This dissertation examines the effects of career interruptions on workers’ wages. In chapter four I examine whether controlling for the type of interruption differently affects men’s and women’s wages and therefore can be used to explain the remaining gender wage differences. The increased participation of married women in the labor force has increased their wages from just 30% of men’s wages in 1890 to nearly 80% as of 2001. Thus, although the gender wage gap has narrowed over time, it has yet to be eliminated. One argument for the persistence of the gender wage gap is that previously researchers have used poor measures of experience to estimate men’s and women’s wages. Although previous studies have made strides in measuring experience, including controls for the timing of work experience, the gender wage gap persists. I extend the wage-gap literature by including controls for the types of interruptions men and women encounter. Because they typically experience different types of interruptions, I examine whether the varying types affect wages differently. I control for the types of interruptions and find similar effects for men’s and women’s wages. My study shows that types of job interruptions do not explain the remaining wage differentials. The fifth chapter extends from the fourth chapter by including controls for all periods of unpaid leave from work. I examine whether wage differences exist between workers who return to their current employer post-interruption versus those who change employers post-interruption. I find differences in the wage effects from different types of unpaid leave for men and women. Chapter six extends from previous chapters by including controls for all periods of paid leave from work in addition to unpaid leaves from work. I examine whether depreciation effects occur when women spend time out of work but receive compensation through paid maternity leaves. I find no evidence that time out of work because of paid maternity leaves depreciates skills.

My dissertation consists of three essays in which I document trends in earnings and income volatility, estimate potential causal mechanisms for changing volatility, and examine the long-term consequences of parental income volatility for children. In essay 2 I document trends in earnings and income volatility of individuals and families using matched data in the March Current Population survey from 1973 to 2009. Essay 3 advances the literature on volatility, using matched data from the CPS to identify demographic and labor market correlates of earnings volatility within education-birth year cohorts. This study collapses the cross-sectional CPS into a pseudo-panel and then estimates the association between earnings volatility and race, local economic activity, and industry, accounting for endogeneity and sample selection bias. In essay 4 I use data linked across generations in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate the relationship between exposure to volatile income during childhood and a set of socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood. The empirical framework is an augmented intergenerational income mobility model that includes controls for income volatility. I find that family income volatility rose by 38 percent over the past four decades, likely driven both by rising volatility of earnings and non means-tested non-labor income. Rising family income volatility occurs across race, education, and family structure. From essay 3, I find that individuals with lower mean earnings have higher earnings volatility. Earnings volatility is also weakly related to race, decreases when young and then rises while workers are still within prime working years. Industry and local economic conditions are significantly related to the occurrence of earnings volatility after accounting for education, though these links differ between men and women. Finally, when examining the intergenerational consequences of volatility, a weak negative association occurs between family income instability during childhood and adult educational outcomes in essay 4.

This dissertation explores how migration responds to economic conditions, particularly differences in responsiveness for various segments of the population. After a brief introduction and motivation of my work in Chapter One, Chapter Two estimates the responsiveness of households’ interstate migration to origin state labor market conditions and surrounding state labor market conditions. Each percentage point increase in origin state unemployment insurance claims leads to a 3.2 percent increase in household’s propensity to migrate interstate and each percentage point increase in the unemployment insurance claims rate of surrounding states reduces interstate migration propensity by 5.2 percent. I then examine how this responsiveness varies by demographics and how it has changed over time. I determine that the responsiveness of migration to labor market conditions is weaker for several groups at high poverty risk, including less educated, non-employed and rural households and households with children present. I also show that between the early 1980s and mid 1990s labor market conditions became a smaller factor in household migration decisions, but since then labor market conditions have gained in importance. While Chapter Two examines short-run migration responsiveness, Chapter Three explores the size of the long-run outflow (or inflow) of skilled labor occurring in local areas in response to economic conditions, amenities and other area characteristics. I estimate the extent of this brain gain and brain drain within localities in the United States between the early 1990s and late 2000s, describing both absolute changes (percentage growth in the stock of educated individuals) and relative changes (growth in the share of educated individuals). For each of three measures of brain gain estimated, I show substantially more positive flows of educated individuals towards local areas with strong initial economic conditions. I also show that non-metropolitan areas are more likely to experience all three measures of brain drain. I present evidence that nonmetropolitan areas’ inability to attract and retain educated individuals stems primarily from labor market disparities including the urban-rural wage differential.

This paper examines data for 12,868 individuals from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) from 1979 through 2010 to explore certain financial incentives of marriage. In particular, this paper focuses on identifying the combination of occupations that decreases idiosyncratic income volatility to the greatest extent. For the sake of this paper, marriage is defined as the combination of two separate assets into a single portfolio. With such, I derive the efficient frontier for each occupation and gender. In the process, reward-to-volatility and mean-variance utility maximization techniques are introduced. Ultimately, applying modern portfolio theory to the marriage market allows one to examine the economic incentives of marriage in a way that has not previously been done. On the whole, the analysis confirms previous literature on marriage dynamics, while offering a new framework for analysis.

