this relationship at the U.S. metropolitan-area level. Using panel data for 1992–2012 in a fixed-effects model, we investigate the effect of pro-market institutions on the unemployment rate, labor force participation rate, employment-population ratio, and employment growth across 366 U.S. metropolitan areas. The results indicate that pro-market institutions are associated with a lower unemployment rate, higher employment-population ratio, and faster employment growth. These results suggest that local-area policies are important for achieving favorable labor market conditions at the local level.     

Mother's education and child development: Evidence from the compulsory school reform in China

This paper investigates the causal impact of mother's schooling on various outcomes of adolescent development by exploiting the temporal and geographical variations in the enforcement of compulsory schooling laws in China. Using data from China Family Panel Studies, we find that mother's education increases adolescents’ school enrollment, math test scores, college aspiration, and internal locus of control related to education. Mother's education also improves adolescent mental health status and reduces the incidence of underweight. We also find considerable gender heterogeneity in the effects of mother's education. The results further indicate that mother's education leads to an increase in family resources for children and an improvement in maternal mental health and parenting, which we interpret as potential mechanisms behind our findings.     

The “Make‐up” of a Regression Coefficient: Gender Gaps in the European Labor Market

We provide a comprehensive picture of the relationship between labor market outcomes and age by gender in the 28 European countries covered by the European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. The analysis is based on a somewhat unconventional approach that refers to concentration curves in the Gini regression framework. It allows identification of ranges in the explanatory variables where local slopes change sign and/or size, i.e. the components that “make up” a regression coefficient. Gender is a crucial factor differentiating participation among workers, although employment–age profiles do not substantially differ. Relevant differences in age profiles concern working‐hours patterns: some countries are characterized by an almost specular behavior in men and women; other countries instead show similar patterns. Generally, earnings increase with age for both men and women. However, local regression coefficients are not monotonic over the entire age range and can even be locally negative in some countries.     

Cancer survivors in the labor market: Evidence from recent US micro-panel data

Rising cancer survival rates and retiring at older ages improve the probability of labor market presence for cancer survivors. Yet, insufficient evidence exists on the labor market effects of male- and female- specific cancers. Therefore, using a theoretical construct of labor supply and health capital, this study exploits a nationally representative dataset, the 2008–2015 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), for estimating the correlated random effects (CRE) and over-dispersion empirical models to capture the job market effects for cancer survivors. After addressing the potential endogeneity of cancer and controlling for the number of years after cancer diagnoses, the estimated CRE model detect substantial male-female differences in the labor market outcomes for the survivors. Male and female cancer types adversely affect short- and long- run employment prospects, and male-specific cancers increase weekly hours of work and decrease short- and long- run annual labor incomes. Moreover, gender-specific cancers increasingly limit long run family incomes and raise total health expenditures in the short- and intermediate- runs but not in the long-run. Additionally, while the cancers increase the likelihood of missing a work day for both genders in the short-run the effect is larger for females. Finally, the total annual cost of workplace absenteeism for the employed male- and female- cancer survivors range from $0.58bn to $3.1 bn.     

Finance–Growth Nexus and the P‐bias: Evidence from OECD Countries

Recent studies provide new empirical evidence confirming that financial development is linked to economic growth in OECD countries. Using new dynamic panel regression techniques, these appraisals indicate that within the group of high‐income countries stock market size as a measure of financial advancement contributes significantly to overall economic activity. Applying the same advanced techniques, this paper questions this conclusion by showing that the findings of these studies seem to be not only not robust with respect to adding new observations but also likely to be plagued by a severe price bias which belittles the information content of the used financial indicator (stock market capitalization). We provide evidence that anticipative price effects (i.e. expectations of future growth, reflected in current stock prices) may be driving the statistical relationship between stock market activities and economic growth in high‐income countries to a much larger extent than recent analyses of the finance– growth link in OECD countries suggest .