Essays in Labor Economics and International Economics

This dissertation includes three essays in labor economics and international economics. The first essay studies the relationship between the amount of a loan demanded by firms and their labor demand. Governments have developed small loan programs with a reduced interest rate to decrease unemployment in Iran. Using longitudinal, firm-level data from the years 2005 to 2010 in Iran, this study examines the effect of one Iranian province\u27s loan program on employment based on two different methods of evaluating causal effects. The first method applies a difference-in-difference fixed effects matching estimator to estimate the employment effect of the program. The second method applies the generalized propensity score to estimate the impact of the amount of a loan on employment. The results from the first method suggest that the loan program has a positive and significant effect on the employment of treated firms. The results from the second method suggest that the estimated employment effects increase with the amount of the loan, whereas there is a decrease in the marginal effects of an additional amount of loan. The second essay investigates how the difference between firms\u27 inflation expectations, measured by the loan amounts they demand, and actual inflation affects their labor demand. In addition, I examine the relationship between firms\u27 inflation expectations and wages in an individualistic bargaining model in which individual workers bargain over wages with their employers. Theoretically, the model shows that a firm\u27s actual labor demand meets its expected labor demand if the firm has a rational expectation regarding inflation. On the other hand, the firm\u27s actual labor demand does not meet its expected labor demand if the firm cannot forecast inflation correctly. Empirically, I use firm-level data from a province in Iran between 2004 and 2011 to test the model\u27s predictions. The empirical results confirm that there is a specific loan amount for which firms\u27 expected labor demands meet their actual ones. In contrast, there is a gap between firms\u27 expected labor demands and their actual ones for any other loan amount. Furthermore, the result indicates that there is a positive and significant relationship between the loan amounts demanded by firms and wages. These results can be explained by firms\u27 inflation expectations and show that they are not consistent with full-information rational expectations models, though they are not far away from them. The third essay examines the effects of the trade sanctions imposed on Iran in 2010 on employment, demand for skilled labor, and wages. I use industrial manufacturing data that cover 10 years before and 5 years after the sanction, 28 provinces, and more than 200 different industries. The results regarding the employment impact of the trade sanctions show that there was remarkable job destruction, most notably in domestically active industries, during the sanction period. The decomposition of the increase in the aggregate demand for skilled labor sheds light on the fact that it comes from labor reallocation within industries, not from across industries. The trade sanctions adversely affected both exporters\u27 and non-exporters\u27 total-factor productivity; however, non-exporters endured a larger negative impact. This induced biased technological change between exporters and non-exporters, which resulted in a market share reallocation towards exporters. As a result, the demand for skilled production workers and their per-capita real average wage increased, whereas the demand for non-production workers and their per-capita real average wage decreased during the sanction years. This opposite effect is explained by the elasticity of substitution

A Descriptive Approach for Strategic Management of Strategic Resource

One of the major elements in management is planning. Planning is the basis of managerial elements and is a process within the framework of which organizations combine and merge all their activities and efforts with regard to the desired goals, the ways for achieving them and how they are met, and the purpose behind its implementation is achievement of organizational results. So management must have proper planning for all its resources.This paper is comprised of three main parts and in the first part, the link between strategic planning and human resources (HR) has been taken into account and in the second part, the strategic approach in human resource planning (HRP) and in the third part, the methodology of human resource planning has been considered, which will be investigated in what follows. Keywords: planning, management, strategic management

Emerging Platform Work in Europe: Hungary in Cross-country Comparison

In this paper, we assess the main characteristics of a growing form of precarious employment, namely platform work. These digitally enabled services cover a wide range of activities from personal low or semi-skilled services (e.g. personal transportation) to highly skilled online services such as software development. In our paper, we characterise the digital platform labour force by the content of the job, working conditions, employment status, and collective voice. The primary aim of the analysis was to give an overview of theoretical foundations and empirical evidence for an EU supported project on platform workers. Here we present an overview of the variety of terminology, definitions of platform work, and platform workers and examine the grey zone of labour law regulation in which many of them operate. We assessed the size of platform employment in Europe, indicating the knowledge inequalities within the EU countries and some methodological inconsistencies. As a case study to scrutinise the regulatory challenges accompanying diffusion of platform work, we look at the failed story of Uber in Hungary and the subsequent success of Bolt which took over the market share of the former. Our findings showed that while the size of the platform economy is growing in Europe, there is no consensus in the social scientific community either on the appropriate terminology or the most convenient methodology on how to measure its extent. This emerging form of employment represents a significant challenge not only for labour law jurisdictions, but for the softer forms of social regulation as well. To better understand the proper governance of digital labour markets and the issue of ”collective voice” through the transformation of the content of work, working conditions, and employment status of the Platform Work sector, it is necessary to focus on both the transformation of work/labour as well as its interplay with value creation, governance, management and labour in the platform-based economy

