by Yau Oi-Man. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references. / ABSTRACT / ACKNOWLEDGE / Chapter CHAPTER I --- --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.1-16 / Chapter CHAPTER II --- --- TOURNAMENT AND SPECIFIC HUMAN CAPITAL --- p.17-55 / Chapter CHAPTER III --- --- THEORETICAL FOUNDATION OF EXPERIMENTS --- p.56-70 / Chapter CHAPTER IV --- --- EXPERIMENTS --- p.71-111 / SUMMARY --- p.112 / BIBLIOGRAPHY

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University / A case study of a rural area wage and benefit survey in the Monadnock region of Southwestern New Hampshire, illustrating the conception, development, and scope of the survey and its effect on management practices and procedures in that area.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Employment rates of Mexican women increased 26 percentage points in the last 23 years. The underlying factors driving this trend are the main motivation for this study. My two explanatory hypotheses are the following: there is a lower 'motherhood penalty,' and a higher preschool enrollment encouraged women's employment. In addition, I estimate the gender gap in weekly wages and wages plus employer-provided benefits. To test these two hypotheses, I decompose changes, over the last two decades, in payoffs and endowments of 'motherhood.' Second, I measure the effect of changes in preschool enrollment on mothers' employment. In addition, I also estimate the gender gaps in wages and wages plus employer-provided benefits, incorporating a more precise measure of job experience than previously used, and measures of cognitive ability and non-cognitive traits (formerly unaccounted for in Mexican studies). My goal is to provide an explanation of the mechanisms that encouraged women's employment in Mexico, and to estimate the possible gender differences in earnings that might prevent a potentially larger progress of women in the Mexican labor market.

Education is often perceived as a key to development and growth, consequently, in the last decades, many countries have increased education coverage in all education levels. The creation of international education quality measurement programs, such as OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) or the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), have further led to a focus on improving education quality. For these reasons, the last decades have seen an increase in the importance of education in the political debate. This has been particularly relevant in Latin America, where, additionally, education has been used, sometimes, to fight traditionally high levels of income inequality, with a significant rise in education expenditure and coverage. The evaluation of education policies that aim to increase education coverage, quality or equity is, however, generally difficult. Many education policies are large-scale policies and are likely to affect all students or workers in the population, even those not directly benefiting from the policy. For example, students not participating in some education policy could still experience changes in their classmate characteristics that could affect their achievement. The presence of possible spillovers may change the direction of the effects of large-scale education policies when all the population is included in the analysis. Therefore, analyzing solely the effects on students participating in the policy may not give a complete picture of the effects of large-scale education policies. This dissertation focuses on the effects that three large-scale education policies that aimed to improve education equity, quality and coverage, respectively, had on students and workers affected differently by the policies. Particularly, each chapter analyzes the aggregate effects for the population of each education policy and decomposes these effects on the impact suffered by different groups of students or workers. In Chapter 1, I analyze the effects on test scores of a policy that aimed to increase education equity in Chile. I study the effects of an increase in school choice for low-income students by examining a 2008 reform that made the value of Chile’s (previously flat, universal) school voucher a step function of student income. This policy increased the proportion of private schools that low income, eligible children could access free of charge from 0.5 to 0.7. In order to identify aggregate effects and the impact within groups of students, I combine the introduction of the policy with variation from a date of birth enrollment cutoff for 1st grade. I show that the differentiated voucher lowered the probability that students used public schools by a small fraction and that these students shifted out of low achievement public schools to enroll in low achievement private schools. Nonetheless, private schools where these students enrolled had better test scores and socioeconomic composition at baseline, and less experienced teachers and smaller class sizes than public schools where they would have enrolled in the absence of the program. Despite the improvement in some school observable characteristics, I do not find any increase in test scores for students more likely to move to private schools. Further analysis suggests a rise in test scores for students most likely to stay in public schools. These results suggest that the policy had an overall modest positive effect on test scores, but that this positive effect was caused by responses from public schools instead of by students responding to the increase in school choice. In Chapter 2, I study the impact on test scores of a policy that aimed to improve education quality by increasing transparency of school performance in Chile. Particularly, I look at the effects of the distribution of school performance information to all families in Chile in 2011. Since I am interested in identifying effects for different groups of students, I define a control group within each group of students by using variation in enrollment year. Due to the presence of a date of birth enrollment cutoff for 1st grade enrollment there is variation in enrollment year for students born a few days apart. I combine this variation together with the timing of the distribution of information to identify the effects of the policy. I show that the distribution of information increased enrollment in high-performing schools, particularly for students in the third quartile of the municipality socioeconomic distribution. Thanks to this policy, students in the third quartile were exposed to a better socioeconomic composition of peers. Test score results suggest that there was an overall positive effect on verbal test scores, particularly for students in the third quartile, seemingly caused by an improvement in peer characteristics. However, there does not seem to be any significant change in test scores for students less likely to change enrollment decisions in response to the new information. Finally, Chapter 3, examines the effects of a policy that increased tertiary education coverage in Colombia on wages. I identify the effects on the distribution of wages using two different empirical strategies: the DiNardo, Fortin and Lemieux (1996) reweighting method and a differences-indifferences strategy. My results suggest that the overall distribution of wages remained constant, once labor demand shifts and productivity changes are taken into account. In contrast, wages increased for workers that were not at the margin of studying tertiary education, workers with primary education or less, and the density of wages at high levels of the distribution decreased for high school and tertiary education graduates. However, there were no effects on average wages for workers with any of the education levels. These results suggest that the policy had heterogeneous effects within the wage distribution and between education levels that were not captured by changes in average wages. These three chapters show that large-scale education policies can, sometimes, have effects on achievement or wages of students that are not participating in the policy, and that these effects are not always visible in the aggregate effects. Therefore, policy-makers and researchers should take into account the presence of spillovers or strategic responses when designing or analyzing large-scale education policies.

