Why is the gender earnings gap greater in Korea than in the United States?

It has long been recognized that the gender earnings gap varies across countries. This paper examines the relatively higher gender earnings gap found in the Korean labor market compared to the US labor market. Using the data set representative of the population for both countries, I found that the significant part of the differences in the gender earnings gap simply arise from the differences in the observed characteristics of women among two countries. In particular, relatively lower labor market experience, current job tenure, and educational attainment by Korean female workers play dominant roles in explaining the observed higher earnings gap. In addition, wage structure and labor market discrimination seem to be against Korean female workers compared to US female workers. J. Japanese Int. Economies 21 (4) (2007) 455–469.     

Gender earnings differentials in Taiwan: A stochastic frontier approach

We examine Taiwan's male–female earnings gaps over the past three decades in order to assess the progress in assimilating women into the labor market. Two alternative methods of evaluating earnings gaps are employed in this paper: the traditional Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition method and the less well-known method of evaluating labor market efficiency. Men and women's earnings are converging during this period (1978–2003) while at the same time there is little change in the level of gender discrimination measured by the standard Oaxaca–Blinder method. Using the labor market efficiency (stochastic frontier) model we find increases in labor market efficiency over time for both males and females; however, females enjoy a much faster rate of increase in efficiency. We conclude that the relative increase in female efficiency represents a decline in discrimination against females.     

Employee Attitudes,Earnings and Fixed-Term Contracts: International Evidence

We explore the relationship between employee attitudes, earnings and fixed-term contracts using data from the British Social Attitudes Survey and International Social Survey Programme. We find that workers employed under such contracts receive significantly lower earnings than their permanent contract counterparts, even after controlling for a plethora of personal and job characteristics. This may be indicative of wage discrimination against fixed-term contract employees. Our results also allude to possible asymmetries in the role of education across this two-tier system, with educational attainment playing a more prominent signaling role in the case of ‘permanent’ contract employees. We also find significant evidence of attitudinal effects, with workers employed on permanent contracts more likely to be both satisfied and secure with their job, but also more likely to find work stressful and exhausting and, perhaps as a consequence, to engage in absence. JEL no. J24, J31, J33     

The rise of the middle class: the income gap between salaried employees and workers in Sweden,ca. 1830–1940

ABSTRACT

We present the first comprehensive, long run salary information on Swedish middle-class employees before the twentieth century. Our data include, for instance, school teachers, professors, clerks, policemen and janitors in Stockholm and Sweden, ca. 1830–1940. We use the new data to compare the annual earnings of these middle-class employees with the annual earnings of farm workers, unskilled construction workers and manufacturing workers. The results show that the income gap between the middle class and the working class widen drastically from the mid-nineteenth century to a historically high level during the 1880s and 1890s. The differentials then decreased during the first four decades of the twentieth century. The bulging earnings advantage of middle-class employees vis-à-vis unskilled workers chimes with Kocka’s depiction of the latter half of the nineteenth century as the era of the bourgeoisie.     

Earnings mobility during labor market reforms in urban China

This paper provides empirical evidence on patterns of earnings mobility for China for the 2000s and before to study how the labor market reform in the late 1990s affects individuals' earnings mobility. We find convergent earnings mobility in the 1990s but clearly divergent earnings mobility in the 2000s, meaning that those with the highest earnings to begin with experienced the largest earnings gains after 2000. Policies would be desirable such as compensating low-skill workers by establishing government-initiated training programs. More generally, welfare policies are necessary to help disadvantaged workers avoid from low-income or poverty traps who suffer from negative shocks in market-oriented reforms.     

Determinants of the Time Series of Earnings and Implications for Earnings Quality*

This paper examines whether differences in accrual accounting methods across balance sheet accounts influence the time‐series process of earnings. We define earnings quality as the responsiveness of earnings to shifts in permanent earnings and predict that responsiveness will increase in a firm's use of variable rate debt, where accruals move directly with shifts in interest rates. We also predict that responsiveness will decrease in a firm's investment in property plant and equipment because depreciation is largely predetermined and does not respond to shifts in opportunity costs. </P><P>To test these hypotheses, we regress earnings on lagged earnings and a proxy for permanent earnings (that is, the implied dividend annuity in lagged equity value). Within the context of an adjustment cost model, this regression captures the responsiveness of earnings by the coefficient on lagged price and by one minus the coefficient on lagged earnings. Consistent with this framework, we find the unconstrained estimated coefficients on these two variables to be negatively correlated. Furthermore, consistent with our hypotheses, we find that the coefficient on lagged earnings (lagged price) is positively (negatively) associated with the relative magnitude and life of fixed assets on the balance sheet and negatively (positively) associated with the relative magnitude of variable rate debt on the balance sheet.</P>     

