In this paper we analyze the impact of global imports on regional labor markets, and how such impact translates to changes in voting patterns in the U.S. Presidential elections from 2000 to 2016. We find that imports from different U.S. trading partners influence voting patterns in different ways. In particular, we observe an anti-incumbent effect caused by import competition from OECD countries. Such an effect cannot be observed for imports from low-income countries. There is also evidence that suggests high exposure to import competition tends to drive voters toward the Democratic candidate, who typically proposes better social welfare programs and more protectionist policies. For imports from low-income countries, evidence for such effects is less robust, but still significant. Despite the voters’ earlier alignment toward the Democrats, we observe a significant voter realignment toward the Republican candidate in the 2016 election due to sudden changes in the Republicans’ stance on global trade. Taken together, these results paint a picture of how the voters’ sentiment towards global trade evolves throughout time and varies with regards to different U.S. trading partners.

Research questions/Empirical data. This thesis includes four papers that study selected aspects of the labor market transformation during the transition in Russia. In particular, the studies address the issues of non-wage employee compensation in Russian firms, location choices and labor market outcomes for the Russian migrants to Russia, the health effects of occupational change during the transition. The empirical data used come from the surveys of firms and individuals in Russia. The research results. In these studies author finds that Russian firms used in-kind benefits to bargain for the government support and to attach employees in the tight labor markets; Russian migrants to Russia sorted themselves across locations according to the demand for their skills; occupational changes during the transition lead to the declining health and increasing levels of alcohol consumption and smoking. A short description of the author. Olga Lazareva has received her B.Sc. in Economics from Novosibirsk State University in Russia and her M.A. in Economics from Central European University in Hungary. Currently she is a Ph.D. candidate at the Economics Department of the Stockholm School of Economics and a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Economic and Financial Research in Russia. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2009

Labor market intermediaries (LMIs) have taken on a greater role in regional labor markets as flexibility of work has increased over the past thirty years. These shifting roles necessitate a greater look at institutions that act as LMIs and the services they perform for workers and employers. Community colleges have recently been highlighted as one of the institutions serving workers that offer market molding activities, going beyond more traditional LMI market matching activities. This study compared four LMI placement and career activities - project based learning, internships and cooperative education, specialized accreditation, and industry advisement through councils - for five similar programs of study at community colleges in the City University of New York (CUNY) system to analyze the effects of these activities on employment placement. Greater utilization of these activities by community college departments was found in most cases to be beneficial for students as it regards employment placement in career fields related to the field of study. Activities that were successful in encouraging students to take part in forms of assessment of job-readiness, either through existing standardized testing of job skills or actual work experience, were found to be particularly valuable. These outcomes suggest that mature industries and occupations with established forms of assessment are more likely to provide a smooth transition from degree attainment to employment. Implications for community college administrators and funders are discussed.

Top researchers and outstanding scientists are an essential source of science-based innovation and regional development. The location pattern and international movements of the scientific elite, are, thus, of fundamental importance. However, despite a growing interest, there is only little empirical evidence about these core issues. Drawing on the results of a world-wide survey of 720 ―star scientists‖ (identified by the number of citations they generated in journals in the ISI databases in the period 1981-2002) this paper seeks to explore the role of islands of innovation in providing employment opportunities for stars. It is shown that US and European islands of innovation and their regional labor markets are at the forefront when it comes to produce (i.e. to educate) and to employ star scientists and to exchange them with other places. Furthermore, the paper provides evidence for the formation of a network among innovative regional labor markets based on international movements of the best and brightest scientific minds. (author´s abstract) / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

Die vorliegende Dissertation umfasst vier Essays, in denen die Rolle von technologischem Fortschritt für die Beschäftigungs- und Lohnentwicklung in Deutschland in den vergangenen 30 Jahren untersucht wird. Die empirische Analyse nutzt die räumliche Variation in der Verteilung der Beschäftigungsanteile von Routinetätigkeiten, die durch Informationstechnologien substituierbar sind. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Arbeitsmärkte, die besonders durch Automatisierung betroffen sind, eine stärkere Polarisierung der Berufsstruktur zwischen 1979 und 2006 erfahren haben, d.h. eine Verschiebung der Beschäftigung von Routineberufen (Büro- und Produktionsberufe) hin zu kognitiven und manuellen Nicht-Routineberufen (Fach- und Führungskräfte bzw. Dienstleistungsberufe). Aufbauend auf diesen Ergebnissen zeigt der zweite Aufsatz, dass technologischer Fortschritt positiv zu intra- und interregionaler Lohnungleichheit beiträgt. Der dritte Aufsatz untersucht die Wechselwirkung zwischen dem durch technologischen Wandel getriebenen Beschäftigungsanstieg am unteren Ende der Lohnverteilung und Beschäftigungschancen von Arbeitnehmern mit Migrationshintergrund. Die Ergebnisse stehen im Einklang mit der Hypothese, dass der technologisch bedingte Rückgang in der Nachfrage nach Routinetätigkeiten und die damit verbundene Reallokation in Berufe mit geringem Qualifikationslevel zu einem Anstieg des Wettbewerbsdrucks im Niedriglohnsektor führt, in dem ausländische Arbeitnehmer oftmals Beschäftigung finden. Der vierte Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit der langfristigen Entwicklung der Zeitarbeit in den regionalen Arbeitsmärkten in Deutschland in den vergangenen 30 Jahren und zeigt, dass die anfängliche Verteilung der Beschäftigungsanteile für manuelle Nicht-Routinetätigkeiten und insbesondere für Routinetätigkeiten eine starke Vorhersagekraft für das regionale Beschäftigungswachstum von Zeitarbeit in Deutschland besitzt. / This thesis studies the role of technological change as a determinant of employment and wage trends in Germany over the past 30 years. The econometric analysis exploits spatial variation in the exposure to technological progress which arises due to initial regional specialization in routine task-intensive activities. The empirical evidence suggests that the occupational structure of labor markets that were particularly susceptible to technological change has polarized, as employment shifted from middle-skilled routine clerical and production occupations not only to high-paying professional occupations but also to low-paying service and construction occupations. Building on these results, the second essay explores whether and to what extent increasing labor market inequality within and across regions is driven by technological change and establishes a positive link between intra-regional wage inequality and computerization. Because of substantial variation in the degree of technology exposure across German regions, technological change can also in part explain rising inter-regional wage inequality. The third essay investigates the interaction between polarization in the native labor market and employment opportunities of immigrant workers in Germany. The findings are consistent with a technology induced reallocation of labor from middle-paying routine tasks towards lower-paying non-routine manual tasks inducing additional competitive pressure in this labor market segment in which immigrant workers are typically employed. Finally, the fourth essay provides an empirical analysis of the diverging patterns of employment in temporary help services across labor markets in Germany over the last 30 years. The differential growth pattern both at the level of occupations and across regional labor markets are found to be related to the initial intensity of routine and non-routine manual tasks.

