8,892 research outputs found
Essays in labor economics
This dissertation consists of three chapters in labor economics.
The first chapter explains why the wage gap between black and white Americans has stalled since 1980, after a period of significant narrowing during the 1960s and 1970s. I argue that routine-biased technological change (RBTC) dampened wage gap convergence in 1980-2000. It had a differential impact across races at different parts of the wage distribution. I present new evidence on occupational patterns by race and on determinants of wage disparities along the wage distribution and rationalize them with an RBTC model in which firms engage in statistical discrimination. I show that, surprisingly, the share of employment in routine-intensive occupations has increased for black workers, in contrast with a significant decrease for white workers. I decompose the wage gap changes using the Oaxaca-RIF method. I show that differences in occupational sorting increased wage disparities, thwarting wage convergence between races at the bottom of the wage distribution. Together, these new empirical findings and model allow us to better understand the mechanisms behind racial disparities at the end of the 20th century.
The second chapter (with Costas Cavounidis, Kevin Lang, and Raghav Malhotra) develops a tractable general equilibrium model to explain within- and between-occupation changes in skill use over time. We apply the model to skill-use measures from the third, fourth, and revised fourth editions of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and data from the 1960, 1970, and 1980 Censuses and March Current Population Surveys. We recover changes in skill productivity by exploiting between-occupation movements. We conclude that finger-dexterity productivity grew rapidly while abstract-skill productivity lagged, a form of ‘skill bias.’ Together with substitutability between abstract and routine inputs, these results explain changes in skill use within occupations.
In the third chapter (with Silvia Vannutelli), we exploit the enlargement of the European Union in 2007 to study the consequences for the Italian labor market of the permanent legalization of immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria. We use a unique administrative employer-employee dataset covering the universe of Italy’s private sector workers. We study firms’ responses in terms of personnel choices. We find short-term effects on firm-level employment. Employment increased for EU07 migrants at the expense of natives, accompanied by a rise in hirings and separations for the former. We provide evidence that the findings are mainly driven by the migrants’ change of legal status rather than by the arrival of new workers in the country. We also observe a reduction in per-capita revenues and operative added value, confirming that the legalization of previously undocumented workers likely drives the effects
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Moving Polygon Methods for Incompressible Fluid Dynamics
Hybrid particle-mesh numerical approaches are proposed to solve incompressible fluid flows. The methods discussed in this work consist of a collection of particles each wrapped in their own polygon mesh cell, which then move through the domain as the flow evolves. Variables such as pressure, velocity, mass, and momentum are located either on the mesh or on the particles themselves, depending on the specific algorithm described, and each will be shown to have its own advantages and disadvantages. This work explores what is required to obtain local conservation of mass, momentum, and convergence for the velocity and pressure in a particle-mesh CFD simulation method. Current particle methods are explored and analyzed for their benefits and deficiencies, and newly developed methods are described with results and analysis.
A new method for generating locally orthogonal polygonal meshes from a set of generator points is presented in which polygon areas are a constraint. The area constraint property is particularly useful for particle methods where moving polygons track a discrete portion of material. Voronoi polygon meshes have some very attractive mathematical and numerical properties for numerical computation, so a generalization of Voronoi polygon meshes is formulated that enforces a polygon area constraint. Area constrained moving polygonal meshes allow one to develop hybrid particle-mesh numerical methods that display some of the most attractive features of each approach. It is shown that this mesh construction method can continuously reconnect a moving, unstructured polygonal mesh in a pseudo-Lagrangian fashion without change in cell area/volume, and the method\u27s ability to simulate various physical scenarios is shown. The advantages are identified for incompressible fluid flow calculations, with demonstration cases that include material discontinuities of all three phases of matter and large density jumps
The governance of housing association diversification in Northern Ireland: managing interdependent social and commercial logics
Housing associations (HAs) are hybrid bodies located between the state, market and community sectors. These divergent influences often give rise to contested notions of identity and purpose as HAs pursue social and commercial goals. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the drivers of HA change, focusing specifically on diversification into private housing markets. It developed the literature on hybridity and institutional logics in two distinctive ways. First, it focused on the Northern Ireland HA sector and second, it studied change through a corporate governance lens, both of which remain under-researched. The study adopted a four-stage grounded methodology to capture data at the sectoral and organisational levels, including observations of board and committee meetings in Northern Ireland’s two largest HAs, using Critical Incident Technique methodology. The thesis conceptualised the tensions that confronted the two HAs as they diversified into private housing markets and also the approaches they adopted to simultaneously manage social and commercial logics. Many studies of HA hybridity have reported evidence of logic succession, whereby market influences displace social purpose goals whenever HAs enact private market norms and values. In contrast, this study drew on the concepts of hybridity, paradox and institutional logics to construct a new ‘paradox model of organisational hybridity’, which reframed the debate on social and commercial goals, from one of logic dominance and succession to one of logic interdependency and management
Behavioral Economics & Machine Learning Expanding the Field Through a New Lens
In this thesis, I investigate central questions in behavioral economics as well as law and economics. I examine well-studied problems through a new methodological lens. The aim is to generate new insights and thus point behavioral scientists to novel analytical tools. To this end, I show how machine learning may be used to build new theories by reducing complexity in experimental economic data. Moreover, I use natural language processing to show how supervised learning can enable the scientific community to expand limited datasets. I also investigate the normative impact of the use of such tools in social science research or decision-making as well as their deficiencies
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