Documents Lewandowski, Piotr 18 results

"The shift away from manual and routine cognitive work, and towards non-routine cognitive work is a key feature of labor markets. There is no evidence, however, if the relative importance of various tasks differs between workers performing seemingly similar jobs in different countries. We develop worker-level, survey-based measures of task content of jobs - non-routine cognitive analytical and personal, routine cognitive and manual - that are consistent with widely-used occupation-specific measures based on O*NET database. We apply them to representative surveys conducted in 42 countries at different stages of development. We find substantial cross-country differences in the content of work within occupations. Routine task intensity (RTI) of jobs decreases significantly with GDP per capita for high-skill occupations but not for middle- and low-skill occupations. We estimate the determinants of workers' RTI as a function of technology (computer use), globalization (specialization in global value chains), structural change, and supply of skills, and decompose their role in accounting for the variation in RTI across countries. Computer use, better education, and higher literacy skills are related to lower RTI. Globalization (as measured by sector foreign value-added share) increases RTI in poorer countries but reduces RTI in richer countries. Differences in technology endowments and in skills' supply matter most for cross-country differences in RTI, with globalization also important. Technology contributes the most to the differences in RTI among workers in high-skilled occupations and non-offshorable occupations; globalization contributes the most to differences among workers in low-skilled occupations and offshorable occupations."

"This paper develops a task-adjusted, country-specific measure of workers' exposure to Artificial Intelligence (AI) across 108 countries. Building on Felten et al. (2021), we adapt the Artificial Intelligence Occupational Exposure (AIOE) index to worker-level PIAAC data and extend it globally using comparable surveys and regression-based predictions, covering about 89% of global employment. Accounting for country-specific task structures reveals substantial cross-country heterogeneity: workers in low-income countries exhibit AI exposure levels roughly 0.8 U.S. standard deviations below those in high-income countries, largely due to differences in within-occupation task content. Regression decompositions attribute most cross-country variation to ICT intensity and human capital. High-income countries employ the majority of workers in highly AI-exposed occupations, while low-income countries concentrate in less exposed ones. Using two PIAAC cycles, we document rising AI exposure in high-income countries, driven by shifts in within-occupation tasks rather than employment structure."

"Minimum wages continue to be at the centre of the policy debates in both developed and emerging economies. Such policies can only be effective if (1) the existing regulatory system does not have gaps that allow for the payment of wages below the minimum wage, and (2) the existing minimum wage laws are not violated (too often). In this paper we analyse minimum wage violations in 10 Central and Eastern European countries that have joined the EU since 2004, and that have statutory national minimum wages. Utilising EU-SILC data, we use the methodology proposed by Bhorat et al. (2013) to analyse both the incidence of minimum wage violations, as well as the monetary depth of these violations. We find that on average in 2003-2012, the estimated incidence of violations ranged from 1.0% in Bulgaria, to 1.3% in the Czech Republic, around 3% in Romania and Slovenia, 4.7% in Poland and Hungary, 5.6% in Latvia, and 6.9% in Lithuania. The average pay shortfall ranged from 13.7% of the country-year specific minimum wage in Estonia, to 41.7% in Slovenia. In all of these countries, workers who were female, less-educated, in the service or agricultural sector, in a micro firm, or with a temporary contract were more likely than other categories of workers to earn less than the minimum wage they were entitled to. While higher minimum to median wage ratios were associated with higher levels of non-compliance, this effect was present within countries over time, but not between them."

"In this paper we utilize an open economy DSGE model to analyse factors behind the Great Recession and its transmission into labour markets of selected Southern European countries. We introduce a number of shocks which form potential sources of macroeconomic disturbances, in particular: foreign demand, productivity, bargaining power, labour demand, labour supply, government spending, and job destruction shocks. Using quarterly data for the 1995-2013 period, we estimate the model for Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. We identify shocks determining macroeconomic and labour market fluctuations in each of the countries studied. We also conduct experiments allowing us to assess to what extent differences between countries with regard to macroeconomic and labour market fluctuations resulted from different shocks affecting them, and to what extent from different resilience of particular economies."

"Between 2002 and 2015, temporary employment in Poland more than doubled. Poland became the country with the highest share of temporary jobs in the EU. In this paper, we study how this process affected job quality and job quantity. We analyse the gaps between temporary and permanent workers in six dimensions of jobs quality, adopting measures proposed by the OECD and Eurofound. Of these gaps, the differences in earnings quality, job security, and work scheduling quality were the most pronounced. Job quality has improved for both groups of workers, but the gaps have not closed completely. Firms in Poland prefer to employ temporary rather than permanent workers because of the lower firing costs, tax wedges, and wages associated with temporary contracts. We use a stylised labour demand model to quantify the upper bound of a potential job creation effect due to lower labour costs incurred through the use of temporary contracts. We find that this effect did not exceed 4% of dependent employment in 2015. We cannot rule out the possibility that the net employment effect was zero. Our findings show that even if the availability of less-costly temporary contracts caused some additional jobs to be created, temporary workers suffered from lower job quality in several dimensions."

"In this article, we study the shift from manual to cognitive work in 10 Central and Eastern European economies. While highlighting the growth in the non-routine cognitive component of jobs, we pay particular attention to the increase in routine cognitive tasks, a trend distinguishing Central and Eastern European economies from the most advanced economies. We find that in all countries routine cognitive tasks were most common in the middle of wage distribution, but increasingly rare among the top earners. We identify two groups of workers whose jobs depend most on performing routine cognitive tasks: medium-skilled men in the manufacturing sectors and medium-skilled women in the service sectors, who jointly represent 33 per cent of Central and Eastern European workers. Should technological progress reduce demand for routine work in Central and Eastern Europe, a large proportion of workers would be affected and wage inequality would rise. We conclude with the policy implications of our findings. "

"This paper analyses the age dimension of changes in the task composition of jobs in 12 European countries between 1998 and 2014. We use the approach proposed by Autor et al. (2003) and Acemoglu & Autor (2011), and combine O*NET occupation content data with EU-LFS individual data to construct five task content measures: non-routine cognitive analytical, non-routine cognitive interpersonal, routine cognitive, routine manual, and nonroutine manual physical. We estimate occupation-level and worker-level regressions and find that the shift away from routine work and toward non-routine work occurred much faster among workers born between 1970 and 1989 than among workers born between 1950 and 1969. In the majority of countries, the ageing of the workforce occurred more quickly in occupations that were initially more routine-intensive, as the share of young workers in these occupations was declining. Individuals in these occupations were increasingly likely to be unemployed, especially if they were between the ages of 15 and 34."

"This Policy Department A study prepared at request of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee examines precarious employment, its patterns, trends and policy strategies in Europe. It explores the risk of precariousness of different types of contract, using information from EU data analysis and literature review, as well as case studies It finds that there are a range and degrees of risks of precariousness associated with all types of contract, based on key indicators of precariousness. A second note presents country case studies of eight EU Member States."