Expropriation with hukou change and labour market outcomes in China

We study the labour market outcomes of Chinese household members changing their registration status (hukou) from rural to urban as a result of land expropriation using panel data from the 2008–2010 Rural Urban Migration in China (RUMiC). While it is largely unclear the extent to which expropriation can be viewed as an event exogenous to individual and household choices, we deal with the potential selection bias of being expropriated by using the methodology proposed by Oster (2019). Gaining an urban hukou is found to improve the labour market outcomes of expropriated household heads and spouses relative to comparable rural stayers and rural-urban migrants. In particular, hukou-changers gain better access to permanent jobs in the public sector through formal search channels. We also find that expropriated parents invest substantially more in children's human capital as compared to rural parents, suggesting that leveling the hukou status among children can contribute to reducing intergenerational inequality.     

The shape of demand for high-level agricultural skills in the South African labour market

A supply of high-level agricultural skills is foundational to the South African agricultural sector's capacity to improve the quality and range of agricultural products and services so as to support small agricultural producers, meet domestic needs for food security and increase the competitiveness of local products on global agricultural markets. Concerns about the coexistence of graduate unemployment and skills shortages in the agricultural sector prompt the question: What is the shape of demand for high-level agricultural skills in the South African labour market? To answer this, the authors conducted 83 interviews with respondents in private, public and non-governmental organisations involved in agriculture. The findings reveal a rising demand for high-level agricultural skills among farmers, farm managers and foremen; in research and product development; in the sales and marketing functions of firms supplying primary agriculture; in government entities across a wide range of occupations; and in public and private sector R&D.     

New Labour and the labour market

The recent run of good macroeconomic news masks mounting evidencethat worklessness is increasingly concentrated on selected individuals,households, and socio-economic groups and in geographical areas.These distributional aspects have been overlooked or ignoredover the last 20 years, but we believe they now form the mostpressing labour-market and social problems facing this administration.We focus on what we view as the government's selected priorities:the concentration of unemployment on certain individuals, groups,and areas; increasing inactivity, especially marked among lesseducated, older men; low pay, persistence of low wages, andits relationship with job loss; and the distribution of workacross households and child poverty. Many of these problemsleave lasting scars on individuals, so that successful interventionmay beneficially change an individual's life-chances. We examinethe evidence on each of these issues and the current state ofpolicy aimed to reduce their scale or intensity.     

Reinterpreting the convict labour market

The convicts transported to NSW between 1817 and 1840 were young, fit, highly literate and brought occupational skills which were broadly representative of the British and Irish working classes. In the colonial labour market where convicts were coerced, more labour was forthcoming and at a lower wage than in a free labour market. The assignment of convict labour in the colony was efficient; skilled urban and construction tradesmen were employed in the same jobs in NSW as they had held in Britain. Domestic servants and unskilled urban workers whose skills were not suited to the needs of the colony experienced job restructuring. The organization of convict workers into teams and gangs in Australia was similar to the way work was organized in free labour Britain, and a mbc of incentives and rewards characterized the extraction of work from convicts. The human capital of the transportees and the labour system within which they worked help to explain the rapid growth of the colonial economy before 1840.     

Second language skills and labor market outcomes: Evidence from the handover of Hong Kong

This paper analyzes the effects of second languages skills on labor market outcomes in Hong Kong. Using data from the Hong Kong Population Censuses, we find that both Mandarin and English language skills are linked to improved labor market performance, and the premiums for English are much larger than those for Mandarin. We further show that the sovereignty transfer of Hong Kong from the UK to China in 1997 has strengthened the positive role of Mandarin and English language skills in finding a job in Hong Kong. The political change has also increased the earnings of people with the ability to speak Mandarin. As a comparison, the earnings premium for speaking English has declined in magnitude after the sovereignty transfer. Investigating into the mechanisms, we show that the rising premiums for Mandarin language skills are operated through choices of occupations and industry sectors. Our findings suggest that important political changes can affect the economic returns to language skills in the labor market.     

Local labour market information on disability

This article considers recent policy developments impacting upon the need for up-to-date information relating to disabled people. In examining data provided by existing sources and requirements for additional information, it considers debates on definitions of disability and how definitions and the framing of questions determine the type and quality of information available. Attention is also given to ways of filling the major information gaps and potential areas of research.     

Education and the labour market in Botswana

Using primary data from a 1993/4 Household Income and Expenditure Survey in Botswana, this article presents empirical results on occupational attainment, its determinants, and the extent of filtering down in Botswana's labour market, given changes in labour market conditions over time. It was found that the Botswana labour market has been characterised by some ‘filtering down’ of educated workers into less skilled jobs as the supply of skilled manpower exceeded demand. Those who entered the labour market earlier, those with more education, those located in the urban areas and male workers are more likely to occupy jobs that are higher up in the hierarchy than to be in an unskilled blue-collar job. Jobs higher up in the hierarchy are also more rewarding financially. The article shows that there is occupational segregation of workers by gender in Botswana's labour market in that female workers are generally confined to a narrow range of occupations. The policy implications are that employment creation has to be pursued vigorously and the issue of gender discrimination investigated further.     

