Are Wages Equal Across Sectors of Production? A Panel Data Analysis for Tradable and Non-Tradable Goods

The assumption that national labor markets are homogenous across tradable and non-tradable goods is common in multisector (open-economy) macro models and crucial for the prominent Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis. This study tests it with a novel method to distinguish the tradable and non-tradable sectors grounded in economic theory, modern empirical methods and a large and detailed macro data set. It finds that both the internal relationship between productivity and wages in the tradable and non-tradable sectors postulated by the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis and its external transmission mechanism are rejected.

The Exporter Wage Premium Reconsidered Destinations, Distances and Linked Employer-Employee Data

This study uses detailed, reliable and up-to-date linked employer-employee data that take account of both the demand and the supply side of the labor market to challenge the conventional wisdom of a universal exporter wage premium. It investigates whether for German establishments an exporter wage premium can be found irrespective of export destination and the distance between export origin and destination. As expected, it finds that exporters generally pay higher wages than non-exporters. But it also shows that only exporting to certain countries is associated with a wage premium. Moreover, such a premium exists only for establishments that ship goods over a relatively long distance.Exporter wage premium, Export destinations, Linked employer-employee data

Are Wages Equal Across Sectors of Production? A Panel Data Analysis for Tradable and Non-Tradable Goods

The assumption that national labor markets are homogenous across tradable and non-tradable goods is common in multisector (open-economy) macro models and crucial for the prominent Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis. This study tests it with a novel method to distinguish the tradable and non-tradable sectors grounded in economic theory, modern empirical methods and a large and detailed macro data set. It nds that both the internal relationship between productivity and wages in the tradable and non-tradable sectors postulated by the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis and its external transmission mechanism are rejected.Balassa-Samuelson, Wage equalization, Tradability

The Exporter Wage Premium Reconsidered - Destinations, Distances and Linked Employer-Employee Data

This study uses detailed, reliable and up-to-date linked employer-employee data that take account of both the demand and the supply side of the labor market to challenge the conventional wisdom of a universal exporter wage premium. It investigates whether for German establishments an exporter wage premium can be found irrespective of export destination and the distance between export origin and destination. As expected, it finds that exporters generally pay higher wages than non-exporters. But it also shows that only exporting to certain countries is associated with a wage premium. Moreover, such a premium exists only for establishments that ship goods over a relatively long distance.Exporter wage premium, Export destinations, Linked employer-employee data

Can we identify Balassa-Samuelson effects with measures of product variety?

The Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis – i.e. that real exchange rates between each pair of countries increase with the tradables sector productivities ratio between these countries, and decrease with their non-tradables sector productivities ratio – has been one of the most prominent frameworks in open economy macroeconomics for more than forty years. However, empirical studies have often been unable to confirm it. We argue that this might at least in part be due to measurement errors leading to downward-biased estimates. We test the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis with innovative trade-based vari-ety measures to differentiate between tradables and non-tradables sector productivities that do not suffer from such errors-in-variables. Using a pairwise regression approach, we find stable and very robust Balassa-Samuelson effects over all our specifications.Balassa-Samuelson, product variety, measurement errors, pairwise regressions

Determinants of Lifetime Unemployment - A Micro Data Analysis with Censored Quantile Regressions

Building on a large administrative micro data set for the time span 1975 - 2004 we look at lifetime unemployment for West German birth cohorts 1950 to 1954. Descriptive evidence shows a highly uneven distribution of unemployment in West Germany - more than 60% of the individuals in our sample were not unemployed for a single day over the better part of their professional career while almost half of the total amount of unemployment fell upon 5% of the individuals covered. We employ censored quantile regressions to explain the amount of individual lifetime unemployment. Explanatory variables are either characteristics of the individual (like education), or of the job (like the wage) or the employer (like the size of the firm) early in the professional career. A particular emphasis is placed on the importance of the occupation: we find that for men working in a disadvantageous occupation at age 25 ceteris paribus leads to a signicantly higher amount of lifetime unemployment. Educational attainment or the wage earned at age 25 are also related to the amount of men's lifetime unemployment, amongst others. Some of these variables show very interesting patterns when looking at dierent quantiles. For women results are in general less clear-cut.Lifetime unemployment, Censored-Quantile Regressions, Occupations specific human capital