Diese Dissertation umfasst drei empirische Analysen regionaler Arbeitsmärkte in Deutschland. Wir wenden dabei Methoden der räumlichen Ökonometrie auf regionale Arbeitsmarktdaten an, um der räumlichen Struktur von Arbeitsmarktaktivitäten Rechnung zu tragen. In der ersten Analyse schlagen wir ein räumliches Paneldatenmodell zur Untersuchung deutscher Matchingfunktionen vor. Mit Hilfe dieses Modells sollen verzerrte und ineffiziente Koeffizientenschätzungen aufgrund räumlicher Abhängigkeiten vermieden werden. Wir zeigen, dass das Vernachlässigen der räumlichen Struktur zu nach oben verzerrten Matchingkoeffizienten führt. Das Ziel der zweiten Untersuchung ist es, Bestimmungsfaktoren für regionale Unterschiede in Arbeitslosigkeit zu identifizieren. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass ein räumlich und zeitlich dynamisches Paneldatenmodell am besten für diese Fragestellung geeignet ist. Zudem zeigen unsere Ergebnisse, dass die regionalen Unterschiede in der deutschen Arbeitslosigkeit einen Ungleichgewichtszustand darstellen. Diese Erkenntnis kann als Argument für politische Interventionen dienen. In der letzten Analyse wenden wir uns der räumlichen Gewichtungsmatrix zu, der eine zentrale Bedeutung in räumlichen Modellen zukommt. Auf Basis einer empirischen Analyse wollen wir die Definition von räumlichen Gewichten untersuchen und ermitteln Faktoren, die die räumlichen Abhängigkeiten auf Arbeitsmärkten bestimmen. Dabei untersuchen wir sowohl unterschiedliche Dimensionen ökonomischer als auch geographische Distanzen als Wirkungskanal räumlicher Abhängigkeit. Für die Entscheidung, welche dieser Distanzdimensionen einen Einfluss auf die räumlichen Relationen hat, verwenden wir ein räumlich-autoregressives Modell höherer Ordnung. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass geographische Distanz alleine nicht ausreicht, um die räumlichen Interdependenzen zwischen regionalen Arbeitsmärkten zu erklären, sondern auch Dimensionen ökonomischer Distanz einen signifikanten Erklärgehalt haben. / In this dissertation, we present different empirical analyses of regional labor markets in Germany. To account for the spatial structure of labor market activities, we apply spatial econometric methods to regional labor market data. In the first analysis, we propose a spatial panel model for German matching functions to avoid possibly biased and inefficient estimates due to spatial dependence. Based on an official data set, we show that neglecting spatial dependencies in the data results in upward-biased coefficients. Furthermore, our results suggest that a dynamic modeling is more appropriate for matching functions than a static approach. In the second analysis, we study determinants for regional differences in unemployment rates. We specify a spatial panel model to avoid biased and inefficient estimates due to spatial dependence. The study covers the whole of Germany as well as East and West Germany separately. Our results suggest that a spatial dynamic panel model is the best model for this analysis. Moreover, we find that German regional unemployment is of disequilibrium nature, which justifies political interventions. Finally, we study the spatial weights matrix which is the key component in spatial econometric models. We investigate empirically the issue of defining spatial weights in labor market applications and propose factors driving spatial dependence in regional labor markets. In addition to geographic distance, we consider different dimensions of economic distance as transmission channel of spatial dependence. To decide which factors influence spatial dependence in labor markets, we apply a higher-order spatial autoregressive model to data on regional labor markets in Germany. Our results suggest that geographic distance does not capture the spatial dependence between regional labor markets sufficiently but economic distance needs to be considered as well.