Documents Kahn, Lawrence M. 11 results

"In this paper, we investigate the effects of the boom in education on the wage structure in Europe. We use detailed information on the distribution of wages, estimated from microdata from 12 European countries from the beginning of the 1980's to the present, to analyse the changes both between and within groups. We specify and estimate a model with supply and demand for different types of labour, as well as institutions affecting the bargained relative wage. Our results show that the boom in education closely matched the shifts in demand due to (skill biased) technological change, which in turn explains why the wage premia for education only rose moderately. We use the conditional wage spread within tertiary education, predicted from quantile log wage regressions, to investigate the hypothesis of skills erosion as a result of the large expansion in tertiary education. We find no evidence in favour of the hypothesis that the boom in higher education lead to an erosion of skills within the group of tertiary education, nor evidence of increasing “over-education” in Europe. Labour market institutions also matter: bargaining co-ordination and employment protection are shown to have a compressing effect on wages, but at different points of the wage distribution. "

"Using Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data for 21 countries, I study the impact of employment protection laws (EPL) on job content. Economic theories predict that stricter protection increases workers' willingness to make firm-specific investments. These theories also predict that stricter protection leads firms to raise their hiring and promotion standards for permanent jobs. Both of these mechanisms predict higher levels of job content in permanent than in temporary jobs; further, it is predicted that stricter EPL increases the gap in job content between permanent and temporary jobs due both to workers' investments and firm hiring standards. I found support for both sets of predictions. First, in almost all cases, workers' self-reported use of influence, reading, writing, planning, numeracy and ict skills, and their task discretion, were higher in permanent than in temporary jobs. Second, stricter EPL raised the gap in job content for influence, reading, writing and planning skills used in permanent jobs vs. temporary jobs, controlling for industry, occupation and human capital. This finding suggests that workers are making firm-specific (or perhaps occupation- or industry- specific) investments that raise their productivity levels and thus warrant higher level job content. These effects became larger when I did not control for industry, occupation, government employment, and human capital variables including schooling, actual labor market experience, cognitive test scores and nativity status. The larger effects of EPL without these controls provide some indirect support for the idea that EPL leads firms to raise their hiring standards."

"Using PSID microdata over the 1980-2010, we provide new empirical evidence on the extent of and trends in the gender wage gap, which declined considerably over this period. By 2010, conventional human capital variables taken together explained little of the gender wage gap, while gender differences in occupation and industry continued to be important. Moreover, the gender pay gap declined much more slowly at the top of the wage distribution that at the middle or the bottom and by 2010 was noticeably higher at the top. We then survey the literature to identify what has been learned about the explanations for the gap. We conclude that many of the traditional explanations continue to have salience. Although human capital factors are now relatively unimportant in the aggregate, women's work force interruptions and shorter hours remain significant in high skilled occupations, possibly due to compensating differentials. Gender differences in occupations and industries, as well as differences in gender roles and the gender division of labor remain important, and research based on experimental evidence strongly suggests that discrimination cannot be discounted. Psychological attributes or noncognitive skills comprise one of the newer explanations for gender differences in outcomes. Our effort to assess the quantitative evidence on the importance of these factors suggests that they account for a small to moderate portion of the gender pay gap, considerably smaller than say occupation and industry effects, though they appear to modestly contribute to these differences."

"Using longitudinal data on individuals from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for thirteen countries during 1995-2001, I investigate the wage premium for permanent jobs relative to temporary jobs. The countries are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. I find that among men the wage premium for a permanent vs. temporary job is lower for older workers and native born workers; for women, the permanent job wage premium is lower for older workers and those with longer job tenure. Moreover, there is some evidence that among immigrant men, the permanent job premium is especially high for those who migrated from outside the European Union. These findings all suggest that the gain to promotion into permanent jobs is indeed higher for those with less experience in the domestic labor market. In contrast to the effects for the young and immigrants, the permanent job pay premium is slightly smaller on average for women than for men, even though on average women have less experience in the labor market than men do. It is possible that women even in permanent jobs are in segregated labor markets. But as noted, among women, the permanent job wage premium is higher for the young and those with less current tenure, suggesting that even in the female labor market, employers pay attention to experience differences."

"Using Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data, we study the slowdown in the convergence of female and male wages in the 1990s compared to the 1980s. We find that changes in human capital did not contribute to the slowdown, since women's relative human capital improved comparably in the two decades. Occupational upgrading and deunionization had a larger positive effect on women's relative wages in the 1980s, explaining a portion of the slower 1990s convergence. However, the largest factor was that the “unexplained” gender wage gap fell much faster in the 1980s than the 1990s. Our evidence suggests that changes in labor force selectivity, changes in gender differences in unmeasured characteristics and in labor market discrimination, as well as changes in the favorableness of demand shifts each may have contributed to the slowing convergence of the unexplained gender pay gap."