The Penn Effect and Transition : The New EU Member States in International Perspective

Recent panel studies have found relatively high point estimates for the elasticity of ag-gregate price measures with respect to productivity in (former) transition economies, while other studies report price-productivity elasticity estimates to depend positively on average productivity in the sample. We aim to reconcile both results by putting com-parative price developments of transition economies in an international perspective. We argue that estimating simple price-productivity relationships without the inclusion of other real factors connected to reform effort might severely bias estimates for CEEC economies. Our results imply that, when controlling for reform effort and therefore avoiding this endogeneity problem, the price-productivity-elasticity for CEEC econo-mies was not different from that of non-transition economies during the first 15 years of transition.Balassa-Samuelson, transition

Determinants of Lifetime Unemployment: A Micro Data Analysis with Censored Quantile Regressions

The empirical literature on unemployment almost exclusively focuses on the duration of distinct unemployment spells. In contrast, we use a large German administrative micro data set for the time span 1975-2004 to investigate individual lifetime unemployment (defined as the total length of all unemployment spells over a 25-year period). This new perspective enables us to answer questions regarding the long-term distribution and determinants of unemployment for West German birth cohorts 1950-1954. We find that lifetime unemployment is highly unevenly distributed and employ censored quantile regressions to show that, for men, pursuing a disadvantageous occupation early in the professional career leads to a significantly higher amount of lifetime unemployment.lifetime unemployment, censored quantile regressions, occupation-specific human capital

Digital Curation Program of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is a digital library that strives to serve the public through digital collections accumulated from a wide variety of partners. Our chosen topic for the DPLA exhibit project is Perspectives on the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War remains a controversial topic of national interest, making it a topic of depth and of many perspectives. Our goals with this exhibit were to gather different perspectives of the war through personal stories, the media, presidential administrations of the war, military personnel, and the general public, including famous figures. We strove to demonstrate the variety of perspectives on the Vietnam War through a variation of digital objects and content that will be engaging for users: both black and white and color photos, videos, and audio files. Furthermore, we wanted to ensure that our digital materials are of high quality, properly documented, and easy to search and find thus all of our objects are from DPLA and are from usable original sources. This poster will describe our processes for organizational, object selection, building our exhibit, attainment of our goals, and detailed steps of our overall operation. The poster will also include details about the minor issues and bumps that occurred while reaching our final product as well as the team members’ perspectives on the project as a whole including: problems, words to for the wise, and triumphs

Library and Information Science Education and eScience: The Current State of ALA Accredited MLS/MLIS Programs in Preparing Librarians and Information Professionals for eScience Needs

The purpose of this study is multifaceted: 1) to describe eScience research in acomprehensive way; 2) to help library and information specialists understand the realm of eScience research and the information needs of the community and demonstrate the importance of LIS professionals within the eScience domain; 3) and to explore the current state of curricular content of ALA accredited MLS/MLIS programs to understand the extent to which they prepare new professionals within eScience librarianship. The literature review focuses heavily on eScientists and other data-driven researchers’ information service needs in addition to demonstrating how and why librarians and information specialists can and should fulfill these service gaps and information needs within eScience research. By looking at the current curriculum of American Library Association (ALA) accredited MLS/MLIS programs, we can identify potential gaps in knowledge and where to improve in order to prepare and train new MLS/MLIS graduates to fulfill the needs of eScientists. This investigation is meant to be informative and can be used as a tool for LIS programs to assess their curriculums in comparison to the needs of eScience and other data-driven and networked research. Finally, this investigation will provide awareness and insight into the services needed to support a thriving eScience and data-driven research community to the LIS profession