Dokument: Empirical Evidence on Labor Market Frictions
| Titel: | Empirical Evidence on Labor Market Frictions | |||||||
| URL für Lesezeichen: | https://docserv.uni-duesseldorf.de/servlets/DocumentServlet?id=65016 | |||||||
| URN (NBN): | urn:nbn:de:hbz:061-20240226-112941-0 | |||||||
| Kollektion: | Dissertationen | |||||||
| Sprache: | Englisch | |||||||
| Dokumententyp: | Wissenschaftliche Abschlussarbeiten » Dissertation | |||||||
| Medientyp: | Text | |||||||
| Autor: | Demir, Gökay [Autor] | |||||||
| Dateien: |
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| Beitragende: | Prof. Dr. Bachmann, Ronald [Gutachter] Prof. Dr. Südekum, Jens [Gutachter] | |||||||
| Dewey Dezimal-Klassifikation: | 300 Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie » 330 Wirtschaft | |||||||
| Beschreibung: | Chapter 1 (co-authored by Ronald Bachmann and Hanna Frings) is motivated by the labor market effects of technological change and the increased use in robots and artificial intelligence. The falling routine employment share in many industrialized countries (Autor and Dorn, 2013; Autor et al., 2003; Goos et al., 2009) suggests that outside options for workers in routine jobs have decreased, which may have led to an increase in monopsony power towards these workers. Furthermore, research on monopsony power in the labor market documents variation in the degree to which worker groups are exposed to potential monopsony power (e.g. Hirsch and Jahn, 2015; Hirsch et al., 2010). The overall degree of monopsony power in the labor market may change if one worker group is particularly affected by monopsony power and the importance of this worker group in the labor market rises. However, differences in monopsony power across workers performing different job tasks has not been explored yet. Therefore, we investigate whether workers who perform different job tasks are exposed to different degrees of monopsony power and whether technological change is associated with higher monopsony power towards routine workers over time.
To measure monopsony power in the labor market, we follow the semi-structural estimation procedure in Manning (2003). This estimation procedure is based on the seminal paper by Burdett and Mortensen (1998) in which quit and recruitment rates vary with wages. Manning (2003) provides a tractable method to estimate the labor supply elasticity to the firm that has been implemented in many different settings (see Sokolova and Sorensen, 2021, for a meta-analysis of this literature). Intuitively, the sensitivity of quit and recruitment rates to wage changes and wage differentials provides information on the potential monopsony power of firms. While in perfect competition every employee would quit in response to a tiny pay cut, this elasticity is lower in dynamic monopsony with frictions. We use administrative social security data from Germany, the Sample of Integrated Labor Market Biographies (SIAB), and merge this data to occupational tasks data using the BIBB Employment Surveys. These two data sets allow us to follow individuals over time, classify workers into different task groups, and assign task intensities to different occupations. We distinguish between routine, nonroutine manual, and nonroutine cognitive tasks. We find that workers who perform mostly nonroutine cognitive tasks are exposed to a higher degree of monopsony power compared to workers who perform mostly routine or nonroutine manual tasks. We provide suggestive evidence that this result can be explained by nonpecuniary job characteristics and job-specific human capital, both of which are highest for employees who primarily perform nonroutine cognitive tasks. Furthermore, the degree of monopsony power experienced by employees who perform routine tasks has remained relatively constant over time. The results imply that job tasks are an important dimension of monopsony power in the cross-section and could explain wage gaps between workers. Nevertheless, changes in monopsony power does not contribute to rising wage inequality over time. Chapter 2 (co-authored by Ronald Bachmann, Colin Green, and Arne Uhlendorff) follows on from Chapter 1 and asks how wages evolve when tasks within occupations change. The automation of routine labor as a consequence of advances in technology may have led to a reduction in wages for these workers. However, as a result of this process, new tasks are also developed where humans possess a comparative advantage (Acemoglu and Restrepo, 2018). Due to data limitations, earlier research ignored variations in tasks within occupations and assumed that tasks remained constant throughout time. This chapter’s key contribution is to explicitly consider the changing task mixes within occupations when analyzing wage changes within occupations over time. We use the empirical approach of Cortes (2016) to estimate wage changes of different occupation groups over time. The estimation procedure purges unobserved variation of workers' ability and occupation-specific returns to ability. As in Chapter 1, we use the SIAB data combined with the BIBB data to follow individual workers over time and measure changing task content within occupations over time. We extend the prior literature by introducing three new subgroups of routine occupations: those with high increases in nonroutine cognitive task content, those with medium increases in nonroutine cognitive task content, and those with low or even decreasing levels of nonroutine cognitive task content. We demonstrate that wages increased for workers in routine jobs whose nonroutine cognitive task content increased the most, but fell for employees in routine jobs whose nonroutine cognitive task did not change much over time. By integrating our data sets with supplementary survey data on training participation from the SOEP, we demonstrate that as the intensity of nonroutine cognitive tasks in certain routine jobs increased, enrollment in employer-funded training also increased. This indicates that employees in these occupations were able to mitigate wage penalties by adapting to the changing task environment. Our findings suggest that technological advancements can rapidly alter the tasks within occupations, and this can also create new earning potential for workers in occupations that are heavily impacted. Additionally, we deduce that expanding occupational search, for example through online advice (Belot et al., 2019), could reduce information frictions and help exposed workers identify suitable occupations. In