Education and Wage Inequalities under a Counterfactual Scenario of Minimum Wage

The main purpose of this paper consists in quantifying the impact of a minimum wage adjustment upon wage inequality in Romania. In general, rigorous minimum wage impact assessment upon wage distribution is quite difficult to be conducted mainly because of data access limitations to longitudinal information available at individuals’ level. In this paper an innovative approach is proposed for building a counterfactual scenario through the use of quarterly survey micro-data provided by the National Institute of Statistics. The period analysed in this paper regards the time-interval Q2 2014-Q3 2014. There are several reasons for this choice. First, there were data availability restrictions and second, it was necessary to identify two consecutive periods corresponding to a window-frame right before a minimum wage adjustment and immediately after it took place. In order to check the impact on gender wage inequalities, a 1:1 matching procedure was applied in order to build two distinct gender groups of individuals that are similar in observable characteristics. Both socio-demographic and economic factors are considered. When comparing the changes registered right after the minimum wage adjustment, we noticed a reduction in gender wage inequalities, as males’ chances to earn more in comparison to females drop

Do apprenticeships increase youth employability in Romania? A propensity score matching approach

The paper aims to bring together two main current research interests: youth employability on the one hand, and use of econometric techniques in order to evaluate the impact of different policy measures, on the other hand. The topic of youth employability is very actual for Romanian labour market, as early school-leaving and the rate of youth not in employment, education or training are among the highest in EU and show no sign of going to decrease significantly on medium and long term. Work-based leaning, as apprenticeship or internship programs are lately promoted as efficient measures to address both the need for a better school-to-work transition, as well as a better education-job match. The paper provides some insights regarding the youth experience of apprenticeship in Romania and empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that work-based programs could increase youth employability. The empirical findings where obtained through a counterfactual approach, by applying the propensity score matching technique on a sample of respondents selected from the Flash Eurobarometer 378 dataset. Our results confirm a low but positive impact of apprenticeships on youth employment in Romania. Also, the analyses confirm that apprenticeships address more to low educated young persons, so the impact of the programs is even more relevant as could be an effective measure for increasing youth employability of disadvantaged youth.&nbsp

Analysis of the post-crisis economic performances in the European Union

The effects of the economic crisis continue to impact the world economy even if the most difficult period of the crisis seems to have passed. In this context, the analysis of the economic performance becomes stringent in that it not only allows for the identification of the economic environment, but also due to the fact that it brings value by determining the automated correction of any decision or direction in the difficult economic context of today. The paper represents a study of some of the main macroeconomic performance indicators for the European Union countries, such as: economic growth, current account balance, labour productivity, employment and average net earnings. Based on a cluster analysis we identified the position of each E.U. member state via an economic performance view and a country level particularization was then achieved. After grouping the countries into two clusters based on their economic performances, we built two distinct equations using panel data models that could explain the economic growth variations for both the case of highly performing and less performing E.U. countries. The results of the analysis actually incorporate some main components that will help formulate economic growth measures, employment and labour productivity. &nbsp

The effects of training on Romanian migrants’ income: a propensity score matching approach

Training programs are an important tool of human resource management, especially in case of technological and organizational changes inside a company. According to the human capital theory, trainings generally lead to increased post-training wages. Having this into consideration, this paper aims to evaluate the effects of trainings on the Romanian migrants’ income by conducting propensity score matching, as a novelty in the field. Both the treatment group and the control group were selected from an online survey conducted in 2010 upon the Romanian migrants worldwide. The results confirmed the human capital theory, indicating that after attending trainings Romanian migrants should expect higher incomes

Education and Wage Inequalities under a Counterfactual Scenario of Minimum Wage

The main purpose of this paper consists in quantifying the impact of a minimum wage adjustment upon wage inequality in Romania. In general, rigorous minimum wage impact assessment upon wage distribution is quite difficult to conduct mainly because of data access limitations to longitudinal information available at individuals‘ level. In this paper an innovative approach is proposed for building a counterfactual scenario through the use of quarterly survey micro-data provided by the National Institute of Statistics. The period analysed in this paper regards the timeinterval Q2 2014-Q3 2014. There are several reasons for this choice. First, it concerns data availability restrictions and second, the need to identify two consecutive periods corresponding to a window-frame right before a minimum wage adjustment and immediately after it took place. In order to check the impact on gender wage inequalities, a 1:1 matching procedure was applied for the construction of two distinct gender groups of individuals that were similar in observable characteristics. Both socio-demographic and economic factors are considered. When comparing the changes registered right after the minimum wage adjustment, we noticed a reduction in gender wage inequalities, as males‘ chances to earn more in comparison to females drop

