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- Karimi, Arizo, 1983-
(författare)
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Impacts of Policies, Peers and Parenthood on Labor Market Outcomes
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of five self-contained papers.Paper 1 This paper analyzes the causal effect of the timing of first birth on highly educated women's career outcomes. To address the endogeneity of birth timing to labor market outcomes, I instrument the former with the occurrence of pregnancy loss before first birth. The results from OLS estimation suggest that a one-year delay of motherhood is positively associated with income and wages. However, 2SLS estimation instead indicates that a one-year delay has a significantly negative effect on both income and wages. The negative effects might partly be explained by child spacing: motherhood delay induces women to have the second child more closely spaced (but not fewer or more children altogether), and consequently to have a potentially longer consequtive parental leave. The same findings hold true when I employ an individual-fixed effects estimator based on panel data and no instrument, from which the results suggest a larger slope decline in the wage profile for "late" mothers compared to "earlier" mothers.Paper 2 This paper analyzes the relevance of spacing births for women's subsequent earnings and wages. Spacing births in longer intervals may allow women to re-enter the labor market between childbearing events, thereby avoiding expanded work interruptions and, in turn, reduce the negative effects of subsequent children. Based on arguably exogenous variation in birth spacing induced by pregnancy loss between the first two live births, the evidence provided in this paper supports this hypothesis and suggest that delaying second birth by one year, on average, increases the probability of re-entering the labor market between births. Moreover, spacing births are found to increase both labor market participation and labor income over an extended horizon after second birth. Also long-run wages are positively affected, with a more pronounced effect for highly educated mothers.Paper 3 This paper studies gender differences in the extent to which social preferences affect workers' shirking decisions. Using exogenous variation in work absence induced by a randomized field experiment that increased treated workers' absence, we find that also non-treated workers increase their absence as a response. Furthermore, we find that male workers react more strongly to decreased monitoring. In addition, our results suggest significant heterogeneity in the degree of influence that male and female workers exert on each other: conditional on the potential exposure to same-sex co-workers, men are only affected by their male peers, and women are only affected by their female peers.Paper 4 We examine the temporal pattern of the causal effect of fertility on female labor income using panel data based on Swedish registers, and instrumenting family size with parents' preferences for a mixed-sex sibling composition. The effect of a third child over the life cycle is evaluated against the alternative of stopping at two children. Our findings indicate a sizeable income reduction in the immediate years after birth, followed by a catching-up effect in income. The short-lived reduction likely corresponds to formal parental leave. Gauging the magnitude of the effect, we find that income decreases by roughly 11 percent over a 10-year horizon after birth. No effects are found on long-run wage rates or on contracted hours of work.Paper 5 This paper re-examines the labor supply responses to changes in the Swedish parental leave system, recognizing that take-up of parental leave benefits might not fully reflect time off from work in a system where job protection exceeds paid leave. We study three reforms, of which the first expanded the entitlement to paid leave by three months, and the two other reforms introduced gender quotas in paid leave. We find that both mothers and fathers decreased their labor supply when entitlement to paid leave was increased. However, the additional benefits were spread out over a long horizon and thus seem to have been used by parents to increase job flexibility. In addition, we find no evidence suggesting that the introduced gender quotas in paid leave altered parents' labor supply.
