This thesis consists of three studies on the role of social capital on the economic performance of recent immigrants to Canada in terms of employment probability, wages and time taken to access to the first job in intended occupation. The first study addresses literature gaps by performing an empirical analysis of the relationship between social capital and employment entry of recent immigrants using the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC). The research builds indicators of social capital based on a network-based concept using information unique to the LSIC, considering the types of networks (kinship, friendship, organization) and their content (size, diversity, density, quality). The study further explores the relationship between those indicators and employment likelihood of immigrants, using panel logit models including fixed-effects, random-effects and generalized estimating equations (GEE) population-averaged models to control for unobserved individual heterogeneity. The analysis reveals significant variability in the social capital stock across immigration classes and ethnic groups; furthermore, social capital stock, as measured by various indicators, influences the probability of employment in the initial four years. Possibly through a more ethnically diverse network, social capital plays an important role in facilitating the economic assimilation of recent immigrants in terms of a higher probability of getting employment. The second study of the thesis investigates the interactions between social capital and immigrants' wages, attempting to deal with some of the difficulties faced by previous studies on returns to social capital. The suspected correlation between social capital and unobserved individual ability motivates the study to treat social capital as endogenous. The estimator proposed by Hausman and Taylor (1981) is used to take into account this endogeneity. This estimator is then shown to be efficient and consistent and is favoured over other panel data estimators. The results indicate that social capital adds to human capital and has important effects on immigrant wages during their first years in Canada. Strong ties such as family networks and friends dominate weak ties such as organizations in helping immigrants get higher wages during their first four years in Canada. This is true especially for those who are disadvantaged with respect to their human capital. Meanwhile, the ethnic diversity of the workplace network is the most influential factor within social capital that affects wages for both male and female immigrants. Using detailed information on employment trajectory and intended occupation provided by the LSIC, the third study of the thesis examines the occupational outcomes of recent immigrants in terms of duration of access to the first job in intended occupation. The matching between actual and intended occupations is obtained from the first two digits of occupational codes, considering both occupation type and skill level. Using a Cox proportional hazard model framework, the study investigates the roles of both human capital and social capital in speeding up the matching process of actual and intended occupations. It finds that the initial year in Canada is critical for an immigrant to land a job in intended field and after this period the hazards of finding employment in intended occupation flatten down for both genders. The results confirm the hypothesis that while human capital such as education and language ability, especially English proficiency and Canadian work experience, facilitates an immigrant's employment access to his or her intended occupation, social capital, mainly friend networks, also plays a role in hastening access to employment in desired occupational fields for both genders.

This dissertation examines the employment impacts of investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency in the U.S. A broad expansion of the use of renewable energy in place of carbon-based energy, in addition to investments in energy efficiency, comprise a prominent strategy to slow or reverse the effects of anthropogenic climate change. This study first explores the literature on the employment impacts of these investments. This literature to date consists mainly of input-output (I-O) studies or case studies of renewable energy and energy efficiency (REEE). Researchers are constrained, however, by their ability to use the I-O model to study REEE, since currently industrial codes do not recognize this industry as such. I develop and present two methods to use the I-O framework to overcome this constraint: the synthetic and integrated approaches. In the former, I proxy the REEE industry by creating a vector of final demand based on the industrial spending patterns of REEE firms as found in the secondary literature. In the integrated approach, I collect primary data through a nationwide survey of REEE firms and integrate these data into the existing I-O tables to explicitly identify the REEE industry and estimate the employment impacts resulting from both upstream and downstream linkages with other industries. The size of the REEE employment multiplier is sensitive to the choice of method, and is higher using the synthetic approach than using the integrated approach. I find that using both methods, the employment level per $1 million demand is approximately three times greater for the REEE industry than for fossil fuel (FF) industries. This implies that a shift to clean energy will result in positive net employment impacts. The positive effects stem mainly from the higher labor intensity of REEE in relation to FF, as well as from higher domestic content and lower average wages. The findings suggest that as we transition away from a carbon-based energy system to more sustainable and low-carbon energy sources, approximately three jobs will be created in clean energy sectors for each job lost in the fossil fuel sector.

