How former business owners fare in the labor market? Job assignment and earnings

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in European Economic Review. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2011 Elsevier B.V.This study uses detailed longitudinal matched employer–employee data to examine the impact of entrepreneurial experience on job assignments, careers, and wages. The results suggest that there are significant differences in career mobility between former business owners and workers who were always wage employees. Former business owners enter firms at higher job levels and progress faster up the hierarchy than wage employees without entrepreneurial experience. The majority of the former business owners find jobs in small firms. The return to business ownership experience is lower than the return to wage employee experience, thus suggesting that the labor market imposes a penalty for business ownership experience.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologi

Age-Biased Technological and Organizational Change: Firm-Level Evidence and Management Implications

This paper examines the question, whether the growing use of new technologies and decentralized forms of work organization affects the age structure of workforces within firms. The initial idea behind this relationship is that technological and organizational change may not only be skill-biased, but also age-biased. Based on human capital theoretical explanations that mainly focus on skill obsolescence in association with the need to acquire new skills, the hypothesis of an age-biased technological and organizational change (ABTOC) is derived and tested econometrically using German firm-level data. The empirical results show that the adoption of technological and organizational innovations decreases the firms’ demand for older workers and increases the demand for younger workers. Hence, ABTOC is found to be at the expense of older workers. Since ABTOC does not fit to the current development in terms of age-specific labor supply, this paper also suggests human resource management practices that encourage firms to combine the use of new technologies and organizational forms with an ageing workforce.Ageing workforces, new technologies, decentralized work organization, skill obsolescence, skill adaptation, productivity-wage-differentials

The Division of Labour, Worker Organisation, and Technological Change

The model developed in this paper explains differences in the division of labour across firmsas a result of computer technology adoption. We find that changes in the division of labourcan result both from reduced production time and from improved communicationpossibilities. The first shifts the division of labour towards a more generic structure, while thelatter enhances specialisation. Although there exists heterogeneity, our estimates for arepresentative sample of Dutch establishments in the period 1990-1996 suggest thatproductivity gains have been the main determinant for shifts in the division of labour withinmost firms. These productivity gains have induced skill upgrading, while in firms gainingmainly from improved communication possibilities specialisation increased and skillrequirements have fallen.education, training and the labour market;

Is Work Flexibility a Stairway to Heaven? The Story Told by Job Satisfaction in Europ

In this paper we investigate the relationship between di¤erent aspects of flexibility and job satisfaction using data taken from the 2001 Special Eurobarometer 56.1 "Social Exclusion and Modernization of Pension Systems". More speci?cally, we verify whether functional, numerical and time flexibility produce different impact on job satisfaction, also distinguishing between satisfaction for quantitative aspects (such as pay, hours of work and career prospects) and qualitative ones (such as motivation, job variety and on the job relations). Then, we test the impact of flexibility on job satisfaction for different types of workers (e.g. high or low skilled, young or old, male or female and country clusters). Taking into account of potential endogeneity, on the whole results from econometric analysis seem to point to a positive link between functional flexibility and job satisfaction and either no effect or a negative impact of numerical and time flexibility. With regard to estimation by groups, differences in the impact of flexibility on job satisfaction are particularly relevant among those groups that are characterized by significant gaps in the incidence of flexibility, such as the young and the old workers, the low and the high educated, Southern and Nordic countries' workers.Job satisfaction; flexibility

Task Organization, Human Capital and Wages in Moroccan Exporting Firms

We conduct a case study of the linkages of task organization, human capital accumulation and wages in Morocco, using matched worker-firm data for Electrical-mechanical and Textile-clothing industries. In order to integrate task organization into the interacting processes of workers’ training and remunerations, we use a recursive model, which is not rejected by our estimates: task organization influences on-the-job training that affects wages. Beyond sector and gender determinants, assignment of workers to tasks and on-the-job training is found to depend on former education and work experience in a broad sense. Meanwhile, participation in on-the-job training is stimulated by being assigned to a team, especially of textile sector and for well educated workers. Finally, task organization and on-the-job training are found to affect wages.Morocco, Wages, On-the-job training, Human capital, Task organization.

Task Organization, Human Capital and Wages in Moroccan Exporting Firms

We conduct a case study of the linkages of task organization, human capital accumulation and wages in Morocco, using matched worker-firm data for Electrical-mechanical and Textile-clothing industries. In order to integrate task organization into the interacting processes of workers’ training and remunerations, we use a recursive model, which is not rejected by our estimates: task organization influences on-the-job training that affects wages. Beyond sector and gender determinants, assignment of workers to tasks and onthe- job training is found to depend on former education and work experience in a broad sense. Meanwhile, participation in on-the-job training is stimulated by being assigned to a team, especially of textile sector and for well educated workers. Finally, task organization and on-the-job training are found to affect wages.Morocco, Wages, On-the-job training, Human capital, Task organization.

The Division of Labour, Worker Organisation, and Technological Change

The model developed in this paper explains differences in the division of labour across firms as a result of computer technology adoption. We find that changes in the division of labour can result both from reduced production time and from improved communication possibilities. The first shifts the division of labour towards a more generic structure, while the latter enhances specialisation. Although there exists heterogeneity, our estimates for a representative sample of Dutch establishments in the period 1990-1996 suggest that productivity gains have been the main determinant for shifts in the division of labour within most firms. These productivity gains have induced skill upgrading, while in firms gaining mainly from improved communication possibilities specialisation increased and skill requirements have fallen.labour economics ;

Leeway for the loyal: a model of employee discretion

This article examines the factors underlying task discretion from an economist's perspective. It argues that the key axis for understanding discretion is the trade-off between the positive effects of discretion on potential output per employee and the negative effects of greater leeway on work effort. In empirical analysis using matched employer-employee data, it is shown that discretion is strongly affected by the level of employee commitment. In addition, discretion is generally greater in high-skilled jobs, although not without exceptions, and lower where employees are under-skilled. Homeworking and flexitime policies raise employee discretion. The impact of teamworking is mixed. In about half of cases team members do not jointly decide about work matters, and the net effect of teams on task discretion in these cases is negative. In other cases, where team members do decide matters jointly, the impact is found to be neutral according to employees' perceptions, or positive according to managers' perceptions. There are also significant and substantial unobserved establishment-level factors which affect task discretion

Computers, Skills and Wages

Computer use is mainly associated with skilled, high-wage workers. Furthermore, the introduction of computers leads to upgrading of skill requirements. This suggests that the computer requires certain skills to take full advantage of its possibilities. Empirical findings, however, suggest that the effects of computers on the labor market are complicated and difficult to trace. This paper offers a simple model and new empirical evidence from Britain showing how computers change the labor market. The model shows that wages are an important determinant of computer use and that neither computer skills nor complementary skills seem to be needed to explain skill upgrading. The empirical results are consistent with the model because they indicate that computer use is explained by wages rather than by skills and that wages are not related to computer skills.economics of technology ;