The Contribution of Associate's Degree Holders to U.S. Earnings,Labor Quality,Productivity, and Overall Economic Growth

There is substantial evidence on the importance of education as a driver of earnings, productivity, and economic growth. However, knowledge of the specific role of associate's degrees in U.S. economic growth is limited. We analyze the sources of U.S. economic growth and identify the contribution of associate's degree holders to improvements in earnings, labor quality, productivity, and overall economic growth. We find evidence that substitution toward workers with associate's degrees has increased U.S. earnings, aggregate labor quality, and productivity, and that these effects are concentrated in the health care, trade, and government sectors. While the average educational attainment of people entering the labor force has plateaued, our results suggest that shifting workers from some college to associate degrees could improve earnings, the quality of the workforce, productivity, and growth, potentially without more time spent in school.     

Effects of cohort size on college premium: Evidence from China's higher education expansion

In this paper, we document the lesser-known heterogeneous trends of college/non-college earnings premium across age groups from 1995 to 2013 in China. Specifically, the college premium in 2013 for the younger group (age 25–34) was about 30 percentage points, similar to the level in 1995, while the college premium in 2013 for the older group (age 45–54) increased to 50 percentage points, nearly double that of 1995. To attribute these divergent trends of the college premium to the changes in the relative size of college workers, we use the model by Card and Lemieux (2001), which incorporates imperfect substitution between similarly educated workers in different age cohorts. Due to the distinctions of these trends in China, our identification is free of the overestimation issue that the existing studies suffer. Our results are similar to those in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Japan. Holding the age cohort and survey year constant, a one unit increase in log relative size of college workers is associated with about 10 percentage points decrease in college/non-college premium and about 18 percentage points decrease in college/high school premium. We further find that the negative effect is much more substantial among the new entrants (age 25–29) than experienced workers (age 30–54). By this pattern, we demonstrate that the new labor market entrants are more sensitive to their own cohort size and argue that the confounding ability composition effect should not be a serious issue.     

Temporary Help Service Firms' Use of Employer Tax Credits: Implications for Disadvantaged Workers' Labor Market Outcomes

Temporary help services (THS) firms are increasing their hiring of disadvantaged individuals while also increasing their use of employment subsidies for doing so. Do these subsidies—the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) and Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit (WtW)—create incentives that improve employment outcomes for THS workers? We examine the distinct effects of THS employment and WOTC/WtW subsidies on earnings and job duration using new survey and administrative data. We find that, even controlling for a broad range of worker and firm characteristics, some important differences persist between THS workers, WOTC/WtW-certified workers, and those who are both THS and WOTC/WtW certified. THS workers who are WOTC certified have similar job duration to eligible unsubsidized workers but much higher quarterly earnings. Among WOTC-certified workers, those in THS firms have similar quarterly earnings to those in other industries but much shorter average job duration. Panel estimates suggest that these effects do not persist over time.     

Does family planning help the employment of women? The case of India

This paper gives some insight into the existence of a positive effect of family planning programmes on women's employment in developing countries. We study married women aged 15–49 living throughout India using a sample drawn from the National Health Family Survey (NFHS-2) for 1998–1999. We focus on a programme of doorstep services delivered by health or family planning (FP) workers who are sent to visit women in their assigned areas. Results derived from the estimation of fixed effect linear probability and conditional logit models show a positive and significant correlation of the share of women living in a local area (village, town or city) that has been visited by FP workers with the probability of women's employment. A multinomial analysis also shows that the largest positive effect of FP in rural India is to be found on paid work, as opposed to unpaid work, suggesting a potential empowering feedback of demographic measures through labour earnings.     

Revisiting the labor supply effect of social security earnings test: New evidence from its elimination and reinstatement in Japan

We explore the labor supply effect of the social security earnings test in Japan on those aged 65–69 years through a combined examination of the elimination of the earnings test in 1985 and its reinstatement in 2002. We present evidence showing that the effects of changes in the earnings tests on the labor supply of the elderly are not symmetric, controlling for changes in the attributes of workers and firms. The repeal of the earnings test in 1985 did affect the earnings distribution of the elderly (especially for male), while its reinstatement in 2002 did not alter the earnings distribution.     

