Includes bibliographical references (p. 39-48).

The dominant ideology within the illegal immigration discourse in the US primarily faults illegal workers for the problem by highlighting the act of illegally entering the US as the origin of the problem. As the dominant ideology goes, illegal immigrants evade law enforcement at the border; they deceive employers to secure work. They disrupt labor markets by lowering wages which displaces lower class US workers. The illegal immigrants and their families abuse social services that they do not pay into at the US taxpayers expense. They form ethnic enclaves, and those who remain in the US resist assimilation into US culture. So the story goes. This thesis challenges this dominant ideology, a subset of the illegal immigration discourse, by documenting decades of immigration law in the US created to serve US employers' demand for labor, and alternately, closing the immigrant worker pipeline when it suited the government's political objectives or the special interests of employers. Loopholes in the immigration laws have tended to insulate employers from prosecution. Meanwhile, undocumented workers have faced lower wages and increased risk. This thesis examines what constitutes the dominant ideology of the illegal immigration discourse. It also includes a discourse analysis of illegal immigration by reviewing national, regional, and local media coverage of the simultaneous raids in December 2006 of six Midwest meat processing plants operated by Swift & Company. The discourse analysis explores media coverage of the raids conducted by the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The raids led to the arrest of 1,282 suspected illegal immigrants, and the analysis will attempt to understand to what extent media coverage supports or challenges the dominant ideology of the illegal immigration discourse. / Master of Arts

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1991. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [87]-112).

Creation and destruction of jobs in Peru’s manufacturing sector: 2002-2007By way of a set of productive factors from a sample of manufacturing firms that created and destroyed jobs in Peru’s formal manufacturing sector for the period 2002-2007, this paper estimates the conditional labor demand equation under three interpretations. The results of these assessments suggest that job creation and destruction were statistically related to positive and negative changes of real output respectively. However, the rates of change of these job flows were lower than those of the real output value. On the other hand, job flows were positively associated with firms’ degrees of processing. Other minor factors associated with job flows were the size of firms and the capital-labor ratio. / Mediante una serie de factores productivos de una muestra de empresas manufactureras formales peruanas que crearon y destruyeron empleo en el periodo 2002-2007, este trabajo estima la ecuación de demanda condicional de mano de obra en sus tres interpretaciones. Los resultados de estas estimaciones señalan que la creación y destrucción de empleos estuvieron asociadas a los cambios positivos y negativos,  respectivamente, de la producción. Sin embargo, los cambios porcentuales del empleo fueron en general de menor magnitud que los respectivos de la producción.De otro lado, el nivel y la creación de empleo se incrementan con un mayor grado de procesamiento de los productos elaborados por las firmas manufactureras. El tamaño de las empresas y la intensidad de uso del capital relativo a la mano de obra inciden también, aunque con menor grado de fortaleza estadística, sobre las variaciones del empleo.

Achieving low unemployment in an environment of weak growth is a major policy challenge; a more egalitarian distribution of hours worked could be the key to solving it. Whether worksharing actually increases employment, however, has been debated controversially. In this article we present stylized facts on the distribution of hours worked and discuss the role of work-sharing for a sustainable economy. Building on recent developments in labor market theory we review the determinants of working long hours and its effect on well-being. Finally, we survey work-sharing reforms in the past. While there seems to be a consensus that worksharing in the Great Depression in the U.S. and in the Great Recession in Europe was successful in reducing employment losses, perceptions of the work-sharing reforms implemented between the 1980s and early 2000s are more ambivalent. However, even the most critical evaluations of these reforms provide no credible evidence of negative employment effects; instead, the overall success of the policy seems to depend on the economic and institutional setting, as well as the specific details of its implementation. (authors' abstract) / Series: Ecological Economic Papers

