Structural Changes in the Demand for Labor

This paper investigates why labor demand has shifted away from low-skilled toward high-skilled labor in The Netherlands. We focus on the role of changes in relative wages and technological progress. A flexible functional form, proposed by Diewert and Wales, the Symmetric Generalized McFadden cost function, is estimated for the exposed and sheltered sectors. The estimates are based on time-series data for the period 1972–1993, which recently became available. Labor-saving technological change explains most of the displacement of low-skilled workers. The computed elasticities suggest that substitution between labor as a whole and capital is small. However, substitution plays a modest role in the shift from low-skilled toward high-skilled labor, especially in the sheltered sector. Skill-capital complementarity seems relevant in both sectors.     

An End to Job Mobility on the Sales Floor: The Impact of Department Store Cost Cutting on African-American Women, 1970–2000

Abstract

Much of the literature regarding the employability of African-American women focuses on how demographic factors like single parenthood, limited social capital, and low levels of education diminish their employment options. This study engages this literature by exploring the role that institutional factors, including state action and cost-cutting strategies in the workplace, play in shaping the structure of job opportunities available to high school-educated African-American women. Focusing on department store workers in the San Francisco Bay area, this case study highlights how shifts, including the increasing contingency of employment between 1970 and 2000, have constrained African-American women's experience and progress in this low-skilled workplace.     

How can robots affect wage inequality?

We explain the simultaneous presence of i) increasing per capita output, ii) declining real wages of low-skilled workers, and iii) a rising wage premium of higher education within a model of economic growth in the age of automation. The theoretical implications are consistent with the data for the United States since the 1970s. Thus, automation contributes towards our understanding of the driving forces of rising inequality. The immediate policy conclusion is that investments in higher education can help to soften the negative effects of automation.     

Do social enterprises attract workers who are more pro-socially motivated than their counterparts in for-profit organizations to perform low-skilled jobs?

Abstract

The literature highlights that social enterprises (SEs) attract workers who are motivated to help others and to meet the social aims in which they believe. However, this assumption is challenged in the case of low-skilled jobs. Therefore, we have performed an empirical study in the quasi-market of service vouchers in Belgium to know if SEs attract workers who have a different motivational profile than their counterparts in for-profit organizations (FPOs) to perform low skilled jobs (N = 217). No significant differences were found. Next, we have compared FPOs with two types of social enterprises, Home Care Services Organizations (HCSOs) and Work Integration Social enterprises (WISEs), and again no significant differences were found for the whole sample. However, it seems that a selection effect exists in WISEs when the sample is reduced to people who were not previously unemployed. In others words, when WISEs deviate from their initial mission of ‘hiring the most vulnerable people on the labor market’, it is only to hire workers whose are highly motivated to achieve the organization’s mission and who fit with the values defended by the organization.     

劳动力市场的二元结构

本文在效率工资理论基本逻辑基础上建立模型,分析劳动力市场的二元结构,即高技能劳动力的相对短缺和低技能劳动力的过剩。基本结论是,雇主与雇员信息不对称,雇主有激励去实施效率工资,由于同样工作给高技能劳动力带来边际劳动负效用低于低技能劳动力,继而对高技能劳动力的效率工资效果好于对低技能劳动力,所以雇主倾向于雇用高技能劳动力。这样,在一定劳动力供给结构下,高技能劳动者就相对短缺,而低技能劳动者则过剩。     

The effects of rural–urban migration on corporate innovation: Evidence from a natural experiment in China

We show that the migration of low-skilled, rural workers to urban centers has a negative causal effect on innovation of firms in such urban centers. Our tests exploit the staggered relaxation of city-level household registration system in China, which facilitates rural residents to migrate to cities. We find a significant decrease in innovation for firms headquartered in cities that have adopted such policies relative to firms headquartered in cities that have not. Overall, our results support the view that an abundant supply of low-skilled workers increases the benefit of using existing low-skilled technology and thus reduces firms’ incentive to innovate.