"Employment Inequalities"

This paper documents the employment disadvantage faced by the less qualified part of the labor force and examines the factors that influence the differing extent of this disadvantage across OECD countries. We argue that employment rates for quartiles of the population ranked by educational qualification provide the best m easure of employment disadvantage. We show that differences in these employment rates for the most- and least-educated quartiles vary substantially within Europe, but are not on average higher than those in the USA. The least qualified suffer the greatest employment disadvantage in countries in which the overall employment rates are low and, for men, the literacy test scores for the least qualified are relatively low. A high level of imports from the South appears to be associated with greater employment disadvantage, but there is no discernible tendency for a high level of wage dispersion, low benefits, or weak employment protection legislation to be associated with greater employment disadvantage. Labor market flexibility has not been the route by which some OECD countries have managed to minimize the employment disadvantage of the least qualified

Services and Employment: Explaining the U.S.-European Gap

Why is Europe's employment rate almost 10 percent lower than that of the United States? This "jobs gap" has typically been blamed on the rigidity of European labor markets. But in Services and Employment , an international group of leading labor economists suggests quite a different explanation. Drawing on the findings of a two-year research project that examined data from France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States, these economists argue that Europe's 25 million "missing" jobs can be attributed almost entirely to its relative lack of service jobs. The jobs gap is actually a services gap. But, Services and Employment asks, why does the United States consume services at such a greater rate than Europe? Services and Employment is the first systematic and comprehensive international comparison on the subject. Mary Gregory, Wiemer Salverda, Ronald Schettkat, and their fellow contributors consider the possible role played by differences in how certain services--particularly health care and education--are provided in Europe and the United States. They examine arguments that Americans consume more services because of their higher incomes and that American households outsource more domestic work. The contributors also ask whether differences between U.S. and European service sectors encapsulate fundamental trans-Atlantic differences in lifestyle choices. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Victor Fuchs, William Baumol, Giovanni Russo, Adriaan Kalwij, Stephen Machin, Andrew Glyn, Joachin Möller, John Schmitt, Michel Sollogoub, Robert Gordon, and Richard Freeman.services, employment, jobs gap, rigidity, labor market, health care, education, incomes, lifestyle, United States, Europe

Women Still Greatly Underrepresented on the Top Boards of Large Companies

Executive and supervisory boards of large companies in Germany are still dominated by men - to an extraordinary degree. Only 2.5% of all executive board members in the200 largest companies (not including the financial sector) are women, and only 10% of all seats on supervisory boards are occupied by women. The situation in the financial sector is similar: in the 100 largest banks, 2.6% of all executive board members are women, and in the 62 largest insurance companies, 2.8% of executive board members are women. The percentage of women on financial sector supervisory boards is higher than their percentage in the top 200 companies: 16.8% in banks and savings banks, and 12.4% in insurance companies. In total, about three-quarters of women with a seat on a supervisory board are appointed by employee representation bodies and therefore have their seat as a result of employee codetermination practices. Aside from a few positive examples, the situation on both types of management boards has hardly changed at all in the last few years. It remains to be seen whether the plan to gradually increase the number of women in management positions, as agreed upon in the German government's 2009 Coalition Agreement, will have more success than the voluntary commitments made by Germany's top business associations in their 2001agreement with the German government. The implementation of the latter initiative private-sector companies can be considered a failure given the virtually unchanged gender composition of top management in large private-sector companies.Board diversity, Women CEOs, Gender diversity, Management

Chinese Saving Dynamics: The Impact of GDP Growth and the Dependent Share

China’s national saving rate rose rapidly in the 2000s after declining through the late 1990s. These dynamics are not explained by precautionary motives, the institutional distribution of income, or reform related processes in general. Rather, we find a compelling explanation lies with GDP growth fluctuations and movement in the dependent share in population. We estimate a vector autoregressive model for the period 1978-2008, then generate in-sample simulations that successfully replicate the 2000s runup in the saving rate. Our out of sample forecasts show the saving rate dropping in the 2010s as the dependency share falls and GDP growth moderates.

WP 46 - Low pay incidence and mobility in the Netherlands – exploring the role of personnel, job and employer characteristics

The rise of earnings inequality in many industrialized countries in recent years has increased concerns about the pay conditions of those individuals located at the bottom of the wage distribution. In this paper we first analyze which groups in the Dutch labor market are more likely on average to fall in low-wage segments, and which are the characteristics of workers and firms that are more closely related to low wage rates. We also explore how the pattern of low-wage employment has evolved over time. Second, we examine the determinants of being in low-wage employment for the individual worker, and we analyze whether there exists a type of “poverty trap” as a result of which earnings mobility is lacking and some workers persist in low-paid jobs for a long period of time. To achieve this we use two datasets: the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for the period 1995-2001, and the Arbeidsvoorwaarden Onderzoek (Labor Conditions Survey, AVO) of the Dutch Labor Inspectorate for 2002. We utilize the longitudinal aspect of the ECHP to analyze the evolution of low-wage employment over time, by looking at different individual and job characteristics. Finally, we complete the analysis on low-wage employment with an examination of the role of the firm using the detailed information provided by the AVO.

GINI DP 9: Comparable Indicators of Inequality Across Countries

This paper addresses the key issue for the GINI project of how best to approach the measurement of income inequality and wage inequality to enhance comparability across different studies. It focuses fi rst on income inequality, dealing with the defi nition of income, the income recipient unit, and the unit of analysis. The summary measures used to capture inequality are also discussed, with an emphasis on capturing trends at different points in the distribution, and sources for comparative data on inequality levels and trends are discussed. The paper then turns to inequality in earnings among employees and discusses the same set of issues in that context. The above bears directly on any analysis of inequality itself but it is also important for an analysis of the direct impacts of inequality at micro-level. For a (multilevel) analysis based on aggregate inequality as an input the paper provides an understanding of the need for comparable concepts and defi nitions across countries and links to data sources as well as aggregate levels. It also links to practical experiences of researchers with different datasets. For this and the datasets see the Data Portal at "gini-research.org":http://www.gini-research.org