The Economic Pay-Offs To On-The-Job Training In Routine Service Work

This study examines the relationship between on-the-job training and job performance among 3,408 telephone operators in a large unionized telecommunications company. We utilize individual data on monthly training hours and job performance over a five-month period as provided by the company’s electronic monitoring system. Results indicate that the receipt of on-the-job training is associated with significantly higher productivity over time, when unobserved individual heterogeneity is taken into account. Moreover, workers with lower pre-training proficiency show greater improvements over time than those with higher pre-training proficiency. Finally, whether the training is provided by a supervisor or a peer also matters. Workers with lower proficiency achieve greater productivity gains through supervisor training, while workers with higher proficiency achieve greater productivity gains through peer training

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMISTS' PERFORMANCE AND PAY: AN ANALYSIS OF LAND GRANT UNIVERSITY SALARIES

The objective of the 1998 Tracking Survey conducted by the CWAE was to examine differences in the professional experiences of female agricultural economists, including the salary study presented here. A comparative analysis presents detailed frequency, performance and pay measures for all types of employers. The econometric analysis of salary focuses more specifically on agricultural economists currently employed in the Land Grant System. The importance of salary to an individual, their rank, experience, refereed journal articles and book chapters appear to have the greatest effect on salary. Although there is no clear gender bias, the number and age of children has negative implications on the salary earned by women.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Constrained Job Matching: Does Teacher Job Search Harm Disadvantaged Urban Schools?

Search theory suggests that early career job changes lead to better matches that benefit both workers and firms, but this may not hold in teacher labor markets characterized by salary rigidities, barriers to entry, and substantial differences in working conditions. Of particular concern to education policy makers is the possibility that teacher turnover adversely affects the quality of instruction in schools serving predominantly disadvantaged children. Although such schools experience higher turnover on average than others, the impact on the quality of instruction depends crucially on whether it is the more productive teachers who are more likely to depart. The absence of direct measures of productivity typically hinders efforts to measure the effect of turnover on worker quality. In the case of teachers, however, the availability of matched panel data of students and teachers enables the isolation of the contributions of teachers to achievement. The empirical analysis reveals that teachers who remain in their school tend to outperform those who leave, particularly those who exit the Texas public schools entirely. Moreover, this gap appears to be larger for schools serving predominantly low income students, evidence that high turnover is not nearly as damaging as many suggest.teacher turnover

Job Mobility and Wage Dynamics

Matched employer-employee data research has found that workersf wages are affected by the characteristics of the firms they work in, and that higher skilled workers tend to be employed by higher paying firms. This paper examines the contribution of workersf job mobility to their wage dynamics. We focus on the possible trade-off between moving to a better paying firm and losing a firm-tenure specific component of earnings, and examine what types of workers benefit from changing firms, rather than staying with their existing employer. Our analysis provides four main findings. First, although the raw earnings gains to jobmovers and stayers are about the same, we find that, after controlling for observable differences, job-movers have about 1.3 percent lower annual earnings growth than nonmovers. Second, we estimate that job-movers gain 0.3 percent per year on average from moving to higher paying firms, but lose 1.6 percent in transitory earnings associated with changing jobs. The gains from moving to better firms are larger for both younger and new entrant workers, while the transitory earnings losses are smaller. We interpret these findings as being due to an earnings growth trade-off for workers between moving to a higher paying firm and losing their tenure-related earnings at their existing firm. Third, we estimate that, on average, workers gain (almost) all of the change in firm earnings premiums when they change jobs. However, such gains are not equally shared by all workers. In particular, our estimates suggest that it is the higher ability workers (as measured by the estimated worker earnings premiums) whose earnings gain (or lose) the most from moving to a firm with higher (or lower) earnings premiums. Finally, we find that workersf earnings also benefit on average from a change in the average earnings of their co-workers. Controlling for other factors, we estimate that a 1 standard deviation change in the estimated average peer earnings is associated with about 0.25 percent change in a workerfs earnings on average.Earnings, Linked Employer-Employee Data, worker mobility, job turnover

Peer Effects, Social Networks, and Intergroup Competition in the Workplace

Using weekly data for defect rates (proportion of defective output) for all weavers in a Chinese textile firm during a 12 months (April 2003 - March 2004) period, we provide some of the first rigorous evidence on the presence and nature of peer effects in the manufacturing workplace. First, a worker is found to put in more effort and improve her performance when she is working with more able teammates. Second, by exploiting the well-documented fact that an exogenouslyformed strong divide between urban resident workers and rural migrant workers exists in firms in Chinese cities, we provide novel evidence on the interplay between social networks (urban resident group and rural migrant group) and peer effects. Specifically, we find that a worker puts in more effort when she is working with more able outgroup teammates but not when working with more able ingroup teammates, pointing to intergroup competition as a powerful source of the peer effects. Such peer effects across the social network, combined with the presence of incentive to outperform teammates at this firm, are largely consistent with recent experimental evidence on the important role that group identities play in facilitating altruistic behaviors.peer effects in the workplace; social networks; intergroup competition

