Comparing earnings profiles in urban areas of an LDC: rural-to-urban migrants vs. native workers

"We use Tanzanian data to test a recently proposed hypothesis that rural-to-urban migrants have an incentive to supply greater work effort than native urban workers, because of the migrants' positive probability of returning to the low-wage rural areas. We treat the choice between public- and private-sector employment as endogenous and, for theoretical and empirical reasons, distinguish migrants with access to rural land from those without access. Our results show that migrants in both sectors face lower initial wage offers than native urban workers. But, the wage gap is eliminated within a decade or less, and thereafter, migrants surpass the wage offers of native workers."     

Accounting practices,earnings volatility,and earnings forecast: The case of the oil and gas producing companies

International Advances in Economic Research -     

Work experience,earnings and participation: evidence from the women and employment survey

This paper presents a probit model of labour force participation and a set of earnings equations estimated using data from the 1980 Women and Employment Survey. The results of the participation model compare with previous findings and the earnings models give typical results of human capital and job characteristics variables. Exclusion of the sample selection effect appears to be of importance and a linear piecewise experience variable outperforms the quadratic specification.     

Changing American earnings distributions: One-half century of experience

Empirical Economics - Recent increases in earnings inequality have been described as “enormous.” Is it that we are experiencing a unique shift toward greater inequality or are we...     

Errors in self-reported earnings: The role of previous earnings volatility and individual characteristics

I report the measurement error in self-reported earnings for a developing country using a novel data set. The data set consists of two cross-sections of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) wage and salary sectors; additionally, a subset of the two cross-sections may be linked to create a panel. Administrative data from FSM Social Security office are matched to the FSM Census data for the wage and salary sectors. I find that the error in annual self-reported earnings is centered on zero. Additionally, I find strong evidence for mean reversion in the data suggesting non-classical measurement error. I identify the impact of prior years' earnings variability on the current reporting of earnings using administrative data on earnings histories. Prior earnings volatility strongly affects measurement error in current period. However, the effect of prior shocks diminish significantly over time—suggesting that first-differencing and fixed-effects techniques will not improve accuracy.     

Measuring the extent of earnings discrimination: an update

Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and data from the March 1990 Current Population Survey are used to estimate yearly earnings averages for white males, white females, black males and black females. In order to test for the possible existence or gender and/or race discrimination, earnings estimates are decomposed, using the tradional Oaxaca (1973) and Blinder (1973) methodology. In comparing these results with those from Carlson and Swartz (1988, using 1979 data), we find that overall and unexplained residual differences have declined quite substantially, but that they still favour white males. We then incorporate an extension of the traditional methodology (Jackson and Lindley, 1989) which allows for testing for the significance of enexplained residuals, and for jointly testing for the significance of residual effect components, the constant and coefficient effects. These results call into question the unambiguous conclusion that earnings differentials uniformly favour white males. Strong support is found for the Jackson–Lindley contention that significant and positive residuals may have have offsetting signs. More specifically, where males appear to receive an entry level premium, as measured by constant effect differentials, but other groups appear to receive favourable treatment as measured by response rates to changes in independent variables (the coefficient effect). This result suggests that efforts may be underway to ‘make up’ for the entry level white male premium.     

Immigrant earnings differentials in Canada: A more general specification of age and experience effects

This paper investigates empirically the role of age and arrival cohort effects on immigrant earnings differentials. The dataset used consists of a sample of 5,069 adult Canadian male employees from the 1973 Job Mobility Survey, a non-census dataset that provides information on actual work experience, language attributes, and numerous parental family background characteristics. It thus allows a more general specification of foreign-born/native-born earnings differentials, particularly the effects of age, work experience and years since immigration. The results confirm the importance of cross-sectional age cohort effects and refine previous findings on arrival cohort effects. Sample selectivity bias is investigated and found to be significant only when respondent's occupation is not controlled for. Adjustment for sample selection bias leaves essentially unchanged the main findings.For their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper presented at a Labour Economics Conference at The University of Western Ontario, the authors would like to thank Martin Dooley, John Vanderkamp, Hank Farber, David Card and John Abowd. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the useful comments offered by members of the Labor Economics/Institute for Research on Poverty Workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an anonymous referee. The authors, of course, retain full responsibility for all remaining errors and shortcomings. The first version of this paper was written while the second author was visiting the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University and the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.     

退休年龄、教育年限与社会保障

在本文中，我们用养老金的缴纳费率和养老金替代率代表社会保障制度，采用有限生命预期的连续时间状态代际交叠模型作为基本框架，分析了社会保障制度对消费者接受教育的年限、退休年龄、工作年限的选择、GDP增长率和利率的影响。同时，我们还分析了消费者的预期寿命对个体消费者接受教育的年限、退休年龄、工作年限的选择以及对社会保障制度的影响。     

Schooling,health knowledge and obesity

The connection between schooling and health is well documented. An important empirical issue that needs to be examined, however, is whether schooling's effects are due to individual health knowledge differences. This empirical study examines this issue with an increasingly important health indicator, obesity. Since provision of health knowledge is a major tool of public agencies promoting health, this empirical study uses a new direct measure of health knowledge to test this hypothesis. The results show that knowledge is inversely related to the probability that an individual is obese. Schooling's effects on relative weight and the probability of being obese are explained by differences in knowledge. This result may imply that schooling's effect on the allocative efficiency of the household production of health is the main reason schooling is linked to health behaviour. The result also may imply that the most effective method of health education is to highlight the disease element of poor dietary habits and health. More importantly, the simulations conducted suggest positive returns to knowledge based on improvements in the probability estimates.     

