Search results for "LABOUR"
showing 10 items of 655 documents
How does fiscal consolidation impact on income inequality?
2012
In this paper, we assess the impact of fiscal consolidation on income inequality. Using a panel of 18 industrialized countries from 1978 to 2009, we find that income inequality significantly rises during periods of fiscal consolidation. In addition, while fiscal policy that is driven by spending cuts seems to be detrimental for income distribution, tax hikes seem to have an equalizing effect. We also show that the size of the fiscal consolidation program (in percentage of GDP) has an impact on income inequality. In particular, when consolidation plans represent a small share of GDP, the income gap widens, suggesting that the burden associated with the effort affects disproportionately house…
Is technical change directed by the supply of skills?
2002
Abstract In a recent contribution, Acemoglu [Quarterly Journal of Economics 113 (1998) 1055] modelled the effects of an increase in the supply of skills on the skill premium. We estimate a model to disentangle the short-run substitution effects and the effects of skill-biased technical change using industry data for South Korea for the period 1974–1998.
Youth Transition from School to Work in Spain
2001
Using a data set drawn from the Encuesta Socio-Demográfica conducted by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística in 1991, we analyze the labor market entrance of Spanish school leavers and the match between education and work at the early stages of working life. The empirical evidence shows that human capital exerts a strong influence on the duration of unemployment. With regard to the job match between education and work we find that young workers are more likely to be underutilized compared to their adult co-workers. Regression results indicate that people with higher education have, all else being equal, a lower probability of being overeducated and a shorter lenght of unemployment. They al…
Labour supply with habit formation
2002
Abstract In a model with habit-forming labour supply we show that standard myopic utility maximisation of a person weakly addicted to a harmful habit is consistent with empirical results on labour supply.
The Impact of CEO Long-term Equity-based Compensation Incentives on Economic Growth in Collectivist versus Individualist Countries
2016
This study examines the impact of the prevalence of long-term equity-based chief executive officer (CEO) compensation incentives on GDP growth, and we address the moderating role of individualist versus collectivist cultures on this relationship. We argue that long-term incentives given to CEOs in some firms may convey to other CEOs that they too may be able to receive such incentives and rewards if they emulate the incentivized and rewarded CEOs. In a longitudinal study across 22 nations over a 5-year period, we find that the higher proportion of CEOs in a country are awarded long-term equity-based incentive compensation, the greater future real GDP growth, particularly in collectivist co…
Frictional and Non-Frictional Unemployment in a Labor Market with Matching Frictions
2016
Using the Mortensen and Pissarides model of a labor market with frictions, this paper proposes a new method, simpler than the one presented in Michaillat (2012), for decomposing unemployment into frictional and non-frictional (rationing) unemployment for a derived rigid wage-setting rule. We use it to compute the frictional and non frictional unemployment rate for two economies characterized by different labor market institutions, namely the US and the Spanish economy. For the entire period under study, the US frictional unemployment rate is around 36 per cent of total unemployment, whereas for Spain, approximately 20 per cent of all unemployment is due to frictions. This outcome may be exp…
Do credit constraints reduce foreign jobs? A note on foreign direct employment
2014
This article studies the effect of credit constraints on the jobs created by multinational enterprises in host countries. Although most FDI is labour intensive, few studies delve into the determinants of foreign direct employment (FDE). This article constructs a model of limited commitment between the financed and financing parties to explain how FDE is affected by financial frictions. Moreover, this study examines FDE’s determinants empirically on a global data set including FDE data from 161 countries during 2003–2010 by means of the gravity equation. Results show that credit constraints during the Great Recession roughly halved FDE, tripling the effect on FDI and suggesting that domestic…
Multinational enterprises and wage costs: vertical FDI revisited
2005
Abstract This study explores how wage costs for high-skilled and less-skilled labor in host countries affect the level of affiliate activities conducted by foreign MNEs. We find support for vertical FDI, in the sense that more FDI is conducted in countries where less-skilled labor is relatively cheap. In addition, we find that skilled-wage cost premia also affect FDI activities previously associated with horizontal FDI, i.e. local affiliate sales. Consequently, the potential effects of relative wage costs on MNE activities are large. Rough calculations suggest that more than 20 percent of US affiliate sales in 1998 can be attributed to skilled-wage cost premia.
ON THE HETEROGENEOUS EMPLOYMENT EFFECTS OF OFFSHORING: IDENTIFYING PRODUCTIVITY AND DOWNSIZING CHANNELS
2014
I. INTRODUCTION For the most part of the last two decades Germany suffered from a hangover of the reunification boom, an overvalued exchange rate, high unemployment, and low growth--so The Economist famously named it the "Sick Man of Europe." At the same time, German companies were relocating production, restructuring, and offshoring. The general public associated such offshoring activities--not only in Germany--with plant closures which made the headlines and confirmed the perception that offshoring was a job killer.1 What usually does not make the news is that such downsizing effects of offshoring may be counterbalanced by productivity effects in the restructuring firm. Depending on their…
Human capital in OECD countries: Technical change, efficiency and productivity
2003
The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of human capital in the productivity gains of the OECD countries in the period 1965-90, breaking down the productivity gains into technical change and gains in efficiency. For this purpose we use both a stochastic frontier approach and a non-parametric approach (DEA) and calculate Malmquist indices of productivity. The results obtained indicate the existence of both a level effect (a higher level of human capital raises labour productivity) and a rate effect (a higher level of human capital affects positively the rate of technical change) associated with human capital. The differences among countries in endowments of human capital have worked aga…