Snakes or Ladders? Skill Upgrading and Occupational Mobility in the US and the UK during the 1990s

It is frequently argued that the process of skill upgrading has both worsened the employment prospects and decreased the relative wages of unskilled workers. However, workers are not immutably either low skill or high skill, and skill upgrading may offer the opportunity for workers to move up the ‘skill ladder’. In this paper we examine the balance of these two effects. We use comparable individual-level panel data from the US and the UK to relate the probability of individual occupational movement to the extent of skill upgrading at the industry level. We find that whilst skill upgrading does indeed have a positive impact on the probability of moving up the job ladder, this is insufficient to outweigh the increased probability of unemployment. We also find that workers moving down or off the ladder suffer large wage penalties.Skill upgrading, occupational mobility, promotions and demotions

Practical estimation methods for linked employer-employee data

"Methods for the analysis of linked employer-employee data are not yet available in standard econometrics packages. In this paper, we make the fixed-effects methods developed orginally by Abowd, Kramarz, Margolis and others more accessible, where possible, and show how they can be implemented in Stata. To illustrate these techniques, we give an example using German linked data. There is a caveat: when the number of plants is prohibitively large and the investigator wants to estimate the correlation between the worker and firm unobserved heterogeneities, the regression-based techniques discussed are not feasible. We also report an estimate of the correlation of zero. In this version of the paper, we replace our earlier Two-Step estimator by a Classical Minimum Distance estimator." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) Additional Information Die Quelle enthält die Stata-Code-Programme zum Herunterladen. In dem Appendix des IAB Discussion Paper ist der Stata-Code abgedruckt, so dass bei Interesse die Modelle nachgeschätzt bzw. auf andere Fragestellungen angewendet werden können.IAB-Linked-Employer-Employee-Datensatz, Schätzung, Datenanalyse, Software, statistische Methode

IS IT EASIER TO ESCAPE FROM LOW PAY IN URBAN AREAS? EVIDENCE FROM THE UK

In this paper we compare periods of low pay employment between rural and urban areas in the UK. Using the British Household Panel Survey, we estimate the probability that a period of low pay employment will end allowing for a number of possible outcomes, namely to a "high pay" job, self-employment, unemployment and out of the labour force. The results show that there are statistically significant differences in the dynamics of low pay across urban and rural labour markets, particularly in terms of exits to high pay and out of the labour force. After controlling for different personal and job characteristics across markets, rural low pay durations are slightly longer on average, with a lower probability that rural workers will move to high pay. However, the results suggest that the most significant urban-rural differences in the typical low pay experience are concentrated among certain types of individuals, e.g. young workers, women without qualifications.Labor and Human Capital,

Weighing China's Export Basket: An Account of the Chinese Export Boom, 2000--2007

In this paper we use new, detailed and comprehensive linked firm-product data to describe various dimensions of the Chinese export boom from 2000-2007. Our analysis indicates that firm entry played a larger role in China's export boom than is the case in other countries, and that processing firms were an important component of this. Our estimates of value-added suggest that the foreign content of China's exports is much higher than previously estimated. Finally, our estimates of technological intensity show that Chinese exports had been increasingly intensive in technology, but the overall intensity is lower when the exports are evaluated by domestic value-added than by final value.Chinese Export Boom, Domestic Value-Added, Technology Intensity

Job Creation, Job Destruction and the Role of Small Firms: Firm-Level Evidence for the UK

Evidence on job creation and destruction for the UK is still limited compared to that available from other countries. What evidence there is refers almost entirely to the manufacturing sector, with the most recent figures referring to the 1980s. There are therefore no recent estimates for the great majority of firms in the UK . In this paper we use firm-level data from 1997–2005 to calculate job creation and destruction rates for almost all sectors, including services. We show that firms in the service sector exhibit much higher rates of job creation and slightly higher rates of job destruction. One-third of new jobs are created by the entry of new firms, while half of lost jobs are destroyed by the exit of firms. “Small” firms (those with fewer than 100 employees) account for a disproportionately large fraction of job creation and destruction relative to their share of employment. This finding is robust to the definition of firm size used.Job creation, job destruction, small firms

Job and Worker Turnover in German Establishments

We use a simple regression-based approach to measure the relationship between employment growth, hirings and separations in a large panel of German establishments over the period 1993-2009. Although the average level of hiring and separation is much lower in Germany than in the US, as expected, we find that the relationship between employment growth and worker flows in German establishments is very similar to the behaviour of US establishments described in Davis, Faberman & Haltiwanger (2006, 2011), and quite different to the behaviour of French establishments described in Abowd, Corbel & Kramarz (1999). The relationship is very stable over time, even during the most recent economic crisis, and across different types of establishment.job turnover, worker turnover, hirings and separations

Ordinary Sailors: The French Navy, Vichy and the Second World War

After the debacle of the Fall of France in 1940, the one organization that managed to maintain its discipline and functionality virtually intact was the French Navy. This is the story of how subsequently that navy was able to exert a disproportionate influence on the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain. Such influence achieved its apogee between February 1941 and April 1942 when the navy\u27s Commander-in-Chief Admiral Darlan served simultaneously in several of the regime\u27s highest offices. During this period France continued to flirt with the possibility of actively engaging Great Britain in war on the side of Nazi Germany. It was also the period when Vichy introduced some of its most repressive measures against its own citizens and entered upon policies that led ultimately to active collaboration in the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz

The American Security Drone Act: America\u27s Paper Tiger vs. China\u27s Trojan Horse

The skies above America have been increasingly inundated with small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) operated by both government agencies and civilians alike. The majority of these drones are manufactured by Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI), a Chinese company that continues to emerge as a national security threat. The risk posed by these drones stems not only from physical access to American airspace, but also from the surreptitious transmittal of information back behind the “Great Firewall of China” via DJI mobile device applications. However, current pending legislation is inadequate to effectively counter this threat. Instead, the United States should take a more comprehensive approach – use existing laws to deny DJI access to U.S. airspace, develop new legislation to curtail access to sensitive information in cyberspace, and take measures to counter consumer reliance on foreign sUAS by investing in the American drone manufacturing industry