Business Cycles and Wage Rigidity

This paper analyzes the impact of downward wage rigidity on the labor market. It shows that imposing downward wage rigidity in a matching model with cyclical fluctuations in productivity, endogenous match-destruction, and on-the-job search, quits are procyclical and layoffs countercyclical. It provides evidence that downward wage rigidity is empirically relevant in ten European countries. It finally shows that layoffs are countercyclical and quits are procyclical, as predicted by the model.Downward wage rigidity; Business cycles; Wage renegotiation

Credible Threats in a Wage Bargaining Model with on-the-job Search

In standard equilibrium search models with strategic wage bargaining and on-the-job search, renegotiation is permitted without requirement of a credible threat. Workers trigger renegotiation whenever they have a new outside option that could raise their wages. In this note I modify the model to be consistent with renegotiation by mutual agreement and I show that estimating the model without imposing credible threats for renegotiation generates downward bias in the estimates of the bargaining power.Credible Threats; On-the-job search; Wage bargaining

Income and Democracy: Revisiting the Evidence

It is well-known in the literature that income per capita is strongly correlated with the level of democracy across countries. In an influential paper, Acemoglu et al. (2008) find that this linear correlation disappears once they control for country-specific effects focusing on within-country variation. In this paper we find evidence of a non-linear effect from income to democracy even after controlling for country-specific effects. While a positive effect emerges for poor countries, this effect vanishes for rich countries.Democracy; Income; Lipset hypothesis; panel data

Gender Wage Gaps Reconsidered: A Structural Approach Using Matched Employer-Employee Data

In this paper I propose and estimate an equilibrium search model using matched employer-employee data to study the extent to which wage differentials between men and women can be explained by differences in productivity, disparities in friction patterns, segregation or wage discrimination. The availability of matched employer-employee data is essential to empirically disentangle differences in workers productivity across groups from differences in wage policies toward those groups. The model features rent splitting, on-the-job search and two-sided heterogeneity in productivity. It is estimated using German microdata. I find that female workers are less productive and more mobile than males. Female workers have on average slightly lower bargaining power than their male counterparts. The total gender wage gap is 42 percent. It turns out that most of the gap, 65 percent, is accounted for by differences in productivity, 17 percent of this gap is driven by segregation while differences in destruction rates explain 9 percent of the total wage-gap. Netting out differences in offer-arrival rates would increase the gap by 13 percent. Due to differences in wage setting, female workers receive wages 9 percent lower than male ones.labor market discrimination; search frictions; structural estimation; matched employer-employee data

Understanding the Native-Immigrant Wage Gap Using Matched Employer-Employee Data. Evidence from Germany

Hellerstein and Neumark (1999) developed a straightforward method to detect wage discrimination using matched employer-employee data. In this paper a new method to measure wage discrimination is proposed, that builds on the ideas first developed by Hellerstein and Neumark. It has four main advantages: it is robust to labor market segregation, it does not impose linearity on the wage setting equation, it avoids the problematic estimation of production functions, and it is not only a test for discrimination but also produces measures of discrimination. Using matched employer-employee data from Germany, I find that immigrants are being discriminated against. They receive wages which are 13 percent lower than native workers in the same firm.Labor market discrimination; immigration; matched employer-employee data

Income and democracy : revisiting the evidence

Este artículo ofrece una evaluación de la contribución al PIB de la infraestructura. A partir de un conjunto de datos de infraestructura que abarca 88 países durante los años 1960-2000, y utilizando un enfoque de panel de series de tiempo, el trabajo estima una función de producción agregada de largo plazo con el PIB, capital humano, capital físico, y un medida sintética de la infraestructura que viene dada por el primer componente principal de la dotación de infraestructura en transporte, energía y telecomunicaciones. Contrastes de cointegración (que permiten rangos de cointegración heterogéneos entre países) revelan un rango común con un solo vector de cointegración, que interpretamos como la función de producción a largo plazo. La estimación de sus parámetros se realiza con el estimador "Pooled Mean Group (PMG)", que permite heterogeneidad en los parámetros de corto plazo al mismo tiempo que impone la restricción (contrastable) de homogeneidad en los parámetros de largo plazo. La elasticidad de largo plazo de la producción con respecto al índice sintético de infraestructura varía entre 0,07 y 0,10. Las estimaciones son muy significativas, tanto estadística como económicamente, y robustas alternativas especificaciones dinámicas y medidas de infraestructura. Hay poca evidencia de la heterogeneidad de los parámetros a largo plazo entre los países, tanto si la heterogeneidad es incondicional como condicional al nivel de desarrollo, el tamaño de la población, o las dotaciones de infraestructur

