{"title":"Do Thai Women Earn Less than Men in Thailand?","authors":"Theepakorn Jithitikulchai","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2984737","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2984737","url":null,"abstract":"Using the Labor Force Surveys, this paper examines trends and heterogeneity in hourly earnings on gender pay gaps among wage workers in Thailand, as well as decomposition for gender wage gap. The decomposition explains impacts on the declined gender wage gap from heterogeneity in characteristics of wage workers and from unequal wage structures. It also examines counterfactual decompositions to investigate the impact of factors including gender characteristic on the distributional changes in wage. The analytical results provide a number of policy implications. Good access to quality education and job-related trainings along with effective reforms of the institutional framework are important to eliminate gender discrimination in wages.","PeriodicalId":177971,"journal":{"name":"Economic Perspectives on Employment & Labor Law eJournal","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116069590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Information Technology and Learning On-the-Job","authors":"James Bessen","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2867134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2867134","url":null,"abstract":"Economists disagree how much technology raises demand for workers with pre-existing skills. But technology might affect wages another way: through skills learned on the job. Using instrumental variables on 9 panels of workers from 1989 to 2013, this paper estimates that workers who use information technology (IT) have wage growth that is about 2% greater than non-IT workers, all else equal, implying substantial learning. This effect persists over time, implying sustained productivity growth from IT. Also, it benefits workers both with and without college degrees. Because many more college-educated workers use IT, college wages grow faster, contributing to economic inequality.","PeriodicalId":177971,"journal":{"name":"Economic Perspectives on Employment & Labor Law eJournal","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125783339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Computer Automation Affects Occupations: Technology, Jobs, and Skills","authors":"James Bessen","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2690435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2690435","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates basic relationships between technology and occupations. Building a general occupational model, I look at detailed occupations since 1980 to explore whether computers are related to job losses or other sources of wage inequality. Occupations that use computers grow faster, not slower. This is true even for highly routine and mid-wage occupations. Estimates reject computers as a source of significant net technological unemployment or job polarization. But computerized occupations substitute for other occupations, shifting employment and requiring new skills. Because new skills are costly to learn, computer use is associated with substantially greater within-occupation wage inequality.","PeriodicalId":177971,"journal":{"name":"Economic Perspectives on Employment & Labor Law eJournal","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132692621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
D. Neumark, I. Burn, Patrick Button, Nanneh Chehras
{"title":"Do State Laws Protecting Older Workers from Discrimination Laws Reduce Age Discrimination in Hiring? Experimental (and Nonexperimental) Evidence","authors":"D. Neumark, I. Burn, Patrick Button, Nanneh Chehras","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2900439","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2900439","url":null,"abstract":"We provide evidence from a field experiment — a correspondence study — on age discrimination in hiring for retail sales jobs. We collect experimental data in all 50 states and then relate measured age discrimination — the difference in callback rates between old and young applicants — to variation across states in antidiscrimination laws offering protections to older workers that are stronger than the federal age and disability discrimination laws. We do a similar analysis for nonexperimental data on differences across states in hiring rates of older versus younger workers. The experimental evidence points consistently to evidence of hiring discrimination against older men and, more so, against older women. However, the evidence on the relationship between hiring discrimination against older workers and state variation in age and disability discrimination laws is not so clear; at a minimum, there is not a compelling case that stronger state protections reduce hiring discrimination against older workers. In contrast, the non-experimental evidence suggests that stronger disability discrimination protections increase the relative hiring of older workers.","PeriodicalId":177971,"journal":{"name":"Economic Perspectives on Employment & Labor Law eJournal","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125720897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Economics of Workplace Drug Testing","authors":"J. Kidd","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2852549","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2852549","url":null,"abstract":"Workplace drug testing is routinely criticized as irrational, unproductive, and even motivated by nefarious intent. This article analyzes the costs and benefits of workplace drug testing within the context of a complex business environment. Even in a drug-policy vacuum, workplace drug testing is shown to be rational under certain circumstances. The rationality of a drug-testing regime strengthens during a societal War on Drugs and weakens slightly as society transitions into a drug-enforcement regime that experiences legalization at the state level and enforcement at the national level. Throughout, however, the optimum level of workplace drug testing is likely never zero.","PeriodicalId":177971,"journal":{"name":"Economic Perspectives on Employment & Labor Law eJournal","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125613076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Firing Costs and Capital Structure Decisions","authors":"Matthew Serfling","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2396599","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2396599","url":null,"abstract":"I