Labor Market Competition among Youths, White Women, and Others

We estimate substitution possibilities among a set of age-race-sex groups in the labor force. The estimates are based on cross-section data from SMSAs in 1969,and they allow us to consider how substitutable adult women are for young women or young men. The estimates are used, along with assumptions about the extent of wage rigidity and elasticities of labor supply, to simulate the direct and indirect effects of the growth of the female labor force on job opportunities for youth, assuming rigid wages for young workers, and on the wage rates of adult males, assuming these wages are flexible.

New Facts About Factor-Demand Dynamics: Employment, Jobs, and Workers

We provide a unified discussion of the relations among flows of workers, changes in employment and changes in the number of jobs at the level of the firm. Using the only available set of data (a nationally representative sample of Dutch firms in 1988 and 1990) we discover that: 1) Nearly half of all hiring is by firms where employment is not growing; 2) Over half of all firing is by firms that are not contracting; 3) Most firing is by firms that are also hiring; 4) Flows of workers within firms are small compared to flows into and out of firms; and 5) Accounting for simultaneous creation and destruction of jobs within firms adds roughly 15 percent to estimates of economywide job creation and destruction. The results imply that macroeconomic fluctuations can have substantial effects beyond those indicated by net employment changes at the firm level, and that studies of dynamic factor demand must account for variations in gross flows of workers.

Wigner's little group and Berry's phase for massless particles

The ``little group'' for massless particles (namely, the Lorentz transformations $\Lambda$ that leave a null vector invariant) is isomorphic to the Euclidean group E2: translations and rotations in a plane. We show how to obtain explicitly the rotation angle of E2 as a function of $\Lambda$ and we relate that angle to Berry's topological phase. Some particles admit both signs of helicity, and it is then possible to define a reduced density matrix for their polarization. However, that density matrix is physically meaningless, because it has no transformation law under the Lorentz group, even under ordinary rotations.Comment: 4 pages revte

Spousal Influences on Parents' Non-Market Time Choices

This paper considers the effect of spouse's characteristics on three aggregated non-paid time uses, active leisure time; child caregiving time; and home production time, using the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). The time diary of each married individual with children under the age of 13 (mothers and fathers) is analyzed, both in terms of the level of non-paid time and the wife's share of the total level of the daily activity for the couple. Three spousal variables: the relative wage of the wife compared to her husband, spouses' weekly hours of employment; and, in the level equations only, the spouses' time in the same activity are considered. Each of these spousal variables needs to be estimated in order to address issues of both endogeneity and missing data. Three alternative strategies to address these problems are explored: predictions within the sample, predictions from outside the sample and propensity matching which marries mothers with time diaries to fathers with time diaries who have propensity scores similar to the women's husband. The results show very little effect of one spouse on the level of other spouse's unpaid time use. This absence of spousal effects is similar to the reduction of spousal effects in employment time described in Blau and Kahn (2005). In terms of the share of wife's time in the activity, we find higher relative wages of the mother compared to her husband leads to a greater share of child care done by the mother on both weekdays and weekends. No consistent effect of relative wages is found on the mother's share of leisure or home production

Old Money, the Nouveaux Riches and Brunhilde's Marriage Strategy

A woman assessing the wealth of a potential husband may observe some, but not all, of his wealth. She may screen, leading to status consumption and wasteful gift giving. The screening activity is costly not only for the potential husband, but also for the woman, as it reduces the wealth of the man she may marry. A sound observable financial background ('old money') benefits the candidate but also the woman, and reduces wasteful status consumption spending. Also, aging and attractiveness of the woman affect the equilibrium conspicuous spending pattern

Subjective well-being and engagement in arts, culture and sport

This paper explores the relationship between engagement in arts, culture and sport, and subjective well-being, contributing to our understanding of the leisure experience, and cultural value, of these activities. Ordered probit analysis of UK data from wave 2 (2010-11) of Understanding Society , provides evidence in support of a wide range of cultural goods generating positive leisure experience, reflected in overall (life, general happiness) and domain (leisure) satisfaction. Frequency of engagement is central to certain activities: only regular participation in arts activities and sport generates positive effects. In contrast, arts events are positive irrespective of frequency. The findings also indicate even less frequent engagement in activities exhibiting cultural characteristics, e.g. museums/historical sites, has positive association with satisfaction. Finally, although employment has a negative association with leisure satisfaction, engagement in leisure activities is not found to spillover into job satisfaction (with the exception of certain sports). This suggests individuals consider work and leisure (including quality of leisure time) separately

What Do We Know About Contracting Out in the United States? Evidence from Household and Establishment Surveys

A variety of evidence points to significant growth in domestic contracting out over the last two decades, yet the phenomenon is not well documented. In this paper, we pull together data from various sources to shed light on the extent of and trends in domestic outsourcing, the occupations in which it has grown, and the industries engaging in outsourcing for the employment services sector, which has been a particularly important area of domestic outsourcing. In addition, we examine evidence of contracting out of selected occupations to other sectors. We point to many gaps in our knowledge on trends in domestic outsourcing and its implications for employment patterns and to inconsistencies across data sets in the information that is available. We recommend steps to improve data in this area

Co-Pay and Feel Okay: Evidence of Illusory Health Gains from a Health Insurance Reform

The reliability of general self-rated health status is examined using the reform of the public health insurance system of Germany in 2004 as a source of exogenous variation. Among others, the reform introduced a co-payment for ambulatory doctor visits and increased the co-payments for prescription drugs. This natural experiment allows identification of the causal impact of the program on self-assessed health and hence reveals the sensitivity of this subjective measure to a perturbation in the insurance system. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, the results indicate that after the policy intervention, the respondents in the treated group perceived their own health status as better than their hypothetical untreated state even when there is no discernible impact on actual health

Is Social Assistance Contributing to Higher Informality in Turkey?

Although still low for European standards, investments in Social Assistance (SA) transfers in Turkey have been increasing in recent years. The government is expanding access to subsidized health for individuals in the informal sector through a rapid expansion of the Green Card program. Generous non-contributory programs, such as the Green Card, may create perverse incentives for individuals to join or remain in the informal sector as they can access free services without paying taxes and/or contributions, thus potentially being able to get higher “net” labor earnings than in the formal sector. Despite the fact that the Green Card is a large and generous program offered to individuals in the informal sector, empirical analysis in this report does not find an actual impact of the program (or of its rapid expansion) on informality. The reason behind this finding is the existence of a very large differential in wages between formal and informal workers explained by differences worker’s productivity. Low-wage workers facing the possibility to move from the informal sector to the formal sector would have strong incentives to do so even if this would imply losing all SA benefits. As such, the expected monetary and job security gains of having a formal job dominate those of having an informal job even after accounting for SA transfers