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- Hernnäs, Sofia, 1991-
(författare)
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Automation and the Consequences of Occupational Decline
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Essay I. Automation affects workers because it affects the return to their skills when performing different tasks. I propose a general equilibrium model of occupational choice and technological change which takes two important labor market features into account: (i) automation happens to tasks and (ii) workers have bundled skills. Equilibrium skill returns vary across tasks, and the impact of automation on skill returns is task-specific. I find that, to a first-order approximation, skill returns depend only on the relative skill allocation in each task. In equilibrium, automation reduces employment in the task subjected to automation so long as tasks are gross complements. This reduction in employment increases both tasks' intensity in the skill used intensively in the automated task. This increased intensity is coupled with a universal decline in the return to the skill used intensively in the automated task. Conversely, the return to the other skill increases in both tasks.Essay II (with Per-Anders Edin, Tiernan Evans, Georg Graetz, and Guy Michaels). We assess the career earnings losses that individual Swedish workers suffered when their occupations' employment declined. High-quality data allow us to overcome sorting into declining occupations on various attributes, including cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Our estimates show that occupational decline reduced mean cumulative earnings from 1986-2013 by no more than 2-5 percent. This loss reflects a combination of reduced earnings conditional on employment, reduced years of employment, and increased time spent in unemployment and retraining. While on average workers successfully mitigated their losses, those initially at the bottom of their occupations' earnings distributions lost up to 8-11 percent.Essay III. Does the long-term economic stress of occupational decline cause health problems, or even death? This essay explores this question using Swedish administrative data, and a measure of occupational decline obtained from detailed US data on employment changes over almost 30 years. I investigate whether people who experience occupational decline have higher mortality or hospitalization rates, and in particular if they are more likely to suffer from cardio-vascular disease or deaths of despair: deaths caused by alcohol, drug or suicide. I find that workers who in 1985 worked in occupations that subsequently declined, had a 5-11 percent higher risk of death in the 30 years that followed, compared to same-aged, similar workers in non-declining occupations. For men in declining occupations, the risk of death by cardio-vascular disease was 7-14 percent elevated, while women in declining occupations faced 31-37 percent higher risk of death by despair. The risk was higher for workers who were lowest paid in their occupations.
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| 2. |
- Edin, Per-Anders, et al.
(författare)
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The Rising Return to Non-cognitive Skills*
- 2018
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We examine the changes in the rewards to cognitive and non-cognitive skill during the time period 1992-2013. Using unique administrative data for Sweden, we document a secular increase in the returns to non-cognitive skill. This increase is particularly pronounced in the private sector, at the upper-end of the wage distribution, and relative to the evolution of the return to cognitive skill. Sorting across occupations responded to changes in the returns to skills. Workers with an abundance of non-cognitive skill were increasingly sorted into abstract and non-routine occupations, for example. Such occupations also saw greater increases in the relative return to non-cognitive skill. This suggests that the optimal skill mixes of jobs have changed over time, that there is sorting on comparative advantage, and that demand-side factors are primarily driving the evolution of the return to non-cognitive skill. Consistent with this, we also show that hikes in offshoring and IT-investments increase the relative reward to non-cognitive skill and the relative intensity of non-cognitive skill usage.
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| 3. |
- Robling, Per Olof, 1983-
(författare)
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Essays on the Origins of Human Capital, Crime and Income Inequality
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This Ph.D. thesis in Economics consists of four self-contained essays investigating the importance of early life environment for long-run outcomes and the consequences of immigration for income inequality. Multigenerational Effects of the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic on Educational Attainment: Evidence from Sweden uses the 1918-19 influenza pandemic in Sweden as a natural experiment to estimate the effects of a fetal health shock on the children of those who experienced the pandemic as a fetal insult. We find that for women, educational attainment decreases by 3-4 months of schooling and the probability of college attendance drops by 3-5 percentage points if their mothers potentially experienced the Spanish flu as a fetal insult. For men, educational attainment decreases by 4-7 months of schooling, and the probability of college attendance drops by 7-11 percentage points if their fathers were potentially prenatally exposed. We find no mother to son, or father to daughter, transmission of the health shock. Early Childhood Lead Exposure and Criminal Behavior: Lessons from the Swedish Phase-Out of Leaded Gasoline examines the effect of childhood lead exposure on crime using population based register data. We follow all children in Sweden in the 1972-1974, 1977-1979 and 1982-1984 cohorts for more than twenty years. By exploiting the variation in childhood lead exposure induced by the Swedish phase-out of leaded gasoline, we show that the sharp drop in lead exposure reduced crime by between 7 and 14 percent on average. The impact is largest among children in low-income families. The analysis reveals the existence of a low threshold level below which further reductions of early childhood lead exposure no longer affect crime. Childhood Exposure to Segregation and Long-Run Criminal Involvement: Evidence from the “Whole of Sweden” Strategy presents quasi-experimental evidence on how exposure to immigrant residential segregation during childhood affects male youths’ criminal behavior. We find evidence that being assigned to a neighborhood with a large share of immigrants increases the probability of being convicted of a drug related crime or sentenced to imprisonment for male youths. A one (within municipality-by-year) standard deviation increase in neighborhood segregation increases the probability of committing these types of crimes by between 11 to 13 percent. This corresponds to about one-fifth of the gap in crime between immigrants and natives for these types of offenses. We do not find significant effects for other types of crimes, such as violent and property crimes. The impacts are concentrated among youths with low educated parents. Immigration and Income Inequality in Sweden 1980 to 2011 investigates how much of the rising trend in income inequality in Sweden can be attributed to increased immigration. I find that the compositional effects associated with immigration account for between 2 and 9 percent of the overall increase in income inequality. Further, using the variation in immigrant density across labor market regions, I find that non-Nordic immigration has not had any significant effect on the native wage distribution. I find a negative effect of non-Nordic immigration on native employment. My estimates suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in non-Nordic immigration decreases native employment by 3 to 5 percentage points.
