•Employment effects depend on former land-use, the crop cultivated, and the production model.•Direct job creation is limited and many projects massively crowd out smallholders.•Crowding out occurs in ...all regions but with considerable regional differences.•Large losses on the local scale but small in relation to total employment in agriculture.•Indirect employment effects become visible mostly in the medium- and long-term.
Large-scale agricultural investments (LSAIs) in general and their socio-economic implications in particular have been heavily debated in recent years. While some claim that LSAIs are an important catalyst for development in neglected rural areas, others caution that they pose a risk to rural communities’ livelihoods. The extent to which LSAIs provide benefits for local communities is hence still contested. This paper sets out to conceptually understand what effects the establishment of a large-scale farm has on the rural labor market in low- and middle-income countries. In addition, we empirically address the question of whether large-scale farming as recorded in the Land Matrix creates or destroys employment. We develop a transition matrix to identify several scenarios based on key determinants of the direct employment creation potential of LSAIs, namely the former land use, the crop type and the production model. We empirically assess the actual importance of these scenarios and the employment creation to be expected from this sample of LSAIs based on labor intensities. We further look into the net employment effects for land formerly used by smallholder farmers. Our analysis shows that LSAIs massively crowd out smallholder farmers, which is only partially mitigated through the cultivation of labor intensive crops and the application of contract farming schemes. This holds true for all regions targeted by LSAIs, although regional differences are found in terms of magnitude. The paper concludes that these effects tend to be large on the local scale (i.e., in the immediate surroundings of the investment site) but small in relation to total national employment in agriculture. However, indirect employment creation related to LSAIs, which is discussed but not empirically addressed in this paper, needs to be taken into account to have the full picture.
Spatial wage disparities can result from spatial differences in the skill composition of the workforce, in non-human endowments, and in local interactions. To distinguish between these explanations, ...we estimate a model of wage determination across local labour markets using a very large panel of French workers. We control for worker characteristics, worker fixed effects, industry fixed effects, and the characteristics of the local labour market. Our findings suggest that individual skills account for a large fraction of existing spatial wage disparities with strong evidence of spatial sorting by skills. Interaction effects are mostly driven by the local density of employment. Not controlling for worker heterogeneity leads to very biased estimates of interaction effects. Endowments only appear to play a small role.
We investigate the effect of studying abroad on international labour market mobility later in life for university graduates. We exploit the introduction and expansion of the European ERASMUS student ...exchange programme as an instrument for studying abroad. We find that studying abroad increases an individual's probability of working in a foreign country by about 15 percentage points. We investigate heterogeneity in returns according to parental education and the student's financial situation. Furthermore, we suggest mechanisms through which the effect of studying abroad may operate.
Managers of China's state-owned firms work in a closed pyramidal managerial labor market. They enjoy non-transferable benefits if they choose to stay within this system. The higher up are they in ...this labor market hierarchy (their political ranks), the fewer are their outside employment opportunities. Due to career and wealth concerns, they are cautious and risk-averse when managing firms. We examine the effect of managers' political ranks on firms' stock price crash risk and find a negative association. This association mainly exists in firms with younger managers and managers with shorter tenure. Further, this effect is only significant in regions with weak market forces, in firms without foreign investors, without political connections, and during periods with no local government leaders' or managers' political promotions. We conclude that the political ranking system reduces the stock price crash risk.