From a controversial genesis in the 1960s the theory of human capital has acquired a role of critical importance in the economic development of human beings and nations. A major development in the human capital literature initiated by Becker and Chiswick (1966) and carried to full fruition by Mincer (1974) was the development of a simple empirical framework which captured the key ingredients of the human capital model. Although ingenious and practical, Mincer's formulation has several shortcomings. Among these are, ignoring self-selection and the endogeneity of schooling and ignoring the role of school quality Notwithstanding these shortcomings, the human capital earnings function has been widely used to estimate rates of return to education. Partly on the basis of high rates of return to education, many developing countries have invested heavily in their education sectors. However, although the vacuum is slowly being filled, the evidence on how rates of return to education have fared subsequent to the growth of the education sector is surprisingly sparse These three issues, that is, the inability of the human capital earnings function to account for the self-selection behavior of individuals, changes in the rate of return to education over time, and the role of school quality in determining earnings, form the focus of this dissertation. While these issues are important for all countries this dissertation analyzes these three issues in the context of Honduras, a poor developing country. The dissertation combines recently collected high quality data household data with data on school quality to create a unique set of data which allows us to explore the three issues raised above in detail Chapter one provides rates of return to education that allow for the endogeneity of schooling attainment. The results reveal that ignoring these effects leads to a substantial understatement of rates of return to schooling. Chapter one section five examines the effect of educational expansion on the rates of return to education. There is an increase in educational returns for men who enter the labor market in the 1980s. This is unexpected due to the massive educational expansion in Honduras, which is expected to reduce the marginal returns to schooling. A number of factors that may explain the higher returns are evaluated. It seems that the emergence of a stable political climate, economic reforms and increases in skill-enhancing labor demand are the most likely explanations Chapter two and chapter three address an apparently straightforward question that has received little attention in developing countries. Does school quality have a significant impact on earnings? Household survey data is combined with unique data on school quality to answer this question. The results display strong effects of school quality on earnings, with the strongest impact occurring at the lower percentiles of the income distribution. These effects persist across a variety of model specifications / acase@tulane.edu

Although many workers have a private household as their workplace, many household employers are unaware of or fail to meet their state and federal payroll tax obligations, thus undermining the workers’ retirement income security. This dissertation uses sixty interviews with household employers and employees in the Washington, DC, area to investigate the causes and conditions of nanny tax evasion. Ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews indicate that lack of awareness, tax complexity, social norms of noncompliance, and poor personal ethics diminish payroll tax payment; concern over one’s job, personal ethics and altruistic concern for the employee motivate compliance. An analysis of limited IRS data on audits as well as data on Schedule H household employment payroll tax returns reveal that although some unpaid tax was discovered, almost as much tax paid in error was refunded, confirming the importance of complexity as a determinant of compliance. Analysis of results using Kohlberg’s stages of moral development and force field analysis of motives provides insight into employers’ decisions to pay or evade their nanny taxes. Policy recommendations emphasize increasing public awareness, tax simplification, and enforcement.

Inner-city economic development as well as educational reform is essential for empowering poor urban residents to compete in the economy and polity. Increasingly, the notion of local control over economic development, and education to that end, has arisen as a critical concern among theoreticians and practitioners. A model that inextricably entertwines economic control with education is worker-controlled and -owned enterprise. Such enterprises can provide jobs and income for often-unemployed urban residents who have been particularly hard-hit by economic restructuring, recession, and racism. Within such enterprises, poor and low-skilled workers are challenged by and imparted dignity through participation in policy decision-making and work design. A focus on economic development moves the civil rights agenda of the 1960's and '70's to confrontation with contemporary economic and racial realities, while collective (albeit private) control of enterprise challenges conservative, traditional approaches to community economic development. A highly successful home-health care enterprise in New York City which has created a substantial number of high-quality, low-skilled jobs for inner-city residents utilizing the worker-controlled and -owned model was studied. A case-study approach to determine the historical sequence of events was employed. A qualitative methodology involving interviews with individual workers and managers as well as statistically-compiled responses from virtually all workers to determine worker participation and satisfaction was utilized. The enterprise was compared with other traditionally-structured New York City home health care agencies as well as with another worker-controlled and -owned enterprise which was not a home health care agency. The study concluded that the worker-controlled and -owned model can be effective in addressing both urban poverty and poor education. Six essential elements for achieving democratic urban economic development are: (1) job creation; (2) service to local low-to-moderate income constituency; (3) design of challenging, full-time, tenured work; (4) democratization of workplace decision-making and profit; (5) payment of reasonable wages and benefits; and (6) contribution to further community economic development. The model studied introduced worker-ownership only after the enterprise had stabilized out of consideration for poor workers' financial limitations as well as a need for managerial control in establishing a viable enterprise. A nonformal educational method proved highly effective with low-skilled workers.

