Questions tagged [labor-economics]
Labor economics is the branch of microeconomics that studies labor markets and its peculiarities. Labor economists usually study topics such as career choice, returns to schooling, determinants of labor productivity, wages, gender and racial gaps.
267
questions
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148 views
Do machines reduce labor… or so they redistribute, alter, and globally increase labor?
John Stuart Mill famously remarked that labor-saving machines have not saved one minute of labor. More seriously, Marx argued, roughly, that machines can gain temporary market advantage, but cannot ...
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1answer
344 views
Tax wedge in labour market
I'm reading a book ( Macroeconomics - Institutions, Instability and the Financial System ) and on page 62, the authors define tax wedge as the "difference between the real consumption wage and the ...
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1answer
110 views
Adam Smith: If humans are self-interested individuals, why should we reinvest our wealth?
According to Adam Smith, humans are self-interested individuals. If this is true, why does he argue that people should reinvest their wealth? How does this benefit a self-interested individual? Does ...
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16answers
18k views
How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
Decades ago a factory job could support a wife and kids until retirement and they offered insurance, benefits, etc. Now, no more unions, those jobs as well as tech and customer service jobs are ...
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1answer
163 views
General Equilibrium Modelling
I have a question regarding GE modelling.
The firm's problem is to:
$$
\max\pi=pf(k,l)-wl-rk
$$
If this is true, we choose $l$ and $k$ to maximize the difference
between costs and revenues. This ...
8
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4answers
212 views
Can absence of inflation be accounted for by a reconfigured class structure?
A previous and oft-heard question asked why no inflation results from the Fed pumping money into the economy.
Are we simply seeing a methodical wage suppression, thus no official "inflation," while ...
5
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0answers
171 views
Consumption-Leisure Elasticity
The macro-literature insists on a consumption-leisure elasticity of 0 to match the balanced growth fact of constant labor supply.
Is there any paper that tries to evaluate this elasticity using ...
1
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2answers
125 views
Finding an intercept on percentage based data and using dummy variables
How do I find an intercept on a percentage data? My data has percentage of grades ( I have converted to numbers where $A^*=8, A=7,B=6...U=0$) by ethnicity and other indicators which I want to test for ...
3
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2answers
78 views
Why is the Supply of Labour More Elastic in a Single Province/State then it is in the Country as a Whole?
Apparently, the federal government has a greater ability than provincial government to increase tax revenues by raising tax rates because the supply of labour is more elastic in a single province than ...
3
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1answer
72 views
Is it possible to reconstitute a labor theory of value?
I am not an economist, so highly technical answers may escape me. I know that since Jevons, Marshall, and the "marginal revolution" the classical labor theory of value has been largely abandoned. And ...
4
votes
0answers
28 views
Estimates of the global STEM workforce?
I am looking for any recent estimates of the global STEM workforce (STEM = Science Technology Engineering Mathematics, and ideally includes software engineers).
Time series data would be even better, ...
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0answers
38 views
Total costs as function of labor and quantity [closed]
If I have wage $w = 200$ and rental rate $r = 3050$ on short run, I can assume that $K=1$ and then get the total costs $TC = rK+wL = 3050 + 200L$.
Isn't it correct?
But what if I also have a cost of ...
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2answers
75 views
Proving or disproving hypothesis?
I took statistics class years ago in my college and I don't remember much of it now. I am into public policy research now and I am bit confused about about what conclusion to make from available ...
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1answer
2k views
Why is the percent of Australian businesses that don't have any employees so high?
I'm trying to understand this Australian Bureau of Statistics release:
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/8165.0
It says:
In June 2014, 61% of actively trading businesses in Australia had ...
1
vote
0answers
58 views
What is the cumulative amount of working hours for consumer products?
Is there any research about the cumulative amount of working hours for consumer products like cars or mobile phones?
With cumulative amount of working hours I mean the total amount of working hours ...
4
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1answer
66 views
How reliable is BLS / JOLTS data on quits?
I'm looking at the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS). It also allows you to disentangle separations between layoffs and quits. The data comes from surveys, i.e. is self reported.
