Search results for "LABOUR"

Selection Correction in Panel Data Models: An Application to Labour Supply and Wages

2000

In recent years a number of panel estimators have been suggested for sample selection models, where both the selection equation and the equation of interest contain individual effects which are correlated with the explanatory variables. We review and compare some of these estimators, and apply them to estimating the return to actual labour market experience for females, using a panel of twelve years. All these estimators rely on the assumption of strict exogeneity of regressors in the equation of interest, conditional on individual specific effects and the selection mechanism. This assumption is likely to be violated in many applications. Also, life history variables are often measured with…

Contributions and limitations of self assessment of competences by higher education graduates

2009

This work presents a continuum of competence. On one extreme of which there is a subtlety of concept of competence. On the other, there are rigorous econometric analyses to find the answer to a critical question: ―to what extent is the assessment of competence reliable? ‖ Quest into the etymology helped us providing a rationale in favour of the preferred use of competence over competency. Moreover, we come to trace its roots in French literature where it was in use long before its emergence in English literature. We found that competences were common among various geopolitical locations and inferred that interest in competence has been internationalised realistically. Both English and Frenc…

2019

Abstract This paper examines the labor-market returns to a new form of postsecondary vocational education: vocational master's degrees. We use individual fixed effects models on a matched sample of students and non-students from Finland to capture any time-invariant differences across individuals. We find that attendance in vocational master's programs leads to an earnings increase of more than seven percent five years after entry. The estimated effect remains positive even if selection on unobservables is twice as strong as selection on observables. Earnings gains are similar by gender and age, but they are marginally higher for those in the health sector than for those in the business or …

The labour market consequences of self-employment spells:European evidence

2008

Hundreds of thousands of Europeans enter self-employment each year, but because self-employment spells are typically brief, many of them exit soon after entry. We examine how those who return to paid-employment fare on the labour market using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). Like earlier evidence for the US, ours indicate that, in general, brief spells of self-employment do not increase average hourly earnings upon return to paid-employment. For highly educated men, an additional year of self-employment actually decreases their earnings by 4-5% relative to a year of continued wage employment. We also find that brief spells of self-employment are associated with increased proba…

The Return-to-Entrepreneurship Puzzle

2013

The returns to entrepreneurship are monetary and non-monetary. We offer new evidence on these returns using a large sample of genetically identical male twins. Our within-twin analysis suggests that OLS estimates are downwards, and traditional first-differenced panel data estimates upwards biased. We find no differences in the earnings of men with either low or high education. Our within-twin analysis of non-monetary returns shows that entrepreneurs with low education work longer hours and have greater responsibilities, but also face a reduced risk of divorce and less monotonous work tasks. The same does not apply to highly educated entrepreneurs.

Unemployment and Vacancy Dynamics with Imperfect Financial Markets

2018

This paper proposes a simple general equilibrium model with labour market frictions and an imperfect financial market. The aim of the paper is to analyse the transitional dynamics of unemployment and vacancies when financial constraints are in place. We model the financial sector as a monopolistically competitive banking sector that intermediates financial capital between firms. This structure implies a per period financial resource constraint which has a closed form solution and describes the transition path of unemployment and vacancies to their steady state values. We show that the transition path crucially depends on the degree of wage flexibility. When wages do not depend on the unempl…

Employment sector and pay gaps: Genetic and environmental influences

2012

This paper examines the role of genetic factors and shared environment in explaining the choice of working in the public sector and public-private sector pay gaps. The analyses are done using data for Finnish twins that span the period from 1990 to 2004. The data are based on two sources. The first data are Finnish Twin Cohort conducted by Department of Public Health in University of Helsinki. These data have been matched with the Finnish Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data (FLEED) kept by Statistics Finland. The standard behavioural genetics decomposition and DF (DeFries and Fulker 1985) analyses indicate that public sector employment is broadly influenced by the genetic factors by around …

Comprehensive school reform and labor market outcomes over the lifecycle: Evidence from Finland

2021

This study focused on the labor market effects of the Finnish comprehensive school reform in 1972–1977 over the lifecycle. The reform increased the age at which students are separated into vocational and general tracks from 11 to 16 as well as updated the curriculum to include more general content instead of vocational. Using longitudinal administrative register data and exploiting the gradual implementation of the reform, I found a negative effect on employment in early career and a positive effect later in the lifecycle. Results for labor earnings are more nuanced and sensitive to different model specifications, but a positive effect was found in the late career. After the reform, the tre…

Seniority rules, worker mobility and wages : evidence from multi-country linked employer-employee data

2018

We construct multi-country employer-employee data to examine the consequences of last-in, first-out rules. We identify the effects by comparing worker exit rates between different units of the same firms operating in Sweden and Finland, two countries that have different seniority rules. We observe a relatively lower exit rate for more senior workers in Sweden in the shrinking firms and among the low-wage workers. These empirical patterns are consistent with last-in, first-out rules in Sweden providing protection from dismissals for the more senior workers among the worker groups to whom the rules are most relevant. Similarly, we observe a steeper seniority-wage profile in Sweden, suggesting…

In-work benefits for married couples: an ex-ante evaluation of EITC and WTC policies in Italy

2014

This paper investigates labor supply and redistributive effects of in-work benefits for Italian married couples using a tax-benefit microsimulation model and a multi-sectoral discrete choice model of labor supply. We consider two in-work benefit schemes following the key principles of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Working Tax Credit (WTC) existing in the US and the UK, respectively. The standard design of these in-work benefits is however augmented with a new benefit premium for two-earner households in order to overcome the well-known disincentive effects that these welfare instruments may generate on secondary earners. In simulation, the proposed in-work benefits are finance…