Screening unemployment in a dual labor market

Equilibrium unemployment is shown to arise in a dual labor market when primary firms use status-dependent hiring to screen heterogeneous labor. Characterization is given of equilibria with both complete and incomplete screening.     

Illegal immigration in a heterogeneous labor market

This paper examines the effects of illegal immigration in a neoclassical growth model with two groups of workers, skilled and unskilled. We show that although illegal immigration is a boon to a country as a whole, there are distributional effects, whose sign is in general ambiguous. This is because all sources of income of both groups are affected and some of these changes tend to move income in opposite directions. Nevertheless, calibration exercises show that the wealth distribution is likely to become more unequal as the number of illegal immigrants increases. We confirm most of our calibration results analytically in a small open economy version of the basic model. Finally, our results remain robust when we extend the model to allow for endogenous skill acquisition.     

International factor mobility and the labor market: A macroeconometric analysis of the German labor market

This paper deals with some problems of international factor mobility with respect to labor using the case of the German labor market. A quarterly macroeconometric model of the German labor market is developed and estimated. It consists of equations explaining labor supply and demand for men and women. Most equations distinguish between labor measured in persons and hours. After a determination of the variables of this model which are influenced by foreign employment two groups of foreign workers which differ according to their EC-member status are discussed separately. Because of several legal and institutional regulations a different treatment of each group with respect to employment policy is necessary. For foreigners from outside the EC alternative reaction functions of the government are discussed and estimated. As the officially published unemployment rate is not comparable intertemporally because of foreign involuntary remigration during recession a new unemployment series including these persons is constructed and explained. The influence of foreign employment on wages is examined and two wage equations are estimated. Finally, some simulation results of an enforced remigration policy are reported.     

处在变革当中的韩国劳务市场

上世纪90年代以前,韩国不仅是世界上实力雄厚的国际工程承包商的国家,而且也是最大的劳务输出国之一。然而,随着经济的发展,韩国目前实际上已由劳务输出国成为部分行业劳动力短缺的国家。劳动力缺失严重已经成为困扰韩国中小企业发展的瓶颈据韩国统计厅公布的一份资料显示:2002     

A social clause against discrimination in the labor market

This paper considers the possibility of employing a social clause on international trade to reduce occupational discrimination and wage discrimination in the labor market. A country subject to such a clause is given the choice of reducing discrimination or having to face the imposition of a tariff or quota on its exports. The impact of these two changes on the remunerations of different groups in society is analyzed in a model allowing for a labor surplus. The analysis shows that neither in the case of occupational discrimination nor in the case of wage discrimination is the social clause necessarily an efficient means for reducing discrimination. Very much depends on how different groups are affected, on the relative political weight of these groups, and on the share of exports in total output.     

Implementing the Mortensen rule in a frictional labor market

We show that, in settings where meetings can be multilateral, the allocation rule proposed by Mortensen (1982) can be relatively straightforward to implement: as a local auction conducted by sellers. The implications of using this mechanism in a simple model of the labor market are then explored. We characterize the equilibrium properties of this model, which include wage dispersion, and examine its implied Beveridge curve. A dynamic version of the model is calibrated to the US labor market, and we show that the model can account for observed vacancy rates, given parameters that are chosen to match the average wages and the natural rate of unemployment, although the implied wage dispersion is quite small. Finally, in the limit, as the time between offer rounds in the model approaches zero, the equilibrium approaches the Walrasian competitive equilibrium.     

Occupational self-selection in a labor market with moral hazard

This paper studies the determinants and implications of self-selection when firms imperfectly observe worker effort. The effects of the resulting moral hazard problem on the self-selection mechanism are analyzed in a model in which workers simultaneously choose an employment sector and an effort level. The implications of the model reveal that in the presence of moral hazard, workers’ effort decisions become an additional mechanism determining the pattern of selection into sectors. Workers’ sector-specific endowments impact sectoral allocation through their effect on workers’ comparative advantage as well as their effect on workers’ shirking propensity. The model is then used in an empirical application that analyzes workers’ self-selection into white collar and blue collar occupations. The estimation results, based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, suggest that workers’ occupational self-selection leads to higher wages and lower dismissal rates in both occupations, compared to an economy in which workers are randomly assigned to each occupation. The difference in dismissal rates between the two occupations is driven by the higher expected productivity in the white collar sector. The positive effects of occupational sorting diminish as the labor market becomes increasingly characterized by moral hazard. Results also suggest that human capital investments in skills that are most relevant to blue collar jobs may generate higher wages and lower dismissal rates in both white collar and blue collar occupations.     

Unionized labor market and licensing by a monopolist

We show that a monopolistic final goods producer may find it profitable to create competition by licensing its technology if the input market is imperfectly competitive. With a centralized union, we show that licensing by a monopolist is profitable under both uniform and discriminatory wage settings by the union. However, the incentive for licensing is higher under the former situation. We also show that licensing by the monopolist is profitable under both quantity and price competition, and the incentive for licensing is higher under price competition than under quantity competition. Our qualitative results hold even with decentralized unions.      

