The Combined Employment Effects of Minimum Wages and Labor Market Regulation: A Meta-Analysis

This paper provides a meta-analysis of 55 empirical studies estimating the employment effects of minimum wages in 15 industrial countries. It strongly confirms the notion that the effects of minimum wages are heterogeneous between countries. As possible sources of heterogeneity, it considers the benefit replacement ratio, employment protection and the collective bargaining system. While the results are in line with theoretical expectations, the degree to which they are robust differs across these institutions.minimum wage, regulation, employment, meta-analysis

Mixed motives: an empirical analysis of ILO roll-call votes

In this empirical paper, we look at individual voting behaviour of government delegates to the International Labour Organization (ILO). We distinguish between the instrumental motive for voting, which consists in the chance that one´s vote may turn the balance in favour of one´s preferred outcome, and non-instrumental motives, such as a desire for good reputation. Empirically, the two can be identified because two alternatives, abstaining and not participating in the vote, do not differ in their instrumental value, but are likely to differ with respect to reputation aspects. The model is estimated by a multinomial logit with country-specific unobserved heteroge-neity, using roll-call votes on the final passage of ILO conventions from 1977 to 1995. The hypothesis that voting is only instrumental is clearly rejected by the data. --Voting,discrete choice,international labour standards,ILO

The Effect of ILO Minimum Age Conventions on Child Labour and School Attendance

Child labour has always been one of the core concerns of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). In this paper, we investigate whether ILO conventions have contributed to reducing the scale of the problem. We use two approaches to answering the question. Evidence based on country-level data shows that, by 1990, countries having ratified ILO conventions were in no different position concerning child labour than nonratifying states. Using individual-level data on school attendance from the 1990s, there is little evidence for an increase in school attendance for children protected by ILO convention No. 138 as compared to unprotected children. --Child labour,school attendance,international labour standards,ILO

Fixed-term Contracts as Sorting Mechanisms: Evidence From Job Durations in West Germany

We estimate the effect of initial episodes under fixed-term contracts (FTCs) on job duration in the further course of the employment spell, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) from 1985 to 2002. Using a statistical matching approach, we find that job exit rates are initially much higher if the employment spell began with an FTC. However, exit rates fall below those of comparable spells spent entirely in permanent employment after a few years time. This suggests that FTCs accelerate a sorting process and that they may at least to some part be understood as prolonged probationary periods. Strikingly, the probability of long-term employment of more than five years duration is not lower in spells that are initially concluded as FTCs. Hence, the sorting processes taking place in both forms of contracts seem to be of similar intensity. --Fixed-term employment,probationary periods,job matching,duration analysis

Cohort effects and the returns to education in West Germany

Using a Mincer-type wage function, we estimate cohort effects in the returns to education for West German workers born between 1925 and 1974. The main problem to be tackled in the specification is to separately identify cohort, experience, and possibly also age effects in the returns. For women, we find a large and robust decline in schooling premia: in the private sector, the returns to a further year of post-compulsory education fell from twelve per cent for the 1945-49 cohort to about seven per cent for those born in the early 1970s. Cohort effects in men?s returns to education are less obvious, but we do find evidence that they, too, have declined. We conclude by identifying possible reasons for the decline. --returns to education,cohort effects,population ageing

Individual and Plant-level Determinants of Job Durations in Germany

We examine job durations of German workers using a linked employeremployee dataset. The descriptive evidence suggests that firm characteristics have a substantial influence on the job exit rate. However, the extent of dispersion in durations is not substantially lower at the firm level than for the sample as a whole, pointing to the presence of segmentation between long and short employment spells within establishments. Using the Cox partial likelihood estimator, we then examine the determinants of job exit. There is some evidence that neglecting firm characteristics biases the coefficients of individual-specific variables. Extension of the model to a competing risks framework shows that both individual and firm-level characteristics differ greatly in their impact on job exit to different destination states. --Job durations,job exit,tenure,linked employer-employee data

The Contribution of the IMF and the World Bank to Economic Freedom

We analyse the effect of IMF and World Bank policies on the composite index of economic freedom by Gwartney et al. (2000) as well as its sub-indexes, using a panel of 85 countries observed between 1970 and 1997. With respect to the Bank, we find that the number of projects has a positive impact on overall economic freedom, while the effect of the amount of World Bank credits is negative. These effects are stronger during the 1990s than in earlier periods. There is no clear relationship between credits and programs of the IMF and economic freedom. --Economic freedom,IMF,World Bank,structural adjustment policies

Seniority and Job Stability: A Quantile Regression Approach Using Matched Employer-Employee Data

Job mobility and employment durations can be explained by different theoretical approaches, such as job matching or human capital theory or dual labor market approaches. These models may, however, apply to different degrees at different durations in the employment spell. Standard empirical techniques, such as hazard rate analysis, cannot deal with this problem. In this paper, we apply censored quantile regression techniques to estimate employment durations of male workers in Germany. Our results give some support to the job matching model: individuals with a high risk of being bad matches exhibit higher exit rates initially, but the effect fades out over time. By contrast, the influence of human capital variables such as education and further training decreases with employment duration, which is inconsistent with the notion of increasing match-specific rents due to human capital accumulation. The results also suggest that the effects of certain labor market institutions, such as works councils, differ markedly between short-term and long-term employment, supporting the view that institutions give rise to dual labor markets. --Job Durations,Mobility,Matching,Human Capital,Quantile Regression

Mixed Motives: An Empirical Analysis of ILO Roll-Call Votes

In this empirical paper, we look at individual voting behaviour of government delegates to the International Labour Organization (ILO). We distinguish between the instrumental motive for voting, which consists in the chance that one's vote may turn the balance in favour of one's preferred outcome, and non-instrumental motives, such as a desire for good reputation. Empirically, the two can be identified because two alternatives, abstaining and not participating in the vote, do not differ in their instrumental value, but are likely to differ with respect to reputation aspects. The model is estimated by a multinomial logit with country-specific unobserved heterogeneity, using roll-call votes on the final passage of ILO conventions from 1977 to 1995. The hypothesis that voting is only instrumental is clearly rejected by the data

Flexibility Provisions in Multilateral Environmental Treaties

In international politics, intergovernmental treaties provide the rules of the game. Similar to private law, treaty designers face a trade-off between flexibility to adjust to unforeseen contingencies and the danger that the binding nature of the treaty and hence, the level of commitment by treaty members, is being undermined if the treaty can be amended too easily. In this paper, we address this problem in the analytical framework of institutional economics, drawing in particular on the incomplete contracts literature. Furthermore, we derive preliminary hypotheses and operational concepts for the measurement of flexibility in international treaties. Based on 400 treaties and supplementary agreements from the field of international environmental law, we provide new insights into the combined application of rules for adoption and entry into force of amendments, as well as provisions for conflict resolution and interpretative development. Using correspondence analysis, we show that treaty provisions can be represented in a two-dimensional property space, where treaties can be arrayed according to the degree of institutionalisation as well as along a flexibility dimension. --