"Using longitudinal data on individuals from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for eleven countries during 1995–2001, I investigate temporary job contract duration and job search effort. The countries are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. I construct a search model for workers in temporary jobs which predicts that shorter duration raises search intensity. Calibration of the model to the ECHP data implies that at least 75% of the increase in search intensity over the life of a 2+ year temporary contract occurs in the last six months of the contract. I then estimate regression models for search effort that control for human capital, pay, local unemployment, and individual and time fixed effects. I find that workers on temporary jobs indeed search harder than those on permanent jobs. Moreover, search intensity increases as temporary job duration falls, and roughly 84% of this increase occurs on average in the shortest duration jobs. These results are robust to disaggregation by gender and by country. These empirical results are noteworthy, since it is not necessary to assume myopia or hyperbolic discounting in order to explain them, although the data clearly also do not rule out such explanations."

"This paper uses longitudinal data on individuals from the European Community Household Panel over the 1996–2001 period to investigate the impact of reforms of employment protection systems in nine countries on the incidence of employment and of temporary jobs for wage and salary workers. Important features of the research design include the use of individual fixed effects models as well as the inclusion of country-specific trends in the dependent variable. A robust finding is that policies making it easier to create temporary jobs on average raise the likelihood that wage and salary workers will be in temporary jobs. This effect is felt primarily when the regional unemployment rate is relatively high. However, there is no evidence that such reforms raise employment. Thus, these reforms, while touted as a way of jump-starting individuals' careers in the job market, appear rather to encourage a substitution of temporary for permanent work."

"I review theories and evidence on wage-setting institutions and labor market policies in an international comparative context. These include collective bargaining, minimum wages, employment protection laws, unemployment insurance (UI), mandated parental leave, and active labor market policies (ALMPs). Since it is unlikely that an unregulated private sector would provide the income insurance these institutions do, these policies may enhance economic efficiency. However, to the extent that unemployment or resource misallocation results from such measures, these efficiency gains may be offset. Overall, Scandinavia and Central Europe follow distinctively more interventionist policies than the English speaking countries in the Northern Hemisphere. Possible explanations for such differences include vulnerability to external market forces and ethnic homogeneity. I then review evidence on the impacts of these policies and institutions. While the interventionist model appears to cause lower levels of wage inequality and high levels of job security to incumbent workers, it also in some cases leads to the relegation of new entrants (disproportionately women, youth and immigrants) as well as the less skilled to temporary jobs or unemployment. Making labor markets more flexible could bring these groups into the regular labor market to a greater extent, at the expense of higher levels of economic insecurity for incumbents and higher levels of wage inequality. The Danish model of loosening employment protections while providing relatively generous UI benefits with strict job search requirements holds out the possibility of reducing barriers for new entrants and the less skilled while maintaining some level of income insurance. "

"Using longitudinal data on individuals from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for eight countries during 1995-2001, I investigate temporary job contract duration and job search effort. The countries are Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. I construct a search model for workers in temporary jobs which predicts that shorter duration raises search intensity. Calibration of the model to the ECHP data implies that at least 59% of the increase in search intensity over the life a long term temporary job occurs in the last period. I then estimate regression models for search effort that control for human capital, pay, local unemployment, gender, and time and country fixed effects, I find that workers on temporary jobs indeed search harder than those on permanent jobs. Moreover, search intensity increases as temporary job duration falls, and at least 80% of this increase occurs on average in the shortest duration jobs. These results are robust to disaggregation by gender and country and to individual fixed effects. These empirical results are noteworthy, since it is not necessary to assume myopia or hyperbolic discounting in order to explain them, although the data clearly also do not rule out such explanations."

"Using European Community Household Panel data for nine countries for 1996-2001, I investigate the impact of reforms of employment protection systems on employment and on temporary jobs for wage and salary workers. Individual fixed effects models are estimated, with the inclusion of country-specific trends in the dependent variable, addressing the possibly changing labor force composition and the possible endogeneity of the reforms. A basic finding that is robust to all specifications and to the disaggregation of the sample by country is that policies making it easier to create temporary jobs raise the likelihood that wage and salary workers will be in temporary jobs. However, there is no evidence that such reforms raise employment, and in some countries, they appear to lower employment. Thus, these reforms appear rather to encourage a substitution of temporary for permanent work. Reforms of permanent employment protection mandates have small and insignificant effects on employment and temporary jobs on average. Moreover, when I disaggregate by country, such reforms appear more often to lower overall employment and to lower the share of employment in permanent jobs. These are likely to reflect short run impacts of such reforms, which make it easier for firms to discharge substandard workers."