This paper uses historical and economic references to evaluate the economic value of learning English in Spain. Seeing that English is the lingua franca in politics, business, and technology, it is a necessary skill for Spanish citizens to possess in order to efficiently interact in foreign relations of all kinds. Due to Franco’s harsh language policies, and Spain’s ineffective education system, Spain has lacked the same linguistic exposure to foreign languages—especially English—than the rest of Europe. By referencing the previous literature written about the relationship between language and earnings, this paper seeks to find the economic incentive for Spaniards to learn English. The six issues introduced by language economist, Francois Grin, provide an economic, cultural, and social compass to evaluate the overall impact English language learning would have on the Spanish labor market and national economy. The six issues analyze the relevance language has on economic processes, human capital, social investments, policies, wage distribution, and the general market. With tourism as Spain’s most lucrative business sector, better skills in English communication would only add to its economic success. While the Spanish government has named English as one of the seven basic skills within the labor market, effective teaching programs still have to be developed.

Ce manuscrit comporte trois essais qui partagent l’objectif commun d’évaluer l’impact de la confiance en soi sur les décisions des agents économiques à l’aide de la méthode expérimentale. Ce travail se concentre sur trois thèmes relatifs à l’économie comportementale du travail : le travail au noir, la recherche d’emploi et le travail en équipe. Le premier chapitre analyse les biais d’optimisme dans le contexte du travail irrégulier. Ce travail fournit une mesure des biais d’optimisme à travers un processus de décision. Les résultats montrent que les modalités d’annonce du contrôle altèrent la perception du risque : la désignation du nombre d’agents aléatoirement contrôlés tend à encourager l’optimisme des fraudeurs. Le second chapitre étudie comment l’incertitude quant à l’habileté et l’estime que les demandeurs d’emploi ont d’eux-mêmes affectent leurs décisions de recherche. Les résultats montrent qu’en moyenne les agents peu habiles ne modifient pas leur salaire de réserve, alors que les sujets très habiles tendent à diminuer leurs exigences salariales et donc à stopper plus rapidement leur recherche. Cependant, les décisions des agents peu habiles ne sont pas homogènes : les agents peu compétents ont des exigences salariales d’autant plus élevées qu’ils ont une haute estime d’eux-mêmes. Le troisième chapitre vise à évaluer dans quelle mesure l’image que les travailleurs ont d’eux-mêmes conditionne leur choix d’effort lorsqu’ils travaillent en groupe. Les résultats montrent que les agents qui sur évaluent (sous-évaluent) leur habileté exercent plus (moins) d’effort que les sujets qui ont une perception correcte de leurs compétences. Les résultats révèlent également que les individus bénéficient de la sur-confiance de leur partenaire, mais pas de leur propre biais, alors que la sous-confiance détériore le bien-être de tous les membres de l’équipe. / This dissertation contains three essays that estimate the effects of self-confidence on economic agents’ decisions. An experimental approach is used for those contributions. This work is interested in three topics concerning behavioral labor economics: moonlighting, job search and teamwork. The first chapter investigates the existence of optimism biases in the context of irregular work. This essay proposes a measure of optimism biases through a decision process. The results show that the way the monitoring policy is announced deeply affects the perception of the risk at stake: the designation of the number of randomly controlled agents tends to foster the cheats’ optimism. The second chapter studies how the uncertainty on ability and self-esteem of job-seekers affect their search behaviors. The results show that on average the low ability agents’ decisions are not affected by the uncertainty about their ability, whereas the high ability agents tend to decrease their reservation wage and thus to stop their search faster. However, the low ability agents’ decisions are not homogeneous: the higher the worker’s self-esteem is, the higher his reservation wage is. The third chapter aims at estimating how workers’ self-image biases affect effort choices and team production. The results show that the workers who overestimate (underestimate) their ability provide higher (lower) effort levels than the unbiased. The results also reveal that the agents benefit from their partner’s confidence, but not from their own bias. Conversely, the presence of underconfident agents in the team damages the welfare of both teammates.