Schooling choices: Preferences, discount rates, and rates of return

This paper develops an empirical model to identify the structural parameters of schooling preferences and human capital production. Our model distinguishes between consumption and investment motives with regard to schooling. The results show that both motives matter. Preferences for schooling vary with social background and ability. Children from poorer social backgrounds and of lower ability have a lower preference for schooling. The discount rate that enters the net value of lifetime income varies with social background as well. The marginal rate of return to schooling decreases with ability and schooling. On average the marginal rate of return is 7.3 per cent, which can be contrasted with a `Mincerian' rate of return equal to 4.8 per cent. This indicates that the usual OLS estimate underestimates the true rate of return. First version received: November 1997/Final version received: February 1999     

Education, credentials, and immigrant earnings

Abstract.  Using 1981 to 2001 Census data, we study how the human capital of immigrants is rewarded in Canada. We distinguish between years of schooling and degrees obtained in order to estimate 'sheepskin' effects – the gain in earnings associated with receipt of a degree, controlling for years of schooling. We find that immigrant years of schooling and immigrant work experience accumulated before arrival is valued much less than Canadian experience of comparable natives. However, for immigrants the increase in earnings associated with completing educational programs is generally higher than that of comparable natives. We provide both signalling and human capital interpretations of this finding.     

城镇居民教育收益率的地区差异及其解释

利用中国社会科学院经济研究所"中国城乡居民收入分配"课题组1995年和2002年的家庭抽样调查数据,本文使用分层线性模型重新估计了1995年、2002年我国居民的教育收益率,得到了不同于OLS估计的结果:(1)我国城镇居民教育收益率的地区差异很大,差异主要来源于省内各城市之间,来源于省间的差别并不显著;(2)计算了省内城市劳动力市场化程度对当地教育收益率的边际影响,发现劳动力市场的发育确实有利于提高教育收益率,而且劳动力市场化程度的差异在一定程度上为各地教育收益率的差异提供了解释。     

Schooling, Training, Growth and Minimum Wages

We examine how the long-run growth performance of an economy is affected by a labor market distortion. In our model, growth occurs through skill formation, and skills are generated through schooling and training of unskilled workers. We analyze how a minimum wage legislation affects long-run growth. In general, the effects are ambiguous. The reason is that while a minimum wage discourages training, it also encourages schooling. The net effect then depends on whether training or schooling dominates the long-run increases in labor productivity.
JEL classification : I 20, J 31, O 40     

LDC participation in international financial markets: Debt and reserves

This paper analyzes LDC borrowing and reserve-holding behavior as part of a general equilibrium portfolio problem. Estimates of LDC debt and reserve demand and credit supply suggest that debt, along with reserves, serves a transactions role. Another finding is that most LDC borrowers are credit constrained. An analysis of LDC export behavior suggests that defaults are likely to be independent, uncorrelated phenomena.     

The frequency and magnitude of earnings management: Time-series and multi-threshold comparisons

We measure the frequency and magnitude of earnings management assuming earnings follow a mixed-normal distribution. We show that the frequency of earnings management is the highest when firms try to meet analysts' forecasted earnings and furthermore the trend is magnified in recent years. Additionally, more firms manage earnings to avoid earnings decreases rather than to avoid negative earnings. Furthermore, the magnitude of earnings management is the greatest when firms try to avoid earnings decreases. Earnings managements to avoid negative and decreased earnings are lower in recent years, and the magnitude of earnings management to meet forecasted earnings became dominant after 2001.     

Employment instability,earnings and market structure

A model of incremental decision-making in local government is presented as an extention of that developed by davis et al. (1996) for US Congressional appropriation. This is then combined with joint supply and demand equation for local taxes and expenditure. An explicit Stone-Geary utility function derived when these fuctions are maximized subject to the supply and demand equations as constraints. Empitical results are then given for local authorities in England and Wales from 1974 to 1960. These results confirm a very important role for the bureauctic component within the overall tax-expenditure model.     

Education,occupation and earnings: A recursive approach for France

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between education, occupation and earnings with an emphasis on the role of occupation in the determination of the effect of education on earnings. At the same time, several forms of human capital and other exogeneous variables are examined. The model is a recursive nature, and it was applied for French individual data. The result tells that despite very strong relationship between education and occupation, and between occupation and earnings, the relative significance of these relationships is greatly modified by different occupations (or classes). It was found also that men and women are considerably different not only as for the relationship between education, occupation and earnings, but also for several exogenous variables.