Adjustment capacity of labour markets of the Western Balkan countries

Study on the adjustment capacity to shocks of EU candidate and potential candidate countries of the Western Balkans, with a focus on labour markets, and background studies on several countries of the region. The main question addressed in this study is the performance of the labour markets in the Western Balkans; to find out whether they can deliver growth of employment and decline of unemployment in the medium run and whether they can withstand short-term shocks due to changes in demand or supply. The study finds that there is an important case for improving the rule of law and the quality of public services in general in the fight against very low participation and employment rates in the region, as well as very high unemployment. Wages, with some exceptions in specific sectors, do not seem to be mis-aligned with respect to productivity developments. There is some indication of possible positive effects from adjusting employment protection legislation, especially for women. The study also identifies an important role for income policies in some of the countries as an important complement to labour market policies.Adjustment capacity, external shocks, Western Balkan countries, South-East Europe, labour markets, EU candidate countries, potential candidate countries, employment protection legislation, rule of law, wages, productivity, taxwedge, remittances, migration

Clean Evidence on Peer Pressure

While confounding factors typically jeopardize the possibility of using observational data to measure peer effects, field experiments over the potential for obtaining clean evidence. In this paper we measure the output of subjects who were asked to stuff letters into envelopes, with a remuneration completely independent of output. We study two treatments. In the ""pair"" treatment two subjects work at the same time in the same room. Peer effects are possible in this situation and imply that outputs within pairs should be similar. In the ""single"" treatment, which serves as a control, subjects work alone in a room and peer effects are ruled out by design. Our main results are as follows: First, we find clear and unambiguous evidence for the existence of peer effects in the pair treatment. The standard deviations of output are significantly smaller within pairs than between pairs. Second, average output in the pair treatment largely exceeds output in the single treatment, i.e., peer effects raise productivity. Third, low productivity workers are significantly more sensitive to the behavior of peers than are high productivity workers. Our findings yield important implications for the design of the workplace.peer effects, field experiments, incentives

Value Added of Teachers in High-Poverty Schools and Lower-Poverty Schools

This paper examines whether teachers in schools serving students from high-poverty backgrounds are as effective as teachers in schools with more advantaged students. The question is important. Teachers are recognized as the most important school factor affecting student achievement, and the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their better off peers is large and persistent. Using student-level microdata from 2000-2001 to 2004-2005 from Florida and North Carolina, the authors compare the effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty elementary schools (>70% FRL students) with that of teachers in lower-poverty elementary schools

Policies for mixed communities: faith-based displacement activity?

The belief that it is fairer if communities are ``mixed'' can be traced at least to the late nineteenth century and the founders of the Garden City Movement. The idea is now firmly established in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and national policies. This article reviews the evidence and argues that this is essentially a faith-based policy because there is scant real evidence that making communities more mixed makes the life chances of the poor any better. There is overwhelming evidence that the attributes that make neighborhoods attractive are capitalized into house prices/rents. The result is that poor people cannot afford to buy into nicer neighborhoods, which anyway have amenities of no value to them. Moreover, ``specialized neighborhoods'' are an important element in agglomeration economies and seem to be welfare enhancing. Thus, policies for mixed neighborhoods treat the symptoms rather than the causes of poverty. Efforts to improve social equity would be more effectively directed toward people themselves rather than moving people around to mix neighborhoods

Intended and Unintended Consequences of a Publish-or-Perish Culture: A Worldwide Survey

Abstract: How does publication pressure in modern-day universities affect the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards in science? By using a worldwide survey among demographers in developed and developing countries, we show that the large majority perceive the publication pressure as high, but more so in Anglo-Saxon countries and to a lesser extent in Western Europe. However, scholars see both the pros (upward mobility) and cons (excessive publication and uncitedness, neglect of policy issues, etc.) of the so-called “publish-or-perish” culture. By measuring behavior in terms of reading and publishing, and perceived extrinsic rewards and stated intrinsic rewards of practicing science, it turns out that publication pressure negatively affects the orientation of demographers towards policy and knowledge of the population facts. There are no signs that the pressure affects reading and publishing outside the core discipline.Incentives;productivity;science;publications;university