<pre>This dissertation consists of three independent chapters at the intersection of macroeconomics and labor economics. The first chapter studies the job-search trade-offs between full-time employment, part-time employment, and multiple job holdings. The second chapter explores the macroeconomic relationship between property crime and output in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework. The third chapter studies the causal effect of property crime on output.</pre> <pre>The first chapter develops a search-matching model of the labor market with part-time employment and multiple job holdings. The model is calibrated to data from the CPS between 2001 and 2004. Workers are able to choose their search intensity and are allowed to hold two jobs while firms can choose what type of worker to recruit. When compared to the canonical Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model, this model performs quite well while capturing some empirical regularities. First, the model generates recruiting and vacancy posting rates that move in opposite directions. Second, part-time employment is up to 10 times more responsive than full-time employment. Third, the model suggests that multiple job holding rates are more flexible than observed in the data with the rate changing by as much as 4 percentage points compared to 0.1 percentage points in the data. Finally, the full model is able to capture compositional changes during recessions with the full-time rate declining and the part-time rate increasing. It also produces an empirically consistent increase in the unemployment rate as well as a decrease in output. The DMP model is more muted than in the data for both.</pre> <pre>The second chapter explores how property crime can affect static and dynamic general equilibrium behavior of households and firms. I calibrate a model with a representative firm and heterogeneous households where households have the choice to commit property crime. In contrast to previous literature, I treat crime as a transfer rather than home production. This creates a feedback loop wherein negative productivity shocks increase property crime which further depresses legitimate work and capital accumulation. These responses by households are particularly important when thinking about the effect of property crime on the economy. Household and firm losses account for 24% of compensating variation (CV) and 37% of lost production. This suggests that behavioral responses are quite important when calculating the cost of property crime. Finally, on the margin, decreasing property crime by 1% increases social welfare by 0.19%, but the effect is diminishing suggesting that reducing crime entirely may not be optimal from a policymakers perspective.</pre> <pre>The third chapter estimates the causal effect of property crime on real personal income per capita. Running system GMM on an unbalanced panel of MSA-year pairs suggests that property crime reduces real personal income per capita by a highly statistically significant 13.3%. This implies that the average person loses $4,869 (2009 dollars) per year with real annual personal income per capita totaling $36,615. The effect is driven primarily by larceny-theft and burglary with highly statistically significant coefficients of -0.179 and -0.110 respectively. Estimates for the effect of robbery are unstable, and the effect of motor vehicle theft is statistically significant, but smaller with a coefficient of -0.060.</pre>

Este trabalho tem como objetivo geral investigar, sob a ótica de um modelo insumo-produto, os impactos no mercado setorial de trabalho no Brasil na década de 1990, evidenciando as transformações ocorridas no lado da oferta de postos de trabalho. Primeiramente, são analisados os efeitos do plano de estabilização do nível de preços e do processo de abertura econômica nos setores produtivos. Os resultados obtidos indicaram que o processo de abertura provocou efeitos positivos e negativos na estrutura produtiva. Setores como Agropecuária modernizaram seu processo de produção e aumentaram sua produtividade, diminuindo, porém, sua capacidade de geração de postos de trabalho. O setor Indústria apresentou-se dependente de insumos importados e também diminuiu sua capacidade de gerar empregos, entretanto o setor Serviços consolidou-se como grande gerador ou absorvedor de mão-de-obra neste período. Em geral, os multiplicadores de produção demonstraram que todos os setores passaram a ser mais dependentes de insumos importados. Neste período, a economia brasileira foi muito mais exportadora de produtos intensivos em trabalho e grande importadora de produtos intensivos em capital, implicando em mudanças na estrutura da oferta de postos de trabalho. Em geral, os multiplicadores de emprego mostraram uma queda na capacidade de geração de novos postos de trabalho (empregos diretos, indiretos e induzidos) em toda a economia. Em seguida, analisou-se a estrutura da oferta de postos de trabalho no Brasil na década de 1990. A análise do perfil da mão-de-obra ocupada mostrou que somente algo em torno de &#8531; dos postos de trabalho foram ocupados