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.
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questions
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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
103 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 ...
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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 ...
6
votes
1answer
106 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 ...
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1answer
151 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
110 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
votes
0answers
189 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.
...
5
votes
1answer
218 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:
$$ \frac{\partial(1-...
2
votes
2answers
242 views
King-Plosser-Rebello Preferences: Scale leisure
KPR preferences are given by
$$ 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 $\...
6
votes
2answers
147 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
votes
2answers
940 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
147 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
568 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
276 views
Does working abroad cause less unemployment? Or is it actually harmful (directly or opportunity cost)?
This question is from subjective origins but is (supposed to be) objective.
The context of this question arises from people in third world countries going abroad to work. Often they are seen as money-...
1
vote
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 ...
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1answer
321 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
votes
1answer
123 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
votes
1answer
28 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
votes
0answers
52 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
235 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 ...
22
votes
3answers
3k views
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
votes
1answer
495 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
62 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 ...
2
votes
1answer
730 views
Impact of government subsidy on labour supply
If the government pays a certain amount $b>0$ to every person who is not working, what is the impact of this subsidy on labour supply? How does it alter the reservation wage? Is your answer ...
3
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1answer
124 views
Should minimum wage be regulated for developing countries
I live in a developing country, where unemployment is at roughly 25%. There is a large divergence in population whereby skilled workers are typically active within in the manufacturing, finance, ...
3
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1answer
143 views
What would happen if the entire world switched to the 4-day work week? [closed]
What would happen if the entire world switched to the 4-day work week?
Specifically would someone's quality of life drop significantly in a developed or a non-developed country?
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3answers
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What is the difference between intensive margin and extensive margin in labor economics?
What is the difference between intensive margin and extensive margin in labor economics, or general RBC model, where we talk about labor-hours supplied changing with extensive margin or intensive ...
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votes
3answers
1k views
Has the natural rate of unemployment decreased with modern travel and the Internet?
The natural rate of unemployment is a combination of structural unemployment and frictional unemployment.
Structural unemployment is caused by a surplus of labor at a given wage in a given area.
...
29
votes
3answers
5k views
What has caused the recent 25% unemployment rate in Spain?
The unemployment rate in Spain has recently been fluctuating around 25%.
What has caused this?
8
votes
1answer
177 views
Does Craigslist Reduce Unemployment?
If a substantial (though admittedly I have no idea how large) part of the natural rate of unemployment is caused by the job search, do more efficient means of communication create more efficient labor ...
2
votes
1answer
26 views
Guvenen et al: Earnings
Guvenen et al look at earnings shocks over time, and try to argue whether these are compatible with standard career-ladder models with normal shocks.
However, their data is no real shocks, it is time ...
2
votes
1answer
63 views
Extensive Labor Margin and Full Insurance
Extensive margin models use Rogerson (1988) style lotteries in order to simplify the savings problem under non-full-insurance.
However, one could still write down the model in that style but instead ...
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votes
6answers
1k views
Graduate Level Textbook on Labor Economics and Macro-Labor
What would be good textbooks at the graduate level that deal with Labor Economics and Labor-Macro (As in, Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, Shimer Puzzle etc)?
6
votes
1answer
92 views
Distribution of Wages
Is there any paper that looks at the distribution of wages? I'd like to see how many workers are in each percentile of labor income. I know that you could compute it using CPS or US tax data, but I ...
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2answers
191 views
Stimulus Effect of the Minimum Wage
In the question about the minimum wage found here, I have heard several times that an increase in the minimum wage can, as one of several competing effects, "boost the economy" by increasing the ...
5
votes
1answer
159 views
Employment Volatility and the Relevance of Aggregate Wage Rigidity
The Mortensen-Pissarides (MP) framework of search labor is the thing in analyzing (equilibrium) unemployment over the business cycle. Shimer showed that the lack of hires is the big margin that ...
11
votes
3answers
2k views
Under what conditions is a monopoly undesirable?
First of all, I realize that "undesirable" is an ambiguous term. So, to clarify, when is a monopoly undesirable under the following metrics?
Pareto efficiency
Reduces consumer surplus
Social Welfare (...
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2answers
179 views
Whatever happened to efficiency wage theories?
Older macroeconomics texts give much space to efficiency wage explanations of how unemployment could coexist with wages in equilibrium higher than the reservation wage of workers.
However, there ...
6
votes
2answers
381 views
Unemployment and the Frisch-Elasticity
There is the long debate on the Frisch-Elasticity being the driver of unemployment over the business cycle.
One argument against the voluntary-unemployment mechanism of RBC models is that if we ...
22
votes
6answers
6k views
How do Marxist economists solve the Diamond-Water Paradox?
For class surveying different economic systems, I read a book on Marxism and its core beliefs. As I read, I came to learn that the Marxist view of economics depends heavily on the Labor Theory of ...
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5answers
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Unemployment and the Minimum Wage---what are the main counter-arguments to Card and Krueger?
Card and Krueger's paper (AER 1994, "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania") uses a difference-in-difference identification strategy to ...