Red Listing plants under full national responsibility: Extinction risk and threats in the vascular flora endemic to Italy

Taxa endemic to a country are key elements for setting national conservation priorities and for driving conservation strategies, since their persistence is entirely dependent on national policy. We applied the IUCN Red List categories to all Italian endemic vascular plants (1340 taxa) to assess their current risk of extinction and to highlight their major threats. Our results revealed that six taxa are already extinct and that 22.4% (300 taxa) are threatened with extinction, while 18.4% (247; especially belonging to apomictic groups) have been categorized as Data Deficient. Italian endemic vascular plants are primarily threatened by natural habitat modification due to agriculture, residential and tourism development. Taxa occurring in coastal areas and lowlands, where anthropogenic impacts and habitat destruction are concentrated, display the greatest population decline and extinction. The national network of protected areas could be considered effective in protecting endemic-rich areas (ERAs) and endemic taxa, but ineffective in protecting narrow endemic-rich areas (NERAs), accordingly changes to the existing network may increase the effectiveness of protection. For the first time in the Mediterranean Basin biodiversity hotspot, we present a comprehensive extinction assessment for endemic plants under the full responsibility of a single country. This would provide an important step towards the prioritization and conservation of threatened endemic flora at Italian, European, and Mediterranean level. A successful conservation strategy of the Italian endemic vascular flora should implement the protected area system, solve some taxonomical criticism in poorly known genera, and should rely on monitoring threatened species, and on developing species-specific action plans

Elective cancer surgery in COVID-19-free surgical pathways during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: An international, multicenter, comparative cohort study

PURPOSE As cancer surgery restarts after the first COVID-19 wave, health care providers urgently require data to determine where elective surgery is best performed. This study aimed to determine whether COVID-19–free surgical pathways were associated with lower postoperative pulmonary complication rates compared with hospitals with no defined pathway. PATIENTS AND METHODS This international, multicenter cohort study included patients who underwent elective surgery for 10 solid cancer types without preoperative suspicion of SARS-CoV-2. Participating hospitals included patients from local emergence of SARS-CoV-2 until April 19, 2020. At the time of surgery, hospitals were defined as having a COVID-19–free surgical pathway (complete segregation of the operating theater, critical care, and inpatient ward areas) or no defined pathway (incomplete or no segregation, areas shared with patients with COVID-19). The primary outcome was 30-day postoperative pulmonary complications (pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, unexpected ventilation). RESULTS Of 9,171 patients from 447 hospitals in 55 countries, 2,481 were operated on in COVID-19–free surgical pathways. Patients who underwent surgery within COVID-19–free surgical pathways were younger with fewer comorbidities than those in hospitals with no defined pathway but with similar proportions of major surgery. After adjustment, pulmonary complication rates were lower with COVID-19–free surgical pathways (2.2% v 4.9%; adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.62; 95% CI, 0.44 to 0.86). This was consistent in sensitivity analyses for low-risk patients (American Society of Anesthesiologists grade 1/2), propensity score–matched models, and patients with negative SARS-CoV-2 preoperative tests. The postoperative SARS-CoV-2 infection rate was also lower in COVID-19–free surgical pathways (2.1% v 3.6%; aOR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.36 to 0.76). CONCLUSION Within available resources, dedicated COVID-19–free surgical pathways should be established to provide safe elective cancer surgery during current and before future SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks