Career Concerns,Inaction and Market Inefficiency: Evidence From Utility Regulation

We study how incentive conflicts known as ‘career concerns’ can generate inefficiencies not only within firms but also in market outcomes. Career concerns may lead agents to avoid actions that, while value‐increasing in expectation, could potentially be associated with a bad outcome. We apply this theory to natural gas procurement by regulated public utilities and show that career concerns may lead to a reduction in surplus‐increasing market transactions during periods when the benefits of trade are likely to be greatest. We show that data from natural gas markets are consistent with this prediction and difficult to explain using alternative theories.     

Workers' Views of the Impact of Trade on Jobs

This article uses new data to examine how workers' perceptions of the impact of trade on jobs like theirs are related to economic variables representing their career paths, job characteristics, and local labor market conditions. We find that only 17 percent of workers think trade creates jobs. And even fewer workers (4–7 percent) in any industry think trade has created better jobs. We find that workers' perceptions do not reflect their job characteristics or the movability of their jobs. Their perceptions of trade primarily reflect local labor market conditions (hiring and separation rates) and education. The determinants of workers' perceptions of trade present a different pattern compared with their perceptions of job security.     

Getting a job as a favor in the Russian post-socialist labor market

The literature on social networks in labor markets often assumes that hiring through a network is a token in a reciprocal favor exchange. Yet, the scope and mechanisms of this phenomenon remain unclear. I propose a general theoretical framework that initially takes the stand-alone favor, rather than reciprocity, as a mode of economic allocation and identifies its institutional support structures. Markets and hierarchies shape favor-doing alongside social networks, often as a byproduct of their other functions. I find empirical evidence for social networks and market pricing as support structures for favors in the Russian post-socialist labor market of the 1990s. The mechanisms behind social networks are prior history and the general norm of reciprocity, while market pricing induces favors by those employers positioned in the middle of the wage distribution and thus exhibiting simultaneously two qualities: a willingness to do favors, because the jobs they have to offer are not sufficiently lucrative to attract the very best talent, and an ability to ask for favors, because nevertheless those jobs remain attractive enough for job seekers at large. Overall, this study shows how labor market institutions, originally set up to support competitive exchanges, affect the likelihood of favors in hiring, in tandem with the traditional support structure, social networks. Favor-doing in emerging markets is understood better as a broadly conceived institutionalized process having a variety of support structures, not just networks, that must be explored from the bottom up in each specific setting.     

The Changing Spatial Relationship Between Residences and Worksites in the New York Metropolitan Region: Implications for Public Policy

In recent decades, most new metropolitan population and job growth has occurred in the suburbs. Conventional wisdom suggests that because of the selective nature of suburban labor market development, most metropolitan workers currently live further from their jobs. Distance, in turn, fragments urban labor markets and creates physical and informational barriers to employment.
This article examines the selective pattern of central city-suburban labor market development within the New York Metropolitan Region between 1960 and 1975 and analyzes the extent to which worker residences have adapted to spatial shifts in employment.     

Transitions From Career Jobs to Retirement in Japan

Most Japanese workers are required to retire from their career firm by age 60. Yet the labor force participation rate of older men in Japan is the highest among industrialized countries, and most Japanese express a strong desire to continue working past age 60. One explanation for this paradox is that many firms reemploy their own retirees or provide them with assistance in finding new jobs with their subsidiaries or client firms.     

Career Employment and Job Stopping

Career jobs typically end well before retirement and are followed by a period of postcareer employment. Although the most financially successful transitions occur when new positions are obtained in the same industry and occupation as the career job, mobility usually involves a change in industry andlor in occupation. Pension-covered career jobs last longer and more frequently end in retirement than noncovered positions. Pensions may also reduce the probability that retirements occur at very young ages and delay retirements when coverage is first obtained in postcareer employment.     