There's ...
1
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1answer
92 views
Why consider non-farm payrolls?
Why does the US consider non-farm payrolls when looking at employment levels? What are the reasons for not including farms? Are the workers too transitive, does it not contribute in a certain way to ...
4
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0answers
4k views
Difference between embodied and commanded labor in the Labor Theory of Value?
Could the difference between "labor embodied" (production cost in labor value) and "labor commanded" (selling price in labor value) as described in the labor theory of value be attributable to the ...
2
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1answer
33 views
Quarterly industry-level productivity growth?
Are there any quarterly data on industry-level productivity growth (i.e., by NAICS code) in the United States? I've looked around for a while but haven't been able to find anything. BLS publishes ...
8
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4answers
219 views
Can higher working hours reduce productivity?
Are there studies about the impact on per-hour output (productivity) of increasing the number of hours worked each week by employees? If every employee works 3hrs/week longer (from 41 to 44hrs), does ...
3
votes
1answer
70 views
CPS CEPR: ORG and Monthly
How does the CPS CEPR store employment information for the non-ORG months?
I am trying to reproduce Mueller (2012). He says
The CPS is the main labor force survey for the U.S., representative of ...
6
votes
1answer
237 views
Are there any studies that show that “Affirmative Action” hurts the economy?
Are there any studies that show that "Affirmative Action" (an action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination, especially in relation to employment or education) hurts the ...
3
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1answer
76 views
How are working hours statistics computed?
In a recent conversation, I was suggested that national working hours aggregates, as provided by bureaus of statistics, are based on surveys on time use.
Is that true? Can macro labor data, which is ...
4
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3answers
729 views
Why does adding a quadratic term to a regression change unrelated coefficients?
I'm in STATA and using 2010 data from Ipums. I'm trying to measure the wage differential between single men, married men, single women, and married women. I ran my first regression and got the ...
5
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1answer
194 views
What term/theory describes more efficient utilization of a resource?
I may be asking the wrong question here, but I wonder if there is a term/theory that describes/studies the evolution of an economy that continually improves the utilization and allocation of certain ...
4
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1answer
112 views
Empirical Data on Demand for Minimum-Wage Jobs in the USA
The idea of a minimum wage and its effects in terms of supply and demand are well-known in mainstream economic theory.
I'm constructing an argument regarding the minimum wage, and what I'm curious ...
7
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3answers
790 views
Why did creating the Eurozone cause the cost of labor to rise in Greece?
As I understand the implementation of the Euro as a common currency caused labor prices to spike in certain countries, Greece being one of them. Why did this happen? Why did it affect certain ...
3
votes
1answer
101 views
Amplification Effects: Negative Denominator
Let $0 < \rho < 1$ be the discount rate, $V$ some option value, and $F$ some fundamental.
$$ \rho V = \beta V + F$$
You have access to some option value $V$ that will always deliver you some ...
8
votes
4answers
1k views
Effect of minimum wage on higher levels of pay
Suppose the minimum wage increases to \$$x$. Is there any evidence on the effect (if any) this is likely to have upon the wage profile of workers higher in the hierarchy, who are already paid more ...
5
votes
1answer
86 views
Geographic mobility of workers within Germany, as compared to within the US?
Martin Feldstein (1997, p. 36) claims that workers within the US are more geographically mobile than say within Germany. I had known that US workers were mobile. But one sentence of his seems a bit ...
0
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1answer
147 views
Test: Part-time Workers Effect on Unemployment Rate
I want to test the causality of part-time workers on unemployment rate.
Should i use part-time workers as a share of total employment or total labour force?
If I run a regression of part-time workers ...
2
votes
1answer
98 views
RBC model and indivisible labour
First of all, I would like to apologise for the fact that I will include a link in my question rather than a direct question, however, I have no idea how to do it in a different way.
I have been ...
2
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0answers
182 views
Hot Topics in Labor-Macro
I'm interested in currently hot research topics within Labor Macro. I'm only aware of the debate on the recent shift in the US Beveridge curve, and, of course, the olden but golden Shimer puzzle.