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate whether referral hiring leads to better job search and labor market outcomes for immigrants in São Paulo. To do so, we use a proxy for referral hiring, the share of same nationality workers in a firm one year before hiring, and estimate wage and turnover regression with a matched employer-employee dataset (RAIS). We find that referral hiring lower immigrant\'s wages at hiring, that is, if the proposed proxy increased by 10 p.p., wages would decrease by 1.9%. We also devise a couple of placebo test that reinforce the results we have found. We identify that nationalities with low education workers absorb all the negative impact. Other possible channels could be the size of immigrant networks and immigration age of nationalities, but we find no impact, although these exercises have several identification problems. Future steps include developing a theoretical framework that can rationalize the results. / O objetivo dessa dissertação é investigar se a contratação por indicação leva a uma melhor busca por trabalho e melhores resultados no mercado de trabalho de imigrantes na cidade de São Paulo. Utilizamos uma proxy para a contratação por indicação, a proporção de trabalhadores da mesma nacionalidade um ano antes da contratação, e estimamos uma regressão de salários e demissões com a RAIS, um painel de firmas e trabalhadores formais. Nossos resultados mostram que a contratação por indicação diminui o salário do imigrante quando da contratação, isto é, se a proxy aumentasse em 10 p.p., salários cairiam em 1,9%. Também elaboramos alguns testes de placebo que reforçam nossos resultados. Identificamos que nacionalidades com trabalhadores menos educados são os que mais sofrem impacto negativo. Outros possíveis canais seriam o tamanho da rede de imigrantes e a idade de imigração das nacionalidades, mas não achamos nenhum impacto, apesar desses exercícios sofrerem de diversos problemas de identificação. Passos futuros seriam desenvolver um modelo teórico que racionalize os resultados.

