This study presents robust evidence on the relationship between teacher pay and turnover using detailed panel data from Texas. While controlling for changes in district and local labor market ...characteristics, I estimate an overall turnover elasticity of −1.4 and show that the effect is largest for inexperienced teachers, declines with experience, and disappears around 19years of experience. Combining these results with what we know about the relationship between teacher value-added and experience, I show that paying teachers more improves student achievement through higher retention rates. The results also suggest that adopting a flat salary schedule may be a cheap way to improve student performance. I find no evidence that pay effects vary by the teacher's gender or subject taught.
•Increasing teacher pay reduces teacher turnover, primarily among less experienced.•Estimators robust to arbitrary changes in district and labor market characteristics.•Increasing teacher pay reduces turnover, which improves student achievement.
Abstract This research considers the role that participating in conscript service has for individuals with a migrant background in overcoming barriers to labour market integration. According to ...previous studies, these barriers include discrimination, previous qualifications not being recognised and a lack of language skills, networks and information. The study is based on 24 interviews conducted with individuals with a migrant background who have performed conscript service in Finland. The research takes place in the context of conscription and mandatory conscript service among male citizens. The findings indicate that conscript service may have some direct and indirect beneficial outcomes for labour market integration. Direct labour market outcomes are particularly related to qualifications acquired during service, which can be directly applied in the civilian labour market. Indirect outcomes are associated with acculturation, such as learning the language and becoming familiar with the host society’s culture and norms. Performing conscript service also facilitates the establishment of social networks, especially with native-born youngsters. Furthermore, conscript service is perceived to have the potential to elevate conscripts’ status in the eyes of potential Finnish employers. As a result, completing conscript service enhances location-specific human capital, and therefore, it can potentially improve labour market integration outcomes.
The relevance of spatial effects in the wage curve can be rationalized by the model of monopsonistic competition in regional labour markets. However, distortions in extracting the regional ...unemployment effects arise for administrative boundaries at the district level as they fail to adequately capture spatial processes. In addition, the nonstationarity of wages and unemployment is often ignored. Both issues are particularly important in high unemployment regimes like East Germany where a wage curve is difficult to establish. In this paper, labour market regions defined by economic criteria are used to examine the existence of an East German wage curve. Due to the nonstationarity of spatial data, a global panel cointegration approach is adopted. By specifying a spatial error correction model (SpECM), equilibrium adjustments are investigated in time and space. The analysis gives evidence on a locally but not a spatially cointegrated wage curve for East Germany.
•Spatial cointegration framework to study wage curve in East Germany.•Wage curve hypothesis valid for labour market areas, not for administrative districts.•Wage curve elasticity is higher if regional unemployment spillovers are considered.•Error-correction works within labour market regions, but not between the regions.•Findings call for a re-direction of public transfers in East Germany.
This article presents empirical evidence from household and firm survey data collected during 2009−2010 on the implementation of the 2008 Labor Contract Law and effects on China’s workers. The ...Government and local labor bureaus have made substantial efforts to enforce the provisions of the new Law, which has likely contributed to reversing a trend toward increasing informalization of the urban labor market. Enforcement of the Law, however, varies substantially across cities. The article analyzes the determinants of worker satisfaction with the Law’s enforcement, workers’ propensity to have a labor contract, their awareness of the Law’s content and their likelihood of initiating disputes, and finds that all are highly correlated with education level, especially for migrants. Although higher labor costs may have had a negative impact on manufacturing employment growth, this has not led to an overall increase in aggregate unemployment or prevented the rapid growth of real wages. Less progress has been made in increasing social insurance coverage, although signing a labor contract is more likely to be associated with participation in social insurance programs than in the past, particularly for migrant workers.
