Starting Your Career with a Temporary Job: Stepping Stone or "Dead-End"?

This paper uses panel data from the UK (BHPS) and Germany (GSOEP) to investigate the wage effect of entering the labour market with a temporary job. Further than the previous literature that studied the effect of the contract type on wage dynamics in the explained part of a wage regression, we also investigate the effect of the starting contract on the variance of unobserved individual effects and random earnings shocks. For this purpose, we decompose earnings into a component determined by initial unobserved earnings ability and experience-related heterogeneity and a component determined by earnings shocks. Our results for Germany, verify the existence of a wage penalty for entering the labour market with a temporary contract. This penalty disappears after 12.5 years for male workers and after 6.5 years for the female workers. In the UK, a similar wage penalty is found for male workers that persists over their working career. In contrast, no wage penalty is found for the British female workers. In the UK, the initial unobserved earnings capacity is higher for workers starting off with a permanent job, while no such difference emerges in Germany. However, this initial unexplained wage inequality decreases faster for workers starting their career with a temporary contract than their colleagues that entered the labour market with a permanent job. Finally, the persistence of earnings shocks is higher for workers entering the labour market with a temporary contract.temporary employment, wages

Escaping low pay: do male labour market entrants stand a chance?

Purpose { This paper investigates the extent and the human-capital de- terminants of low-wage mobility for labour market entrants, in the UK and Germany. Design/methodology/approach { Using panel data for the UK (BHPS) and Germany (GSOEP), we apply a competing-risks duration model that al- lows us to study transitions from low pay to competing destination states: higher pay, self-employment, unemployment and inactivity. Unobserved het- erogeneity is tackled by a non-parametric mass-point approach. Findings { We ¯nd that low pay is only a temporary state for most young job starters. However, there is a small group of job starters that is caught in a trap of low pay, unemployment or inactivity. In the UK, job starters escape from low pay mainly by developing ¯rm-speci¯c skills. In Germany, involvement in formal vocational training and the attainment of apprenticeship quali¯cations account for low pay exits. Originality/value { Over the past decades, unemployment and low-wage employment have emerged as major challenges facing young labour market entrants. While most empirical studies focus exclusively on the transition from low pay to high pay, we show that a signi¯cant percentage of young entrants are caught in a low-pay - non-employment trap. Moreover, we show that, depending on the institutional context, di®erent types of human capital investments can account for a successful low-pay exit.Low pay ; labour market entry ; duration model ; human capital

Escaping the low pay trap: do labour market entrants stand a chance?

This paper investigates the wage and employment perspectives of low-wage labour market entrants, using panel data from the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany. We apply a competing risks hazard model of transitions from low pay to higher pay, to unemployment or to inactivity. Low pay is found to be a rather transitory experience. However, a significant amount of transitions between low pay and non-employment is indicated. Exits from low-pay seem to be determined by firm-specific skills in the UK and the Netherlands, while by formal educational and vocational training qualifications in Germany.low pay; competing risks; panel data

Deep Learning for User Comment Moderation

Experimenting with a new dataset of 1.6M user comments from a Greek news portal and existing datasets of English Wikipedia comments, we show that an RNN outperforms the previous state of the art in moderation. A deep, classification-specific attention mechanism improves further the overall performance of the RNN. We also compare against a CNN and a word-list baseline, considering both fully automatic and semi-automatic moderation

Accounting for inequality in the EU: Income disparities between and within member states and overall income inequality

In fighting inequality and poverty in the EU emphasis has been placed in reducing differences between countries and/or regions regarding certain macroeconomic indicators, such as the GDP per capita. However, from a policy perspective it is important to know the extent to which overall inequality in the EU is attributed to inequality between the individual countries and the extent to which it is attributed to inequality within them. In addition, it is important to know the extent to which income disparities in each individual member state contribute to overall EU inequality. Following certain assumptions, hypotheses and alternative scenarios, this paper investigates the above questions, employing a decomposition analysis of inequality by population subgroup and utilizing data and information provided by the CHER programme. A number of alternative inequality indices were used to capture the different aspects of inequality and test the robustness of the estimates. The suggested typologies of welfare state regimes were also examined to explain the differences in income inequality between countries and their contribution to overall EU inequality. Policy analysts and policy makers could benefit greatly from such information in evaluating, designing and implementing interventions to deal with inequality and poverty in the EU.Income inequality; decomposition analysis; welfare state regimes; EU

Do welfare and labour market institutions influence unemployment duration of immigrants? Evidence from 11 European countries

This paper investigates the effect of institutions on the unemployment gap between immigrants and natives in 11 EU-countries. We study whether benefits provide disincentive effects as the job-search theory suggests or rather efficiency gains as alternative theories propose. Further than the existing literature, we study unemployment duration instead of unemployment incidence, we distinguish between exits to inactivity, primary and secondary employment and we use individual-level measures for unemployment benefits. We apply a competing-risk event-history model using the ECHP. Our results favour the efficiency-gains argument for granting immigrants benefits as we find that benefits reduce unemployment duration and prevent transitions into inactivity. Employment perspectives of immigrants are better when demand for low-skilled labour is high, employment protection is low and immigration policy is labour-market oriented.Benefits; Employment protection; Event-history model; Immigrants; Low-skilled labour; Unemployment duration

Direct T-violation measurements and T-odd effects in decay experiments

Motivated by the recent experimental announcements for direct measurements of time-reversal non-invariance in the neutral kaon system, we make a comparative discussion of the CPLEAR and KTeV measurements. The most suitable way to consistently incorporate the mixing, the time evolution and the decays of kaons, is to describe the neutral kaon system as a system with a non-Hermitean Hamiltonian. In this framework, the physical (decaying) incoming and outgoing states are distinct and belong to dual spaces. Moreover, since they are eigenstates of the full Hamiltonian, they never oscillate. This is directly manifest in the orthogonality conditions of the physical states, which entirely determine the evolution of the kaon system. Along these lines we conclude: CPLEAR studies K0-bar{K0} oscillations, a process where initial and final states can be reversed, the CPLEAR asymmetry being an effect directly related to the definition of time-reversal. Conclusively, CPLEAR provides a direct measurement of T-violation without any assumption either on unitarity or on CPT-invariance. The KTeV experiment studies in particular the process KL -> pi+ pi- e+ e- where they measure a T-odd effect. However, using unitarity together with estimates of the final state interactions, it should be possible to determine whether this effect can be identified with a genuine T-reversal violation.Comment: 11 pages, no figures. Presented at the 34th Rencontres de Moriond on Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories, Les Arcs, 13-20 March, 199

Wage Mobility in Europe. A Comparative Analysis Using restricted Multinomial Logit Regression

In this paper, we investigate cross-country differences in wage mobility in Europe using the European Community Household Panel. The paper is particularly focused on examining the impact of economic conditions, welfare state regimes and employment regulation on wage mobility. We apply a log-linear approach that is very much similar to a restricted multinomial logit model and much more flexible than the standard probit approach. It appears that regime, economic conditions and employment regulation explain a substantial part of the cross-country variation. The findings also confirm the existence of an inverse U-shape pattern of wage mobility, showing a great deal of low and high-wage persistence in all countries.wages; wage mobility; wage dynamics; multinomial logit regression; loglinear models; welfare states