Measuring match quality using subjective data

We examine whether data routinely collected in household surveys and surveys of workers can be used to construct a measure of underlying match quality between worker and firm which helps test matching models and predict subsequent labour market outcomes of workers. We use subjective data from employees both on reported levels of job satisfaction with various aspects of the current job and on whether they would like a new job with a new employer to construct a measure of underlying match quality. We then use this to test several implications of matching models relating to wage-tenure profiles, wages, and separations.panel data, wages, job mobility, match effects, BHPS

Firms and workers: who fails in times of crisis?

Using a panel of linked employer-employee data from Portugal, we follow the performance of firms and workers during the first decade of 2000s in terms of the risk of firm shutdown and of chances of workers’ entering unemployment. This allows us to identify the characteristics of unsuccessful firms and workers over this period and, of most interest, whether these characteristics changed as a consequence of the global crisis. In addition, and different from previous works, we (i) assess whether there is a differential effect to crisis depending on firm size, and (ii) relate the workers’ risk of unemployment to the hazard of firm shutdown. In the analyses of hazard of shutdown and risk of unemployment most of the effects of observed covariates remained unchanged through the business cycle. There is a differential response to crisis depending on firm size. A small firm’s risk of shutdown is 9 times the risk of a large firm. However, the chances of becoming unemployed are less than twice larger for a worker in a small firm. This suggests that large firms may be less likely to shutdown, but they are not a shield from unemployment.firm survival, employment, crisis, LEED

Tariff-Rate Quotas and Agricultural Trade: An Application to the Agricultural Free-Trade Negotiation between the MERCOSUR and the EU

In October 2004 the European Union and the MERCOSUR tried to reach an agreement for creating what would be the world's largest free-trade area accounting for 650 millions people. But despite five years of bilateral work to strike a deal, the two parties stayed on ropes at their meeting in Portugal the 18th of October 2004. The stumbling blocks are the MERCOSUR's demand for a greater access to EU's agricultural markets and the EU's demand for expanded access for industrial goods, services and investments. Though, both partners made great efforts to comply with each other requests, it wasn't enough. In this paper we are interested in the possible last EU's offer to enlarge access to its market through the allocation of bilateral tariff-rate quotas for some MERCOSUR's agricultural products namely corn, wheat, beef, poultry, swine and dairy products. Following the methodology of Elbehri and Pearson (Elbehri and R. 2000) we model bilateral tariff-rate quotas in GTAP using GEMPACK. We then, carry out our simulation to estimate the potential effects of expanding the MERCOSUR's access to these EU's markets.MERCOSUR, European Union, agricultural trade, TRQ, GTAP, International Relations/Trade, D58, F17, F15,

The dynamics of job creation and destruction for University graduates: why a rising unemployment rate can be misleading

This study uses a longitudinal matched employer-employee data set on the Portuguese economy to analyze systematic information on job creation and job destruction for university graduates, comparing it to other groups of workers. We find that the unemployment rate can provide an incomplete and misleading idea of the dynamics in labor demand and of the employment prospects for university graduates. The pessimistic view that seems to be popular nowadays, stating that the expansion of higher education may have gone too far and that investment in higher education has become a too risky business, possibly not worthwhile, as employers are no longer keen on recruiting newly graduate workers, does not find support in the empirical evidence for the Portuguese economy.unemployment, gross job flows