Weaker jobs,weaker innovation. Exploring the effects of temporary employment on new products

This work explores the relationship between temporary employment and product innovation focusing on five major European economies (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands) observed between 1998 and 2012. The analysis distinguishes sectors according to their technological characteristics and regimes finding that industries using temporary employment tend to have a weaker product innovation propensity. The negative correlation between temporary employment and innovation turns out to be stronger in those sectors where tacit firm’s specific knowledge is crucial to the development of innovations. These sectors are identified using both the ‘Cumulativeness’ proxy stemming from Peneder’s classification as well as distinguishing between different Schumpeterian regimes – Schumpeter Mark I vs. II – of knowledge accumulation.     

The employment effects of sustainable development policies

This paper argues that it is time for ecological economists to bring the employment impacts of sustainable development policies to the forefront of the research agenda. Important conservation efforts continue to founder because of their perceived employment effects. The paper examines the evidence on the employment impacts of sustainable development policies and argues that maintaining or even increasing employment depends critically on appropriate policy design and attention to the political economy of implementation of policies. The paper concludes that a better understanding of these issues, fair labour market and structural adjustment programs, and especially forward planning to anticipate problem areas, must replace the piecemeal, ‘knee-jerk’ reactions to environmental issues, such as were evident in Australia during the last federal election.     

Regional effects of the minimum wage on teenage employment

previous research on the minimum wage using national-level data concludes that the minimum wage has a small effect on the employment of teenagers. This paper provides new evidence that there is substantial regional variation in the effect of the minimum wage, and in some regions it has a decidedly larger impact on teenage employment than previously measured Estimates from a panel data set of the US states suggest that the minimum wage may cause almost a 7% reduction in teenage employment in some regions. This results is robust to different econometric specifications, and holds whether a relative or real specification of the estimating equation is used.     

The beneficial effects of generous unemployment benefits on profits and employment

Theories of the labor market generally predict that high unemployment benefits put upward pressure on wages, thus diminishing the profitability of employing labor and exacerbating unemployment. It remains to be explained why firms agree to contribute to generous schemes (replacement rates for general schemes in Europe and US are in the range 50–85%) that they are often willing to supplement (with sector- or firm-specific schemes that may involve even 100% replacement and long benefit duration). An answer can be found by including in the shirking–efficiency wage model, the hypotheses that workers are risk-averse and that those discharged for misconduct are not eligible to benefits. It is then optimal for risk-neutral firms (and for employment) to introduce an insurance scheme with full income coverage and with a duration limited only by the workers' participation constraint (there is no trade-off between level and duration of benefits). The more difficult it is to detect and fire shirkers, the higher is the rent workers enjoy above the competitive wage and the longer is the benefit duration consistent with the participation constraint. This result can be interpreted as a complementarity between the strictness of employment protection legislation (EPL) and the duration of benefits, which seems to conform with broad patterns observed in primary vs. secondary employment and in continental Europe vs. Anglo-Saxon countries.     

The long-run effects of the real exchange rate on employment and wages in Canadian manufacturing

ABSTRACT

The literature on real exchange rate effects on the labour market is dominated by short-run analysis showing that there is heterogeneity in the responses of firms or industries to a real exchange rate shock. Analysing data on Canadian manufacturing industries, I conclude that there is a common long-run equilibrium across all manufacturing industries controlling for their openness to trade after varying adjustments to a real exchange rate shock have taken place. This conclusion is important from the perspective of policy making because it helps to form expectations about the effects of a real exchange rate movement on the labour market. The results suggest that real appreciation leads to economically significant reductions in employment in manufacturing in the long run. Real wages decrease in industries that are highly engaged in international trade and somewhat increase in industries that are relatively closed to international trade. Both employment and real wages converge quickly to the long-run equilibrium.     

越南在城市化进程中失地农民就业的消极影响

进入新世纪,随着越南经济的发展、社会的进步,越南工业化和城市化快速推进。但同时,农户土地被大量征用,相当数量的农民失去土地后处于无业、待业,生活得不到保障。为解决对失地农民就业的消极影响,提出政府应该采取加强劳动技能培训提高失地农民再就业能力、鼓励失地农民自主创业等优惠政策,以及推动失地农民再就业等对策。     

The effects of employment protection: Learning from variable enforcement

Employment protection legislation (EPL) is not enforced uniformly across the board. There are a number of exemptions to the coverage of these provisions: firms below a given threshold scale and workers with temporary contracts are not subject to the most restrictive provisions. This within-country variation in enforcement allows us to make inferences on the impact of EPL which go beyond the usual cross-country approach. In this paper we develop a simple model which explains why these exemptions are in place to start with. Then we empirically assess the effects of EPL on dismissal probabilities and on the equilibrium size distribution of firms. Our results are in line with the predictions of the theoretical model. Workers under permanent contracts in firms with less restrictive EPL are more likely to be dismissed. However, there is no effect of the exemption threshold on the growth of firms.     

Analysing the employment effects of mergers and acquisitions

This paper examines the employment effects of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) by using matched establishment-level data from Finland. Our data register practically almost all M&As in all sectors. We compare the employment effects of cross-border M&As with the effects arising from two different types of domestic M&As and internal restructurings. The results show that cross-border M&As lead to downsizing in manufacturing employment. The effects of cross-border M&As on employment in non-manufacturing are much weaker. Changes in ownership associated with domestic M&As and internal restructurings also typically cause employment losses, but they exhibit an interesting sectoral variation.     