exploit the adoption of state-level labor protection laws as an exogenous increase in employee firing costs to examine how the costs associated with discharging workers affect capital structure decisions. I find that firms reduce debt ratios following the adoption of these laws, with this result stronger for firms that experience larger increases in firing costs. I also document that, following the adoption of these laws, a firm's degree of operating leverage rises, earnings variability increases, and employment becomes more rigid. Overall, these results are consistent with higher firing costs crowding out financial leverage via increasing financial distress costs.","PeriodicalId":177971,"journal":{"name":"Economic Perspectives on Employment & Labor Law eJournal","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114532748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Labor-Force Participation, Policies & Practices in an Aging America: Adaptation Essential for a Healthy and Resilient Population","authors":"L. Berkman, A. Börsch-Supan, M. Avendano","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2663312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2663312","url":null,"abstract":"Population aging in the United States poses challenges to societal institutions while simultaneously creating opportunities to build a more resilient, successful, and cohesive society. Work organization and labor-force participation are central to both the opportunities and challenges posed by our aging society. We argue that expectations about old age have not sufficiently adapted to the reality of aging today. Our institutions need more adaptation in order to successfully face the consequences of demographic change. Although this adaptation needs to focus especially on work patterns among the “younger elderly,” our society has to change its general attitudes toward work organization and labor-force participation, which will have implications for education and health care. We also show that work’s beneficial effects on well-being in older ages are often neglected, while the idea that older workers displace younger workers is a misconception emerging from the “lump of labor” fallacy. We conclude, therefore, that working at older ages can lead to better quality of life for older people and to a more productive and resilient society overall.","PeriodicalId":177971,"journal":{"name":"Economic Perspectives on Employment & Labor Law eJournal","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128538840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can Welfare Abuse Be Welfare Improving?","authors":"K. Mazur","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2626088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2626088","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I analyze quantitatively a model of labor search with unemployment insurance (UI), savings, voluntary quits and various labor attachment requirements. In particular, I study welfare consequences of a powerful reform giving UI entitlement to workers quitting their jobs voluntarily in order to search for another one. Results of the model calibrated to the US labor market show that there are significant welfare gains associated with pursuing a generous entitlement policy for quitters as compared to the US status-quo. Moreover, I employ the assumption of monetary search costs and show that it can explain the empirically documented unemployed worker search behavior. Finally, by inducing different unemployment benefit eligibility requirements, the model identifies a concrete policy that could help us understand differences in the unemployment rate, match quality and income inequality between the US and Europe.","PeriodicalId":177971,"journal":{"name":"Economic Perspectives on Employment & Labor Law eJournal","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133617791","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Equal Pay by Gender and by Nationality. A Comparative Analysis of Switzerland's Unequal Equal Pay Policy Regimes Across Time","authors":"R. Erne, Natalie Imboden","doi":"10.1093/CJE/BEV003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CJE/BEV003","url":null,"abstract":"What explains the adoption of two different policies on equal pay by gender (EPG) and by nationality (EPN) in Switzerland? And why is the liberal, litigation-based, equal pay policy regime set up by the Gender Equality Act of 1996 much less effective than the neocorporatist ‘accompanying measures’ to the Bilateral European Union–Switzerland Agreement on Free Movement of Persons adopted in 1999 to ensure equal pay for workers of different national origins? The formation of two different policy regimes cannot be explained by different levels of political will. Equally, different ‘varieties of capitalism’ cannot explain the setup of the two different equal pay policy regimes within the very same country. Instead, our qualitative comparative analysis across time suggests that the differences can be best explained by a particular constellation of attributes, namely the use of different policy frames—i.e. ‘anti-discrimination’ in the EPG and ‘unfair competition’ in the EPN case—and the different setting of interest politics epitomised by the opposite stances adopted by Switzerland’s employer associations in the two cases.","PeriodicalId":177971,"journal":{"name":"Economic Perspectives on Employment & Labor Law eJournal","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116289687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Amicus Brief of Labor Relations and Research Center, U. Mass., Amherst in Browning-Ferris, NLRB RC-109684","authors":"H. Freeman, George Gonos","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2474143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2474143","url":null,"abstract":"Amicus brief submitted by the Labor Relations and Research Center, University of Massachusetts to the National Labor Relations Board in the representation case of Brown-Ferris Industries, Leadpoint Business Services and Local 350, Teamsters, RC-109684. The brief provides a socio-legal argument for the joint-employer status of the temporary staffing agency and its user clients under federal labor law and the duty of both employers to bargain with joint-employed temp workers who seek union representation and a collective bargaining agreement.","PeriodicalId":177971,"journal":{"name":"Economic Perspectives on Employment & Labor Law eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123865991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}