Does the minimum wage reduce wage inequality? Evidence from Thailand

Most of the minimum wage literature in developing countries provides supporting evidence of its effectiveness in reducing wage inequality. Using minimum wage data from Thailand (1985-2010), I find rather mixed outcomes. The minimum wage seems to help compress the lower part of wage distribution for employees in large businesses. However, the effect does not extend to small and medium firms in the covered sector. In contrast with its role as a benchmark for wage adjustment in Latin America, the minimum wage in Thailand does not reduce overall wage inequality owing to the high non-compliance rate and weak law enforcement, particularly in the informal sector. JEL classification: J38; O1

Essays on labour economics

Empirical studies in labour economics often suffer from endogeneity problems. Employing exogenous variations in policies and natural shock, this thesis investigates three topics. The first two topics concern labour market phenomena in Thailand, whereas the third provides a case study of labour demand adjustment after an international supply chain shock. Chapter 2 assesses the impact of minimum wage policy on wage inequality in Thailand. The result is rather mixed. Although the minimum wage effectively reduces wage inequality among workers in formal sectors, it does not affect the wage distribution in the informal sector at all. The evidence suggests that such a result is mainly driven by weak law enforcement. Meanwhile, using changes in compulsory schooling law, chapter 3 provides consistent estimates of the rates of return to education in Thailand. Based on the IV method, only female employees experience a positive and significant return to (upper primary) education. Interestingly, the size and direction of bias of the estimator, especially for male sub-sample, are not consistent with the conventional result. The possible reasons underlying these findings are elaborated. Chapter 4 relies on a different type of shock. The Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami 2011 is treated as an external shock to the international supply chain of Auto industry. Then I estimate the impact of the supply chain disruption on labour inputs adjustment in the US auto industry. Despite the break down in supply chain of motor vehicle parts and accessories among Japanese auto companies, these firms do not seem to reduce their labour inputs (used as a proxy for changes in production) significantly except for a small drop in average monthly earnings of workers in Japanese assembly plants. Also, their competitors make only slight adjustment to capitalize on the Japanese loss. Regarding other margins of adjustment, there is no evidence in support of the adjustment through import or price. Yet inventories and sales incentive appear to be major tools employed to mitigate either positive demand or negative supply shocks on both groups of companies

Addressing the need for an appropriate skilled delivery care workforce in Burundi to support Maternal and Newborn Health Service Delivery Redesign (MNH-Redesign): a sequential study protocol

Background Despite Burundi having formed a network of 112 health facilities that provide emergency obstetric and neonatal care (EmONC), the country continues to struggle with high rates of maternal and newborn deaths. There is a dearth of empirical evidence on the capacity and performance of EmONC health facilities and on the real needs to inform proper planning and policy. Our study aims to generate evidence on the capacity and performance of EmONC health facilities in Burundi and examine how the country might develop an appropriate skilled delivery care workforce to improve maternal and newborn survival. Methods We will use a sequential design where each study phase serially inputs into the subsequent phase. Three main study phases will be carried out: i) an initial policy document review to explore global norms and local policy intentions for EmONC staffing and ii) a cross-sectional survey of all EmONC health facilities to determine what percent of facilities are functional including geographic and population coverage gaps, identify staffing gaps assessed against norms, and identify other needs for health facility strengthening. Finally, we will conduct surveys in selected schools and ministries to examine training and staffing costs to inform staffing options that might best promote service delivery with adequate budget impacts to increase efficiency. Throughout the study, we will engage stakeholders to provide input into what are reasonable staffing norms as well as feasible staffing alternatives within Burundi’s budget capacity. Analytical models will be used to develop staffing proposals over a realistic policy timeline. Conclusion Evidence-based health planning improves cost-effectiveness and reduces wastage within scarce and resource-constrained contexts. This study will be the first large-scale research in Burundi that builds on stakeholder support to generate evidence on the capacity of designated EmONC health facilities including human resources diagnosis and develop staffing skill-mix tradeoffs for policy discussion

Impact of an anticipatory care planning intervention on unscheduled acute hospital care using difference-in-difference analysis

Acknowledgements We thank Information Statistics Division and the data analytical team from NHS Lothian for data linkage. Funding This work was supported by NHS Lothian through an award from the Invest to Save Fund. The Health Economics Research Unit is funded by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Factors influencing the development, recruitment, integration, retention and career development of advanced practice providers in hospital health care teams: a scoping review

Background: Advanced practice providers (APPs), including physician assistants/associates (PAs), nurse practitioners (NPs) and other non-physician roles, have been developed largely to meet changing healthcare demand and increasing workforce shortages. First introduced in primary care in the US, APPs are prevalent in secondary care across different specialty areas in different countries around the world. In this scoping review, we aimed to summarise the factors influencing the development, recruitment, integration, retention and career development of APP roles in hospital health care teams. Methods: We conducted a scoping review and searched Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, Ovid Global Health, Ovid PsycINFO and EBSCOhost CINAHL to obtain relevant articles published between Jan 2000 and Apr 2023 that focused on workforce management of APP roles in secondary care. Articles were screened by two reviewers independently. Data from included articles were charted and coded iteratively to summarise factors influencing APP development, recruitment, integration, retention and career development across different health system structural levels (macro-, meso- and micro-level). Results: We identified and analysed 273 articles that originated mostly from high-income countries, e.g. the US (n = 115) and the UK (n = 52), and primarily focused on NP (n = 183) and PA (n = 41). At the macro-level, broader workforce supply, national/regional workforce policies such as work-hour restrictions on physicians, APP scope of practice regulations, and views of external collaborators, stakeholders and public representation of APPs influenced organisations’ decisions on developing and managing APP roles. At the meso-level, organisational and departmental characteristics, organisational planning, strategy and policy, availability of resources, local experiences and evidence as well as views and perceptions of local organisational leaders, champions and other departments influenced all stages of APP role management. Lastly at the micro-level, individual APPs’ backgrounds and characteristics, clinical team members’ perceptions, understanding and relationship with APP roles, and patient perceptions and preferences also influenced how APPs are developed, integrated and retained. Conclusions: We summarised a wide range of factors influencing APP role development and management in secondary care teams. We highlighted the importance for organisations to develop context-specific workforce solutions and strategies with long-term investment, significant resource input and transparent processes to tackle evolving healthcare challenges

