It is not clear whether interactions among superstar employees lead to an increase in productivity. Such interactions are relatively rare, and measuring productivity is challenging. In this paper, it ...is suggested that these difficulties can be overcome by analysing changes in the performance of elite National Basketball Association (NBA) players who participate in the Olympic Games. By using advanced individual performance measures, the study finds that these athletes experience an increase in performance of 7.1 percent in the season after the Games, compared with similar non‐Olympic athletes. The sharp discontinuity in peer quality experienced by the players is the most likely explanation for this increase.
This article explores the relationship between economic inactivity and religiosity. The aim of the analysis of qualitative data presented here is to examine whether, and how, religious beliefs impact ...on decisions British-Pakistani Muslim women make about economic activity.
Analysis of interview data reveals that none of the interviewees held the belief that economic activity was impermissible (haram) for women in Islam. However, some interviewees held religiously-informed beliefs that paid employment was undesirable, with marked differences in attitudes to economic activity by both age and migrant generation. Alongside this, interviewees described structural constraints to economic activity, for example, limited opportunities for well-paid, local, part-time work. Overall, religious beliefs emerge as significant in the lives of Muslim women because they allow them to make sense of, and find value in, their marginalised positions in relation to the labour market rather than as drivers of economic inactivity.
Government responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic have differed in scope and design, with important implications for the labour market as a whole but also for specific groups of workers. Using labour ...force survey data from seven middle‐ and high‐income countries, this article analyses transitions in the labour market in the first two quarters of 2020 and compares them with transitions in the previous year. The authors find that governments that favoured wage subsidies over other forms of income support were able to lessen labour market volatility, but that in all seven countries studied the COVID‐19 pandemic exacerbated labour market inequalities.
European unification represents major challenges to national institutional frameworks as well as significant pressures for institutional convergence. So far, labour markets have actually seen ...relatively little convergence, and national institutions have remained highly distinct. Against this background, the book provides an encompassing comparative analysis of school-to-work transitions in EU member states. It shows how differences in both European education and training systems, as well as labour market institutions, generated significant variation in the experiences of young people entering European labour markets during the 1990s. This book compiles an integrated series of comparative empirical analyses of education-to-work transitions across the EU by drawing on the European Labour Force Surveys. Individual chapters describe the educational background of young people entering the labour market, address the scope of educational expansion in recent decades, and chart basic structures of transition processes in European labour markets. Chapters not only examine the role of education for successful labour market integration, but also the impact of macroeconomic, structural, and institutional factors on young people's chances of avoiding unemployment and attaining employment in occupations appropriate to their education and training. From these analyses it becomes apparent that the structure of education and training systems is the key institutional factor behind successful youth labour market integration. At the level of intermediate skills, dual systems of training have retained their advantages in terms of reduced youth unemployment. High levels of education still constitute a key asset, for, despite significant educational expansion in recent decades, devaluation trends have been limited. As youth labour markets are found to be particularly responsive to macroeconomic conditions, however, macroeconomic stability turns out to be an equally important predicament to successful youth labour market integration, in particular among those with low levels of education. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience/0199252475/toc.html Contributors to this volume - Thomas Couppie, CEREQ Markus Gangl, Social Science Research Centre, Berlin Cristina Iannelli, University of Edinburgh Walter Muller, University of Mannheim Michele Mansuy, INSEE David Raffe, University of Edinburgh Asuncion Soro-Bonmati, University of Alicante Rolf van der Velden, Maastricht University Maarten Wolbers, Maastricht University
MATCHING WITH COUPLES Kojima, Fuhito; Pathak, Parag A.; Roth, Alvin E.
The Quarterly journal of economics,
11/2013, Volume:
128, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Accommodating couples has been a long-standing issue in the design of centralized labor market clearinghouses for doctors and psychologists, because couples view pairs of jobs as complements. A ...stable matching may not exist when couples are present. This article’s main result is that a stable matching exists when there are relatively few couples and preference lists are sufficiently short relative to market size. We also discuss incentives in markets with couples. We relate these theoretical results to the job market for psychologists, in which stable matchings exist for all years of the data, despite the presence of couples.
Individuals often enter similar jobs via two different routes: internal mobility and external hiring. I examine how the differences between these routes affect subsequent outcomes in those jobs. ...Drawing on theories of specific skills and incomplete information, I propose that external hires will initially perform worse than workers entering the job from inside the firm and have higher exit rates, yet they will be paid more and have stronger observable indicators of ability as measured by experience and education. I use the same theories to argue that the exact nature of internal mobility (promotions, lateral transfers, or combined promotions and transfers) will also affect workers' outcomes. Analyses of personnel data from the U.S. investment banking arm of a financial services company from 2003 to 2009 confirm strong effects on pay, performance, and mobility of how workers enter jobs. I find that workers promoted into jobs have significantly better performance for the first two years than workers hired into similar jobs and lower rates of voluntary and involuntary exit. Nonetheless, the external hires are initially paid around 18 percent more than the promoted workers and have higher levels of experience and education. The hires are also promoted faster. I further find that workers who are promoted and transferred at the same time have worse performance than other internal movers.
