Endogenous labor force participation and firing costs

I construct a matching model to explain the labor market transition between employment, unemployment and nonparticipation, and evaluate the quantitative effects of firing costs. The model has several features that are distinguished from previous studies: endogenous labor force participation, different job-search decisions and imperfect insurance markets. I find that the model is able to account for the U.S. labor market, especially the gross labor-force transition rates. I also find that firing costs as a type of firing tax have a negative effect on the layoff rate, the job-finding probability and the participation rate. In particular, the effect of a decrease in the job-finding probability is greater than the effect of a decrease in the layoff rate, and this results in an increase in the unemployment-to-population ratio. Finally, firing costs make individuals' job tenures longer and skew the asset distribution to the right.     

Economic determinants of the labor force withdrawal of Registered Nurses

This study examines two outflows that affect the labor supply of Registered Nurses (RNs), nurses leaving the profession to pursue a non-nursing occupation and employed nurses withdrawing from the labor force. Using pooled CPS data for 1980–90, a probit model is specified to estimate economic influences on the labor-force-withdrawal decisions of RNs. Evaluating the estimated probit function for different sets of RN characteristics yields different probability estimates of labor-force withdrawal. The results suggest that, although relatively few RNs leave the nursing profession to seek non-nursing occupations, a significant number withdraw, at least temporarily, from the labor force. The wage rate, other family income, presence of children, and full-time/part-time work status have a significant influence on the withdrawal decision.     

New methods for analyzing structural models of labor force dynamics

The economic theory of decision-making under uncertainty is used to produce three econometric models of dynamic discrete choice: (1) for a single spell of unemployment; (2) for an equilibrium two-state model of employment and non-employment; (3) for a general three-state model with a non-market sector. The paper provides a structural economic motivation for the continuous time Markov (or more generally ‘competing risks’) model widely used in longitudinal analysis in biostatistics and sociology, and it extends previous work on dynamic discrete choice to a continuous time setting. An important feature of identification analysis is separation of economic parameters that can only be identified by assuming arbitrary functional forms from economic parameters that can be identified by non-parametric procedures. The paper demonstrates that most econometric models for the analysis of truncated data are non-parametrically under-identified. It also demonstrates that structural estimators frequently violate standard regularity conditions. The standard asymptotic theory is modified to account for this essential feature of many structural models of labor force dynamics. Empirical estimates of an equilibrium two-state model of employment and non-employment are presented.     

农村劳动力转移与城镇化如何协调发展

本文在实地调查基础上分析了农村劳动力转移与城镇化进程的协调关系.认为,改革开放前的30年是不发展的协调;改革开放后的20多年是发展中的初步协调;现在应着力解决走向成熟协调的十个突出问题:建立最低工资制;八小时工作制;劳动环境和劳动保护;农民工住房;农民工养老保障;农民工医疗;农民工培训;农民工子女教育;工资拖欠;进城交通成本.本文还认为,我国大多数农区大多数农户,其所经营的农业实际早已破产.为什么规模庞大的中国农业还能维持再生产?为什么规模庞大的中国农民还能维持生计?主要靠2亿多农民进城做工和在乡镇企业做工.他们给农户每年带来约一万亿元的收入,支撑中国农业和农民生活的真正秘密正在于此.改革开放以来,我国经济的快速发展使综合国力大大增强,已经开始具有全面建设较低水平社会保障制度的能力.     

Early internet IPOs versus subsequent entrants

This paper examines whether investors in early Internet IPOs earned superior returns to those who invested in later entrants. We document three differences between early public firms in a new Internet technology and their followers: underpricing, operating characteristics at the IPO, and stock price performance after the IPO. We find that there is value in going public relatively early in a new Internet technology. Specifically, long-term returns are significantly higher for the early entrants. We also find evidence, consistent with previous studies that examine hot IPO markets, that the early public firms have better operating characteristics at the IPO than later entrants.     

