Search results for "Labour economics"
showing 10 items of 361 documents
Fitness costs of worker specialization for ant societies
2016
Division of labour is of fundamental importance for the success of societies, yet little is known about how individual specialization affects the fitness of the group as a whole. While specialized workers may be more efficient in the tasks they perform than generalists, they may also lack the flexibility to respond to rapid shifts in task needs. Such rigidity could impose fitness costs when societies face dynamic and unpredictable events, such as an attack by socially parasitic slavemakers. Here, we experimentally assess the colony-level fitness consequences of behavioural specialization in Temnothorax longispinosus ants that are attacked by the slavemaker ant T. americanus . We manipulate…
Heritability of Lifetime Income
2013
Using 15 years of data on Finnish twins, we find that 24% (54%) of the variance of women’s (men’s) lifetime income is due to genetic factors and that the contribution of the shared environment is negligible. We link these figures to policy by showing that controlling for education reduces the variance share of genetics by 5-8 percentage points; by demonstrating that income uncertainty has a genetic component half the size of its variance share in lifetime income; and by exploring how the genetic heritability of lifetime income is related to the macroeconomic environment, as measured by GDP growth and the Gini-coefficient of income inequality.
Improve Your Social Network and Have the Advantage in the Employment Seeking Process
2021
Human resource management uses social networks to identify new employees. This research investigates if people use social networks to identify employment opportunities and how they improve their networks to get easier and quicker access to information and resources. Researchers worldwide devote their attention to different aspects of identification of new employees via social networks. The authors of the paper have done empirical research based on an online survey with 298 respondents, and the data obtained from the survey has been analysed using various statistical tools. The number of suitable candidates for employment is decreasing and companies need knowledge about the employment seekin…
Automation, workers' skills and job satisfaction.
2020
When industrial robots are adopted by firms in a local labor market, some workers are displaced and become unemployed. Other workers that are not directly affected by automation may however fear that these new technologies might replace their working tasks in the future. This fear of a possible future replacement is important because it negatively affects workers’ job satisfaction at present. This paper studies the extent to which automation affects workers’ job satisfaction, and whether this effect differs for high- versus low-skilled workers. The empirical analysis uses microdata for several thousand workers in Norway from the Working Life Barometer survey for the period 2016–2019, combin…
The effect of physical activity on long-term income.
2013
Abstract Empirical evidence for the direct effects of physical activities on long-term labor market outcomes is limited. This state of affairs is surprising, because there is a growing amount of support on the positive effects of physical activities on health on the one hand and on the effects of good health on labor market outcomes on the other hand. We examine the long-term income effects of physical activity using a large sample ( N = 5042) of male twins from Finland (Older Finnish Twin Cohort Study, 1975, 1981, 1990), matched to detailed register-based income data (Finnish Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data, 1990–2004). Our primary income measure is calculated over a fifteen-year peri…
Job contact networks, inequality and aggregate output
2005
In this paper we study the effects of social networks on wage inequality and aggregate production. In particular, we consider a simplified version of the model by Calvo'-Armengol and Jackson (2003), with good and bad jobs and skilled and unskilled workers. Our findings are: i) increasing the number of social links increases aggregate output and may reduce inequality; ii) given a number of social connections, output increases if the average distance among worker decreases; iii) a more mixed and well-integrated society, that is a society in which heterogeneous workers share social links, produces more output and less inequality than a society in which some workers are isolated, when productiv…
Personality and the gender wage gap
2012
In this study, we investigate whether personality traits contribute towards a better understanding of the reasons for the gender wage gap. We explore whether two of the personality factors put forward by Bowles et al. (2001) as likely to be incentive enhancing in the employer–employee relationship can explain the difference in wages for women and men. These are (1) personal self efficacy (Locus of Control (LoC)) and (2) time preference. We also study the role of the so called Big Five personality traits (extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, openness intellect and conscientiousness), which have been associated with earnings in several recent studies. Using a sample of Dutch empl…
Gender and potential wage in Europe: a stochastic frontier approach
2011
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide evidence concerning wage differentials and the existence of gender pay discrimination in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used the stochastic frontier approach as an alternative method to measure the relevance of gender discrimination. This methodology allows them to explain the differences between the potential and the observed wage that an individual could obtain, given his or her human capital endowment.FindingsThe authors found support for wage discrimination against women. The results show that a significant part of the gender wage gap in all the countries analysed is not attributa…
Robots, labor markets, and universal basic income
2020
Automation is a big concern in modern societies in view of its widespread impact on many socioeconomic issues including income, jobs, and productivity. While previous studies have concentrated on determining the effects on jobs and salaries, our aim is to understand how automation affects productivity, and how some policies, such as taxes on robots or universal basic income, moderate or aggravate those effects. To this end, we have designed an experiment where workers make productive effort decisions, and managers can choose between workers and robots to do these tasks. In our baseline treatment, we measure the effort made by workers who may be replaced by robots, and also elicit firm repla…
Microfinance
2013
This chapter gives the reader an introduction to microfinance and reports how the industry has moved from generally being praised to increasingly being criticized. Particularly, the chapter addresses the concern that microfinance institutions chase profits and are moving away from the poor-customer segments. The authors' findings indicate that rather than being an industry with high profits, the industry struggles with high costs and low earnings. They also find that the focus on serving poor customers did not change over time. Thus, the ‘mission drift’ claim cannot be confirmed.