This dissertation examines gender pay disparity and women’s and men’s pay increase trajectories in a comparative analysis of the U.S. nonprofit and for-profit sectors. First, using the U.S. Censuses from 1990 and 2000, and the American Community Survey 2010-2014 data, this dissertation examines the nonprofit/for-profit difference in gender pay equity in Chapter 4. Traditionally, researchers have examined gender pay disparity across all industries in the entire economy combined. My analysis, however, focuses on 15 human service industries because nonprofit organizations are usually concentrated in those fields only. This empirical chapter makes two contributions to the field: first, it offers a more apples-to-apples comparison between pay in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors than previous research; second, it captures the gender pay disparity at three points in time, thus reflecting the change over the past 20 years. My industry-specific results challenge two normative assumptions: first, that nonprofits pay their workers lower than for-profits; and second, the smaller gender pay disparity in the nonprofit sector is a result of nonprofit pay compression. Leveraging theories from economics, sociology, and organizational studies, this empirical chapter pinpoints factors, such as industrial competition for labor, institutional pressures, level of unionization, and organizational form, that lead to a difference – or lack thereof – in the level of gender pay disparity between the two sectors. My second empirical chapter (Chapter 5) examines women’s and men’s pay increase trajectories in the nonprofit (NP) and for-profit (FP) sectors based on the Survey of Income and Program Participation 2008 panel data. This chapter traces the pay increases for four groups of workers: NP Stayers, FP Stayers, NP-FP Movers, and FP-NP Movers. The results show that there was selection in workers’ moving behaviors: NP-FP Movers tended to be those who were disadvantaged in the nonprofit sector, while FP-NP Movers tended to be those who were better off in the for-profit sector. The analysis does not find gender or sectoral difference in pay increase trajectories for workers who chose to stay in the same sector. This empirical chapter is the first attempt at tracing the pay trajectories of nonprofit and for-profit human service workers using longitudinal data.

Esta tese tem como elemento central a estrutura de mercado, cujos resultados são inéditos até onde conhecemos. Na primeira parte, tratamos de inovação e estrutura de mercado, dada a apropriabilidade. Analisamos P&D em particular e inovação em produto e processo para empresa e para o mercado, bem como formas de apropriabilidade além de patentes, tais como copyright e desenho industrial complexo. Entre os resultados empíricos que encontramos vale destacar que: (i) estrutura de mercado tem impacto positivo sobre inovação, via de regra, quando considerado junto com gasto com propaganda ou com um mix de mecanismos de apropriabilidade; (ii) lucratividade defasada, via de regra, tem efeito positivo sobre a decisão de gastar ou não em P&D e de inovar ou não, seja em produto ou processo, para a empresa ou para o mercado; (iii) exceto gastos com propaganda, os outros indicadores de apropriabilidade aqui considerados isoladadamente, via de regra, não têm impacto positivo sobre os indicadores de inovação; e (iv) em geral, o mix de mecanismos de apropriabilidade tem impacto positivo e significativo tanto sobre gastos com P&D quanto sobre a decisão de gastar em P&D e inovar. Na segunda parte tratamos de salários e estrutura de mercado dada a qualificação dos trabalhadores sob uma perspectiva muito recente. Verificamos empiricamente em que medida o poder de mercado das empresas da indústria brasileira de transformação no mercado de produto influenciou os salários dos trabalhadores, dadas suas qualificações, no período 1998 a 2005. Para tal, adotamos um procedimento pouco presente na literatura sobre mercado de trabalho: experimento quase natural (no caso, o overshooting cambial de 2002-2003), como forma de corrigir a potencial simultaneidade entre salários e parcela de mercado. Entre os resultados desta seção vale destacar que: (i) a parcela de mercado tem efeito positivo sobre os salários dos trabalhadores de escolaridade alta, mas negativo sobre os de média, sugerindo que as empresas da indústria brasileira de transformação usam o poder no mercado de produto para pagar melhores salários para os trabalhadores mais qualificados e pagar menores salários para os menos qualificados – algo que tende a ampliar a polarização dos rendimentos no mercado de trabalho brasileiro. Dado que parcela de mercado também é uma forma de medir tamanho de empresa, este resultado sugere também que as firmas maiores da indústria brasileira de transformação pagam os trabalhadores mais qualificados melhor que as firmas menores. E (ii) atividades de P&D tiveram efeito negativo sobre escolariadade alta, mas inovação em geral teve efeito positivo sobre os mais qualificados, sugerindo que a competição no mercado de produto aumenta atividades inovativas em geral, acirrando a disputa por mão de obra qualificada. Porém, esta mesma competição no mercado de produto não aumenta a atividade de P&D e, portanto, a disputa por mão de obra qualificada para esta finalidade. Pelo contrário. A evidência empírica obtida sugere que a competição no mercado de produto diminui esta atividade, bem como a procura por mão de obra qualificada para este fim. / The central point of this dissertation is market structure, whose results are unpublished as we know. In the first section we consider innovation, market structure and appropriability in the Brazilian manufacturing sector in 2003 and 2005. We analyse not only R&D but also process and product innovation to the firm and to the market, as well many appropriability mechanisms further than patents, as copyright and complex industrial design. Among the main empirical results we found are: (i) market structure has positive impact on innovation, especially joint with advertisement expenditure or mix of appropriability mechanisms; (ii) lagged profits has positive effects on R&D expenditure decision and innovation decision, no matter if it is product or process innovation to the firm or to the market; (iii) all apropriability mechanisms except advertisement don`t have positive impact on innovation; and (iv) in general mix of appropriability mechanisms has positive impact on R&D expenditure and R&D expenditure and innovation decision. In the second section we analyse wages and market structure. We check empirically how Brazilian manufacturing firms product market power impact on worker wages, conditional to workers skills, between 1998 and 2005. We use a rare procedure in empirical labour market literature: a quasi-natural experiment (in this case the 2002-2003 Brazilian exchange rate overshooting) as source of exogeneity, which help us correct potential simultaneity between wages and market share. Among the main results we found are: (i) market share has positive effect on high skilled workers wage but negative on the medium skilled, which suggest that Brazilian manufacturing firms use their product market power to pay higher wages to high skilled workers but to pay lower wages to the less skilled – which can increase wages polarization in the Brazilian labour market. As market share also means firm size, this result also suggests that the biggest firms in the Brazilian manufacturing pay better than the smallest. And (ii) R&D activity has negative effect on high skilled workers but innovation as a whole has positive effect on the high skilled, which suggests that competition on product market increase innovative activity as a whole, increasing high skilled labour demand. However, competition in the product market does not increase R&D activity and, as consequence, does not increase high skilled labour demand. In fact, the empirical evidence shows us the opposite: the competition on product market reduce R&D activity and high skilled labour demand as well to this objective.

