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The paper studies the dynamic change of the migrant labor market in China from 2002 to 2007 using two comparable data sets. Our focus is on the rural-urban migration decision, the wage structure of migrants, the urban labor market segmentation between migrants and urban natives, and the changes of these aspects from 2002 to 2007. We find that prior migration experience is a key factor for the migration decision of rural household members, and its importance keeps increasing from 2002 to 2007. Our results show that there is a significant increase in wages among both migrants and urban natives over this five-year period, but migrants have enjoyed faster wage growth, and most of the increase of wages among migrants can be attributed to the increase of returns to their characteristics. We also find evidence suggesting convergence of urban labor markets for migrants and for urban natives during this five-year period.

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The authors employ spatial econometrics techniques and Annual Averages data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1990-2004 to examine how changes in the minimum wage affect teen employment. Spatial econometrics techniques account for the fact that employment is correlated across states. Such correlation may exist if a change in the minimum wage in a state affects employment not only in its own state but also in other, neighboring states. The authors show that state minimum wages negatively affect teen employment to a larger degree than is found in studies that do not account for this correlation. Their results show a combined direct and indirect effect of minimum wages on teen employment to be -2.1 per cent for a 10 per cent increase in the real effective minimum wage. Ignoring spatial correlation underestimates the magnitude of the effect of minimum wages on teen employment.

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Econometric evaluations of public-sponsored training programmes generally find little evidence of an impact of such policies on transition rates out of unemployment. We perform the first evaluation of training effects for the unemployed adults in France, exploiting a unique longitudinal dataset from the unemployment insurance system. Using the so-called timing-of-events methodology to control for both observed and unobserved heterogeneity, we find that training does not accelerate the exit from unemployment, but has a significant and positive effect on the duration of the subsequent employment spell. Accounting for training duration, we find that longer training spells cause longer unemployment spells, but also longer employment spells, suggesting that training improves the matching process between jobseekers and firms.

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We examine the dynamic role of education and experience as determinants of wages. It is hypothesised that an employee’s education is an important signal to the employer initially. Over time, the returns to schooling should decrease with labour market experience and increase with initially unobserved ability, since the employer gradually obtains better information on the productivity of an employee. Replicating US studies using data from a large German panel data set (GSOEP), we find no evidence for the employer learning hypothesis for Germany. Differentiating blue-collar and white-collar workers and estimating quantile regressions, however, leads to the conclusion that employer learning takes place for blue-collar workers at the lower end of the wage distribution. We further show, that information on the productivity of an employee is to a large extend private.

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This paper estimates the marginal returns to college for individuals induced to enroll in college by different marginal policy changes. The recent instrumental variables literature seeks to estimate this parameter, but in general it does so only under strong assumptions that are tested and found wanting. We show how to utilize economic theory and local instrumental variables estimators to estimate the effect of marginal policy changes. Our empirical analysis shows that returns are higher for individuals more likely to attend college. We contrast the returns to well-defined marginal policy changes with IV estimates of the return to schooling. Some marginal policy changes inducing students into college produce very low returns.

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The lack of formal education and competences of the Portuguese workers is one of the biggest problems of the country. This lack is [not] disappearing as quickly as desired and the young generations still lag far behind those in other OECD countries. This paper studies the intergenerational transmission of education achievement, in particular higher education completion, seeking to determine the influence on future attainment of parents’ education and labor market conditions while the child was growing up. We conclude that the education of the parents is very important, even if it is only one of them that has it. This influence seems not to be independent of the gender of the parent who has it. The fact that the parents face unemployment has a negative effect on the educational achievement of the child. Females generally perform better than males, but there are exceptions. For instance, it is significantly lower if the father has low education and the mother has secondary or higher education.

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Three hypotheses are given to explain why a married woman's work hours might be related to her husband's education, even controlling for his wage rate. Data for a single cohort of women from the [National Longitudinal Survey of Youth] NLSY 1979 suggest that women's work hours are positively related to spousal education at the time of marriage but also fall more rapidly over time after marriage among those with the most educated husbands. Cross-sectional data from the [Current Population Survey] CPS for 1980-2010 indicate that the latter effect appears to have increased since 2000. Both men's and women's preferences for a traditional division of labour within the household are found to be negatively related to the husband's education among newlyweds but to rise faster over the course of a marriage when the husband is highly educated. Overall, the results provide evidence consistent with both marital sorting on the basis of attitudes to female work and changes in tastes that are influenced by marital quality. Little support is found for the argument that spousal education measures non-market productivity.

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The large increase in computer use has raised the question whether people have to be taught computer skills before entering the labour market. Using data from the 1997 Skills Survey of the Employed British Workforce, we argue that neither the increase in computer use nor the fact that particularly higher skilled workers use a computer provides evidence that computer skills are valuable. We compare computer skills with writing and math skills and test whether wages vary with computer skills, given the specific use that is made of computers. The regression results show that while the ability to write documents and to carry out mathematical analyses yields significant labour-market returns, the ability to effectively use a computer has no substantial impact on wages. These estimates suggest that writing and math can be regarded as basic skills, but that the higher wages of computer users are unrelated to computer skills.

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A quantitative model of two-sided search with ex-ante heterogeneity in both worker and entrepreneurial skills is proposed. It is possible to characterize both the competitive equilibrium and the optimal solution numerically. The competitive equilibrium is shown to be suboptimal. Less-skilled workers and firms are too selective, not matching with their comparable counterparts. High-types, on the other hand, are not selective enough. The model shows promise as a tool for evaluating the effects of labor policies (and other changes in the economy) on the composition of unemployment and on unemployment duration, as well as on wage distributions. The effect of introducing a simple unemployment insurance scheme is then twofold. First, it increases unemployment by allowing a greater proportion of low types not to match, which decreases output. Second, it decreases mismatch, which has a positive effect on output. It is possible to have a positive effect of unemployment insurance on productivity and find the optimal level of unemployment insurance. Finally, it is shown that assuming risk-neutral workers in this model is not innocuous.

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We analyse the role of training in mitigating the negative impact of technical and organizational changes on the employment prospects of older workers. Using a panel of French firms in the late 1990s, we first estimate wage bill share equations for different age groups. Consistently with what is found in the literature, we find that adopting new technologies and innovative work practices negatively affects the wage bill share of older workers. In contrast, training older workers more than average increases their share in the wage bill in the next period. So, training contributes to offset the negative impact of [information and communication technologies] ICT and innovative work practices. However, it does not reduce the age bias associated with these innovative devices: the interaction terms between training and ICT/innovative work practices are either insignificant or negative. As a second step, we estimate the impact of ICT, innovative work practices and training on employment flows by age group in the next period. We get similar results to those obtained with wage bill shares. Overall, training appears to have a positive impact on the employability of older workers, but it offers limited prospects to dampen the age bias associated with new technologies and innovative work practices.

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