pela mão-de-obra feminina, a qual estava concentrada no setor Serviços. Para o conjunto da economia, a idade do trabalhador ocupado concentrou-se na faixa dos 20 a 39 anos, tendo diminuído a participação da mão-de-obra jovem e aumentado, ainda que timidamente, a ocupação de trabalhadores com idade superior a 50 anos. O setor Agropecuária foi o que mais empregou mão-de-obra na faixa dos 10 a 14 anos. Em contrapartida, no setor Extração de petróleo, gás natural, carvão e outros combustíveis, os postos de trabalho ocupados nesta categoria são desprezíveis. Este setor é o que ocupa com mais intensidade a mão-de-obra madura (acima dos 40 anos). A maioria da mão-deobra ocupada na década começou a trabalhar com 10 a 14 anos, porém os trabalhadores que estão ingressando atualmente no primeiro emprego, o fazem mais tarde. A análise da situação na ocupação dos trabalhadores mostrou que, notadamente a partir da segunda metade da década, houve um crescimento do número de trabalhadores sem carteira assinada, indicando uma possível piora nas relações de trabalho. Constatou-se ainda uma redução abrupta no número de pessoas trabalhando por conta própria e um aumento no número de postos de trabalho na administração pública. Não obstante, os trabalhadores ocupados no setor Extração de petróleo, gás natural, carvão e outros combustíveis e no setor Serviços industriais de utilidade pública eram, em sua grande maioria, contratados com carteira de trabalho assinada. O tempo de serviço da mão-de-obra ocupada na década de 1990 parece também indicar a precarização das relações de trabalho. Ao longo da década, algo em torno de 40% das pessoas estavam no atual emprego entre menos de 1 ano a 2 anos. A rotatividade é maior no setor Construção civil, onde, em média, 53% dos trabalhadores estavam no atual emprego a menos de 2 anos. Na década de 1990, o número de horas de trabalho semanais era maior que 45 horas para cerca de 40% da mão-de-obra ocupada, embora mais de 20%, em média, dos trabalhadores ocupados trabalhava em tempo parcial. No setor Serviços esta jornada de trabalho era mais comum. Em que pese ter-se observado, a partir da segunda metade da década de 1990, um ligeiro crescimento para a escolaridade da mão-de-obra ocupada entre 8 a 14 anos, a maioria dos trabalhadores ocupados durante todo período analisado possui de 4 a 7 anos de estudo. Não obstante, a construção de um índice de qualificação relativa permitiu verificar a intensidade do emprego de trabalhadores nos vários níveis de qualificação. Os resultados também mostraram que, na década de 1990, o consumo intermediário foi responsável, em média, por mais da metade da oferta de postos de trabalho. Dos trinta e um setores analisados, dezoito dependem mais fortemente do consumo intermediário. A demanda final foi significativa em onze setores e apenas em um [Extrativa mineral (exceto combustíveis)] a exportação teve a maior participação na oferta de postos de trabalho. / This work has as general objective to investigate, through an input-output model, the impacts in the sectorial labor market in Brazil in the decade of 1990, evidencing the transformations happened on the side of the supply of work positions. Firstly, the effects of the price level stabilization plan and of the process of economical opening on the productive sectors are analyzed. The results indicated that the opening process has caused positive and negative effects in the productive structure. Sectors as the agricultural modernized its production process and increased his productivity, decreasing, however, its capacity of work positions generation. The Industry sector came dependent of imported inputs and it also reduced its capacity to generate jobs, however the Services sector consolidated as great generator and/or absorbing of labor in this period. In general, the production multipliers demonstrated that all of the sectors became more dependents of imported inputs. In this period, the Brazilian economy was very more a work intensive products exporter and a great capital-intensive products importing, leading to changes in the structure of the work positions supply. In general, the employment multipliers showed a decrease in the ability to generate new work positions (direct, indirect and induced) in all the economy. Afterwards, the structure of the Brazilian work positions supply in the last nineties was analyzed. The occupied worker profile analysis showed that only about &#8531; of the work positions was filled for women, which was concentrated in the Services sector. For all the economy, the occupied worker\'s age concentrated on the 20 - 39 range. The participation of the young labor was reduced and the occupation of workers with 50 years old or more has a little increase. The agricultural sector used the major proportion of 10 to 14 years old workers. Otherwise, in the Petroleum and gas mining sector, the use of this category of workers is despicable. This sector is the major user of the mature labor force (above the 40 years). In the decade, most of the occupied workers began to work with 10 to 14 years, however the workers that are entering now