...
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1answer
174 views
Generalized KPR: Frisch Elasticity
Consider the following version of KPR preferences (with $l$ being leisure):
$$ U(c,l) = \left(\left(c\right)^\gamma l^\omega\right)^{1-\sigma}$$
I'm after the Frisch elasticity:
$$ \frac{\partial(1-...
2
votes
2answers
212 views
King-Plosser-Rebello Preferences: Scale leisure
KPR preferences are given by
$$ U(c, l) = \frac{\left(cv(l)\right)^{1-\sigma}-1}{1-\sigma}$$
with concave increasing $v$ and $c$, $l$ denoting consumption and leisure. In the limiting case of $\...
5
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2answers
135 views
Has Stack Overflow been economically beneficial to programmer productivity?
Has Stack Overflow an overall positive impact on programmers productivity?
On one side, it takes time and effort to ask and answer questions -- thus decreasing productivity.
On the other side, ...
6
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2answers
932 views
Why life expectance is growing faster than retirement age? - source needed
Need sources of information about "Why is life expectancy growing faster than retirement age?"
Is there any literature about "why the increased quality of life and medicine in rich countries doesn’t ...
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1answer
135 views
Labour Productivity Growth and Reallocation of Labour
Using a shift-share methodology, labour productivity growth can be arise from productvity growth within a sector (within effect) or reallocation of labour to sectors with higher productivity (...
5
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1answer
466 views
Instrumental variables for minimum wage
I was wondering if there is a classic instrument for minimum wage as there is for schooling or other variables. If so, how does it fares with respect to most established designs like spatial ...
3
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2answers
143 views
Does working abroad cause less unemployment however small?
The context of this question arises from people in third world countries going abroad to work. Often they are seen as money-hungry people who don't love their country (unless they are, say, physicists ...
1
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1answer
44 views
Reject worker after match
In the DMP family of labor models, we typically have $V$ denoting a vacancy and $J$ denoting the value of a job. $V$ typically becomes 0 through free entry.
Say a firm get matched with a worker of ...
1
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1answer
316 views
DMP: Two Labor Markets
Consider the following extension of the standard DMP model, in which we have two labor markets with different returns, indexed $i$. The markets are completely separated and firms and workers can only ...
4
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1answer
120 views
Reasons for the recent rise in long-term unemployment
Kroft et al document the raise of long-term unemployed in the US during the recent crises. This is an impressive figure from their paper:
They show that the raise does not come from compositional ...
3
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1answer
27 views
Data: Vacancies in the US before 2005
Shimer (2005) says
These [separation shocks] introduce an almost perfectly positive correlation between unemployment and vacancies, an event that essentially never been observed in the United ...
2
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0answers
48 views
Separation shock and business cycles
In the context of the Diamonds-Mortensen-Pissarides models, there was a reasoning why a separation shock cannot fit business cycles. I think it was brought forward by Shimer, but I could be wrong.
...
2
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0answers
29 views
Consumption of the unemployed
I am wondering how the consumption of the unemployed varies over the business cycle. We know that wages of people getting fired in busts are higher than wages of people in booms (Mueller 2012), so ...
0
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1answer
231 views
Unemployment: Human Capital Deterioration
I am looking for Macro-Labor models that include deterioration of human capital. The mechanism is simple: The longer you were unemployed, the more human capital you are losing.
However, this is ...
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3answers
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Why is collective bargaining by a group of employees not the same thing as price-fixing?
Employees sell their labor for wages. If a critical mass of employees get together and demand higher wages, how is this not the same thing as a critical mass of merchants illegally fixing the price of ...
3
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1answer
453 views
Wage regressions: Nominal versus real wage
I'm wondering do I need to convert nominal wages to real wages when running wage equations using panel data sets? My dependent variable is log of wage and I'm looking at returns to education across ...
5
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1answer
59 views
Is Firing Costly in the US?
I suppose that it doesn't cost most firms much to get rid of cheap labor, and that high wage workers typically have contracts that imply high compensations in case of firing.
But what about the ...