China's remarkable economic transition and capacity for dynamic growth has stunned the world. Throughout the period of economic reform, China has been moving towards the creation of a labour market. ...The scale of this transformation is unprecedented. New economic incentives, vast labour migration, draconian retrenchment of state workers, and sharply rising wage inequality are all characteristic of this unique transition. Drawing on more than a decade of survey-based research, the authors systematically document and analyse this important transformation. They use economic and sociological theory, institutional analysis and political economy to fully explain the causes, pressures, obstacles and consequences of the move towards a labour market in China. It is argued that much progress has been made towards the creation of a labour market but that the process is far from complete. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/economicsfinance//toc.html
Understanding whether labor market discrimination explains inferior labor market outcomes for many groups has drawn the attention of labor economists for decades—at least since the publication of ...Gary Becker’s The Economics of Discrimination in 1957. The decades of research on discrimination in labor markets began with a regression-based “decomposition” approach, asking whether raw wage or earnings differences between groups—which might constitute prima facie evidence of discrimination—were in fact attributable to other productivity-related factors. Subsequent research—responding in large part to limitations of the regression-based approach—moved on to other approaches, such as using firm-level data to estimate both marginal productivity and wage differentials. In recent years, however, there has been substantial growth in experimental research on labor market discrimination—although the earliest experiments were done decades ago. Some experimental research on labor market discrimination takes place in the lab. But far more of it is done in the field, which makes this particular area of experimental research unique relative to the explosion of experimental economic research more generally. This paper surveys the full range of experimental literature on labor market discrimination, places it in the context of the broader research literature on labor market discrimination, discusses the experimental literature from many different perspectives (empirical, theoretical, and policy), and reviews both what this literature has taught us thus far, and what remains to be done.
I examine the role of geography in the market for CEOs and find that firms hire locally five times more often than expected if geography were irrelevant to the matching process. This local matching ...bias is widespread and exists even among the largest U.S. firms. Tests reveal that both labor supply and demand influence local matching. Compensation and unforced turnover are lower for local than for nonlocal CEOs, and the compensation of local CEOs depends on local labor market factors, unlike that of nonlocal CEOs. These findings suggest the presence of market segmentation and contrast with much of the prior literature, which explicitly or implicitly assumes a single national market.
This paper was accepted by Lauren Cohen, finance
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In this essay, I begin by identifying the reasons that automation has not wiped out a majority of jobs over the decades and centuries. Automation does indeed substitute for labor--as it is typically ...intended to do. However, automation also complements labor, raises output in ways that leads to higher demand for labor, and interacts with adjustments in labor supply. Journalists and even expert commentators tend to overstate the extent of machine substitution for human labor and ignore the strong complementarities between automation and labor that increase productivity, raise earnings, and augment demand for labor. Changes in technology do alter the types of jobs available and what those jobs pay. In the last few decades, one noticeable change has been a "polarization" of the labor market, in which wage gains went disproportionately to those at the top and at the bottom of the income and skill distribution, not to those in the middle; however, I also argue, this polarization and is unlikely to continue very far into future. The final section of this paper reflects on how recent and future advances in artificial intelligence and robotics should shape our thinking about the likely trajectory of occupational change and employment growth. I argue that the interplay between machine and human comparative advantage allows computers to substitute for workers in performing routine, codifiable tasks while amplifying the comparative advantage of workers in supplying problem-solving skills, adaptability, and creativity.
Farmers throughout the United States report a shortage of workers. At the same time, there are proposals to strengthen the enforcement of existing immigration laws. In this paper, we develop an ...equilibrium approach to examine the impact of removing undocumented workers from the California agricultural labor market, and to infer whether there is evidence of shortages using individual-worker data. We find evidence that is consistent with a persistent shortage in some sub-sectors of the California farm labor market. Further, we conduct counter-factual policy simulations over a range of possible policy alternatives, and find that removing 50% all undocumented farm workers from the state would lead to an increase in wages of over 22%.
The first part of the report presents stylized facts of youth and labor markets in Africa. The second part discusses past youth employment interventions in the region. It argues for the need of an ...integrated approach should governments want to tackle youth employment issues in a sustainable manner. Indeed, in African countries, with large informal sectors and dominance of rural population, solely reforming labor market institutions and implementing active labor market policies are likely to have limited impact. It argues that the most needed and well-rounded approaches are: expanding job and education alternatives in the rural areas, where most youth live; promoting and encouraging mobility; creating a conducive business environment; encouraging the private sector; improving the access and quality of skills formation; taking care of demographic issues that more directly affects the youth; and reducing child labor.
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