Shui, Chi Wai. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-61). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.ii / 摘要 --- p.iii / Acknowledgements --- p.iv / Chapter Section 1: --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Section 2: --- Data --- p.4 / Chapter Section 3: --- Models and Methodology --- p.7 / Chapter 3.1 --- Specific Model --- p.7 / Chapter 3.2 --- Comparative Model --- p.10 / Chapter 3.3 --- Estimation of the Household Time Value and Household Shadow Wage --- p.11 / Chapter Section 4: --- Results --- p.15 / Chapter 4.1 --- Results of the Specific Model --- p.15 / Chapter 4.2 --- Results of the Comparative Model --- p.18 / Chapter Section 5: --- Conclusion --- p.23 / Appendix: --- p.24 / References: --- p.60

A literatura empírica em economia do trabalho mostra que o tamanho do empregador afeta positivamente o salário de seus trabalhadores. O presente trabalho utiliza uma especificação empírica da equação salarial que inclui efeitos fixos para os trabalhadores, para o empregador e para a qualidade do match entre eles, de modo que explicações teóricas para a existência do efeito do tamanho do empregador possam ser testadas sem que vieses de variável omitida prejudiquem as conclusões. Esta especificação com três efeitos fixos ainda não foi utilizada na literatura empírica do efeito salarial do tamanho do empregador. Os resultados indicam que mais da metade do efeito do tamanho do empregador é explicado pela correlação do tamanho com as três heterogeneidades não observáveis e que devemos rejeitar a validade empírica das explicações fornecidas pelos modelos teóricos testados de forma geral. Contudo, ressaltamos que tais modelos podem se aplicar em circunstâncias específicas. / Economists have persistently found a positive relationship between the employer size and the wage earned by employees. This paper uses an empirical specification that controls for unobserved heterogeneity at three levels: worker, employer and match quality, for the first time in this literature. Thus, theoretical explanations of the employer size effect can be tested with estimation results that are not biased due to omitted variable problems. We show that more than half of the employer size effect is explained by the correlation between the employer size and the three heterogeneities. The results also suggest that we should reject the tested theoretical models as general explanations of the employer size effect. However, these models may explain the effect in some circumstances.