The paper looks at one of the most dynamically evolving migration processes in contemporary Europe - labour migrants in Poland. Poland, until very recently a typical emigration country started ...receiving large numbers of migrants only after 2014. This process, however, cannot be explained in supply terms only. In fact, it was also a strong structural demand for foreign workers that played at least an equally important role. This newly established migration system has been tested during the pandemic along with policy adjustments and economic changes. We claim that despite the very fact that the 'essential workers' rhetoric was almost absent in the Polish public discourse, foreign workers played a significant role in securing the continuous operation of many sectors of the economy. The paper shows that the role of migration in Poland has changed along with the transition from a net-sending to a net-receiving country, but still it worked as a safety valve during the pandemic. We argue it was possible because of liberal rules regarding international movement and work abroad. By focusing on the role of exogenous shocks and by considering the very specific migration system in Poland, this paper contributes to the growing literature on the labour market-immigration nexus.
Discrimination in a low-wage labor market Pager, Devah; Western, Bruce; Bonikowski, Bart
American sociological review,
10/2009, Volume:
74, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Decades of racial progress have led some researchers and policymakers to doubt that discrimination remains an important cause of economic inequality. To study contemporary discrimination, we ...conducted a field experiment in the low-wage labor market of New York City, recruiting white, black, and Latino job applicants who were matched on demographic characteristics and interpersonal skills. These applicants were given equivalent résumés and sent to apply in tandem for hundreds of entry-level jobs. Our results show that black applicants were half as likely as equally qualified whites to receive a callback or job offer. In fact, black and Latino applicants with clean backgrounds fared no better than white applicants just released from prison. Additional qualitative evidence from our applicants' experiences further illustrates the multiple points at which employment trajectories can be deflected by various forms of racial bias. These results point to the subtle yet systematic forms of discrimination that continue to shape employment opportunities for low-wage workers.
The health workforce is an essential component in building responsive and efficient health care systems. Yet despite its importance, it remains in many countries the weakest building block of the ...health system and a major constraint to achieving universal health coverage goals. Most countries face either absolute shortages (not enough health workers) or relative shortages (skills imbalances)—sometimes both. Countries also face maldistribution, inadequate training capacity and a weak knowledge base, negative work environments, weak human resources management systems, poor working conditions, and inadequate financial and non-financial incentives. There is growing consensus among researchers, practitioners, and the research community that many of these problems have labour market roots. This paper reviews the main economic issues around key health workforce challenges and discusses the contributions that economic analysis can make to health workforce policy-making. It adopts a labour market framework to address the service delivery challenges countries face due to health workforce bottlenecks, and discusses the importance and contribution of the health workforce to general employment and economic growth. The use of an explicit economic framework helps to define policy responses that go beyond scaling up health workers' training, highlighting the importance also of the roles of incentives, preferences, and market failures.
•Using gravity models and 2001-2021 data, we study nurse migration drivers and the influence of health and economic shocks.•Health-related shocks in origin countries lead to a decline in nurse ...migration flows.•While economic crises in origin countries push more nurse migration, recessions at destination reduce the number of arrivals.•When health shocks are preceded by recessions origin countries struggle to cope with the increase in healthcare demand.•The study shows substantial heterogeneity across geographical regions in terms of the drivers of nurse migration.•Nurses are generally attracted to the OECD destinations by the better institutional and labour market conditions.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the global shortage of nurses and doctors, highlighting the need for countries to aim for greater self-sufficiency in their health workforce rather than relying on foreign recruitment to meet excess demand. By using gravity models and taking advantage of rich data over the period 2001–2021, we examine the determinants of qualified nurse migration to OECD countries and investigate how macroeconomic imbalances impact nursing labour markets across time and place. We find evidence that economic recession in origin countries can lead to an increased loss of medical personnel, which could worsen the nurse deficit there. Source countries are particularly vulnerable to a nurse deficit if a recession is followed by a health shock that increases the demand for healthcare. However, a health shock temporarily reduces the number of nurses leaving and hence decreases the number of incoming nurses in destination countries. Recessions in destination countries reduce the number of arriving nurses there. Our study also captures the role of place in nurse migration by investigating heterogeneity in nurse migration across the main geographic source regions worldwide.
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