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| 2. |
- Thornquist, Tamara, 1988-
(författare)
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Essays in economics : The impact of changes on the labor market induced by structural change, the adoption of a new computer-based technology and economic slowdowns on family formation, family fertility outcomes and new careers
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Childlessness, Number of Children and The Labor Market at the Time of a New Technology, the US 1980-2018The adoption of a new computer-based technology in the US in the late 1970s resulted in broad changes on the labor market that can be described by two major phenomena - job polarization and a shift in the relative returns to skill. A well established theoretical and empirical literature shows that commuting zones with a historically greater specialization in routine task intensive occupations adopted the new computer-based technology faster and subsequently saw greater changes on the local labor markets. In this paper, I build on the previous literature and analyze the relationship between the historical specialization of commuting zones in routine task intensive occupations and the change in family fertility outcomes in the US 1980-2018. The prediction is that commuting zones with a greater initial routine task specialization adopted the new technology faster and thereafter saw greater changes on the local labor markets, which further led to greater changes in the fertility outcomes. The estimation results suggest that among women in the age group 20-39 of any educational level, the shares of women with at least one child and at least two children decreased by more in commuting zones with a historically greater routine task employment. The result is driven by college educated women.Marital economic homogamy and earnings polarization, the US 1970-2018In this paper I analyze what impact the polarization of earnings had on a rise in the economic resemblance between marriage partners aged 27-36 in the US 1970-2018. An earnings polarization means that the relative earnings gap at the upper end of the earnings distribution has been widening, while the relative earnings gap at the lower end of the earnings distribution has been narrowing in the US since the 1950s-1960s. I employ a structural change driven explanation of labor market polarization and the instrumental variable technique to identify the causal effect of interest. The estimation results show that the marital economic resemblance increases on the widening relative earnings gap at the upper/lower part of the earnings distribution and decreases on the narrowing relative earnings gap at the upper/lower part of the earnings distribution. Keeping all else equal, the polarization of earnings would account for 19 to 25 percent of the rise in the coefficient of marital sorting in the US between 1970 and 2018.New Careers, Labor Market Turmoil and Gender: Evidence from Russia 2000-2016 In this paper I study what was the effect of entering the labor market under adverse economic conditions on the career development of college educated men and women in Russia 2000-2016. The instrumental variable technique is used to identify the causal effect of interest. I find a negative immediate effect of graduating in a bad economy on the log hourly wage among all college graduates and among college graduate men. Although the negative effect gradually dissipates as the economy picks up, it remains present years after graduation. When it comes to college women, no immediate effect of graduating in a bad economy on the hourly wage is identified. The negative effect on the hourly wage among women first pops up three to five years after graduation. College men and women who graduated in a bad economy do, on average, have lower quality jobs which might explain negatively affected hourly wages.
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| 3. |
- Blomqvist, Niklas, 1987-
(författare)
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Essays on Labor Economics : The Role of Government in Labor Supply Choices
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- "Right to Work Full-time" Policies and Involuntary Part-time EmploymentThis paper investigates the effect of right to full-time policies implemented to decrease involuntary part-time work for public care workers employed by Swedish municipalities. Taking advantage of a staggered decision process, these policies are evaluated using a difference-in-differences approach. Results show that involuntary part-time employment is real and significant, with 10% of part-time employed workers choosing full-time when given the opportunity. The effect mainly comes from a decrease in contracts of <75% of full-time and an increase in contracts of 80% of full-time and above. Further results from the full-time policies show that being more flexible in the choice of hours worked is popular among workers, indicated by an increase in tenure and reduced turnover in municipalities that offer more flexibility in the choice of hours worked.Hours Constraints and Tax Elasticity Estimates - Evidence from Swedish Public Care WorkersThere is a concern that tax elasticity estimates may be downward biased in the presence of optimization frictions for workers. So far, there is limited evidence on the nature of these optimization frictions. This paper provides new insight into one part of the optimization frictions black box, namely hours constraints. Using unique and newly collected data, I exploit a staggered implementation of a policy that gave some public care workers the opportunity to choose their preferred hours of work. Taking advantage of this policy, I estimate differences in tax elasticities between constrained and unconstrained public care workers by comparing bunching at a large tax kink in the Swedish tax system. The empirical evidence points to the conclusion that hours constraints do not affect tax elasticity estimates.Restricting Residence Permits - Short-Run Evidence from a Swedish ReformIn June 2016, the Swedish parliament decided to restrict the granting of permanent residence permits for asylum seekers in Sweden. The new status quo for a refugee is a temporary rather than a permanent residence permit. In a first evaluation of this reform we use a Regression discontinuity analysis in which we follow refugees, aged 25-65, over their first years after arrival. Our main results show that a temporary residence permit increases the probability of working and enrolling in regular education.Mom and Dad Got Jobs: Natural Resources, Economic Activity, and Infant HealthThe impact of local economic shocks, such as the discovery and exploitation of natural resources, on labor markets and health is not well understood. Both positive and negative effects have been documented in the literature. In this paper, we show that the phase before active resource extraction begins directly affects the local economy. This implies that previous estimates – typically based on designs exploiting differences before and after the active phase of extraction begins - may have understated the actual effect of natural resource extraction on outcomes of interest. Using rich data from Sweden combined with differences in the timing and location of mineral exploitation permits, we find a positive impact on female and male employment and earnings and a negative effect on housing prices. Children’s health outcomes are also negatively affected, an effect likely driven by the increase in local economic activity rather than extraction-related externalities.
