Explore the vast range of titles available.

We classify the empirical literature on the wage impact of immigration into three groups, where studies in the first two groups estimate different relative effects, and studies in the third group estimate the total effect of immigration on wages. We interpret the estimates obtained from the different approaches through the lens of the canonical model to demonstrate that they are not comparable. We then relax two key assumptions in this literature, allowing for inelastic and heterogeneous labor supply elasticities of natives and the \"downgrading\" of immigrants. “Downgrading” occurs when the position of immigrants in the labor market is systematically lower than the position of natives with the same observed education and experience levels. Downgrading means that immigrants receive lower returns to the same measured skills than natives when these skills are acquired in their country of origin. We show that heterogeneous labor supply elasticities, if ignored, may complicate the interpretation of wage estimates, and particularly the interpretation of relative wage effects. Moreover, downgrading may lead to biased estimates in those approaches that estimate relative effects of immigration, but not in approaches that estimate total effects. We conclude that empirical models that estimate total effects not only answer important policy questions, but are also more robust to alternative assumptions than models that estimate relative effects.

We estimate a dynamic model of employment, human capital accumulation—including education, and savings for women in the United Kingdom, exploiting tax and benefit reforms, and use it to analyze the effects of welfare policy. We find substantial elasticities for labor supply and particularly for lone mothers. Returns to experience, which are important in determining the longer-term effects of policy, increase with education, but experience mainly accumulates when in full-time employment. Tax credits are welfare improving in the U.K., increase lone-mother labor supply and marginally reduce educational attainment, but the employment effects do not extend beyond the period of eligibility. Marginal increases in tax credits improve welfare more than equally costly increases in income support or tax cuts.

Recent literature analysing wage effects of immigration assumes labour supply is fixed across education-experience cells. This article departs from this assumption estimating a labour market equilibrium dynamic discrete choice model on U.S. micro-data for 1967–2007. Individuals adjust to immigration by changing education, participation, and/or occupation. Adjustments are heterogeneous: 4.2–26.2% of prime-aged native males change their careers; of them, some switch to white-collar careers and increase education by about three years; others reduce labour market attachment and reduce education also by about three years. These adjustments mitigate initial effects on wages and inequality. Natives that are more similar to immigrants are the most affected on impact, but also have a larger margin to adjust and differentiate. Adjustments also produce a self-selection bias in the estimation of wage effects at the lower tail of the distribution, which the model corrects.

Concerns over the supply of skills in the U.S. labor force, especially education-related skills, have exploded in recent years with a series of reports not only from employer-associated organizations but also from independent and even government sources making similar claims. These complaints about skills are driving much of the debate around labor force and education policy, yet they have not been examined carefully. In this article, the author assesses the range of these charges as well as other evidence about skills in the labor force. Very little evidence is consistent with the complaints about a skills shortage, and a wide range of evidence suggests the complaints are not warranted. Indeed, a reasonable conclusion is that overeducation remains the persistent and even growing condition of the U.S. labor force with respect to skills. The author considers three possible explanations for the employer complaints and the associated policy implications.

\"Immigration to the UK, particularly among more educated workers, has risen appreciably over the past 30 years and as such has raised labor supply. However studies of the impact of immigration have failed to find any significant effect on the wages of native-born workers in the UK. This is potentially puzzling since there is evidence that changes in the supply of educated natives have had significant effects on their wages. Using a pooled time series of British cross-sectional micro data on male wages and employment from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s, this paper offers one possible resolution to this puzzle, namely that in the UK natives and foreign born workers are imperfect substitutes. We show that immigration has primarily reduced the wages of immigrants -- and in particular of university educated immigrants -- with little discernable effect on the wages of the native-born.\" (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku). Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: empirisch-quantitativ; empirisch; Querschnitt; Längsschnitt. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1975 bis 2005.

\"The careers of MBAs from a top US business school are studied to understand how career dynamics differ by gender. Although male and female MBAs have nearly identical earnings at the outset of their careers, their earnings soon diverge, with the male earnings advantage reaching almost 60 log points a decade after MBA completion. Three proximate factors account for the large and rising gender gap in earnings: differences in training prior to MBA graduation, differences in career interruptions, and differences in weekly hours. The greater career discontinuity and shorter work hours for female MBAs are largely associated with motherhood.\" Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: Sekundäranalyse; empirisch; empirisch-quantitativ. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1990 bis 2006. (author's abstract, IAB-Doku).

This paper analyzes how changes in the skill mix of local labor supply are absorbed by the economy, distinguishing between three adjustment mechanisms: wages, expansion in size of those production units using the more abundant skill group more intensively, and more intensive use of the more abundant skill group within production units. We contribute to the literature by analyzing these adjustments on the firm rather than industry level, using German administrative data. We show that most adjustments occur within firms through changes in relative factor intensities and that firms entering and exiting the market are an important additional absorption mechanism.

Reserving a share of the parental leave period for fathers is considered necessary in order to induce fathers to take leave, and to increase men's participation in child-rearing. We investigate how a parental leave reform directed towards fathers affected leave-taking, and, in turn, children's and parents' long-term outcomes. A paternal leave quota greatly increases the share of men taking paternity leave. We find evidence that children's school performance improves as a result, particularly in families where the father has higher education than the mother. We find no evidence that paternity leave counters the traditional allocation of parents' labor supply.

This paper gives an overview of current thinking by economists about the consequences of ongoing technological progress for labour markets, and discusses policy implications. In economics, the impact of technological progress on labour markets is understood by the following two channels: (i) the nature of interactions between differently skilled workers and new technologies affecting labour demand and (ii) the equilibrium effects of technological progress through consequent changes in labour supply and product markets. The paper explains how the ongoing Digital Revolution is characterized by a complex interplay between worker skills and digital capital in the workplace, and consequent changes in job mobility for workers and in output prices affecting consumer demand for goods and services. In particular, it explains how current worker–technology interactions and the equilibrium effects they entail combine to create economy-wide job polarization with winners and losers from ongoing technological progress. The paper therefore concludes by discussing a set of policy interventions to ensure that the benefits of the Digital Revolution are broadly shared.

The share of the population aged 60 and over is projected to increase in nearly every country in the world during the period 2005 - 50. Population ageing will tend to lower both labour-force participation and savings rates, thereby raising concerns about a future slowing of economic growth. Our calculations suggest that OECD countries are likely to see modest - but not catastrophic - declines in the rate of economic growth. However, behavioural responses (including greater female labour-force participation) and policy reforms (including an increase in the legal age of retirement) can mitigate the economic consequences of an older population. In most non-OECD countries, declining fertility rates will cause labour-force-to-population ratios to rise as the shrinking share of young people will more than offset the skewing of adults towards the older ages. These factors suggest that population ageing will not significantly impede the pace of economic growth in developing countries.\" (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku). Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: empirisch-quantitativ; empirisch; Querschnitt; prognostisch; Evaluation; anwendungsorientiert. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1950 bis 2050.