Eight years into the horizon of aspirational maternal and newborn health pledges: a nationwide cross-sectional exploration of the Burundian EmONC network capacity and budget deficits

Objective: The Burundian emergency obstetric and neonatal care (EmONC) programme, which was initiated in 2017 and supported by a specific policy, does not appear to reverse maternal and newborn mortality trends. Our study examined the capacity challenges facing participating EmONC facilities and developed alternative investment proposals to improve their readiness paying particular attention to EmONC professionals, physical infrastructure, and capital equipment. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Burundian EmONC facilities (n=112). Participants: We examined EmONC policy documents, consulted 12 maternal and newborn health experts and 23 stakeholders and policymakers, surveyed all EmONC facilities (n=112), and collected cost data from the Ministry of Health and local suppliers in Burundi. We developed three context-specific EmONC resource benchmark standards by facility type; the Burundian policy norms and the expert minimum and maximum suggested thresholds; and used these alternatives to estimate EmONC resource gaps. We forecasted three corresponding budget estimates needed to address prevailing deficits taking a government perspective for a 5-year EmONC investment strategy. Additionally, we explored relationships between EmONC professionals and selected measures of service delivery using bivariate analyses and graphically. Results: The lowest EmONC resource benchmark revealed that 95% of basic EmONC and all comprehensive EmONC facilities lack corresponding sets of human resources and 90% of all facilities need additional physical infrastructure and capital equipment. Assessed against the highest benchmark which proposes the most progressive set of standards for the prevailing workloads, Burundi would require 162 more medical doctors, 1005 midwives and nurses, 132 delivery rooms, 191 delivery tables, 678 and 156 maternity and newborn care beds, and 395 incubators amounting to US$32.9 million additional budget for 5 years. Conclusion: We demonstrated that Burundian EmONC facilities face enormous capacity challenges equivalent to US$32.9 million funding gap for 5 years; averagely approximating to 5.96% total health budget increase annually

Headscarf and job recruitment—lifting the veil of labour market discrimination

Abstract This paper investigates effects of appearance and religious practice of job applicants on the hiring decision. We asked participants in our laboratory experiment to select fictitious candidates for an interview from a pool of CVs with comparable characteristics but different photos. Some photos were of the same Turkish women with and without a headscarf. We demonstrate the effects of appearance, ethnicity, and veiling simultaneously and propose underlying mechanisms. We find robust effects of appearance but heterogeneous effects of headscarf on callback rates based on types of occupations and recruiters’ characteristics. However, positive characteristics mitigate discrimination against headscarf and even reverse it

Factors influencing the development, recruitment, integration, retention and career development of advanced practice providers in hospital health care teams: a scoping review.

Acknowledgements: We thank Eli Harriss, the Knowledge Centre Manager at the Bodleian Health Care Libraries, University of Oxford for her support in literature search, and Rhys Swainston from Nuffield Department of Medicine Centre for Global Health Research, University of Oxford for reading an earlier draft of the manuscript.BACKGROUND: Advanced practice providers (APPs), including physician assistants/associates (PAs), nurse practitioners (NPs) and other non-physician roles, have been developed largely to meet changing healthcare demand and increasing workforce shortages. First introduced in primary care in the US, APPs are prevalent in secondary care across different specialty areas in different countries around the world. In this scoping review, we aimed to summarise the factors influencing the development, recruitment, integration, retention and career development of APP roles in hospital health care teams. METHODS: We conducted a scoping review and searched Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, Ovid Global Health, Ovid PsycINFO and EBSCOhost CINAHL to obtain relevant articles published between Jan 2000 and Apr 2023 that focused on workforce management of APP roles in secondary care. Articles were screened by two reviewers independently. Data from included articles were charted and coded iteratively to summarise factors influencing APP development, recruitment, integration, retention and career development across different health system structural levels (macro-, meso- and micro-level). RESULTS: We identified and analysed 273 articles that originated mostly from high-income countries, e.g. the US (n = 115) and the UK (n = 52), and primarily focused on NP (n = 183) and PA (n = 41). At the macro-level, broader workforce supply, national/regional workforce policies such as work-hour restrictions on physicians, APP scope of practice regulations, and views of external collaborators, stakeholders and public representation of APPs influenced organisations' decisions on developing and managing APP roles. At the meso-level, organisational and departmental characteristics, organisational planning, strategy and policy, availability of resources, local experiences and evidence as well as views and perceptions of local organisational leaders, champions and other departments influenced all stages of APP role management. Lastly at the micro-level, individual APPs' backgrounds and characteristics, clinical team members' perceptions, understanding and relationship with APP roles, and patient perceptions and preferences also influenced how APPs are developed, integrated and retained. CONCLUSIONS: We summarised a wide range of factors influencing APP role development and management in secondary care teams. We highlighted the importance for organisations to develop context-specific workforce solutions and strategies with long-term investment, significant resource input and transparent processes to tackle evolving healthcare challenges