Documents Upward, Richard 10 results

"Der Zusammenhang zwischen der Beschäftigungsentwicklung auf der einen Seite und den Einstellungen und Entlassungen auf der anderen Seite ist wichtig für das Verständnis der Entwicklung der Arbeitslosigkeit in Rezessionen. Obwohl die Anzahl der Einstellungen und Entlassungen in Deutschland viel niedriger ist als in den USA, entspricht der Zusammenhang zwischen der Beschäftigungsentwicklung und den Einstellungen und Entlassungen weitestgehend dem Muster, das dort beobachtet wird (Davis et al. 2006, 2012). Es unterscheidet sich dementsprechend stark von dem in Frankreich (Abowd et al. 1999). Insbesondere Jüngere mit kürzerer Betriebszugehörigkeitsdauer, niedrigerem Schulabschluss, niedrigeren Löhnen in geringfügigen Beschäftigungsverhältnissen werden freigesetzt, wenn sich Betriebe hinsichtlich der Beschäftigtenzahl verkleinern, wenngleich dies nicht ausschließlich gilt."

"We estimate the earnings, hours and income effects of job loss (displacement) for a representative sample of UK workers from 1991–2007. We are able to follow workers before and after displacement regardless of their labour market state, and we are able to precisely match displaced workers with observably similar non-displaced workers. We show that job loss is associated with a long-run reduction in income which is mainly due to reductions in monthly pay conditional on employment rather than in employment propensity. Entry into unemployment is very short-lived, and while there is some entry into other labour market states, this does little to compensate for income losses. Total income from welfare payments, including unemployment insurance, retirement income and invalidity benefit reduces losses by only 15% in the first 12 months after job loss, and become even less important as time passes. The lack of a “safety net” means that job loss in the UK has a similar effect to job loss in the US."

"We investigate how individual workers and local labour markets adjust over a long time period to a discrete and plausibly exogenous technological shock, namely the introduction of containerisation in the UK port industry. This technology, which was introduced rapidly between the mid-1960s and the late-1970s, had dramatic consequences for specific occupations within the port industry. Using longitudinal micro-census data we follow dock-workers over a 40 year period and examine the long-run consequences of containerisation for patterns of employment, migration and mortality. The results show that the job guarantees protected dock-workers' employment until their removal in 1989. A matched comparison of workers in comparable unskilled occupations reveals that, even after job guarantees were removed, dock-workers did not fare worse than the comparison group in terms of their labour market outcomes. Our results suggest that job guarantees may significantly reduce the cost to workers of sudden technological change, albeit at a significant cost to the industry."

"We use a simple non-parametric regression approach to measure the relationship between employment growth, hirings and separations in a large panel of German establishments over the period 1993--2009. Although it is often claimed that firms in Europe have less flexibility in their ability to hire and fire, we find that the relationship between employment growth and worker flows in German establishments is very similar to the behaviour of US establishments. The relationship is stable over time, even during the most recent economic crisis, and across different types of establishment. We verify our results with independent measures from administrative data. We suggest that this result is due to: the strong relationship between employment reductions and voluntary separations; the low level of ``churning''; and the heterogeneity of jobs within establishments."

"We investigate the labor market effects of immigration in Denmark, Germany and the UK, three countries which are characterized by considerable differences in labor market institutions and welfare states. Institutions such as collective bargaining, minimum wages, employment protection and unemployment benefits affect the way in which wages respond to labor supply shocks, and, hence, the labor market effects of immigration. We employ a wage-setting approach which assumes that wages decline with the unemployment rate, albeit imperfectly. We find that wage flexibility is substantially higher in the UK compared to Germany and, in particular, Denmark. As a consequence, immigration has a much larger effect on the unemployment rate in Germany and Denmark, while the wage effects are larger in the UK. Moreover, the elasticity of substitution between natives and foreign workers is high in the UK and particularly low in Germany. Thus, the preexisting foreign labor force suffers more from further immigration in Germany than in the UK."

"Increases in standard hours have been a contentious policy issue in Germany. Whilst this might directly lead to a substitution of workers by hours, there may also be a positive employment effect due to reduced costs. Moreover, the response of firms differs between firms which offer overtime and those which do not. For a panel of German plants (2001-2006), we analyse the effect of increased standard hours on employment. Using difference-in-difference methods we find that, consistent with theory, overtime plants showed a significant positive employment response, whilst for standard-time plants there is no difference at all between plants which increased standard hours and those which did not."

"We investigate the impact of financial participation (profit-sharing and share ownership) on workers' total compensation. Some workers' representatives have argued against the introduction of profit-sharing because they fear that profit-sharing would be a way for firms to reduce the marginal cost of hiring workers, while at the same time transferring some of the risk of variable profits from firms to workers. We find that workers in plants which operate financial participation schemes earn significantly more: 25% in the case of profit-sharing and 18% in the case of share ownership. However, econometric models which deal with selection by plants and workers into profit-sharing schemes suggest that the effect on total compensation is much smaller: between 4% (from a difference-in-differences regression) and 2.5% (from a comparison of matched pairs). We find no evidence that high-skilled white-collar workers benefit more strongly from profit-sharing schemes."

"In many OECD countries, low productivity growth has coincided with rising inequality. Widening wage and productivity gaps between firms may have contributed to both developments. This paper uses a new harmonised cross-country linked employer-employee dataset for 14 OECD countries to analyse the role of firms in wage inequality. The main finding is that, on average across countries, changes in the dispersion of average wages between firms explain about half of the changes in overall wage inequality. Two thirds of these changes in between-firm wage inequality are accounted for by changes in productivity-related premia that firms pay their workers above common market wages. The remaining third can be attributed to changes in workforce composition, including the sorting of high-skilled workers into high-paying firms."

"Differences in average wages across firms – which account for around one-half of overall wage inequality – are mainly explained by differences in firm wage premia (the part of wages that depends exclusively on characteristics of firms) rather than workforce composition. Using a new cross-country dataset of linked employer-employee data, this paper investigates the role of cross-firm dispersion in productivity in explaining dispersion in firm wage premia, as well as the factors shaping the link between productivity and wages at the firm level. The results suggest that around 15% of cross-firm differences in productivity are passed on to differences in firm wage premia. The degree of pass-through is systematically larger in countries and industries with more limited job mobility, where low-productivity firms can afford to pay lower wage premia relative to high-productivity ones without a substantial fraction of workers quitting their jobs. Stronger product market competition raises pass-through while more centralised bargaining and higher minimum wages constrain firm-level wage setting at any given level of productivity dispersion. From a policy perspective, the results suggest that the key priority should be to promote job mobility, which would reduce wage differences between firms while easing the efficient reallocation of workers across them."