Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2007. / Thesis directed by Frances Hagopian for the Department of Political Science. "June 2007." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 452-487).

This dissertation consists of three empirical essays on agricultural incentives, risk, and rural labor markets. Chapter 1 empirically estimates the effect of agricultural price support policies on crop choice and input (mis-)allocation, with important implications for spillover effects to other sectors. Agricultural price support policies are a popular way to alleviate the risk inherent in volatile prices, but, at the same time, may distort input allocation responses to agricultural productivity shocks across multiple sectors. This could reduce productivity in the agricultural sector in developing countries. I empirically test for misallocation in the Indian agricultural setting, with national price supports for rice and wheat. I first motivate the setting using a two-sector, two-factor general equilibrium model and derive comparative statics. I then use annual variation in the level of the national price supports for rice and wheat relative to market prices, together with exogenous changes in district-level agricultural productivity through weather shocks, in a differences-in-differences framework. I derive causal effects of the price supports on production patterns, labor allocation, wages, and output across sectors. I find that rice area cultivated, rice area as a share of total area planted, rice yields, and rice production all increase, suggesting an increase in input intensity (inputs per unit area) dedicated to rice. Wheat shows a similar increase in input intensity. The key input response is a reallocation of contract labor from the non-agricultural sector during peak cultivation periods, which results in an increase in wages in equilibrium in the non-agricultural sector (especially in response to price supports for the labor-intensive crop, rice, of 23%). The reallocation of labor reduces agricultural productivity by 82% of a standard deviation, and simultaneously reduces gross output in non-agricultural firms by 2.6% of a standard deviation. I also find that rice- and wheat-producing households do not smooth consumption more effectively in response to productivity shocks in the presence of price supports. Chapter 2 (with Emily Breza and Supreet Kaur) demonstrates the influence of collective action - specifically, through social sanctions imposed by informal labor unions - on labor supply in rural labor markets. A distinguishing feature of the labor market is social interaction among co-workers---providing the ingredients for social norms to develop and constrain behavior. We use a field experiment to test whether social norms against accepting wage cuts distort workers' labor supply during periods of unemployment. We undertake our test in informal spot markets for casual daily labor in India. We partner with 183 existing employers, who offer jobs to 502 randomly-selected laborers in their respective local labor markets. The job offers vary: (i) the wage level and (ii) the extent to which the offer is observable to other workers. We document that unemployed workers are privately willing to accept work at wages below the prevailing wage, but rarely do so when this choice is observable to other workers. In contrast, observability plays no role in affecting take-up of jobs at the prevailing wage. The consequences of this behavior are substantial: workers are giving up 38% of average weekly earnings in order to avoid being seen as breaking the social norm. In a supplementary exercise, we document that workers are willing to pay to punish anonymous laborers who have accepted a wage cut. Costly punishment occurs both for workers in one's own labor market, and for workers in distant other labor markets---suggesting the internalization of norms in moral terms. Our findings support the presumption that, even in the absence of formal labor institutions, collusive norms can constrain labor supply behavior at economically meaningful magnitudes. Chapter 3 investigates how households use engagement in criminal activity to smooth consumption in the face of agricultural risk. About 400,000 barrels of oil are stolen per day in the Niger Delta region. Much of this oil is stolen by militia groups with the help of local youth (who have the requisite knowledge about the terrain and placement of the pipelines). I use exogenous variation in households' access to oil pipelines, together with local shocks to agricultural productivity (both self-reported and due to variation in rainfall) to show that a proxy for theft from oil pipelines increases in the vicinity of households located close to pipelines that suffer unanticipated crop losses. This coincides with non-food expenditure-smoothing for these households (relative to households that are far from pipelines). Finally, I look at heterogeneity by household characteristics to identify households that are more likely to be affected by agricultural shocks or more likely to be targets for militia recruitment - households with young unemployed men and young men who are not in school, and households that lack financial infrastructure in their vicinity (which I take to be a proxy for a household's ability to access credit when faced with economic shocks). The findings from this paper suggest that there is potential for large spillover savings - in terms of reducing theft of oil from pipelines - for any policy that provides credit or other kinds of risk-mitigation mechanisms to households.

