Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Economics, August 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

This dissertation is an economic investigation into the persistency of Canadian unemployment. It examines whether this persistence is caused by sectoral shifts. Empirically, we test for persistence using the Cochrane Variance ratio and the modified rescaled range test statistics. We estimate unemployment persistence using Bayesian ARFIMA class of models. To understand employment sectoral dynamics, the thesis uses data-driven Vector Autoregression models with emphasis on Classical and Bayesian estimation techniques. At the theoretical level, two structural Real Business Cycle models are proposed to explain how aggregate unemployment persistence emerges from sectoral labour mobility. The main difference between these two models is the impetus of the shock. One model uses relative sectoral technology shocks and the other uses relative sectoral taste shocks. We show that sectoral phenomena are important in accounting for aggregate unemployment fluctuations.

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the important role of job connections, references, and word of mouth information in labor markets. The first essay examines the importance of job connections for internal migrants. In this chapter, I develop a theoretical model where labor market networks provide labor market information with less noise than information obtained in the formal market. This model predicts lower initial wages and greater wage growth after migration for migrants without contacts. I then use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY) to examine whether migrants who used social connections when finding their first job assimilate faster in the new region. Consistent with the theoretical model, I find that migrants who did not use social connections take longer to assimilate in the new region. The second essay models how screening workers through social networks impacts labor mobility in markets with adverse selection. When there is asymmetric information in labor markets, worker mobility is constrained by adverse selection in the market for experienced workers. However, if workers can acquire references through their social networks then they can move more easily between jobs. In this chapter I develop a simple labor market model in which workers can learn the productivity of other workers through social interaction. I show that networks increase wages and mobility of high-productivity experienced workers; however, networks discourage workers from accepting jobs outside their job-contact network, because of adverse selection. The third essay in this dissertation examines the importance of social networks in labor markets when work is produced jointly. Most employers cite poor attitude and poor fit with firm culture as their greatest problems in recruiting employees, rating these factors more important than skill. This is easily explained when the output of the firm requires that workers engage in work together. In this essay, I explain why it might be rational for firms to hire through social networks even when worker skill is observed perfectly, if these workers are better able to do joint work with the firm s existing employees. / Ph. D.

No description available.

Abstract Like the other developing countries, there was an obvious dual structural economy in the process of economic transition in PRC. There were a lot of rural surplus labor forces in the agricultural sector, and massive underemployments in the industrial sector resulted from imbalanced development policies of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) central-planning economic system. Moreover, the formation of dual structure in PRC was partly in response to differences of natural environment. The most important is that it was caused deeply political and social institutions of Chinese characteristics. With economic reform all the more, large urban-rural gap brought about rural labor mobility from rural to rural, or mobility from underdeveloped interior region to developed coastal region. In the process of mobility, social networks play key role, which provided non-native labors some employment opportunities, information and some places to stay. But the kinds of networks were strengthened by discriminations of local residents¡¦ collective exclusiveness, which resulted in rural-urban dual structure divided into two sub-structures further. People of two sub-structures exclude each other for self-benefits on the one hand, and there would be mutual actions and competitions mutually on the other hand. Labor allocation was the most easily influenced by polity, society and economy of a nation. Therefore, in the meanwhile labor mobility emerged in the geographical space or economic structure, and there would be implications of economic transitions. When we explore the differences of economic development through expression of labor mobility that was helpful to probe into institutional changes of China and to explain differences of economic development and structure between regions. Consequently, this paper makes labor mobility to be a kind of indicators to examine economic development, which would be useful for us to find diversities of innate characters of economic development between provinces of China.

Proefschrift--Groningen. / "Stellingen" and tables inserted in pocket.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-90). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-90). Also available on the Internet.