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| 5. |
- Björklund, Anders, 1950-, et al.
(författare)
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Arbetsmarknaden
- 2014. - 4
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 6. |
- Eliasson, Tove, 1985-
(författare)
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Empirical Essays on Wage Setting and Immigrant Labor Market Opportunities
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three self-contained essays.Essay 1: This essay estimates wage assimilation among non-western immigrants in Sweden, controlling for selection into employment by including individual fixed effects. Furthermore, using matched employer-employee panel data covering the complete Swedish labor market, this essay decomposes wage catch-up into relative wage growth within and between workplaces and occupations. The results show that failing to control for selection into employment is likely to underestimate relative wage growth of immigrants, as early entrants in the labor market differ from later entrants along unobservable dimensions. Even after 30 years in the country, the group of non-western immigrants still earns substantially lower wages than natives. Wages catch up mainly within workplaces and occupations, suggesting that improved signals of productivity, rather than improved knowledge of job options, are of importance for the wage growth of non-western immigrants.Essay 2: Earlier research has shown that immigrant- and minority entrepreneurs have difficulties accessing capital through the formal financial markets. This essay studies what role immigrant employees within the local bank sector have for the probability of immigrants to run their own businesses. I use linked employer-employee data covering the whole Swedish labor market for the years 1987 to 2003 and utilize a nationwide refugee dispersal policy to get exogenous variation in the exposure to co-ethnic bank employees. Results suggest that there is a positive relation between co-ethnic bank employees and the probability of being self-employed. This effect is most pronounced for immigrants who arrived with low education, for males and for those residing in metropolitan regions. The effects are substantial and robust to a wide set of controls for labor market characteristics of the ethnic group at the local level. These results provide evidence of an ethnic component in the formal credit markets.Essay 3 (with Oskar Nordström Skans): This essay investigates the impact of a collective agreement stipulating a one shot increase in establishment-specific wage levels in a public-sector setting where wages otherwise are set according to individualized wage bargaining. The agreement stipulated that wages should increase in proportion to the number of low-paid females within each establishment. We find that actual wages among incumbents responded to the share of females with a wage below the stipulated threshold, conditional on the separate effects of the share of low wage earners, and the share of females. We find clear evidence of path-dependence in wages, covered workers remained on higher wage levels 4 years after the agreement took effect. The increase in wages resulted in a reduced probability of exit among young workers with relatively good grades and a lower frequency of new hires at the establishment level.
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| 7. |
- Engdahl, Mattias, 1982-
(författare)
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International Mobility and the Labor Market
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four self-contained essays.Essay 1 (with Olof Åslund): We study the labor market impact of opening borders to low-wage countries. The analysis exploits time and regional variation provided by the 2004 EU enlargement in combination with transport links to Sweden from the new member states. The results suggest an adverse impact on earnings of present workers in the order of 1 percent in areas close to pre-existing ferry lines. The effects are present in most segments of the labor market but tend to be greater in groups with weaker positions. The impact is also clearer in industries which have received more workers from the new member states, and for which across-the-border work is likely to be more common. There is no robust evidence on an impact on employment or wages. At least part of the effects is likely due to channels other than the ones typically considered in the literature. Essay 2: I study demand shifting effects of real exchange rate movements in border regions. Detailed geographic information on border crossings, the location of retail outlets, and where the population resides, allows me to explore the labor market effects of cross-border shopping. The impact is identified by comparing areas located close to the border with more remote areas. The relative effects are large; a ten percent decline in the value of the Swedish krona is followed by an increase in the number of employees in the retail industry by 3 percent. Similarly, the share of the population employed in retail increases by 0.3 percentage points and annual earnings by 2.7 percent.Essay 3 (with Olof Åslund): We study the effects of performance bonuses in immigrant language training for adults. A Swedish policy pilot conducted in 2009–2010 gave a randomly assigned group of municipalities the right to grant substantial cash bonuses to recently arrived migrants. The results suggest substantial effects on average student achievement. But these were fully driven by metropolitan areas; in other parts of Sweden average performance was more or less unaffected. In line with theory, effects tend to be clearer where institutional features make the bonus more feasible, or where student characteristics suggest that the costs should be lower.Essay 4: I study the association between naturalizations, labor market outcomes and family formation. The results show that the economic outcomes of immigrants from outside the OECD, on average, improve following naturalization. A strict causal interpretation of the results is not possible as the outcomes start to improve already before the acquisition of citizenship. The study also shows that for migrants from some country groups there is a positive correlation between naturalizations and the likelihood of getting married and having children. This is suggestive of immigrants naturalizing for family reasons. Further, my findings illustrate that modeling assumptions are of great importance. Models that are not flexible enough could lead to false claims regarding causality.
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