Essays on Unions, Wages and Performance: Evidence from Latin America

Unions are one of the most important institutions in labor markets, and are capable of affecting workers (wages) and employers (performance). Despite the relevance unions have had worldwide, most of the literature has concentrated on the economic effects of unions in the U.S. and other developed countries, with few studies concentrating on what unions do in developing countries. Because developing countries have contrasting differences compared to developed countries, in terms of economic development, legal settings and institutions, it is possible that conclusions reached in the broader literature might not be appropriate in the framework of developing countries. This dissertation aims to fill this gap in the literature studying the economic effects of unions on wages and performance in selected developing countries in Latin America: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Panama and Uruguay. The first essay focuses on the impact of unions on wages distribution in Bolivia and Chile, using the novel Recentered Influence Function decomposition. Although both countries have considerably different levels of economic development and institutions, the estimations indicate unions have similar effects increasing wages and reducing wage inequality at the top of the distribution. These results are similar to those found replicating the methodology using U.S. data. The results suggest that the common economic and political forces that govern the role of unions as collective bargaining units transcend other contextual differences in these countries. The second essay analyzes the impact of unions on economic performance of establishments in the manufacturing sector in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Panama and Uruguay. Using an augmented Cobb Douglas production function, the essay finds that unions have a positive, but small, effect on productivity, with the exception of Argentina. Analyses on alternative measures of performance show that, for most cases, the positive productivity effects barely offset the higher union compensation; that unions show no relationship with sales growth; and that unionized establishments usually reduce investment in capital and R&D. While no single narrative can explain all observed effects across countries, the results provide a step forward to understand the role of unions on economic performance in developing countries

Domestic Violence and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from a Mixed-Race Developing Country

This study investigates the heterogeneous effects of domestic violence over labor markets in an ethnically fragmented country such as Bolivia. Among developing countries, Bolivia “excels” in having one of the highest levels of domestic violence in the region. Anecdotal evidence and empirical evidence suggest that response to domestic violence is not homogeneous across different ethnic groups. Using information from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) for Bolivia, we examine the heterogeneous impacts of domestic violence over one of the key labor market outcomes such as employment. We employ a probabilistic decision model and treatment regression techniques to examine this effect. We claim that the impact of domestic violence on labor markets is limited among indigenous people, given that violence is, to some extent, socially recognized and accepted. We find that for most of the cases, indigenous women are less responsive to domestic violence than non-indigenous ones, except for groups with a high income level. Our results are robust for alternative methodologies to address possible endogeneity problems.labor markets, domestic violence, Bolivia, indigenous

Los sindicatos y rendimiento económico en los países en desarrollo: Estudios de Casos de América Latina

This paper analyzes the economic impact of unions on productivity in the manufacturing sector across six Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, and Panama. Using an augmented Cobb-Douglas production function, the paper finds that unions have positive, but mostly small, effects on productivity, with the exception of Argentina, with a large negative effect, and Bolivia, with no effect. An analysis on profitability shows that, in most cases, the positive productivity effects barely offset higher union compensation, and that unions are negatively related to investment in capital and R & D. Different explanations for these effects are discussed.Este artículo analiza el impacto económico de los sindicatos sobre la productividad en el sector manufacturero en seis países de América Latina: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, México, Uruguay y Panamá. Utilizando una función de producción aumentada de Cobb-Douglas, el documento encuentra que los sindicatos tienen efectos positivos, pero sobre todo pequeños, sobre la productividad, con la excepción de Argentina, con un gran efecto negativo, y Bolivia, sin efecto. Un análisis de la rentabilidad muestra que, en la mayoría de los casos, los efectos positivos de la productividad apenas compensan una indemnización sindical más alta, y que los sindicatos están relacionados negativamente con la inversión en capital y en I + D. En el artículo se discuten diferentes explicaciones de estos efectos

Enhancing Electrical Engineering Technology Capstone Experience

The College of Science and Technology (COST) at our university (XXX) offers degrees in Mechanical (MET), Civil (CET) and Electrical Engineering Technology (EET). All the Engineering Technology programs are ABET accredited and have been successful in achieving the TAC2000 outcomes. In particular, our Senior Design capstone course (TEET4010/ 4020) is a comprehensive three-credit, two-semester engineering design course, that all engineering majors are required to take as their capstone experience. We view this course as a very important component in the preparation of a trained EET professional. The course emphasizes both hard and soft skills and serves as an emulation of a real world engineering project. We use both, projects proposed by the faculty and projects contributed from local industry and we partner the teams of student with faculty and industry mentors. As a result of their participation in this course, students are subjected to a real world engineering project development experience for the first time. By participating in real engineering projects, students learn to deal with unplanned events such as: missed deadlines, working in team environment and dealing with difficult team members, even dealing with different industry or faculty mentors. From their participation in the course and the project students get a very valuable learning experience. In this paper, we describe the development of our industry-based projects senior design course. In the next sections we describe the role of the capstone design course in respect to ABET academic outcomes. We also present examples of the type of projects implemented and a summary and listing of future work