in their first job, are doing it later. The analysis of the situation in the occupation showed that, especially starting from the second half of the decade, there was a growth of the number of workers in the informal sector, indicating a possible worsening in the work relationships. It was still verified an abrupt reduction in the number of people working independently and an increase in the number of work positions in the Public administration. In spite of, the occupied workers in the Petroleum and gas mining sector and in the Public utilities sector have a formal work relationship. The time in the current job seems also to indicate some worsening of the work relationship. Along the decade, something around 40% of the people was in the current job among less than 1 year to 2 years. The rotation is larger in the Construction sector, where, on average, 53% of the workers were less than 2 years in the current job. In the decade of 1990, the number of weekly working hours was larger than 45 hours for about 40% of the occupied workers, although more than 20%, on average, was working in partial time. In the Services sector the partial timework was more common. Starting from the second half of the decade of 1990, a quick growth in the category of occupied labor between 8 to 14 education years was observed. However, most of the occupied workers during analyzed period have from 4 to 7 years of study. In this sense, the construction of an index of relative qualification allowed to verify the intensity of the work occupation in the several qualification levels. The results also showed that, in the decade of 1990, the intermediate consumption was responsible, on average, for more of the half of the work positions supply. Of the 31 analyzed sectors, eighteen depend more strongly on the intermediate consumption. The final demand was significant in eleven sections and just in a sector (Metal mining) the export had the largest participation in the work positions supply.

In rural China, when approaching the end of nine-year compulsory schooling, students face four equally popular post-compulsory education decisions (PCED): dropout, work after graduation, vocational high school, and academic high school. The literature tends to simply treat PCED as dichotomous (continue vs. leave school), and there is a geographical research imbalance favoring inner China. An increasing volume of studies also suggest that traditionally recognized factors like socioeconomic status and academic performance are not as influential as before in advancing the schooling. People have started to look at socio-emotional support, such as the promotion of self-discipline and confidence. At present, it is grassroots NGOs (GNGO) who take the major responsibility for providing this type of support in rural China, and there is rare discussion of achievements, let alone evaluation of practical impact. Given the existing problems, the key research questions of this study are: (1) What are the current PCED determinants for China’s rural students? More specifically, what are the PCED determinants for lower secondary students in rural Guangdong, a coastal province? (2) How can GNGO intervention affect PCED by boosting certain subjective factor(s)? The tested treatment is the Lighthouse program, whose one-month summer camp aims to improve student attitudes towards their life, such as making them more confident, organized, and social. The key to answering the first question is to explore a comprehensive list of variables applying to local populations, which cannot be achieved simply through a literature review. When answering the second question, since Lighthouse participation is voluntary, it is important to deal with selection bias, to ensure that any identified Lighthouse impact results from its activities rather than the student characteristics that lead to their participation. To overcome these methodological challenges, I first employed the Delphi approach. Delphi is an iterative process used to collect and distill the judgments of experts using a series of questionnaires interspersed with feedback. It is used to identify possible PCED determinants that are missing in the literature, to determine factors that lead to Lighthouse participation, and to collect discussions about both PCED determinants and GNGO intervention. Based on the Delphi results and literature, I then designed five questionnaires for students, households, teachers, principals, and Lighthouse volunteers. In Jun-Oct 2012, I led seven research assistants in conducting two waves of surveys in eight towns, building a firsthand dataset of 6298 valid observations with imputations. Multinomial logit was used to investigate PCED determinants. It predicted the PCED probabilities, given nine groups of independent variables. Propensity score matching was used to evaluate the program impact. It calculates the treatment propensity for each student based on their characteristics, so the Lighthouse impact can be compared between treated and untreated students of similar treatment propensity. Tests of robustness and heterogeneity were conducted after