Search results for "jel:J"
showing 10 items of 87 documents
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.
Long-term health effects on the next generation of Ramadan fasting during pregnancy
2011
Each year, many pregnant women fast from dawn to sunset during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Medical theory suggests that this may have negative long-term health effects on their offspring. Building upon the work of Almond and Mazumder (2008), and using Indonesian crosssectional data, I show that people who were exposed to Ramadan fasting during their mother's pregnancy have a poorer general health and are sick more often than people who were not exposed. This effect is especially pronounced among older people, who, when exposed, also report health problems more often that are indicative of coronary heart problems and type 2 diabetes. The exposed are a bit smaller in body size and weig…
¿CUÁNTOS SOMOS? UNA EXCURSIÓN POR LAS ESTADÍSTICAS DEMOGRÁFICAS DEL INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE ESTADÍSTICA (INE)
2007
Francisco.J.Goerlich@uv.es Este trabajo presenta una reflexión en torno a la consistencia de las estadísticas demográficas que con más frecuencia se utilizan en la práctica, stocks de población y flujos de nacimientos, defunciones y saldos migratorios. Se ilustran numerosas inconsistencias, lo que hace dudar de la fiabilidad de algunas de estas estadísticas. Las estadísticas de población son básicas en cualquier país, ya sea moderno o en vías de desarrollo. Si no sabemos «cuantos somos», difícilmente sabremos «cuanto producimos». Los ejemplos se centran en un único proveedor de estadísticas, el Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), y deben enmarcarse en un espíritu constructivo de mejora…
Problemática laboral de los socios trabajadores de las empresas de Economía Social: ¿socios o trabajadores?
1999
Co-operatives and labour societies are the most important organisations within the framework of Social Economy. The establishment of these societies, which create employment in the private sector with a democratic philosophy based on mutual help, has been recently boosted thanks to the support of public power. Their growing importance can be explained by three factors: the Employment Policy, the Social Policy and the productive decentralisation. As far as labour is concerned, these societies offer the following advantages: intensive use of labour, high rate of stability in employment, high levels of productivity, training and surplus re-inversion, lower rate of inflation, fewer conflicts th…
The effect of polytechnic reform on migration
2011
This paper examines the effect of the polytechnic reform on geographical mobility. A polytechnic, higher education reform took place in Finland in the 1990s. It gradually transformed former vocational colleges into polytechnics and also brought higher education to regions that did not have a university before. This expansion of higher education provides exogenous variation in the regional supply of higher education. The reform raised the mobility of high school graduates across local labour markets in the years after they had completed their secondary studies, which indicated increased mobility between high school and post-secondary education. We estimate that the reform enhanced the annual…
Technology and Labor Regulations: Theory and Evidence
2015
This paper shows that different labor market policies can lead to differences in technology across sectors in a model of labor saving technologies. Labor market regulations reduce the skill premium and as a result, if technologies are labor saving, countries with more stringent labor regulation, which bind more for low skilled workers, become less technolog- ically advanced in their high skill sectors, but more technologically advanced in their low skill sectors. We then present data on capital-output ratios, on estimated productivity levels and on patent creation, which tend to support the predictions of our model.
The Employment Effect of Reforming a Public Employment Agency
2015
By how much does an increase in operating effectiveness of a public employment agency (PEA) and a reduction of unemployment benefits reduce unemployment? Using a recent labour market reform in Germany as background, we find that an enhanced effectiveness of the PEA explains about 20% of the observed post-reform unemployment decline. The role of unemployment benefit reduction explains just about 5% of the observed decline. Due to disincentive effects resulting from the reform, the reform of the PEA could have had an even higher impact on unemployment reduction if there had been less focus on long-term unemployed workers.
Human Capital Inequality, Life Expectancy and Economic Growth
2006
This article presents a model in which inequality affects per capita income when individuals decide to invest in education taking into account their life expectancy, which depends to a large extent on the human capital of their parents. Our results show the existence of multiple steady states depending on the initial distribution of education. The low steady state is a poverty trap in which children raised in poor families have low life expectancy and work as non-educated workers. The empirical evidence suggests that the life expectancy mechanism explains a major part of the relationship between inequality and human capital accumulation. Increases in life expectancy and human capital accumu…
Fairness Considerations in Labor Union Wage Setting : A Theoretical Analysis
2012
We consider a theoretical model in which unions not only take the outside option into account, but also base their wage-setting decisions on an internal reference, called the fairness reference. Wage and employment outcomes and the shape of the aggregate wage-setting curve depend on the weight and the size of the fairness reference relative to the outside option. If the fairness reference is relatively high compared to the outside option, higher wages and lower employment than in the standard model will prevail. If hit by an adverse technology shock, the economy will then react with a stronger downward adjustment in employment, whereas real wages are more rigid than in the standard model. W…
The effect of job displacement on couples' fertility decisions
2016
This paper analyzes the effects of job displacement on fertility using Finnish longitudinal employer-employee data (FLEED) matched to birth records. We distinguish between male and female job losses. We focus on couples where one spouse has lost his/her job due to a plant closure or mass layoff and follow them for several years both before and following the job loss. As a comparison group we use similar couples that were not affected by job displacement. In order to examine the possible channels through which job loss affects fertility we examine also the effect on earnings, employment and divorce. The results show that a woman?s own job loss decreases fertility mainly for highly educated w…