Thesis (doctoral) - Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-234)

The focus on diversity is relatively new in the Norwegian labor market but its expansion is comparable to other European countries. Due to the changing contours of the population outlook in Norway and the large demand of labor, there is a challenge faced by different actors in the processes of formulating and implementing social policies. These confrontations include factors such as qualification, training, facilitation, racism and other forms of discrimination. Along with political and legal measures to ensure fair conditions, there has been an involvement of both public and private sectors in discussions related to these issues and how they can be talked. Due to this, a number of organizations such as Posten Norway AS, Telenor ASA, Statoil ASA, Stormberg and Dalpro have embarked on strategic measures focusing on how to deal with the diversity problematic in their respective firms. These organizations are both publicly and privately owned. This paper engaged in an exploration of these strategies by closely relating to a research project at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU Social Research Limited in the report "Why Diversity" (Berg, Thorshaug,Garvik,Svendsen and Øiaas, 2012). The case studies of the named organizations were chosen based on their working strategies parallel to diversity variations, diversity management, the size of the organization, and industrial affiliation. The data collection from the companies was based on interviews with Human Resource personnel and diversity managers. Other sources of data included public documents from the studied organizations. This paper discusses how employers in the private and public entities choose to use diversity work as a strategy. John Wrench’s theory of "Diversity Management" is used to analyze the applied strategies through the various measures. A qualitative approach was employed and involved conversations and interviews, analysis of the given documents, related literature (both off and online), observation and knowledge gained during the research project. The considered relevant aspects to highlight diversity in this paper, in a broader sense, included immigrants, immigrants in the labor market, as well as political and legal constraints in workplace. The findings in this study are a presentation of the various strategic approaches used by the chosen companies, exploring and discussing their experiences and assessing what enhances or limits a good diversity management.

The purpose of this research is studying and analyzing immigrant’s perception of their integration into the labor market in Sweden. It is qualitative study and the data consist from six in-depth interviews with immigrants who live in Östersund, Sweden and arrived to Sweden at least one year ago. The theoretical starting point of the thematic analysis of the collected data is following concepts: social integration and social segregation, discrimination (statistical, preference, ethnical, racial, religious), cultural distance, self-confidence and self-perception, human capital and social capital.The results have shown that the majority of the immigrants perceive themselves as segregated from the Swedish labor market due to the unemployment, discrimination towards them, cultural differences between them and Swedes, the unadjustment to the Swedish society, and the exclusion from the Swedish social network. However, the employment was not considered by all interviewed immigrants as a prerequisite for the integration into the job market in Sweden. Such country-specific skills as Swedish education and Swedish work experience were identified by the interviewed immigrants as important factors for their acceptance by the Swedish employers.

Title: Integration of unemployed immigrants into the labor market in Gävle Authors: Ibrahim Adan Issack and Ekaterina Ivanova The aim of this study was to investigate unemployed immigrant’s description of how they perceive the labor market in Gävle. Qualitative method face-to-face interviews were used to gather data. The results of this study shows that an unemployed immigrant seems to encounter hinders and opportunities in the labor market. The following five issues were described as being most important in influencing immigrants’ employment opportunities in Gävle: Swedish language knowledge, previous education, discrimination, social network and family situation. Ecological system theory and previous research were used to analyze the gathered results.  Key words: integration, immigrant, labor market.

This thesis explores labour market processes in urban India. Investigating large and persistent differentials in urban unemployment rates across the Indian states, we find that regions with higher wage push or better amenities have higher unemployment rates, controlling for labour force composition. The differentials are maintained by rural-urban migration rather than by barriers to inter-state migration. Our investigation of wage determination yields evidence of imperfect competition in the labour market which is not simply 'institutional'. Indian firms pay efficiency wages which induce sufficient productivity gains to pay for themselves. After identifying the long and short run structural processes in the labour market, we consider recent aggregate trends in India's factory sector. There was negative employment growth in the 1980s even as output growth touched record levels. Our analysis suggests that this had less to do with wage growth, as proposed by the World Bank, and more to do with increasing work intensity, encouraged by wage incentives, improved infrastructure and increased competition. Considerable slack was inherited from the past, evidence of which flows from the wage and production function estimates. We find that increased labour utilization raises capacity utilization. This is important because Indian industry has chronically carried large excess capacity. A breakthrough in total factor productivity growth accompanied declining employment in the 1980s and has been interpreted as the reward of deregulation in this decade. Existing studies mismeasure productivity growth by neglecting labour utilization (hours) and assuming perfectly competitive product markets. We produce new estimates at the aggregate and industry levels. A natural ceiling to hours worked moderates bad news on the employment front and good news on the productivity front. Our analyses are expected to contribute to the evaluation of current and controversial policy changes in India.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Economics, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Göteborg University, 2006. / Added t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf [215]-224).