Female Employment and Occupational Changes in the 1990s: How is the EU Performing Relative to the US?

This paper provides a comparison of the incidence and composition of female employment both in the EU and in the US. Despite a significant increase in female labour market participation in the EU, about 50% of the difference between the employment rates in the US and the EU can still be attributed to differences in the educational attainments and the employment rates of women aged 25?54. We highlight the main features of female employment in both areas, paying particular attention to the differences across age cohorts and educational levels. Our main findings are as follows: (i) the educational level of the EU female population is slowly converging to that of the US across age cohorts, (ii) the employment rates of less educated women are much lower in the EU than in the US (with the exceptions of the Scandinavian countries) even for women aged 25?34, and (iii) occupational segregation is lower for the younger highly educated women who seem to be entering more typically male occupations and less typically female occupations, although at a higher rate in the US than in the EU.Publicad

The Role of the Minimum Wage in the Welfare State : An Appraisal

In order to offer a balanced assessment of the role of minimum wages in the Welfare State, seven basic questions need to be answered: (i) Why is the minimum wage a useful redistributive tool?; (ii) How binding are minimum wage floors in different countries?; (iii) To what extent do minimum wages have the adverse consequences that standard analysis predict?; (iv) Are there strong theoretical grounds underlying the revisionist results?; (v) Who supports minimum wages?; (vi) Under which conditions is the minimum wage a better tool than other policy instruments to achieve income redistribution?; and, finally, (vii) What is the overall cross-country time-series evidence regarding the employment effect of the minima? The aim in this paper is to provide an appraisal on the available evidence for each of the above-mentioned issues.Publicad

Where do Women Work? : Analysing Patterns in Occupational Segregation by Gender

Our goal in this paper is twofold. First, to examine the role of education and other socio-economic factors in explaining differences between the EU and the US in occupational segregation by gender. And, secondly, to analyse its relationship with job characteristics, remuneration and promotion opportunities of female employees.Publicad

Youth labour markets in Spain: education, training and crowding-out.

The stylised facts describing the evolution of youth labour markets in Spain can be characterised as a "high-skill, bad-job trap" where higher educated workers end up in semi or unskilled entry jobs while crowding out lower educated workers from that type of job. A simple matching model with multiple contracting regimes is used to explain how a less tigher skilled labour market can be lead to crowding-out of lower educated worker and less on-the-jobtraining.Unemployment; Education; Training matching;

Youth labour markets in Spain: education, training and crowding-out

The stylised facts describing the evolution of youth labour markets in Spain can be characterised as a "high-skill, bad-job trap" where higher educated workers end up in semi or unskilled entry jobs while crowding out lower educated workers from that type of job. A simple matching model with multiple contracting regimes is used to explain how a less tigher skilled labour market can be lead to crowding-out of lower educated worker and less on-the-jobtraining

Los problemas del mercado de trabajo juvenil en España: Empleo, formación y salarios mínimos

En este artículo se discuten los efectos sobre el mercado de trabajo juvenil de dos reformas recientes que han afectado al sistema de salarios mínimos español: el proceso de equiparación del Salario Mínimo Interprofesional para todas las edades, culminado en 1998, y el Pacto sobre Negociación Colectiva, firmado en 1997. Con este fin, se realiza una síntesis de los resultados obtenidos en investigaciones recientes y se aporta nueva evidencia que indica que en ambos casos las decisiones tomadas han podido resultar inadecuadas

Minimum wages, collective bargaining and wage dispersion : the spanish case

Recent empirical work on the employment effects of minimum wages in Spain has shown negative, albeit not large, effects on youth and low skilled-workers'employment prospects. In this paper we tackle this issue in greater depth. Specifically, we analyse how collective wage bargaining, by fixing minimum wages above statutory ones, affects the overall wage structure and employment. We develop a simple model with monopsonistic features, resulting in externalities in wage-setting by firms, which may give rise to wider wage dispersion than that implied by the introduction of minimum wages

Past, present and future of the Spanish labour market: when the pandemic meets the megatrends