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Human capital has long been recognized as a crucial determinant of economic development. The main contribution of my dissertation is to both theoretically and empirically demonstrate the idea that the composition (different types of education) of human capital determines technological progress and affects long-run economic growth. As compared to traditional human capital and growth literature, it emphasizes the composition effect of human capital, rather than the level effect, on economic development. It provides a new perspective in characterizing the stages of economic development along the growth path. Optimal human capital composition benefits not only lesser developed countries who usually lack educational resources but also developed countries with limited population growth potential. The first chapter, titled ``Education, Technology, Human Capital Composition and Economic Development'', develops a framework of endogenous educational decisions and technological progress to explore the human capital composition and its effects on economic growth. In this model, growth is driven by technological advancement, which depends on the human capital composition. Individuals can choose from different types of workers: unskilled workers, generalists or specialists. Both generalists and specialists, through technological progress, are able to enhance growth. The model considers the role of technology stock, coordination cost, education cost and worker's innate ability on the human capital composition and economic growth. The main result shows the improvement in the composition of human capital promotes economic growth in most economic stages. However, this positive effect tapers off as the economy reaches complete specialization. This provides a possible explanation for the convergence of economic growth to zero asymptotically in the long run. I extend the argument into an open economy framework in the second chapter, titled ``Migration Effects on Home Country's Composition of Human Capital and Economic Development''. This chapter examines migration effects on domestic composition of human capital and economic growth. The net effect of migration depends on two facets. On one hand, the possibility of migration provides incentives for workers to invest in education and consequently increases the fraction of skilled workers in home country's human capital composition. On the other hand, increased population of skilled emigrants hinders the accumulation of human capital. A sufficient condition for beneficial migration is derived: if the ex ante domestic fraction of unskilled worker is relatively high, allowing the home country to achieve faster economic growth with migration. The last chapter, titled ``The Effect of Tertiary Education Composition on Economic Growth'', differentiates types of tertiary education by ISECD levels and empirically investigates their effects on economic growth. I use panel data on a group of 77 countries for the period 1998-2011. In dynamic panel data estimation, a potential endogeneity bias could arise due to the inclusion of lagged dependent variables. Several methods are applied to overcome the issue, such as Anderson-Hsiao estimator, the Difference Generalized Method of Moments estimator and the System Generalized Method of Moments estimator. The study shows a significantly positive relationship between short-cycle tertiary education and real GDP per capita for both developed and developing countries. However, undergraduate and graduate education only positively correlate to economic growth in developed countries. The empirical results are informative for developed countries as well as developing countries. Understanding the contribution of tertiary education in different levels allows them to effectively allocate resources and appropriately integrate it in growth policies. / Economics