Knowledge hierarchies in the labor market

Many workers produce intangible, knowledge-intensive inputs, rather than participating directly in the production process. We develop a model where the labor market organizes itself in a knowledge hierarchy. Skills are segmented into successive clusters. Each cluster buys knowledge from the next one and sells knowledge as a production input to the preceding one. The model is useful to study the impact of improvements in the technology of knowledge transmission on inequality. It is shown that inequality goes up at the top of the income distribution, but not at the bottom.     

A model of employment discrimination at labor market disequilibrium

This paper develops Thurow's job-competition model for the analysis of employment discrimination. A disequilibrium framework of analysis and a ‘stochastic’ rationing mechanism is adopted.     

A Keynesian model of search and labor market disequilibrium

The paper develops Keynesian employment dynamics in a search model with stochastic vacancy-availability playing the major role. A UV curve is derived from the search dynamics, and in effect represents a demand for searchers to maintain employment levels. The supply of searchers is determined from the real wage, the duration of the search necessary to locate a vacancy, and layoff probabilities. Persistent disequilibrium in the labor market is examined, and it is shown how a lowering of the real wage can increase employment and lower unemployment.     

Mandatory sick pay provision: A labor market experiment

The question whether a minimum rate of sick pay should be mandated is much debated. We study the effects of this kind of intervention with student subjects in an experimental laboratory setting rich enough to allow for moral hazard, adverse selection, and crowding out of good intentions. Both wages and replacement rates offered by competing employers are reciprocated by workers. However, replacement rates are only reciprocated as long as no minimum level is mandated. Although we observe adverse selection when workers have different exogenous probabilities for being absent from work, this does not lead to a market breakdown. In our experiment, mandating replacement rates actually leads to a higher voluntary provision of replacement rates by employers.     

A dynamic macroeconomic model with monopolistic behavior in the labor market

Is the monopolistic behavior of a wage setting labor union compatible, in the long and in the short run, with price stability and full employment? What is the effect, if any, of economic policies? The answers are strongly affected by the prevailing technology and by the union's objective function. With limited short run production possibilities, a short run trade-off may exist between full employment and maximum expected real wage revenues. In the long run, however, when expectations are fully adjusted, this trade-off disappears. Therefore, a labor union consistently pursuing maximum short run expected real wage revenues may not maximize long run effective real wage revenues. Price stability is granted in the long run, provided inflation is not induced by public policy. The only instrument a pure consuming government has to fight long unemployment is to reduce its share of aggregate demand.     

Evaluating active labor market programs in Romania

Using unusually rich (for transition economies) follow-up survey data and propensity score matching techniques, this paper seeks to increase our knowledge on what active labor market programs (ALMPs) work in South-East European countries by providing estimates of the effects of four ALMPs implemented in Romania in the late 1990 s. We find that three programs (training and retraining, self-employment assistance, and public employment and relocation services) had success in improving participants’ economic outcomes. In contrast, public employment was found detrimental for the employment prospects of its participants. Our sensitivity analysis also finds evidence that, in the case of training and retraining, self-employment assistance, and public employment and relocation services, operators “cream off” the most qualified candidates among the unemployed; whereas public employment seems to be used as a regional policy by “bringing work to the workers”, that is, creating jobs in high unemployment regions.     

Anti-muslim bias in the Chinese labor market

Is there a Muslim disadvantage in economic integration to the Chinese economy? Do political mandates from the government help reduce disparities? To answer these questions, we conducted a large-scale audit study and submitted over 4000 resumes of fictitious male candidates to job advertisements for accounting and administrative positions posted by private firms, state-owned firms and foreign firms. We randomized the ethnic identities of job applicants, their academic merit, and requested salaries. Our results show that a Muslim job seeker is more than 50% less likely to receive a callback than a Han job seeker, and higher academic merit does not compensate for this bias. Importantly, we find that state-owned enterprises are equally likely to discriminate against Muslim job seekers, despite their political mandate to increase diversity. Interview evidence suggests that besides productivity concerns and outright hostility towards outgroups, bias is also driven by employer concerns over the operational costs of accommodating a diverse workforce.     

Money and rank in the labor market

We analyze the gains/losses in wage and in rank position for workers switching firm. Voluntary movers enjoy a wage premium relative to stayers, but that premium declines with rank inside the new firm, indicating that movers are trading-off money and rank.     

Pitfalls in the modeling of labor market flows: a reappraisal

ABSTRACT

We discuss the relevance of the internationally adopted methodology for modelling labour market flows and comparing labour market flexibility. This is based on a two-state labour market model that neglects inactivity and uses aggregate stock data to derive transition rates. Traditionally, the results suggest that continental European labour markets are inflexible and unable to adjust quickly to aggregate demand or supply shocks compared with their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. This evidence has driven us to gain a better understanding of the relevance of such a modelling approach and critically discuss its main methodological hypothesis. We relax its assumptions by including inactivity and by using flow data for the period 2010–2017. We compare the results thus obtained with transition rates derived using a three-state labour market model for France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. These countries represent the institutional settings of continental Europe on the one hand and Anglo-Saxon nations on the other. The implied transition rates are much higher, even in continental Europe, when inactivity is considered, thus suggesting that conclusions derived using an incomplete representation of the labour market are misleading. Inactivity therefore plays a crucial role and its inclusion provides a more exhaustive picture of labour mobility.