Book Review: "The Natural Survival of Work: Job Creation and Job Destruction in a Growing Economy". By Pierre Cahuc and André Zylberberg.

Book review of "The Natural Survival of Work: Job Creation and Job Destruction in a Growing Economy". By Pierre Cahuc and André Zylberberg.Job displacement, worker turnover, active labor market policy, unemployment

Does work pay in France ? Monetary incentives and the guaranteed minimum income

Most welfare programs generate high marginal tax rates on labor income. This paper uses a representative sample of individuals on France's main welfare program (the Revenu Minimum d'Insertion, or RMI) to estimate monetary gains to employment for welfare recipients. This is based on the distribution of potential monthly earnings faced by each individual, as inferred from the distribution of observed wages and working time. Taking account of the welfare earnings top-up program (intéressement), we find that gains are almost always positive, but that their amount is very low, especially for single mothers. Intéressement is found to have a small impact, because of its provisional nature. Gains are positively related to the probability that a welfare recipient in 1996 will be observed in employment in 1998. Using a simple structural model, we interpret this as a labor supply effect.Welfare, labor earnings, transfers, tax-system.

The Efficiency of Collective Bargaining in Public Schools

This paper develops a bargaining model of wage and employment determination for the public sectror. The solution to the model generates structural wage and employment equations that are estimated using data from New York State teacher-school district collective bargaining agreements. An advantage of this approach is that the major collective bargaining models (monopoly union, right to manage, efficient contracting, and inefficient contracting) are nested in the structural equations based on flexible functional forms and these models can be empirically tested as restrictions on estimated model parameters. The empirical results suggest that the allocation of resources generated by collective bargaining in New York State public schools is, by and large, not Pareto efficient. Furthermore, it is possible to estimate separate measures of union bargaining power over wages and employment. Empirically, it appears that union bargaining power over wages is around 0.53, while bargaining power over employment is around 0.71. In addition, the paper demonstrates the importance of controlling for the nature of the collective agreement when measuring the level of public services that flow to a community in the presence of a unionized public sector work force. Nous proposons un modèle de négociations collectives sur les salaires et l'emploi dans le secteur public. La solution de ce modèle implique des équations structurelles de détermination des salaires et d'emploi qui sont estimées à partir de données provenant des conventions colléctives des écoles publiques de l'état de New York. Notre approche a l'avantage d'englober tous les modèles majeurs de la littérature sur les négociations collectives (syndicat monopole, droit à gérer, négociations efficaces et négociations inefficaces) et de relier chaque modèle à une restriction d'égalité sur un ou plusieurs paramètres estimés. Nos résultats suggèrent que l'allocation des ressources spécifiée dans les conventions collectives des enseignants de l'état de New York n'est, en générale, pas efficace. De plus, notre approche nous permet d'estimer le pouvoir de négociationsur les salaires et sur l'emploi séparément. Nous trouvons un pouvoir de négociation sur les salaires de 0.53, et sur l'emploi de 0.71. Finalement, nous démontrons l'importance de contrôler le caractère endogène des salaires lors de l'analyse des flux des services publics dans un marché syndicalisé.Collective Bargaining, Efficient Contracting, Public Sector Union, Education, Négociations collectives, contrats efficaces, syndicat du secteur public, éducation

High-Wage Workers and High-Wage Firms

We study a longitudinal sample of over one million French workers and over 500,000 employing firms. Real total annual compensation per worker is decomposed into components related to observable characteristics, worker heterogeneity, firm heterogeneity and residual variation. Except for the residual, all components may be correlated in an arbitrary fashion. At the level of the individual, we find that person-effects, especially those not related to observables like education, are a very important source of wage variation in France. Firm-effects, while important, are not as important as person-effects. At the level of firms, we find that enterprises that hire high-wage workers are more productive but not more profitable. They are also more capital and high-skilled employee intensive. Enterprises that pay higher wages, controlling for person-effects, are more productive and more profitable. They are also more capital intensive but are not more high-skilled labor intensive. We also find that person-effects explain 92% of inter-industry wage differentials

By Choice and by Necessity: Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment in the Developing World

IZA Discussion Paper No. 8273International audienceOver half of all workers in the developing world are self-employed. Although some self-employment is chosen by entrepreneurs with well-defined projects and ambitions, roughly two thirds results from individuals having no better alternatives. The importance of self-employment in the overall distribution of jobs is determined by many factors, including social protection systems, labor market frictions, the business environment, and labor market institutions. However, self-employment in the developing world tends to be low productivity employment, and as countries move up the development path, the availability of wage employment grows and the mix of jobs changes

A Randomized Trial and the Treatment of Pemphigus Vulgaris

Pemphigus vulgaris is a rare, life-threatening autoimmune disease. Mycophenolate mofetil is a potent immunosuppressant medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration to be used after solid organ transplantation and to treat pemphigus vulgaris. Mycophenolate mofetil has not become the “wonder drug” that had been anticipated based on initial clinical reports. Studies like that reported by Beissert et al. in this issue are essential to improve dermatologic care

Antibiotics, Acne, and Upper Respiratory Tract Infections

About two million people per year in the U.S have acne severe enough to require treatment with antibiotics. Treatment frequently lasts for more than six months, prompting concerns about antibiotic resistance and other possible consequences of long-term antibiotic use, such as increased susceptibility to infections. This Issue Brief summarizes a large study that evaluates the risk for upper respiratory and urinary tract infections among adolescents and young adults treated with antibiotics for acne

High Wage Workers and High Wage Firms

We study a longitudinal sample of over one million French workers and over 500,000 employing firms. Real total annual compensation per worker is decomposed into components related to observable characteristics, worker heterogeneity, firm heterogeneity and residual variation. Except for the residual, all components may be correlated in an arbitrary fashion. At the level of the individual, we find that person-effects, especially those not related to observables like education, are the most important source of wage variation in France. Firm-effects, while important, are not as important as person-effects. At the level of firms, we find that enterprises that hire high-wage workers are more productive but not more profitable. They are also more capital and high-skilled employee intensive. Enterprises that pay higher wages, controlling for person-effects, are more productive and more profitable. They are also more capital intensive but are not more high-skilled labor intensive. We also find that person-effects explain 92% of inter-industry wage differentials.

Should Employment Authorities Worry About Mergers and Acquisitions ?

This paper considers the role mergers and acquisitions have on employment. First, it considers the importance of different aspects of compensation policy and human resource management practices for distinguishing acquired and acquiring firms. Second, it examines which individuals from which firms remain with the newly created entity after the takeover. Using a unique employer-employee linked data set for France, we find that very few observable workforce or compensation characteristics distinguish acquired from acquiring firms ex-ante. Nevertheless, the human resources department seems to be quite active in the post-takeover period, with employees of the acquired firm being less likely to remain with the new entity in the short term after takeover than those of the acquiring firm and with the differences between the two types of firms disappearing after 3 years. The workers with characteristics that tend to be associated with the fastest subsequent job finding in the displaces worker literature are also those who tend to be overreprensented among the individuals who separate from their employer post-takeover. Finally, as both acquired and acquiring firms differ from firms not involved in takeover activity in a similar manner, employment authorities may be able to anticipate the regions in which takeovers are more likely to occur by looking at the financial accounts of firms with particular characteristics that have local establishments.Employment, takeovers, linked employer-employee data.