both methods. Qualitative materials collected from Delphi and on-site interviews were used to explore the causal mechanism. I use relative risk ratios to report the findings of PCED determinants. The findings challenge the existing literature regarding the roles of gender and parental background, further extend knowledge of monetary reward/cost and subjective factors, and confirm new possible determinants that have seldom been investigated in literature. The main model passes the robustness check, and there exist explainable heterogeneity effects. It is notable that education aspiration stands out as a strong PCED determinant, ceteris paribus. Propensity score matching shows that the Lighthouse program mainly affects PCED by boosting educational aspiration for students with high academic performance, although that impact fades gradually if there is no follow-up service. The novelty of the program to local people, volunteer team morale, and volunteer acceptance of Lighthouse training could help explain why increases in aspiration varied across sites. The role-model effect might explain why the increase in aspiration exists, as there are signs that the students tried to copy the volunteer’s schooling decision once trust was built. This study makes three major contributions. It can be translated into comprehensive advocacy for education policies related to PCED, such as dropout prevention and the promotion of VHS. It may also suggest the value of, or at least the required improvement to, China’s educational GNGOs, which are young and remain confined by governmental regulations. Last but not least, this is a unique showcase of how qualitative-quantitative sequential mixed-method works better in exploratory analyses. The study has limitations in timing, missing data, external validity, implementation of research methods, and heavy rely on self-reported questionnaires, but they can be largely eliminated by conducting proper further studies.

Schools face a great challenge in recruiting and retaining quality teachers, given the documented importance of, variability in, and difficulty observing and predicting teacher quality. One option schools have is to identify what more effective teachers do and use that information to train less effective teachers to get better. Unfortunately, there is little empirical support for much traditional teacher training, as measured by gains in student test scores. Models of collaborative, team-based learning – such as Professional Learning Communities and Japanese lesson study – have been widely touted, and there is some evidence that they may be effective in certain contexts. Economic theory suggests this could be because of peer monitoring, peer pressure, specialization, knowledge-sharing, or market failure in pre-service training, particularly if learning to teach is primarily experiential. However, not all collaboration is good due to concerns about free-riding and substituting for more productive individual activity, so unbridled enthusiasm for collaborative professional development may need to be tempered. This dissertation examines the effectiveness of a specific form of teacher collaboration in the form of inquiry teams, groups of teachers and administrators jointly engaged in action research projects with the aim of uncovering innovative instructional strategies and sharing effective approaches. It takes advantage of the phase-in of teams, eventually to all teachers in a large, urban school district in the northeastern United States from 2007-2010 to estimate the results of three natural experiments using difference-in-differences and instrumental variables approaches. The effects of teamwork on teacher value-added, teacher retention, and student test scores are small and sensitive to year, specification, and outcome, although results are mostly positive and occasionally statistically significant, suggesting that overall effects are potentially positive but modest at best. Further examination of heterogeneity and four qualitative case studies of teams suggest that small average effects mask considerable differences in team processes, and that under certain conditions, inquiry team work may be far more effective. A cost analysis reveals that, although it is costly to do inquiry work well, given the low-intensity of average treatment and the large number of students affected, the benefits of inquiry work could exceed the costs if the policy were more targeted. Overall, the policy recommendation is to temper unqualified enthusiasm about teacher collaboration, as without appropriate structures and supports it has little measurable effect on the outcomes examined here. As a policy lever, a universal mandate to participate on collaborative inquiry teams is unlikely to be effective or pass a cost-benefit test. Nonetheless, smaller-scale, higher intensity forms of collaboration that allow for more active leadership support and participation may be more promising, and more cost-effective than alternative forms of professional development, particularly for some sub-groups of teachers such as those in their first year of teaching.