Half a Career: Discrimination & Railroad Internal Labor Markets

This paper examines the causes and consequences of the racial structure of railroad internal labor markets in the American South. By 1900, many southern railroads hired blacks almost exclusively for middle-level occupations on their trains but did not permit their promotion to top-level positions. This institutionalized bias in promotion helps explain the employment of whites and blacks at identical jobs but different wages. It also explains why it was impossible for some southern railroads to adopt the seniority-based promotion ladders that had become standard on railroads elsewhere in the United States.     

Seasonal rural labor markets and their relevance to policy analyses in developing countries

Seasonality is a salient feature of rural livelihoods and particularly within agriculture the demand for labor varies with the seasons and weather. In low-income countries, agriculture employs almost two-thirds of the labor force and incomes from labor are a major determinant of welfare. Therefore, an appropriate model representation of rural labor markets is critical when analyzing agricultural and food policies. Economy-wide models are commonly used for ex-ante policy analysis, but have so far ignored the influence of seasonality, implicitly assuming separability of seasonal labor demand and supply. This study relaxes that assumption using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model calibrated to the Bhutanese economy as an illustrative case. Using model setups with and without seasonal labor markets, a cereal export ban of India is simulated leading to higher import prices for Bhutan. Results demonstrate that neglecting the influence of seasons on rural labor markets systematically biases model results. Assuming homogeneity of labor units, i.e., allowing substitution across seasons, understates the impacts of policy changes on rural wage rates, distorts households' labor-leisure trade-off decisions and overstates agricultural supply response. Given the widespread use of economy-wide models, the results are important for understanding the implications of domestic and global policy changes for agriculture and welfare in developing economies.     

Dualism in Part-Time Employment

This paper draws on open-ended interviews of managers to characterize two distinct types of part-time employment in service industries. "Secondary" part-time employment displays the typical characteristics of a secondary labor market; "retention" part-time jobs are primary labor market jobs. Some predictions of this model are tested on Current Population Survey data.     

Labor Market Conditions and the Economic Status of Black Men: A Note

I study the effects of local employment to population ratios on the relative position of blacks to evaluate whether tight labor markets reduce the differences in economic status between young blacks and whites. I find evidence that blacks receive greater employment advantages than whites in tight labor markets, but the effect is small. Blacks with 12 or fewer years of education experience higher earnings in tight labor markets, but this effect is also small.     

Getting a Good Job: Mobility in a Segmented Labor Market

This study examines the process by which men in three ethnic neighborhoods of Boston move from secondary to primary employment in a segmented labor market. Workers who successfully make this transition belong to neighborhood-based social groups that have customary linkages to particular primary jobs. Members of such groups costlessly learn how to perceive and act in the labor market in ways that faciliate their entry into the primary sector. Workers' labor market perceptions reflect objective characteristics of the primary jobs to which their social groups are linked.     

Firm Productivity Differences From Factor Markets

We model firm adaptation to local factor markets in which firms care about both the price and availability of inputs. The model is estimated by combining firm and population census data, and quantifies the role of factor markets in input use, productivity and welfare. Considering China's diverse factor markets, we find that within an industry interquartile labor costs vary by 30–80%, leading to 3–12% interquartile differences in TFP. In general equilibrium, homogenization of labor markets would increase real income by 1.33%. Favorably endowed regions attract more economic activity, providing new insights into within‐country comparative advantage and specialization.     

Household Behavior with Imperfect Labor Markets

A household model with differential asset endowments and idiosyncratic transactions costs in accessing labor markets is developed to (1) explain membership of farm households to alternative labor regimes (sellers, employers, or self-sufficient in labor), (2) test for recursivity between production and consumption decisions selectively by labor regime, and (3) identify the determinants of differential labor productivity across labor regimes. The model is applied to a 1994 household survey of the Mexican land reform sector.     

Pull and push: individual farming in Hungary

This paper is motivated by the fact that (part-time) individual farming is commonly observed among rural households in a number of transition economies but it is not clear prima facie if such resource allocation is optimal. A conceptual model of household labor allocation between individual farming and off-farm wage employment is developed. The model explicitly accounts for the role of household endowments in labor allocation as the analysis is conditioned on the status of factor markets. The hypotheses are empirically tested using 1998 data from a country-representative survey of rural households in Hungary, an advanced transition country, which only recently became EU member state. Results provide evidence that capital market imperfections still remain. Implications for the policies related to agricultural sector restructuring, employment and rural development are discussed.     

Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Institutional Theory of Labor Markets and Wage Determination

Sydney and Beatrice Webb were among the most influential institutional labor economists of the pre‐World War II period yet this portion of their work has fallen out of sight for more than a half‐century. This paper reconstructs the Webbs' theory of labor markets and wage determination and explains how it differs from the rival neoclassical labor theory of Alfred Marshall. Key institutional components of their theory are developed, such as rent theory, institutional pyramid, chain of bargains, inequality of bargaining power, unemployed residuum, and common rule. The Webbs' theory is then used to explain the operation of labor markets and why in the absence of regulation they generate numerous social problems, including widespread poverty wages, excessive work hours and injuries, substantial unemployment, and human capital exploitation. Also described is the set of labor policies the Webbs advocate to solve these problems. Implications for modern labor theory and policy are developed.     

Duration of Joblessness Following Displacement

This paper examines the duration of joblessness for workers displaced from full-time nonagricultural jobs between 1979 and 1981. Although nearly one-half of these workers found jobs within 14 weeks of displacement, many experienced very long spells of joblessness. A Weibull model of jobless spell duration is estimated that identifies demographic characteristics and labor market conditions significantly affecting the expected duration of joblessness. The results indicate that many displaced workers become structurally unemployed.     

制度短缺与劳工短缺——"民工荒"问题研究

本文认为,在劳动力市场信息不充分的条件下,外来工（农民工）主要（只能）通过私人网络关系去寻找工作。利用网络寻找工作不一定能使他们得到工资较高的工作岗位．却可以节省找工成本。由于外来工工资较低,所以,他们不能安心在所在企业工作,因而有较高的流动率。高流动率造成了劳工短缺即“民工荒”。作为群体的外来工之所以工资低,主要是最低工资标准丧失了调节作用,这是基本的、直接的制度缺陷。外来工的高流动性还塑造了劳资关系双方的短期行为。本文还进一步讨论了农民工高流动率和不能转化为真正的职业工人的制度背景．这就是“半工半耕”和城乡二元户籍划分的正式制度、乡土社会的传统社会规范和社会公众（包括农民工自身）对农民工的认知心理等非正式制度。     

Compensating Wage Differentials in the Union and Nonunion Sectors

This paper tests for the existence of structurally different compensating payments in the union and nonunion sectors of the economy. Significant differences may stem from the different mechanisms by which such payments are determined: markets are the primary mechanism in the nonunion sector, while Political processes play a major role in the union sector. The empirical results provide tentative support for the structural differences hypothesis; They also reveal an absence of positive and significant compensating payments in nonunion labor markets.     

Industrial Structure and Unemployment in Regional Labor Markets Industrial Structure and Unemployment

Even during periods of moderated national joblessness, certain regions face stubbornly high unemployment. "Rust Belt" areas are often particularly affected and raise the question of whether such labor markets may not clear even in equilibrium. This article examines evidence from a panel data set of West Virginia counties, along with case-study surveys. The combined findings help provide a better understanding of persistent local unemployment, which appears to be due to nonclearing labor markets.     

25 years of European merger control

We study the determinants of common European merger policy over its first 25 years, from 1990 to 2014. Using a novel dataset at the level of the relevant antitrust markets and containing all relevant merger cases notified to the European Commission, we evaluate how consistently arguments related to structural market parameters – dominance, rising concentration, barriers to entry, and foreclosure – were applied over time and across different geographic market definitions. On average, linear probability models overestimate the effects of structural indicators. Using non-parametric machine learning techniques, we find that dominance is positively correlated with competitive concerns, especially in markets with a substantial increase in post-merger concentration and in complex mergers. Yet, its importance decreased following the 2004 merger policy reform. Competitive concerns are also correlated with rising concentration, especially if entry barriers and foreclosure are of concern. The impact of these structural indicators in explaining competitive concerns is independent of the geographic market definition and does not change over time.