Who gets to cross the border? The impact of mobility restrictions on labor flows in the West Bank

© 2015 The Author. This paper examines the impact of labor mobility restrictions such as border closures, physical obstacles and unequally accessed ID cards and work permits on the labor flows of West Bank residents. The results demonstrate that for Jerusalem residents, mobility restrictions reduce out-migration but they are much more pronounced in impeding out-migration to Israel proper than to Israeli settlements. Additionally, an increase in the number of border closures per quarter has a positive and significant impact on the odds of facing unemployment for all groups, but is especially high for migrant workers residing outside of Jerusalem. A lower bound estimate of the economic cost of a 50. day increase in the number of border closures (1.78 standard deviations) per quarter is about USD 1.7 million per day in the subsequent quarter. The paper also concludes that the determinants of out-migration differ from those of return-migration. For example, while border closures and unemployment status during previous visits are strong determinants of out-migration, the decision to return is driven by relatively low wages and lacking the necessary legal documentation to enter Israel. The findings in this paper are consistent with international studies that ascribe inefficiency in labor markets to restrictions on labor mobility across regions

Examining Industry Wage Differentials in the Palestinian Territories

It has been widely documented that there is a high level of inter-industry wage dispersion in the United States and several other developed countries. Unfortunately, due to the lack of data availability, industry wage differentials in developing countries have been examined in only a few studies and have been constrained by data limitations. Identifying the causes of industry wage differentials is crucial because it has policy implications toward mitigating wage inequality and unemployment. In this paper, I investigate industry wage differentials in the Palestinian territories – the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – using a rich dataset that allows cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. I find that observed labor quality, unobserved labor quality, and labor market segmentation along the public and private sector represent the most suitable explanations for inter-industry wage dispersion in the Palestinian territories. Additionally, there is (limited) evidence of a shirking model especially in Gaza

REFORMING THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS OF LOW-SKILLED LABOR IN THE UAE

By establishing a central licensing authority (CLA) in the UAE that is managed by reputable placement agencies in the UAE and overseen by a government entity (including but not limited to MoHRE) can largely resolve many issues involved in the recruitment process, while imposing minimum administrative costs. The CLA has two key responsibilities, the first of which is to reform the recruitment process through Models 1-3, and the second is to create a clearing house for jobseekers and employers

EARLY RETIREMENT, BENEFITS AND THE COST OF LIVING AMONG NATIONALS IN ABU DHABI

Social and security authorities in the UAE, including the Abu Dhabi Retirement and Pension Benefit Fund (ADRPBF) may face three main challenges: Demographic, financial and early retirement. Due to the increase in life expectancy at birth (hence, number of years lived after retirements) and decrease in death rates, demographic challenges refer to the continuous increase in the numbers of retirees and their beneficiaries, which could create a kind of imbalance between revenues and entitlements. Financial challenges may arise in the future if financial resources are insufficient to meet the expenses. This may be largely due to the lack of any control on salary increases in addition to the lack of a higher ceiling for the salaries of the insured at the end of the service. Early retirement (retirement before the legal age) may impose a large financial burden on the system in the future and intensifies the loss in the contribution of experienced nationals to the development of the nation

Determinants of Early Retirement in the UAE

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the retirement behavior of UAE nationals by understanding the socio-economic characteristics of early retirees and identifying the main determinants of early retirement. Accordingly, a survey study is created and deployed for current employees and retirees affiliated with Abu Dhabi Retirement and Pension Benefit Fund (ADRPBF). The survey was designed to reach 100 retirees and 200 currently active workers from those registered at the ADRPBF. The survey was conducted by employing the online survey method and face-to-face interviews. The total number of respondents is around 244, with a total response rate of 81.33%. Some factors related to the psychosocial work environment play a significant role in the early retirement decision of Emiratis. These factors are stress level, autonomy level and authority level at work. In addition to these, the level of work environment comfortability and life-work balance seem to also affect the early retirement decision. In general, the results indicate that higher the stress level, lower the level of autonomy and authority; higher the early retirement decision within the Emirati workforce. Last but not least, the likelihood of early retirement increases significantly if employees face a work-related health problem. Initiatives at the government and company level to adjust the working conditions for the capacity of elderly people shall be considered. Healthy living campaigns and sport programs might be launched to reduce work-related health problems and consequently early retirement. Our work is the first comprehensive study exploring the early retirement decision of the UAE nationals. One limitation of our study is the limited number of participants in the survey. Future work that will include a higher number of participants and supplementary questions to cover more job features (physical workload, other psychosocial factors) might be helpful

Which social categories matter to people: An experiment

Social categories matter to people, but it is not obvious ex ante which ones matter more. To explore this, we conduct a novel experimental market of anonymous partners based on social categories. Participants have the option of choosing or discarding a peer according to their gender, ethnicity, and religion. Our research design allows us to explore whether individuals prioritize social categories when selecting a peer and whether the order in which social categories are prioritized is context dependent. Considering both free and costly decisions, two economic contexts are evaluated: donations (dictator game) and investments (risk game). We find that when selecting a partner, gender appears to be the dominant social category across different conditions, with subjects exhibiting sharp preferences for being matched with a female partner. However, the partner\u27s religion gains prominence as a requested social category when issues concerning social-group decision-making become relevant to one\u27s own payoffs. Finally, we find that choosing social categories seems to have economic consequences both by increasing economic donations and increasing investments. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

INVESTIGATING THE PALESTINIAN LABOR MARKET 1999-2010

The recent uprisings in the Middle East came as a huge surprise to the world because we know very little about the economic grievances of these individuals. Since the Palestinian labor market is among the most complex in the region, a thorough analysis of its key features will make a great contribution to our understanding of Middle East labor markets. My dissertation aims to investigate the Palestinian labor market. Largely due to data constraints, little is known about key features of that labor market. However, I have obtained access to under-utilized data to address three major issues that profoundly impact the residents in these areas: inter-industry wage dispersion, the migration decisions of Palestinians, and the social welfare consequences of the Gaza Blockade. In the first chapter, I examine inter-industry wage dispersion in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and question the roles of the standard competitive wage model as well as the efficiency wage model. I find that both models play a role in explaining inter-industry wage dispersion in the West Bank and Gaza. Specifically, observable human capital characteristics, unobserved labor quality and labor market segmentation along the public and private sector represent the most suitable explanations for inter-industry wage dispersion. In the second chapter, the current blockade on the Gaza Strip is used as a natural experiment to quantify the social welfare implications of strictly defined labor mobility restrictions. The results suggest that the blockade produced a level of welfare loss that is equivalent a joint decrease in real domestic and foreign wages by approximately 64% and 18% respectively, when labor markets were integrated. Finally, in the third chapter, I investigate the impact of politically-determined barriers on labor flows in the West Bank. The findings show that residence-based ID cards exert the greatest force in shaping the decision to migrate as well as the decision to return for male residents of the West Bank. Further, border closures and closure obstacles negatively impact out-migration but play a minimal role in the return-migration decision relative to the expected wage gain from migration

On the heterogeneous effects of tax policy on labor market outcomes

Many recent studies have documented the heterogeneous effects of government‐spending shocks on major macroeconomic variables, particularly on output. We delve deeper into the heterogeneous effects of fiscal policy innovations, but focus on the tax policy innovations and their impact on the labor market, while accounting for gender, race, ethnicity, and the business cycle. Using microlevel data from the United States, we find that: (i) Tax shocks have varying employment effects depending on gender, race, and the stage of the business cycle; (ii) Sector, industry, and occupational segregation in labor markets by gender, race, and ethnicity can explain most of the variation in response to fiscal policy shocks