From the early nineteenth century through World War II Springfield, Massachusetts was one of the world's preeminent metalworking centers. On the eve of the Second World War hundreds of firms and thousands of skilled machinists produced machine tools, fixtures, castings, forgings, and precision components for the nation's automobile, electrical appliance, steel, and aircraft industries. However, by the mid-1950s Springfield industry commenced an inexorable decline, interrupted briefly by Vietnam War defense spending. Firms were purchased by outside investors and work moved, while foreign firms gained market share from local companies. Springfield's fall from manufacturing prominence mirrors events elsewhere in the industrial Northeast and is important to understand. The decline is examined mainly through a history of the American Bosch Company, its workers, and their union. Established in 1911, unionized in 1936, Bosch specialized in the design and manufacture of precision diesel fuel injections components. During World War II it employed thousands of skilled machinists. After the war it was purchased by Wall Street investors and in the early 1950s became part of a small corporation headquartered in New York City. By the early 1960s it had become the most profitable firm in the diesel products division of a Fortune 500 corporation. By the time it closed in 1986 Bosch was an aging plant with a few hundred workers owned by a Fortune 100 corporation. From 1950 forward management attempted to implement numerous strategies to reduce costs and maintain market share, including the construction of a low-wage plant in Mississippi, the acquisition of overseas factories, and in-plant schemes to streamline production. The union resisted in-plant restructuring efforts, but offered token opposition to the company's world-wide maneuvers. Throughout, unionists believed their machining skills coupled with their knowledge of the products being produced were assets the company needed to succeed. The company never shared this perspective, and unresolved, this disjuncture contributed to the closing of the plant. It is argued here that management's efforts failed because workers were treated as appendages of their machines.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / William F. Blankenau / This dissertation consists of three essays focusing on wage inequality and education policy. Essay 1 considers growth in the variance of wages. Prior work has documented that the college premium plays a major role in explaining wage variance growth. This essay examines the extent to which this role can be attributed to an increase in the dispersion of occupation-specific returns to post-secondary education. Using the variance components approach and CPS data between 1979-1981 and 2003-2005, the essay shows that the variation in the college premium across occupations has increased over time, and this variation expansion explains about five percent of the growth in wage variance across the two periods. By dividing the sample workforce into professional and nonprofessional groups, the results suggest that the increased variation in the return to post-secondary education particularly caused the wage gap between the professional and non-professional workers to increase. Essay 2 applies quantile regression methodology to the study of the determinants of the wage distribution among natives and immigrants in the U.S., using PUMS from 1990 and 2000, and ACS from 2006. Among other findings, the immigrant/native wage gap is concentrated at the lower end to the median of the wage distribution, and the primary source of the wage gap is the relative lack of labor market skills among immigrants. A cross-time comparison shows that the recent immigrant/native wage gap after controlling for skill variables first decreased from 1990 to 2000 and then expanded from 2000 to 2006. The growth is concentrated at the two ends of the wage distribution, and the reason for growth is that the recent immigrants in 2006 are younger and thus have less market experience than their counterparts of 1990. Essay 3 is coauthored with Dr. Blankenau. We analyze the impact of changes in college admission standards on the skilled labor distribution, skilled firm distribution, and the match of skilled labor with skilled firms. We propose a model of schooling with heterogeneous labor and firms, in which firms’ decisions in creating skilled jobs are conditioned on the supply of skilled labor. The model shows that lowering standards without providing incentives to acquire skills does not necessarily motivate accumulation of human capital or expansion of skilled industry. Lower standards tend to create a mismatch of educated labor with unskilled positions. In some specifications, lower standards can lower firms’ willingness to create skilled positions, leaving more skilled workers underemployed.

This is a cross-national study of determinants of women's share of the labor force. Previous research suggests that national rates of female share of the labor force are affected by economic development and international trade. Economic development has been linked to increased education opportunities for women, decreased fertility rates and increased gross national product per capita. These effects of economic development were suggested to improve women's economic opportunities. Some studies have focussed on the effects of foreign trade and finance on cross-national variations in female labor force participation rates. World-system researchers have recommended changes in methods and theory that suggest that the determinants of female labor force participation need to be reexamined. By using statistical methods recently introduced to cross-national research, as well as more recent data, I have tested hypotheses suggested by previous research for the decade of the 1980's. Specifically, previous research suggested that economic development increases and international trade generally decreases women's share of the labor force. This period was a tumultuous time in the world-economy. Many countries experienced debt crises and many attempted economic restructuring by focusing on exports of manufactured commodities instead of raw materials and agricultural goods. I have tested for the effects of these changes on changes in women's share of the labor force using data from the 60 countries for which data were available. Lowered fertility rates increased women's share of the labor force in the 1980's, but that was the only modernization indicator that had an effect. The proportion of a country's revenues obtained from exports affected women's share of the labor force, but this effect varied by levels of commodity concentration and exports in manufactured products. As commodity concentration increased, the positive effect of exports became less positive. As manufactured exports became a bigger proportion of all of a countries exports, the positive effect of exports as a source of a country's revenues on women's share of the labor force became more positive. Debt servicing and debt restructuring was not found to have an effect on women's share of the labor force in the 1980's.