完善就业培训、提高劳动者就业技能

就业培训是职业培训一个重要内容，西方发达国家对于职前培训极其重视，我国在历史上很早以前，在一些行业就有学徒培训。后来一些有识之士学习西方，又办起了一系列职业学校，建国后国家在全国又办起几千所技工学校和各种各样的中等专业学校，近年来又有了职高、高职、职大等等，社会上也出现了各种各样的职业技术培训中心和职业技能培训学校，似     

The relationship between drug use and labor supply for young men

This paper examines the relationship between young men's hours worked and their use of marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes, cocaine, and other drugs using cross-section data from the 1991 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA), a nationally representative survey of the U.S. noninstitutionalized population age 12 and over. Our results indicate that substance use has little effect on the number of hours worked by young men in the past month, with the exception that young men who smoked 1 to 3 marijuana joints in the last month worked 42 more hours than nonusers. To assess the robustness of our 1991 results, we re-estimated identical models using data from the 1992 NHSDA, an independent cross-section that was collected using the same methodology as the 1991 survey. Comparing the 1991 and 1992 results, the 1992 data also show that substance use has little relationship overall to the number of hours worked. However, in contrast to the 1991 results, the 1992 results show that smoking 1 to 3 marijuana joints in the last month is associated with 41 fewer hours worked than nonusers. This paper is the first study to assess the robustness of drug use–labor supply results on adjacent cross sections. Our results demonstrate the value of re-estimating the drug use–labor supply relationship.     

The effect of household appliances on female labor force participation: Evidence from microdata

We estimate the effect of household appliance ownership on the labor force participation rate of married women using micro-level data from the 1960 and 1970 U.S. Censuses. In order to identify the causal effect of home appliance ownership on married women's labor force participation rates, our empirical strategy exploits both time-series and cross-sectional variation in these two variables. To control for endogeneity, we instrument a married woman's ownership of an appliance by the average ownership rate for that appliance among single women living in the same U.S. state. Single women's labor force participation rates did not increase between 1960 and 1970. We find evidence in support of the hypothesis that the diffusion of household appliances contributed to the increase in married women's labor force participation rates during the 1960's.     

Joint estimation of sequential labor force participation and fertility decisions using Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques

We analyze the effect of children on the labor supply of married women in a framework that accounts for the endogeneity of labor market and fertility decisions, for the heterogeneity of the effects of children and their correlation with the fertility decisions, and for the correlation of sequential labor market decisions. Women with stronger propensity for market work have fewer children, work more before the first birth, and face larger negative effects of children. The total effect of a child remains considerable long after birth; prior birth-related reductions in labor supply account for a significant share of the total effect.     

Explaining cross-racial differences in teenage labor force participation: Results from a two-sided matching model

White teenagers are substantially more likely to search for employment than black teenagers. This differential occurs despite the fact that, conditional on race, individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to search. While the racial wage gap is small, the unemployment rate for black teenagers is substantially higher than that of white teenagers. We develop a two-sided search model where firms are partially able to search on demographics. Model estimates reveal that firms are more able to target their search on race than on age. Employment and wage outcome differences explain half of the racial gap in labor force participation rates.     

Dynamic models of the labor force behavior of married women which can be estimated using limited amounts of past information

This paper examines the extent of the inadequacy of standard cross-sectional models of US labor force behavior and considers the abilities of alternative models to capture the observed continuity in the hours of work and earnings of individuals as well as in their employment histories. Both of the alternatives to the standard cross-sectional model considered in this study incorporate limited amounts of information about past work behavior that could easily be collected as part of a national population census. Using a population of 21 to 64 year old married working women taken from a 1969 through 1978 Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the variables included in the Z vector age: 1) age of the wife; 2) education of the wife; 3) state average hourly wage in manufacturing measured in 1967 dollars; and 4) unemployment rate for the state in which the wife lives. Results show that by using information about a women's hours of work and wage rate in the previous year, it may be feasible to improve on forecasts of a woman's employment and earnings behavior. For each model a separate estimate is made for wives aged 21 through 46, and for those aged 47 through 64. The dummy and difference models perform much better than the standard model, with the dummy model having the higher pseudo-chi-square statistic. These models show that systematic errors made in determining which individuals work, what they earn per hour, or how many hours they work, should result in prediction errors of the same sort year after year in the computation of annual earnings. These findings with respect to years of work and nonwork, years of part time versus full time work, and cumulative earnings over a 10 year period, confirm and extend Heckman's findings; thus, forecasting models of the work behavior of individuals should not be estimated using pure cross-sectional data. It would be important if researchers could identify what observable factors, if any, increase the likelihood that wives will alter their work behavior from what it has been in the immediate past, even if they are not able to fully understand or explain this previous work behavior.     

U.S. interstate labor force migration: An analysis of trends, net exchanges, and migration subsystems

The rich geography and complex temporal trends of U.S. interstate labor force migration are portrayed. The most commonly reported net migration statistics hide multi-faceted patterns of state-to-state exchange. Maps depicting net migration balances show that much population redistribution has been taking place counter to the popularly conceived Frostbelt-to-Sunbelt flow. Significant net migration exchange takes place within each of the major regions of the U.S. as well as between them.

Principal component analyses carried out on gross state-to-state flow tables for 1960–1965, 1965–1970, and 1970–1975 suggest the existence of a set of remarkably stable migration subsystems, despite the heralded net migration turnarounds in nonmetropolitan-to-metropolitan and south-to-north patterns of flow.     

劳动力工资水平标准探讨

劳动力工资水平作为关乎国计民生的重大问题,一直受到政府部门和社会各界的高度关注。文章采用理论分析与实证研究相结合的研究方法,利用专业的计量经济学软件Eviews,分析出与劳动力工资水平密切相关的宏观因素。     

Accounting for labor demand effects in structural labor supply models

When assessing the effects of policy reforms on the labor market, most studies only focus on labor supply. The interaction of supply and demand is not explicitly modeled, which might lead to biased estimates of potential labor market outcomes. This paper proposes a straightforward method to remedy this shortcoming. We use information on firms' labor demand behavior and feed them into a structural labor supply model, completing the partial analysis of the labor market on the microdata level. We show the performance and relevance of our extension by introducing a pure labor supply side reform, the workfare concept, in Germany and simulating the labor market outcome of the reform. We find that demand effects offset about 25% of the positive labor supply effect of the policy reform.     

构筑文化力 提升竞争力

中交第三航务工程勘察设计院是一家以港口、交通工程勘察设计为主的大型综合性国家甲级勘察设计院.近年来,院党委从实践"三个代表"重要思想、贯彻科学发展观、落实"以人为本"原则、促进企业持续发展的战略高度出发,紧密结合承担上海国际航运中心洋山深水港总体设计等重点工程建设任务和科技型企业特点,积极推进企业文化建设,不断营造尊重知识、尊重人才、鼓励创新的氛围,不断完善有利于人才脱颖而出和人尽其才的环境,积极探索科技型企业以人为本、助人成才的新途径、新方法,从而为洋山深水港一期等一系列国家和省市重点工程任务的圆满完成提供了重要的思想保证、智力支持和人才支撑.     

Migration consequences of welfare reform

We investigate whether recent changes in welfare policy affect the migration of low-educated unmarried mothers. Estimates indicate that welfare reform is associated with an increase in employment-related intrastate migration, and a decrease in non-employment related migration, both within and between states. The net effect was a small increase in intrastate migration and a small decrease in interstate migration. The close link between migration and employment suggests that welfare reform has motivated low-income women to move for economic reasons. In general, welfare policy appears to have a much larger effect on residential location because of its relationship to employment than because of benefit differences between states.     

Consumption and labor supply

We present a new econometric model of aggregate demand and labor supply for the United States. We also analyze the allocation full wealth among time periods for households distinguished by a variety of demographic characteristics. The model is estimated using micro-level data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys supplemented with price information obtained from the Consumer Price Index. An important feature of our approach is that aggregate demands and labor supply can be represented in closed form while accounting for the substantial heterogeneity in behavior that is found in household-level data. As a result, we are able to explain the patterns of aggregate demand and labor supply in the data despite using a parametrically parsimonious specification.     

A model of municipal labor markets

Municipal government is a large and growing source of employment, and it is generally agreed that it does not act like a competitive firm. The special characteristics of municipal government are used to try to identify the major differences from a competitive firm with respect to labor. Some observed phenomena are explained in the context of the model, and tentative policy implications are considered.