<p>This dissertation consists of three separate essays on job search and labor market dynamics. In the first essay, “The Impact of Labor Market Conditions on Job Creation: Evidence from Firm Level Data”, I study how much changes in labor market conditions reduce employment fluctuations over the business cycle. Changes in labor market conditions make hiring more expensive during expansions and cheaper during recessions, creating counter-cyclical incentives for job creation. I estimate firm level elasticities of labor demand with respect to changes in labor market conditions, considering two margins: changes in labor market tightness and changes in wages. Using employer-employee matched data from Brazil, I find that all firms are more sensitive to changes in wages rather than labor market tightness, and there is substantial heterogeneity in labor demand elasticity across regions. Based on these results, I demonstrate that changes in labor market conditions reduce the variance of employment growth over the business cycle by 20% in a median region, and this effect is equally driven by changes along each margin. Moreover, I show that the magnitude of the effect of labor market conditions on employment growth can be significantly affected by economic policy. In particular, I document that the rapid growth of the national minimum wages in Brazil in 1997-2010 amplified the impact of the change in labor market conditions during local expansions and diminished this impact during local recessions.</p><p>In the second essay, “A Framework for Estimating Persistence of Local Labor</p><p>Demand Shocks”, I propose a decomposition which allows me to study the persistence of local labor demand shocks. Persistence of labor demand shocks varies across industries, and the incidence of shocks in a region depends on the regional industrial composition. As a result, less diverse regions are more likely to experience deeper shocks, but not necessarily more long lasting shocks. Building on this idea, I propose a decomposition of local labor demand shocks into idiosyncratic location shocks and nationwide industry shocks and estimate the variance and the persistence of these shocks using the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) in 1990-2013.</p><p>In the third essay, “Conditional Choice Probability Estimation of Continuous- Time Job Search Models”, co-authored with Peter Arcidiacono and Arnaud Maurel, we propose a novel, computationally feasible method of estimating non-stationary job search models. Non-stationary job search models arise in many applications, where policy change can be anticipated by the workers. The most prominent example of such policy is the expiration of unemployment benefits. However, estimating these models still poses a considerable computational challenge, because of the need to solve a differential equation numerically at each step of the optimization routine. We overcome this challenge by adopting conditional choice probability methods, widely used in dynamic discrete choice literature, to job search models and show how the hazard rate out of unemployment and the distribution of the accepted wages, which can be estimated in many datasets, can be used to infer the value of unemployment. We demonstrate how to apply our method by analyzing the effect of the unemployment benefit expiration on duration of unemployment using the data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) in 1996-2007.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis comprises four chapters, in two parts. The first part examines the result of a Swedish payroll tax reduction; first from the perspective of the worker, then from that of the employer. The second half of the thesis concerns subjective well-being, both from an individual and from an aggregate viewpoint. Payroll Taxes and Youth Labor Demand. In 2007, the Swedish payroll tax was reduced substantially for young workers. This paper examines whether targeted payroll tax reductions are effective in raising youth employment. We estimate a small impact, both on employment and on wages. However, the effect differs markedly across ages, with 4–5 times higher impact on 22–23 year-olds compared to 25-year-olds. Additionally, the employment effects are strongly procyclical, approaching zero in the deep recession. We calculate that the estimated cost per created job is more than four times that of directly hiring workers at the average wage. Payroll Taxes and Firm Performance. The Swedish payroll tax reform of 2007 had the effect that firms' average social fees came to depend on the age structure of their employees. This makes it possible to estimate how firms respond to shocks in labor costs. We find a significant, but very small effect on gross investments, and a negative, but not statistically significant, impact on labor productivity. There are no effects on exit rates or profitability. Beyond Income: The Importance for Life Satisfaction of Having Access to a Cash Margin. We study how life satisfaction among adult Swedes is influenced by having access to a cash margin, i.e. a moderate amount of money that could be acquired on short notice either through own savings, by loan from family or friends, or by other means. We find that cash margin is a strong and robust predictor of life satisfaction, also when controlling for individual fixed-effects and socio-economic conditions, including income. This suggests that cash margin captures something beyond wealth. On Aggregating Subjective Well-Being. This paper discusses the assumptions underlying the aggregation of individually measured well-being. Any aggregation method is associated with measurability assumptions regarding the underlying well-being measure, as well as moral philosophical assumptions with respect to how individual well-being is weighted into a composite metric. I compare welfare across a set of countries, under alternative aggregation methods, and find that countries often can be ranked under comparatively weak measurement assumptions, and, equally important, that aggregation methods can be chosen so as to refrain from strong ethical preconceptions.