The present study is an analysis of inter-industry labour flows between 1959 and 1968. The data were provided by the Department of Employment (DE) and are derived from an annual one per cent sample survey of employees holding national insurance cards. Their reliability is subject to several limitations but on the whole they provide good approximations of the actual figures. The study begins with an introductory chapter in which the findings of macro analyses of labour supply and micro investigations into local labour markets are examined in order to demonstrate the need for the inter-industry approach taken here. The manpower flow data are introduced at the end of this chapter where their limitations are discussed. The main body of the thesis is contained in the next six chapters. These can be divided into two parts. Chapters II-IV analyze the role of non-cyclical forces in determining manpower flows between industries. Chapter II examines net flows between manufacturing and non-manufacturing. It analyzes the contribution these net flows make to overall changes in industrial employment levels and demonstrates that manufacturing relies heavily on net recruitment from certain non-manufacturing industries which, in turn, experience large net intakes of persons outside employment. The chapter also shows that there is a tendency for young persons to enter and leave the labour force through the service sector and to spend the prime of their working lives in manufacturing where wages are higher. Chapter III analyzes gross manpower movements in and out of industries. The first half examines each industry's total inflows and outflows as a proportion of its employment level. This provides a measure of the industry's labour turnover rate. Industries with high turnover rates were found with two exceptions either to have high rates of employment growth or to pay low average wages. The second half examines the relative sizes of labour flows between industries and demonstrates that manpower movements between certain pairs of industries are much greater than would occur if flows were randomly determined. In other words, the industry a mobile worker enters is to some extent a function of his previous industry of employment. Chapter IV analyzes the causes of these neighbourhood relationships between industries. The first half constructs a measure of locational and occupational similarities between industries. The resulting formula provides estimates of the degree of neighbourliness between industries that are remarkably close to those derived from the inter-industry mobility data. The chapter also considers the importance of relative wages in determining neighbourhood relationships and reports that these play a subordinate role. Chapter V begins the discussion of the trade cycle's impact The first half examines net movements of manpower between manufacturing and non-manufacturing and finds that they are positive in upswings and negative in downswings. Moreover, net flows increase as a proportion of total manufacturing employment changes in the late stages of each upswing. This reflects the favourable manufacturing wage differential and the intensification of competition for manpower already in employment as the number of persons without jobs and seeking work dwindles. Net manufacturing inflows were, however, found to decline in absolute terms in the late stages of each upswing. The second half of the chapter examines gross manpower flows between manufacturing and non-manufacturing. It shows that the decline in net male flows during the late stages of each upswing is due both to a fall in gross inflows and a rise in outflows. The lower inflow is due to a decline in the number of persons in non-manufacturing suitable for recruitment into manufacturing while the higher outflow reflects increasing competition from the non-manufacturing sector. Net female flows fall by much less in the late stages of an upswing. Gross inflows continue to increase but outflows rise faster. This is because the female labour supply is more elastic and movements of women between manufacturing and non-manufacturing respond more readily to relative demand changes. Chapter 6 analyzes in greater depth the effects of a tightening labour market on the inter-industry mobility process It shows that the manufacturing sector suffers most from manpower shortages at the peak of the cycle even though its plants pay the highest wages. This is attributable to greater cyclical fluctuations in manufacturing labour demand, greater skill requirements, and increasing competition from non-manufacturingo The relative importance of each of the last two factors can be expected to vary between individual manufacturing industries Engineering and metals plants should experience greater recruitment difficulties owing to skill differences, while plants in industries that are close neighbours to non-manufacturing industries could be expected to suffer from increasing competition from the non-manufacturing sector. These theories are tested econometrically on manpower flow data for movements between non-manufacturing and individual manufacturing industries and are supported by the results. Chapter 7 analyzes manpower flows between the engineering and metals industries. These are shown to be affected strongly by changes in the composition of final product demand. Post war cycles in Britain have been led by the swings in consumer expenditure on durable goods and lagged by fluctuations in plant and machinery investment. Plants producing both types of goods are found in engineering and metals industries. In some cases both types of goods may be produced in the same factoryo Consequently there is considerable competition for scarce manpower between these two sectors of final demand. The effect of the lag in the timing of demand recovery between them is, however, to provide consumer durables producers with a competitive advantage. Since their manpower requirements start to expand at a time when the labour market is relatively slack, they have the opportunity to pre-empt the labour supply. Capital goods producers must then wait until the start of the downswing before they can recruit all the manpower they require This suggests that capital goods producers face the most serious manpower shortages at the peak of the boom and an investigation of cyclical fluctuations in the time customers have to wait for deliveries of plant and machinery provides qualified support for this view. Chapter 8, the conclusion,contains a summary of the findings of the study and a discussion of its implications for future research and policy making. It considers various methods of achieving a change in the industrial distribution of employment and argues that the introduction of relative wage changes to achieve this objective is best regarded as a policy of last resort implemented only after its likely impact on flow patterns and comparability claims have been carefully analyzed. The advantages of discriminatory taxes on labour - such as the Selective Employment Tax - over relative wage changes is that they do not induce comparability claims from workers who lose their position in the earnings structure. More research into interindustry mobility patterns is recommended to provide a basis for future manpower planning and the possible introduction of new types of discriminatory employment taxes to assist in the implementation of such plans.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 189-200). Also available via the Internet