Gender,occupation, or workplace: what mattered for the gender gap in the Swedish tobacco industry?

Abstract

Historical studies on earnings differentials are largely based on group data and much less so on micro-level data. We use detailed information from a nationwide survey that matches employers and employees and covers the entire tobacco industry in Sweden in 1898. When comparing the labour market outcomes of women to those of men, we find that the cost of being female varied across branches, which contributed to the overall earnings gap in the industry. Earnings differentials reflect horizontal as well as vertical segregation. Female workers were concentrated in the low-skilled segments of tobacco work but were not kept out of the skilled and better paid segments. Alongside with this, there are indications of a glass ceiling pattern; gender mattered more at the top of earnings distribution than at the bottom deciles. Where men and women actually performed the same tasks, gender mattered less for earnings, but due to segregation this was not the situation for all workers.     

Occupational status,earnings, and fertility expectations: Development and estimation of a causal model

Summary This paper tests, within the framework of LISREL, the causal structures of occupational status, earnings, and fertility expectations using data from the 1984 Canadian Fertility Survey of currently married and common-law women aged 18–44. Differential occupational status, earnings, and fertility among three groups of wives classified by generation of Canadian residence are also examined. The models incorporate age, education, work experience, and ethnic/English language ability as exogenous determinants of occupational status, earnings, and fertility.The major findings are: (1) lower earnings of third generation wives are strongly related to lower levels of education, work experience, and job status; (2) wives who speak an ethnic language are likely to have lower fertility than comparable wives who do not speak an ethnic language; and (3) generational effects on earnings and fertility are limited to differences in education, work experience, and occupational status.The author is grateful to Dr. Karol J. Krotki, co-director of the Canadian Fertility Study, for permission to analyze the Canadian Fertility Survey data. Special thanks are also due to Ms. Margaret King for her comments on an earlier draft of the paper.     

Fluctuations in Unemployment and Industry Labor Markets

Throughout the 1990s, and particularly in the mid- to late-1990s, the Japanese employment situation went from bad to worse. We investigate the causes of rising unemployment in Japan, using data on individual workers from the “Special Survey of the Labor Force” between 1988 and 1999. This research focuses on the effect of labor market segmentation by industry on labor flows. Our findings reveal that unemployment in the construction industry and, more recently, in the service industry has contributed greatly to the national unemployment rate. We also find that most successful job transfers occur within the same industry, even though workers may experience some periods of unemployment. Finally, our results show that labor market conditions in each industry affect the probability that a worker will fall into unemployment as well as the probability that an unemployed worker will find new employment. These findings suggest that the Japanese labor market is segmented by industry and this segmentation contributed to the worsening unemployment in Japan. J. Japan. Int. Econ., December 2001, 15(4), pp. 437–464. Department of Economics, Dokkyo University, 1-1 Gakuen-cho, Soka-shi, Saitama 340-0042, Japan; Graduate School of Economics, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, 464-8601, Japan. © 2001 Elsevier Science (USA).Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: J63, J64.     

On labor incentives and work norm in Japanese firms

In this paper, we argue that social/corporate norms play an important role in achieving higher productivity and better economic welfare. We define “social norm” to be a standard of behavior suggested by a social custom, i.e., a customary choice of actions in each social situation. We reinterpret the well-known Nash equilibrium as a “norm equilibrium.” A norm equilibrium is a stable social norm, stable in the sense that there is no incentive to deviate from the behavior suggested by the prevailing social norm. This interpretation requires less information than the traditional interpretation. Moreover, we need not be concerned with the problem of refinement because it is the social norm itself which refines the equilibria. We apply this concept to the labor market. The key assumption is that the level of an individual worker's effort is private information known to workers as a whole; i.e., all workers' efforts are known to their fellow workers as well as to the workers themselves. We show that different work norms may emerge in different corporations at an equilibrium. In “prestigious” firms cooperation is the prevailing work norm, while in “nonprestigious” firms noncooperation is the norm. Thus, the efficiency wage hypothesis holds without the existence of unemployment. Some implications of this interpretation for the Japanese labor markets are discussed.     