This dissertation consists of three essays in Labor Economics. The first chapter estimates the costs for establishments of hires and separations for a panel of German establishments. The panel records the start and the termination of the employment of all employees in the surveyed establishments, allowing estimation of adjustment costs under different assumptions of how frequently establishments revise their labor demand. Under the assumption that establishments revise their labor demand every month, estimates suggest hiring costs per employee of approximately 5,000 Euros, and costs of separations of 1,000 Euros. Hiring costs vary considerably between skilled (8,000 to 28,000 Euros per hire) and unskilled (4,000 to 8,000 Euros) labor. Spatial aggregation (large establishments) is associated with lower cost estimates, and only monthly adjustment frequencies yield estimates consistent with theoretical predictions. The second chapter analyzes the role of regional ethnic capital - defined as the average years of schooling of ethnic groups - in the educational attainment of young second generation immigrants in Germany using information on naturalization and country of birth in a nationally representative survey. I find evidence for externalities of ethnic capital for ethnic groups. A higher average education of ethnics makes attendance of higher-quality secondary schools more likely. Moreover, the effect is mainly mediated through the ethnic concentration in the region. However, if higher than regional aggregates are used for the measurement of ethnic capital, no externalities are detected. The third chapter analyzes the impact of regional own-ethnic concentration on the language proficiency of immigrants in Germany. It solves the endogeneity of immigrants' location choices by exploiting the fact that guest-workers in Germany after WWII were initially placed by firms and labor agencies. We find a robust negative effect of ethnic concentration on immigrants' language ability. Simulation results of a simultaneous location and learning choice model confirm the presence of the effect and show how immigrants with high learning cost select into ethnic enclaves. Under the counterfactual scenario of a regionally equal distribution of immigrants the share of German-speakers increases only modestly. / text

The main focus of this thesis is the employment decisions of firms. The thesis consists of three self-contained but closely related essays, all enlightening employment dynamics in different ways. The thesis is mainly empirical but there are also some theoretical developments when existing theory is insufficient to explain the empirical findings. The impact on employment of product market conditions and labor market conditions facing firms are investigated. The results suggest that product demand has a robust impact on firms’ employment dynamics, but also the market price, the wage costs, and the matching between vacancies and unemployed workers seem to matter. The empirical evidence of the relevance of imperfect competition in the product market is important, particularly since most research on labor market dynamics has assumed perfect competition. The results with respect to matching of vacancies and unemployed workers contradict the standard search and matching model as well as simple efficiency-wage or bargaining models with wage rigidity and excess supply but no frictions in the labor market. A richer model of the labor market is needed to explain the results, including on-the-job search and perhaps more heterogeneity between employed and unemployed workers. Essay I, “What are the Determinants of Hiring? - The Role of Demand and Supply Factors”, studies the importance of demand and supply factors for hiring in local labor markets. Essay II, “Vacancy Matching and Labor Market Conditions”, studies the probability of filling a vacancy, how it varies with the number of unemployed and the number of vacancies in the local labor market, and what impact it has on firms’ employment dynamics. Essay III, “The Dynamics of Firms’ Factor Demand”, studies firm-level adjustments of employment, the capital stock, and inventories in response to exogenous shocks theoretically and empirically. These three decisions have typically been studied one at the time, but here they are studied together in a way which allows for interactions and a better understanding of firm behavior.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New School University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 291-302).