The effects of changes in household demographics and employment on consumer demand patterns

This study examines to what extent changes in consumer demand patterns over the last two decades in the Netherlands can be attributed to changes in household demographics, employment and total expenditures. The dominating changes in consumer demand are decreasing budget shares of food & beverages and clothing & footwear and increasing budget shares of housing and services. The changes in households’ composition – away from the traditional one-earner family with children – together with the increase in household total expenditures account for about one-third of the decrease in the budget share of food & beverages, half of the increase in the budget shares of services and only a minor part of the increase in housing. Once controlled for budget effects, the quadrupling of the proportion of employed women with young children accounts for about one-third of the increase in the budget shares of personal & health care – including childcare – and food away, holidays & entertainment.     

新媒体崛起与传统媒体的经营策略

在新媒体崛起之后,媒体传播的基本要素发生了巨大改变,＂去中心化＂的传播机制的建立逐步培育出多点对多点、全立体的新型传播机制,不断挑战传统媒体的单向传播格局和单面化市场;内容具有海量性和易检性不断挑战传统媒体的严谨、深刻和权威,改变着受众的信息接收习惯和选择自由度;时效性的发布特点大大缩短了传统媒体的编发时滞,日益挤占传统媒体的信息发布空间;个性化服务不断打破传统媒体拥有的垄断优势,改变着受众的社会文化心理。面对新媒体的挑战,传统媒体未来选择需要在融合新媒体,发展多媒体的思维中重新赢得受众,赢得市场,并与新媒体一起互利共生,结成信息同盟,这不失是传统媒体在新形势下的生存之道。     

The firm-level employment effects of innovations in high-tech US manufacturing industries

We focus on four two-digit manufacturing industries that are known for their high patenting activity. We then use Principal Components Analysis to generate a firm- and year-specific ‘innovativeness’ index by extracting the common variance in a firm’s patenting and R&D expenditure histories. To begin with, we explore the heterogeneity of firms by using semi-parametric quantile regression. We then move on to parametric regressions that include a weighted least squares (WLS) analysis, which explicitly takes into account the different job-creating potential of firms of different sizes. As a result, we investigate the effect of innovation on total number of jobs, whereas previous studies have focused on the effect of innovation on firm behavior. Indeed, previous studies have typically taken the firm as the unit of analysis, implicitly weighting each firm equally according to the principle of ‘one firm equals one observation’. Our results suggest that firm-level innovative activity leads to employment creation that may have been underestimated in previous studies.     

The impact of recent mental health changes on employment: new evidence from longitudinal data

This study uses longitudinal data and four different measures of mental health to tease out the impact of psychiatric disorder onsets and recoveries on employment outcomes. Results suggest that developing a mental health problem leads to a significant increase in the probability of transitioning to non-employment, while a recovery increases the probability of return to work among the not employed with a mental health problem. No consistent effect was found on hours worked and earnings. Research and policy attention is needed with respect to early interventions such as job retention programmes to help workers with mental health problems remain employed as well as interventions that may lead to recovery and return to work. More research is needed especially with data and models that can differentiate between the effects of mental health onsets and recoveries on employment exit and return to work transitions.     

Interconnected communications networks and home market effects

Abstract.  This study develops a model of trade that highlights the effects of the interconnection of country‐specific communications networks as a driving force behind trade in high‐tech products with positive transport costs. By constructing a two‐country model of monopolistic competition with two production factors, it is shown that the locational decisions of firms may magnify the influence of interconnected networks. In a reversal of the standard home market effects, the abundance of unskilled labour in the developing countries can attract high‐tech firms from the developed countries. JEL classification: D43, F12, L13     

The nonneutrality of money and employment rates: Tobin and taxation effects

This paper demonstrates sufficient conditions for a system of income taxation to create a negative relationship between the steady-state rates of fully anticipated inflation and employment. The model examined is an extension of the one developed by Fischer (1979) to demonstrate the nonneutrality of money in an economy where inflation is accurately anticipated in the long-run equilibrium.     

The rise of part-time employment in the great recession: Its causes and macroeconomic effects

During the Great Recession, the U.S. economy witnessed a substantial rise in part-time employment for a sustained period. We extend the New Keynesian unemployment model by Galí et al. (2012) to allow substitutions between full-time and part-time labor, and estimate the model’s parameters by using the Bayesian method. In our model, households and firms can optimally allocate full-time and part-time labor, and disturbances exist in part-time labor supply (household disutility from part-time labor) and part-time labor demand (firms’ efficiency to use part-time labor). As for the Great Recession, the initial increase in part-time employment at the outset of the financial crisis is mostly explained by the rise of the risk premia; the persistently high level of part-time employment in the later period is mainly explained by an exogenous increase in part-time labor supply. A part-time labor supply shock also explains a significant portion of slow recovery in the gross wage during the recession, as the shock lowers the part-time wage and the proportion of full-time workers in total employment. Notably, the results from our model suggest that though the transition from full-time to part-time jobs contributed to mitigating the sharp contraction in total employment and labor force during the Great Recession, it played only a limited role in relieving recessionary pressure.