Agency cost and the crisis of China's SOEs: A comment and further observations

This paper compares and contrasts our earlier principal–agent analysis of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with that of Zhou and Wang [China Econ. Rev. 11 (2000) 297.]. We argue that the focal principal–agent relationship in these SOEs consists of the manager as the principal and the workers as the agents. In addition, the paper addresses the appropriate representation of the state as principal and the manager as agent when the two top levels of SOEs are the focus. The modeling of collusion in a multilevel organization is also discussed. Other aspects in representing these SOEs are presented.     

The Effect of the Tipped Minimum Wage on Employees in the U.S. Restaurant Industry

According to federal law in 2013, employers can take a credit of up to $5.12 for tips received by workers in satisfying the minimum‐wage requirement of $7.25. This article uses interstate variation in laws regarding tip credits and minimum wages to identify the effects of reducing or eliminating the tip credit on employment, hours, and earnings in the U.S. restaurant industry. Using data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages and the Current Population Survey, we find that a reduction in the tip credit increases weekly earnings but reduces employment in the full‐service restaurant industry and for tipped workers. The results are robust to controls for spatial heterogeneity in employment trends and are supported by a series of falsification tests.     

Inter-industry labor reallocation and task distance

This paper investigates factors preventing inter-industry labor reallocation by estimating the determinants of inter-industry worker flow and earnings change after a job change. We find that the difference in required tasks is an important reason for earnings reduction after an inter-industry job change, and thus, workers may hesitate to move to industries requiring a different set of tasks for fear of losing the wage premium acquired by task-specific human capital. In addition, more workers switch to industries with which their previous industry had larger transactions, although it affects earnings changes only marginally. On the other hand, industry performance does not affect labor inflow or wage changes significantly for inter-industry job changes. Young men, less educated women, and those quitting previous jobs for family or health reasons are more likely to move to industries requiring a different set of tasks, and young individuals who lost their jobs involuntarily are less likely to do so. Individuals more likely to move are not necessarily those whose earnings loss associated with the move is small: earning losses associated with task distance are relatively small among younger and less educated workers and are uncorrelated with the reasons for quitting the previous job.     

Technological Change and Returns to Education: The Implications for the S&E Labor Market

Abstract

This paper analyzes the earnings effect of skill-biased technological change (SBTC), focusing on the comparison of science and engineering (S&E) and non-S&E occupations. In the analysis, we assert that S&E occupations and non-S&E occupations differ in the nature of skill requirements and their susceptibility to technological change; and consequently the earnings effects of SBTC also demonstrate a similar impact. For the empirical analysis, the modified Mincerian earnings equations are estimated by quantile regressions as well as the ordinary least squares (OLS) and two-stage estimation method.

Fitted to Korean panel data, the earning-enhancing effect of SBTC is observed for male workers, not only for those in S&E occupations but also for those in non-S&E occupations. Such an effect is not observed for women in S&E occupations, and rather turns even negative for women in non-S&E occupations; envisaging a relatively large occurrence of work interruption of married women in Korea, we conjecture that this may reflect women workers’ skill deterioration taking place during a work interruption. The earnings effect of SBTC is most apparent for male workers in the higher quantiles of earnings distribution, implying that those who are highly educated and have high unobserved ability gain most from SBTC.     

Earnings Differentials Determinants Between Skills in the Malaysian Manufacturing Sector

The Malaysian manufacturing sector has been experiencing a gradual change in its production process as it shifts from labor-intensive to more capital-intensive techniques. This has led to a change in the skills required by the industries where skilled workers are in greater demand and where the wage ratio between skills favors the skilled workers. There are many factors that can influence an indi-vidual's earnings. These include educational attainment, job location, types of industries and sex. This paper attempts to measure the determinants of earnings differentials among skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers in the Malaysian manufacturing sector. The analysis is based on a survey of 2065 workers in six major industries conducted in 1999. These are the electrical and electronics, textile, wood-based, transport equipment, food and chemical industries. The determin-ants of earnings differentials are obtained by using the coefficients of the earnings functions. These factors are decomposed into several categories, namely human capital, individual characteristics and the residual. The results reveal that human capital variables, which comprise education, training and experience, play a significant role in determining the earnings differentials, particularly between skilled and semi-skilled workers and between semi-skilled and unskilled workers.