Multiple Bone Metastatic Invasion with Clinical Implications due to Ductal Mammary Carcinoma – Case report and Short Literature Review

Multidisciplinary approach of clinical cases in rehabilitations units can be very complex and divers. Method: We present a case of a woman 30 years old, whose oncological histo-ry begins 9 years ago, when the diagnosis of invasive ductal mammary infiltrating ca-nelular carcinoma grade I was made and treated by tumorectomy (lumpectomy). The pa-tient refused oncological treatment at that time and resorted to alternative medicine dur-ing a period of 7 years: diet without sugar and animal products; regular vitamin B17 treatments; almond kernel cure; high-dose intravenous vitamin C treatment for; intrave-nous ozone therapy; apitherapy with bee venom; oral administration of cannabis oil dur-ing the past four years until now; physical therapy. Results: The evolution is marked by the appearance of multiple bone metastatic lesions. The most worst clinical consequence was a hyperalgesic cervicobrachial neuralgia, due to multiple C6-T3 lytic lesions diag-nosed 2 years ago and C7 compression (close to spinal cord injury), situation which had as medical approach two surgeries interventions, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Con-clusions: The rehabilitation program was adapted to every stage of clinical evolution and was marked by many complications. All the steps were made for functional improvement and for increase the quality of life

Flat-Rate versus Progressive Taxation? An Impact Evaluation Study for the Case of Romania

Taking into consideration the recent debates on adopting a progressive tax system over the flat-rate taxation, our paper aims to investigate the impact of a change in the current Romanian personal income tax policy system from the 10% flat-rate tax system to some alternative progressive taxation scenarios. The methodological approach consisted in using the European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) database to micro-simulate the impact upon poverty and income inequality. Through our ex-ante tax policy analysis we bring empirical evidence of a modest, but positive effect upon poverty rate and income inequalities in favor of a progressive taxation system. However, when looking at the government financial implications through the personal income tax budget revenues, we discuss upon the possible trade-off between the benefits on poverty and income inequalities and the possible budgetary drawbacks. Despite the data limitations, this study has the benefit of being among the first attempts to evaluate the impact of a personal income tax policy reform for the case of Romania

Analysis of the Post-Crisis Economic Performances in the European Union

The effects of the economic crisis continue to impact the world economy even if the most difficult period of the crisis seems to have passed. In this context, the analysis of the economic performance becomes stringent in that it not only allows for the identification of the economic environment, but also due to the fact that it brings value by determining the automated correction of any decision or direction in the difficult economic context of today. The paper represents a study of some of the main macroeconomic performance indicators for the European Union countries, such as: economic growth, current account balance, labour productivity, employment and average net earnings. Based on a cluster analysis we identified the position of each E.U. member state via an economic performance view and a country level particularization was then achieved. After grouping the countries into two clusters based on their economic performances, we built two distinct equations using panel data models that could explain the economic growth variations for both the case of highly performing and less performing E.U. countries. The results of the analysis actually incorporate some main components that will help formulate economic growth measures, employment and labour productivity

The COVID-19 pandemic and main economic convergence indicators in the EU

Abstract>The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented global public health crisis, which led to a drastic decline in economic activity and sharp rises in government deficits and public debts. Our research aims to analyse the aggregated impact of COVID-19 pandemic on each EU country and their health systems and correlate it with the main economic convergence indicators for 2020. To this purpose, we built a composite COVID index using Principal Component Analysis, employed TOPSIS to rank the EU countries according to nominal and real convergence indicators, and correlate the index with each ranking. Our findings suggest that in the first year of the pandemic, nominal convergence indicators were more affected than real convergence indicators. Non-euro CEE countries managed to keep some of their convergence indicators at relatively sustainable levels despite having high COVID index values. Baltic and Scandinavian countries seem to have outperformed the others, the latter having an initially more relaxed approach to the restrictions imposed on the population. The risk of diverging during the pandemic crisis appears to be increasing in countries where there were imbalances prior to 2020

Migration and Earnings in Romania

AbstractThis article investigates the determinants of Romanian average earnings by estimating several panel data econometric models at national and regional level. The earnings are regressed against a number of socio-economic variables that include the unemployment rate, the labour productivity, the number of immigrants, the number of emigrants and the number of graduates from tertiary education and from post-secondary education. The results obtained show that productivity, higher education and immigrants positively influence Romanian earnings and that the unemployment rate lowers the earnings. Also, different patterns are observed across the macro-regions, the comparative analysis of the results enabling us to identify the characteristics of each Romanian macro-region