Purpose: This paper aims to review the experience so far of the Spanish labour market during the Covid-19 crisis in the light of the existing institutions, its performance during past recessions and the policy measures adopted during the pandemic. Emphasis is placed on the role of worldwide trends in labour markets because of automation and artificial intelligence, in shaping a potential recovery of this (hopefully) transitory shock through a big reallocation process of employment and economic activity. It also highlights some innovations to employment and social policies needed to smooth the reallocation process and lessen the rise in inequality associated to technological trends. Design/methodology/approach: Theory and empirics. Findings: The Spanish labour market will subject to a great reallocation shock as a result of Covid-19 and secular technological changes. Reforms need to be undertaken. Originality/value: An overview and some new results.The authors are grateful to an Associate Editor for useful comments. Dolado and Felgueroso thank financial support from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (grant ECO2017-83255C3-P), Fundacion BBVA (Ayudas a Equipos de Investigacion Científica Sars-Cov-2 y Covid-19) and Fedea, respectively

Xenon hydrate as an analog of methane hydrate in geologic systems out of thermodynamic equilibrium

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 20(5), (2019):2462-2472, doi:10.1029/2019GC008250.Methane hydrate occurs naturally under pressure and temperature conditions that are not straightforward to replicate experimentally. Xenon has emerged as an attractive laboratory alternative to methane for studying hydrate formation and dissociation in multiphase systems, given that it forms hydrates under milder conditions. However, building reliable analogies between the two hydrates requires systematic comparisons, which are currently lacking. We address this gap by developing a theoretical and computational model of gas hydrates under equilibrium and nonequilibrium conditions. We first compare equilibrium phase behaviors of the Xe·H2O and CH4·H2O systems by calculating their isobaric phase diagram, and then study the nonequilibrium kinetics of interfacial hydrate growth using a phase field model. Our results show that Xe·H2O is a good experimental analog to CH4·H2O, but there are key differences to consider. In particular, the aqueous solubility of xenon is altered by the presence of hydrate, similar to what is observed for methane; but xenon is consistently less soluble than methane. Xenon hydrate has a wider nonstoichiometry region, which could lead to a thicker hydrate layer at the gas‐liquid interface when grown under similar kinetic forcing conditions. For both systems, our numerical calculations reveal that hydrate nonstoichiometry coupled with hydrate formation dynamics leads to a compositional gradient across the hydrate layer, where the stoichiometric ratio increases from the gas‐facing side to the liquid‐facing side. Our analysis suggests that accurate composition measurements could be used to infer the kinetic history of hydrate formation in natural settings where gas is abundant.This work was funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, DOE [awards DE‐FE0013999 and DE‐SC0018357 (to R. J.) and DOE Interagency Agreement DE‐FE0023495 (to W. F. W.)]. X. F. acknowledges support by the Miller Research Fellowship at the University of California Berkeley. W. F. W. acknowledges support from the U.S. Geological Survey's Gas Hydrate Project and the Survey's Coastal, Marine Hazards and Resources Program. L. C. F. acknowledges funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grants RYC‐2012‐11704 and CTM2014‐54312‐P). L. C. F. and R. J. acknowledge funding from the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives, through a Seed Fund grant. The simulation data are available on the UC Berkeley Dash repository at https://doi.org/10.6078/D1G67B.2019-11-0

Xenon Hydrate as an Analog of Methane Hydrate in Geologic Systems Out of Thermodynamic Equilibrium

Methane hydrate occurs naturally under pressure and temperature conditions that are not straightforward to replicate experimentally. Xenon has emerged as an attractive laboratory alternative to methane for studying hydrate formation and dissociation in multiphase systems, given that it forms hydrates under milder conditions. However, building reliable analogies between the two hydrates requires systematic comparisons, which are currently lacking. We address this gap by developing a theoretical and computational model of gas hydrates under equilibrium and nonequilibrium conditions. We first compare equilibrium phase behaviors of the Xe·H₂O and CH₄·H₂O systems by calculating their isobaric phase diagram, and then study the nonequilibrium kinetics of interfacial hydrate growth using a phase field model. Our results show that Xe·H₂O is a good experimental analog to CH₄·H₂O, but there are key differences to consider. In particular, the aqueous solubility of xenon is altered by the presence of hydrate, similar to what is observed for methane; but xenon is consistently less soluble than methane. Xenon hydrate has a wider nonstoichiometry region, which could lead to a thicker hydrate layer at the gas‐liquid interface when grown under similar kinetic forcing conditions. For both systems, our numerical calculations reveal that hydrate nonstoichiometry coupled with hydrate formation dynamics leads to a compositional gradient across the hydrate layer, where the stoichiometric ratio increases from the gas‐facing side to the liquid‐facing side. Our analysis suggests that accurate composition measurements could be used to infer the kinetic history of hydrate formation in natural settings where gas is abundant