The impact of E‐Verify mandates on labor market outcomes

A number of states have adopted laws that require employers to use the federal government's E‐Verify program to check workers' eligibility to work legally in the United States. Using data from the Current Population Survey, this study examines whether such laws affect labor market outcomes among Mexican immigrants who are likely to be unauthorized. We find evidence that E‐Verify mandates reduce average hourly earnings among likely unauthorized male Mexican immigrants while increasing labor force participation among likely unauthorized female Mexican immigrants. Furthermore, the mandates appear to lead to better labor market outcomes among workers likely to compete with unauthorized immigrants. Employment rises among male Mexican immigrants who are naturalized citizens in states that adopt E‐Verify mandates, and earnings rise among U.S.‐born Hispanic men. There is no evidence of significant effects among U.S.‐born non‐Hispanic whites.     

Local politics and the local authority labour market

The 1979 election heralded a new approach to public sector finance and employment. For local government, this has involved a new regulatory framework, which attempts to reproduce private sector financial and labour market structures. This article examines the effect of this new regulatory framework on the labour markets of three case study local authorities and the manner in which those effects have been mediated by local politics over the period 1979-1984     

Eastern European trade and the Austrian labour market

Eastern European Trade and the Austrian Labour Market. — Recent years have seen a major break in trade relations between Western and Eastern European countries. Austria experienced a large bilateral trade creation with these countries. In this paper, the authors take a closer look at the impact this trade growth had on the Austrian labour market. To differentiate as far as possible between different segments of the labour market, they concentrate on unemployment experience and wage growth for a panel of individual workers in Austrian industry. The results show rather small employment effects, the impact on wage growth is more pronounced with interesting modifications for mobile and immobile workers.     

Union relevance in the Malaysian labour market

The study estimates the effect of union membership on workers' wages using individual‐level data from a survey conducted among employees in various sectors in Malaysia in 2012. Initial results show that union membership has a positive effect on wages. However, after controlling for endogeneity, union membership or the presence of a labour union within a firm is not statistically significant for individual wage levels. Because there is no trade union wage premium, the study suggests that the revival of labour union membership is not going to be an easy task.     

Active labour market policies and job tenure

In this paper, we study the effect of subsidised on-the-jobtraining, training for the unemployed and pure wage subsidieson job tenure. Correcting for selection biases, we find thateach of the labour market policies increases the length of jobtenure. Despite the sensitivity of the estimates to the parametricassumptions with respect to the unobservables, the effect ofsubsidised on-the-job training schemes is always found to besignificantly positive. Training programs for the unemployedand pure wage subsidies always have a positive, but statisticallynon-significant effect Our results provide some support forhuman capital theories as opposed to matching theories.     

Duration of unemployment in the Dutch youth labour market

Summary This paper is concerned with the specification and estimation of a one-state proportional hazard model to explain the duration of unemployment in the Dutch youth labour market. Special attention is given explaining the unequal distribution of unemployment experiences among young labour force participants. The model is estimated using data from a 1984 national random sample of young people unemployed in May and interviewed in October/November. It is found that the replacement ratio has no significant effect. The predicted youth wage on the other hand is significant. The paper also presents and compares different functional forms for modelling duration dependence and heterogeneity.A more extensive version of this paper was published by the Organisation for Strategic Labour Market Research (OSA) in The Hague as working paper nr. 14, 1985. We wish to thank this organisation for its encouragement and for its financial support. We also wish to thank M. Bom, J. Hartog, T. Manders, E. de Regt and G. Ridder for their comments and help.     

Institutions and economic performance: evidence from the labour market

We analyse the institutional determinants of economic performance,taking European labour-market institutions as a case in point.European economic growth after the Second World War was basedon Fordist technologies, a setting to which the continent'sinstitutions of solidaristic wage bargaining were ideally suited.They eased distributive conflicts and delivered wage moderation,which in turn supported high investment. The wage compressionthat was a corollary of their operation was of little consequenceso long as the dominant technologies were such that firms couldrely on a relatively homogeneous labour force. But as Fordismgave way to diversified quality production, which relied moreon highly skilled workers, the centralization of bargainingand the compression of wages became impediments rather thanaids to growth. Assuming that growth will rely even more inthe future on rapidly changing, science-based, skilled-labour-intensivetechnologies, countries with centralized labour-market institutionswill have to move still further in the direction of decentralization.Whether Europe in particular can accommodate these demands willhelp to determine whether it is able to re-establish a fullemployment economy in the twenty-first century.     

Trade, capital mobility, and the German labour market

Trade, Capital Mobility, and the German Labour Market. — This paper sets up three structural variants of a general equilibrium model of a small open economy with three sectors (exportables, importables, non-tradables) and three factors (internationally mobile capital and immobile skilled and unskilled labour) in order to analyse the employment and wage effects of globalisation shocks. The model is numerically implemented for West Germany in 1980 on the base of input-output tables and employment data from a random sample of social security accounts. Overall this study indicates that the globalisation process does not have strong effects on unemployment and/or the wage differential in West Germany.     

A disequilibrium analysis of the labour market: Review and comments

Summary The article has been divided into two main parts. The first consists of a review and an evaluation of Lenderink and Siebrand's analytical and empirical approaches to the short-run phenomena on the Dutch labour market during the period 1952–1970. The main implications are explicitly stated and show how the authors have integrated the relevant results of equilibrium and disequilibrium analysis. It appears that the general analytical approach of Lenderink and Siebrand certainly is very promising. From the comments in the second part it becomes clear that the authors' main empirical results should be rejected. Some new data are produced to be compared with the originally presented data. They provide the basis for emphasizing that the original analysis does not satisfy some theoretical and empirical consistency conditions. Therefore, suggestions for revision of some aspects of Lenderink and Siebrand's study are recommended. This paper consists of a review of and comments uponA Disequilibrium Analysis of the Labour Market (Lenderink and Siebrand, 1976).