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| 4. |
- Olsson, Martin, 1978-
(författare)
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Essays on Employment Protection, Private Equity and Spousal Behavior
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of four papers, summarized as follows. “Employment Protection and Sickness Absence” An exemption in the Swedish Employment Security Act in 2001 allows employers with at most ten employees to exempt two workers from the seniority rule at times of redundancies. The exemption is found to decrease sickness absence by more than 13% at those establishments that were treated relative to those that were not and this was due to a behavioral, rather than a compositional, effect. “Employment Protection and Parental Childcare” I examine if employment protection affects parental childcare. I estimate that an increased dismissal risk reduces the total days of parental childcare by around six percent. The identification relies on a reform that made it easier for employers in Sweden to dismiss workers in small firms. Both a sorting effect and a behavioral effect can explain the reduced childcare. I also find that temporary parental leave is redistributed within households if only one partner was affected by the reform. “Private Equity and Employees” Using linked employer-employee data from Sweden, a difference-in-difference approach, and 201 private equity buyouts undertaken between 1998 and 2004, we show that unemployment risk declines and labor income increases for employees after a private equity buyout. A plausible explanation is relaxed financial constraints: the effects are strongest in industries dependent on external finance for growth, for non-divisional buyouts, and for buyouts just prior to 2001. “Temporary Disability Insurance and Spousal Labor Supply” We use a reform in the Swedish temporary disability insurance to show that the partner’s benefit level affects spousal labour supply: an eleven percent increase of the partner’s benefit level is estimated to prolong spousal sick spells with around eight percent, which corresponds to an elasticity of sick days with respect to the partner’s benefit of three-quarters of the own labor supply elasticity of unity.
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| 6. |
- Skogman Thoursie, Peter, 1968-
(författare)
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Disability and work in Sweden
- 1999
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Occupational Attainment and Earnings ( the Case of the Disabled This paper offers, for the first time, estimates of the extent of unexplained wage differentials between disabled and nondisabled workers in Sweden. According to studies of wage differentials between disabled and nondisabled workers in the United States, the unexplained component accounts for almost 50 per cent of the differential between the two groups. However, these studies ignore such potential differences in occupational attainment as are not explained by differences in occupational qualifications. Using a technique developed by Brown et al. (1980), this paper extends the traditional wage decomposition by incorporating explained and unexplained differences in occupational attainment. Data from the Swedish Level of Living Survey for 1981 and for 1991 have been used. The results show that in both years the disabled worked in low-level occupations to a greater extent relative to the nondisabled. This is due to the fact that disabled workers have lower qualifications. The unexplained component due to differences in returns on wage determinants is insignificant in the 1981 case but is highly significant in 1991, constituting around 50-60 per cent of the average log wage differential.Economic Incentives: Do they Affect the Likelihood of a Disability Pension Being Granted? An ageing population and a growing number of people leaving the labour market mean that more and more elderly people become dependent on a shrinking labour force. It is thus important to understand the process whereby disability pensions are granted, in order to formulate a policy that strikes a balance between economic security and incentives to work. This paper studies the possible effect of the economic incentives present in the Swedish disability pension system on the probability of a disability pension being granted. A mixed conditional logit model incorporating various predicted income levels is used to estimate this probability. A sample consisting of workers aged 25-64 from the 1981 Swedish Level of Living Survey, of whom 8 per cent were granted disability pensions during the 1980s, has been used. The results indicate that economic incentives do have a significant and positive, albeit quantitatively small, effect on the likelihood of a disability pension being granted.The Role of Caseworkers in Selecting Candidates for a Vocational Rehabilitation Project Very little is known about the way labour market programme participants are selected for the programmes. This paper studies how caseworkers selected candidates for a vocational rehabilitation project for the disabled. The caseworkers had been given four rules for eligibility: a severe disability, a recently granted disability pension, participation in an education programme and regular employment should all disqualify from participation. The paper investigates various aspects of the way the caseworkers followed or broke these rules, and whether they selected the most employable candidates. The data used has been taken from register data at the National Social Insurance Board, the same data that was used by the caseworkers in selecting the candidates. The results show that the caseworkers did not always follow the rules and that they based their decisions on factors other than those implicit in the rules. Some of these factors suggest that they wanted the most employable to participate in the project.
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