Unemployed, Now What? The Effect of Immigration on Unemployment Transitions of Native-born Workers in the United States

Although one would expect the unemployed to be the population most likely affected by immigration, most of the studies have concentrated on investigating the effects immigration has on the employed population. Little is known of the effects of immigration on labor market transitions out of unemployment. Using the basic monthly Current Population Survey from 2001 and 2013 we match data for individuals who were interviewed in two consecutive months and identify workers who transition out of unemployment. We employ a multinomial model to examine the effects of immigration on the transition out of unemployment, using state-level immigration statistics. The results suggest that immigration does not affect the probabilities of native-born workers finding a job. Instead, we find that immigration is associated with smaller probabilities of remaining unemployed, but it is also associated with higher probabilities of workers leaving the labor force. This effect impacts mostly young and less educated people

Centrolene savagei

Number of Pages: 11Geological SciencesIntegrative Biolog

Standard Error Correction in Two-Stage Optimization Models: A Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimation Approach

Following Wooldridge (2014), we discuss and implement in Stata an efficient maximum likelihood approach to the estimation of corrected standard errors of two-stage optimization models. Specifically, we compare the robustness and efficiency of this estimate using different non-linear routines already implemented in Stata such as ivprobit, ivtobit, ivpoisson, heckman, and ivregress

Unions, Wage Gaps, and Wage Dispersion: New Evidence from the Americas

Using a common methodology, the effects of unions on wage levels and wage dispersion are estimated for two neighboring countries, Bolivia and Chile, and for the U.S. The analysis shows that unions have broadly similar effects on the wage distribution within these three economies. The findings suggest that the political economy of unions, coupled with market constraints on labor costs, produce commonality in union wage effects that transcend other economic and institutional differences

Robotics Focused Capstone Senior Design Course

This work describes the educational experiences gained teaching the Senior Design I & II courses, a senior level, two-semester sequence in the Electrical Engineering (EE) program at Georgia Southern University (GSU). In particular, the authors present their experiences in using robotics as the main area to develop the capstone senior design, with focus in interdisciplinary interactions and teamwork for the design and implementation of autonomous mobile robots. Other main purpose of the capstone design course sequence is for the students to experience working in an engineering application project researching and analyzing the sustainability, ethical and social impact issues related to their projects. The students work for two semesters as a team to design, test and build a mobile robot project for a particular application. Some of these projects have been fabricated to participate in different robotic competitions, including the IEEE sponsored hardware competition, the lawn mower competition, and the robot waiter competition.

An Interdisciplinary Team-based Mobile Robots design course for Engineering

An Interdisciplinary, Team-Based Mobile Robots Design Course for Engineering TechnologyAbstractThis work describes the educational experience gained during a new course in mobile robotics, a fourthyear elective course in the undergraduate Electrical Engineering Technology program at our University.The main topic of this course is concentrated on team-based, one semester-long robotics projects in whichstudents design and build mobile robots for different applications. A mobile robot is a system that contains mechanical and electronic parts that can be programmed toperform some specific functions, responding to sensory inputs under the control of an internal or externalcomputer. The reasons to use mobile robots as the main topic for the robotic course is that in addition toinvolving the electrical and mechanical engineering disciplines, robotics deals with other sciences andhumanities subjects, such as animal and human behavior imitation, learning techniques, and environmentinteractions. Robotic systems can relate to most processes in nature and human behavior. Because of this,their potential as educational tools for teaching and learning various subjects in technology and sciencesis unlimited The design and implementation of an autonomous navigation vehicle requires a broad knowledge inareas traditionally not covered in a single discipline. These areas include electrical and computerengineering, computing sciences, mechanical engineering, and other engineering disciplines. As a result,it is very difficult to train students and engineers within a single discipline to effectively design andimplement complex mobile robots. Thus, we felt that it was important to offer a robotics elective courseto establish an interdisciplinary framework to teach the basics and offer a structured course for educationin mobile robot design. One of the major goals of this new class is to expose students to industrial andcommercial quality design, and bridge the gap between conceptual understanding and concreteimplementations. After undergraduate students are able to apply abstract knowledge in concreteimplementations, subsequent higher-level, theory-oriented courses have more relevance.In this paper the authors present their experiences in using robotics in a one-semester course with focus ininterdisciplinary interactions and teamwork for the design and implementation of autonomous mobilerobots that have been able to participate in different robotic competitions that includes (but are notlimited) to the Trinity College Firefighting robotic competition, The Institute of Navigation (ION)Autonomous Lawn Mower and The international Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC)This course is used to fulfill ABET’s academic outcomes that require for engineering students to haveexperience working in interdisciplinary groups, be able to work in a team, and have experience inmanaging a project. The paper provides motivations and background information, describes the mobilerobotic team organization and the autonomous vehicle characteristics, the paper concludes with asummary and recommendations for future work