Abstract Employees experience challenges managing home and work. The increase of women in the workforce, single-parents, childcare, elder care responsibilities, and men in nontraditional roles warrant changes in traditional working hours and flexibility in work schedules. Through the theoretical frameworks of work-family conflict, spillover, border, and boundary theories, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how flexible work arrangements (FWAs) assisted employees in meeting work and family obligations. Minimal research is available in the defense industry and the use of FWAs. A nonprobability, convenience sample was used to explore how management and nonmanagement participants from a Midwest defense contractor used FWAs. An online questionnaire consisting of 59 questions and 14 face-to-face (FTF) interviews were used to collect data. There were 27 participants that responded to all online questions. FTF interviews were audio recorded and member-checked. The research questions were focused on how employees used FWAs and whether work-family balance (WFB) was achieved. Both data collection media were transcribed and inductively coded tracking emerging themes and patterns. Dominant themes showed that FWA increased WFB, employees worked longer hours, employees were loyal to the organization, and telecommuting was the ideal FWA. The implications for social change are providing a realistic view to employers on the importance of balancing work and family. FWAs are also shown to contribute to employee satisfaction and attract and retain highly-skilled workers.

Fabricated metals' manufacturing sector employment in the United States declined following the onset of the 2008 recession. Premium compensation and benefits afforded to employees within the manufacturing sector amplified the negative effects of recessionary job losses. Using the regional macroeconomic complex adaptive systems (CAS) framework, the purpose of this study was to examine the geographic distribution of job losses, recovery rates, and adaptive behavior after the recession for the fabricated metals manufacturing sector by measuring and comparing effects in 50 East North Central division MSAs and 50 South Atlantic division MSAs in the United States. Independent sample t tests compared average job level change rates for the tested regions. Significant differences in mean job loss rates for the two divisions occurred between 2008 and 2010 and in mean job recovery rates between 2010 and 2012. A multiple regression model analyzed the relationship of the dependent variable post-recession employment level changes with the independent variables defined as workforce demographic changes and establishment level changes as indicators of adaptive behavior. Results revealed a significant relationship between the dependent variable and shifts in the workforce demographic profile but did not reveal a significant relationship between the dependent variable and changes in the number of firms engaged in this sector. This study forms the genesis of background data for measuring cross-regional performance in the presence of external shocks and serves as a foundation for developing incentive models based on thriving sectors and regions for individuals, organizational groups, and society as a whole in engendering economic growth and well-being.

One dressmaker, Mrs. A. H. Taylor of Bowling Green, Kentucky, was studied in order to draw attention to the role of the dressmaker in American fashion. A biography of Mrs. A. H. Taylor and the business history were compiled; available designs were analyzed in relation to current fashion; and an investigation of the business organization was made. It was found that the dressmaking establishment played an important role in the lives of women of that time period. Fashionable custom fit clothing was made available to local residents and to mail-order customers. The establishment was one of the few businesses which offered women employment in that area. Through a comparison with contemporaneous fashion magazines, the examples of Mrs. Taylor's work which were available were found to be in current fashion, although many distinctive individual characteristics were noted. By the late 1920's the acceptance of ready-to-wear items and the death of Yrs. Taylor had brought about the decline of the dressmaking establishment, thus ending an important phase of American life.

The thesis investigates the behavior of Spain’s persistently high unemployment rate. Rigid labor laws, unemployment insurance generosity, and the demographics of the unemployed are part of the cause, but they are only underlying factors driving the hysteresis that has been present for nearly four decades. The thesis attempts to extract explanations for this persistence by comparing Spain to other countries, such as its next-door neighbor, Portugal. Special attention is placed on the role that recessions and subsequent changes in real GDP growth play in sustaining a high rate of unemployment.