The effect of marketing investment on firm value and systematic risk

Analyzing the financial benefit of marketing is still a critical topic for both practitioners and researchers. Companies consider marketing costs as a type of investment and expect this investment to be returned to the company in the form of profit. On the other hand, companies adopt different innovative strategies to increase their value. Therefore, this study aims to test the impact of marketing investment on firm value and systematic risk. To do so, data related to four Arabic emerging markets during the period 2010–2019 are considered, and firm share price and beta share are considered to measure firm value and systematic risk, respectively. Since a firm’s ownership concentration is a determinant factor in firm value and systematic risk, this variable is considered a moderated variable in the relationship between marketing investment and firm value and systematic risk. The findings of the study, using panel data regression, indicate that increasing investment in marketing has a positive effect on the firm value valuation model. It is also found that the ownership concentration variable has a reinforcing role in the relationship between marketing investment and firm value. It is also disclosed that it moderates the systematic risk aligned with the monitoring impact of controlling shareholders. This study provides a logical combination of governance–marketing dimensions to interpret performance indicators in the capital market

Attitudes of Primary Pregnant Women Toward Preference of Birth Method in Dezful, Iran: A Cross-Sectional Study

Introduction: Choosing the birth method is a major issue for pregnant women that is affected by multifaceted physiological, psychological and socio-cultural factors. Aim(s): The aim research was performed to explore factors influencing pregnant women’s attitude toward birth method. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study on 220 healthy nulliparous pregnant women with uncomplicated pregnancies without any contraindication for vaginal birth in Medical Centers of Dezful, in the south west of Iran. Data collection tool was a questionnaire for factors affecting the choice of delivery method. Differences in attitude were compared between two groups of natural vaginal delivery preference and cesarean delivery preference. Statistical analysis was performed with SPSS Version 16.0 statistic software package. Descriptive statistics were used to report percentages, mean, and standard deviation, and t-test, chi-square were applied to analyze the data. Results: During the study period, 206 primary pregnant women were examined to determine the attitudinal influencing factors the birth method preference. 131 women (64%) chose the natural delivery method and 71 women (36%) chose the cesarean delivery method. In addition, the results showed a statistically significant difference between the two groups regarding the general attitude of the participants towards natural delivery (164.43 in the normal vaginal delivery (NVD) group versus 134.50 in the cesarean section (CS) group (p < 0.001)). Conclusion: There is a direct relationship between the attitude of pregnant women towards vaginal birth and the tendency to normal vaginal delivery and cesarean section. Also, according to the results of the study of 8 components of attitudes, counseling sessions and prenatal training sessions can be identified based on counseling needs and be guided counseling sessions more purposefully

Social capital contributions to food security: A comprehensive literature review

Social capital creates a synergy that benefits all members of a community. This review examines how social capital contributes to the food security of communities. A systematic literature review, based on Prisma, is designed to provide a state of the art review on capacity social capital in this realm. The output of this method led to finding 39 related articles. Studying these articles illustrates that social capital improves food security through two mechanisms of knowledge sharing and product sharing (i.e., sharing food products). It reveals that social capital through improving the food security pillars (i.e., food availability, food accessibility, food utilization, and food system stability) affects food security. In other words, the interaction among the community members results in sharing food products and information among community members, which facilitates food availability and access to food. There are many shreds of evidence in the literature that sharing food and food products among the community member decreases household food security and provides healthy nutrition to vulnerable families, and improves the food utilization pillar of food security. It is also disclosed that belonging to the social networks increases the community members’ resilience and decreases the community’s vulnerability that subsequently strengthens the stability of a food system. This study contributes to the common literature on food security and social capital by providing a conceptual model based on the literature. In addition to researchers, policymakers can use this study’s findings to provide solutions to address food insecurity problems