This study deals with skilled migration from a developing country perspective. The migration of skilled individuals from developing countries to developed countries is often viewed as a costly subsidy from the poor nations to the rich, and a threat to their economic development. The first part of the study brings up to date both the theoretical and the policy debate on the impact of skilled migration on the sending economies. The second purpose of the study is to take a closer look at the motivations for skilled emigration from Turkey. The emigration of skilled individuals from Turkey has attracted greater attention in recent years, particularly after the experience of back to back economic crises that have led to increased unemployment among the highly educated young. A survey study was undertaken during the first half of 2002 in order to collect information on various characteristics of Turkish professionals and Turkish students residing abroad. Over 2000 responses were received from the targeted populations. The information from this survey was then used to determine the empirical importance of various factors on return intentions by estimating ordered probit models for the two samples. In the migration literature, wage differentials are often cited as an important factor explaining skilled migration. The findings of the study suggest, however, that other factors are also important in explaining the non-return of Turkish professionals. Economic instability in Turkey is found to be an important push factor, while work experience in Turkey also increases non-return. In the student sample, higher salaries offered in the host country and lifestyle preferences, including a more organized and ordered environment in their current country of study increase the probability of not returning. For both groups, the analysis also points to the importance of prior intentions and the role of the family in the decision to return to Turkey or stay overseas.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1984. / Also available in print.

Thesis (PH.D.) -- Syracuse University, 2006 / "Publication number AAT 3251778."

This dissertation uses varying approaches to examine effects of war on communities and individuals in developing countries, specifically in Liberia, West Africa. The first essay, based on work published jointly with Robert E. Moore in 2012, uses a case study of Saclepea, Liberia, to illustrate the role that an appropriately designed local economic development (LED) plan can play in a rural African community emerging from crisis. This case demonstrates the need for the involvement and cooperation of many parties. Clear understanding of the stage of assistance helps to define the role of each entity. This case confirms that local participation in development efforts is an important factor in the success of these efforts. The second essay compares post-war earnings and educational attainment of former child soldiers, adult soldiers, and non-soldiers in post-war Liberia. The results indicate that the war in Liberia had different effects on soldiers than on non-soldiers, but effects for soldiers do not differ greatly between those who fought as children and those who fought as adults. Lasting effects for former soldiers do not, in sum, seem to be negative. Third, I take an experimental approach to understanding trust and trustworthiness among former child soldiers in Liberia. Liberian subjects’ decisions in the standard investment game indicate that former child soldiers do not differ in trusting behavior from other subjects. Non-soldiers are less trusting than adult soldiers, and child soldiers are less trustworthy than adult soldiers. Among only child soldiers, those who had only witnessed violence are more trustworthy than those who had been victims of violence. Liberians in this experiment tend to trust more than Americans who played the same investment game previously. The final essay examines many instances of the same investment game to explore how violence affects trusting and trustworthy behaviors and how those behaviors affect a country’s level of peacefulness. I find that a macroeconomic peace index can predict trust but not trustworthiness. Trustworthiness does affect peacefulness.

Previous empirical research on variable pay systems have suggested that possible gains can come from paying for performance, but highlight the difficulty firms face in measuring performance. Using contracts signed in Major League Baseball’s free agent market, I find that over the 2010-2014 period, teams utilized variable pay schemes with players that were more productive or signaled greater risk, either in their contract terms or via overspecialization. However, not all forms of risk signaling were correlated with greater use of performance incentives, including age and proxies for injury history. These findings have significant implications for labor practices more broadly, as the high-information environment of Major League Baseball can shed light on how principals behave when performance measurement costs are effectively eliminated.

This DPhil thesis is a collection of three theoretical and empirical papers studying labor markets in several advanced economies. Two chapters examine the relationship between the banking sector and the labor market in the US and the UK, while one evaluates a policy that has been proposed to help labor markets in the Euro Area adjust to economic shocks. In the first chapter, I develop a New Keynesian DSGE model that integrates a banking sector subject to moral hazard with a standard random search model of the labor market. I estimate the model using US data and study the role of the banking sector in determining labor market fluctuations. In the second chapter, I estimate a structural VAR model of the UK and US economies and identify bank lending shocks using a mix of sign and short-run exclusion restrictions. Consistent with the predictions of the DSGE model, an expansionary loan supply shock decreases job-destruction and increases job-creation, reducing the unemployment rate persistently. Bank lending shocks are also important drivers of labor market fluctuations, particularly during the Great Recession. Lastly, in the third chapter, I calibrate to the Euro Area a currency union DSGE model to evaluate the aggregate properties of European Unemployment Insurance (EUI). I find that EUI cannot contemporaneously stabilize the monetary union and achieve convergence in regional unemployment and inflation rates.