This paper examines the long-run impacts of childhood left-behind experience resulting from the labour migration of one or both parents on labour market outcomes in adulthood in China. We find that ...exposure to a left-behind experience due to maternal migration in early and late childhood has a detrimental effect on one’s probability of finding a job and wages, respectively. However, maternal absence in late childhood has a positive impact on the probability of finding a job. The long-run effects of childhood left-behind experience on labour market outcomes are more pronounced among those who are males, those who are from medium- and low-income families, and those who currently live in rural areas. We also find that educational attainment, health status, cognitive ability, personality traits and personal values are possible channels through which early-life left-behind experience affects labour market outcomes in adulthood. Our findings provide a fresh understanding of the effects of parental migration on the economic wellbeing of left-behind children and can be used to inform policies to mitigate the long-lasting negative effects of childhood left-behind experience.
This article discusses the changing social distribution of unemployment and long-term unemployment risks during the current financial and economic crisis. These risks are interpreted as the result of ...three different, overlapping forms of labour market segmentation: first, the institutionally stabilized polarization between labour market insiders and outsiders; second, the occupational dualization of high- and low-skilled employees and occupations; and third, the marginalization of disadvantaged social groups. On the basis of European Union-Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data for 24 European countries (2005–2012), it can be shown that (long-term) unemployment risks increase especially for low-skilled persons and occupations, single parents, migrants and disabled persons. Women, older and permanently employed persons are relatively less affected by short-term unemployment but more affected by long-term unemployment. Hence, the current crisis strengthens the occupational and social dualization of labour markets, endangering the inclusiveness and long-term growth potential of the European economy and societies.
Ethnic and religious differentials in labour market outcomes within many countries have been remarkably persistent. Yet one very well‐known differential—the Catholic/Protestant unemployment ...differential in Northern Ireland—has largely (although not completely) disappeared. This paper charts its decline since the early 1980s and examines potential explanations using Census data from 1991, 2001 and 2011 together with annual survey data. These data span the ending of The Troubles, the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the introduction of fair employment legislation, growth in hidden unemployment and major structural changes in Northern Ireland. We assess the potential impact of these changes.
We examine individual-level compensating differentials for commuting distance in a quasi-natural experiment setting by examining how wages respond to changes in commuting distance induced by firm ...relocations. This set-up enables us to test for the relevance of job search frictions within labour market models. Due to the quasi-experimental set-up, we are able to avoid a range of endogeneity issues. We demonstrate that a 1 km increase in commuting distance induces an almost negligible wage increase in the year after the relocation but a more substantial wage increase of about 0.15% three years later.
The study of inequality by economists has largely focussed on distributive inequalities of various kinds. The focus on different dimensions of distributive inequality in access and outcomes is ...welcome. However, it is also important to consider relational inequalities and power imbalances, which economists typically consider to be the domain of sociology, anthropology and related disciplines. Many economic processes cannot be understood without analysing the underlying relational inequalities, which can reveal much about economic processes and associated policies. Some examples from the Indian experience, specifically relating to power imbalances created by gender and caste differentiation, indicate how this can play out. These are not simply 'traditional social forms' that are in opposition to or contradictory with capitalist accumulation. Rather, they are crucial in enabling segmented labour markets and enabling extractivist patterns of accumulation, on which recent Indian economic growth has been dependent.
We study the extent of persistence in unemployment and low-pay employment in Italy in the period 2014-2017, using the Italian component of the EU-SILC survey merged with administrative data. We model ...persistence in unemployment and low-pay employment using different dynamic random-effects models accounting for observed and latent individual heterogeneity as well as endogeneity of the initial conditions. We find evidence of true state dependence in place for both unemployment and low-pay employment. Moreover, past unemployment spells increase the probability of being low-paid, conditional on being employed, while the opposite effect is limited. For both processes the degree of reliance on the previous state is considerably greater than the magnitude of cross-effects. Thus, evidence is presented that these processes shape almost independent no-pay/low-pay tunnels leading individuals into two different traps, rather than a cycle between the two states.
•We study persistence in unemployment and low-pay in Italy using linked survey-administrative data.•Evidence is presented of state dependence for unemployment and low-pay employment.•Independent no-pay/low-pay tunnels lead individuals into two different traps.•The structure of the Italian labour market resembles more to a tunnel than a cycle.
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