Chapter 3, the primary motivation is to understand the underlying causes for the coexistence of good (high-wage) and bad (low-wage) jobs in the labor market. With labor market frictions, wage and information shocks on workers' potential outside options can positively affect workers' labor market behavior and outcomes. To investigate this hypothesis, I examine the spillover effects of the public discussion, announcement, and introduction of Germany's first sectoral minimum wage in the main construction sector. This paper mainly contributes to the small but growing body of literature on horizontal spillover effects, which mostly utilizes firm-level data. By combining worker-level and establishment-level data, this study goes beyond the existing literature by uncovering reallocation patterns in addition to wage and employment outcomes, as well as testing predictions from different theoretical models. For identification, I utilize a triple differences approach, comparing over time (difference one) low- and high-wage workers (difference two), differentially for industries with high (outside option industries) versus low employment flows (non-outside option industries) to the minimum wage sector in the past (difference three). To estimate the empirical strategy, I use linked employer-employee administrative data. I expect that low-wage workers in outside option industries should be affected most by potential spillover effects of the public announcement, discussion, and introduction of the main construction sector minimum wage. The triple differences approach has the benefit of purging group-specific time shocks, such as shocks to the low-wage or high-wage labor market. It also serves as a methodological contribution in terms of measuring spillover effects at the individual level. I find that low-wage workers in outside option industries experienced higher wage growth, driven by an increase in establishment transitions, and reallocation to better-paying establishments right at the year when the minimum wage was prominently discussed and announced in the media. Furthermore, by testing the predictions of a theoretical model of strategic interactions between employers, I find that these interactions alone cannot fully explain the spillover effects observed. Instead, the model of information frictions with biased beliefs about outside options proposed by Jäger et al. (2022) appears to better fit the patterns present in the data. This is particularly evident in the timing of the spillover effects and the tendency for workers with arguably more information frictions in the labor market to experience higher spillover effects. These findings suggest that the reduction of information frictions may be the primary driving mechanism behind the observed spillover effects. The findings of this study imply that labor market institutions, particularly sectoral minimum wages, may have unintended benefits through spillover effects on workers who are not directly targeted. The effectiveness of the minimum wage as a pay transparency tool may be attributed to the fact that its public discussion and announcement was unsolicited and widely publicized in the media. Chapter 4 (co-authored by Friederike Hertweck, Malte Sandner, and Ipek Yükselen) examines the role of coworker networks in college students' transitions from education to the labor market. While there is a significant amount of research on the role of networks in labor market success, there is little known about the role of coworker networks from student jobs. We argue that college student employment is a widespread and increasing practice. Since information frictions in the labor market are particularly strong at labor market entry, coworkers in student jobs may be potentially helpful in reducing these frictions. To analyze the impact of coworker networks on students' labor market outcomes at labor market entry, we use linked social security and university records from a large German university and gather detailed information on students' labor market history, as well as their university enrollment, and coworkers. We proxy the coworker quality by coworker average wages. To account for the potential non-random selection of high-ability students into establishments with better and more productive coworkers, we employ a comprehensive set of control variables derived from our two sources of data. These controls include detailed individual characteristics, student job characteristics, and network characteristics. Of particular importance is the inclusion of the final high school GPA (Abitur) as a measure of ability for the student, the establishment fixed effects proposed by Abowd et al. (1999) as a proxy for establishment productivity, and a focus on close coworkers while controlling for less close coworkers. Specifically, close coworkers are defined as those who work in the same establishment and occupation as the student, while less close coworkers are those who work in the same establishment but in a different occupation. This allows us to effectively capture the quality of the establishment. Additionally, we also incorporate establishment fixed effects, leveraging the variation of coworker quality within the same establishment for students who enter the establishment at different times and work with different sets of coworkers. We find that the wages of former student job coworkers have a statistically significant positive impact on the wages of the first full-time employment of graduates, and aid in the quick transition to employment for graduates. These results are not driven by an increase in study effort or from students who begin their careers in the same establishment as their student job. Instead, our findings suggest that in particular former coworkers in full-time employment drive the results. Given that our outcome pertains to the initial full-time employment of graduates, it is reasonable to surmise that the appropriate channel within this context may be one of anchoring or guidance. Our results imply that the networks of student job coworkers are a crucial means of potentially reducing information frictions and facilitating the transition into the labor market upon graduation. | |||||||
| Lizenz: |  Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International Lizenz | |||||||
| Fachbereich / Einrichtung: | Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät » Volkswirtschaftslehre | |||||||
| Dokument erstellt am: | 26.02.2024 | |||||||
| Dateien geändert am: | 26.02.2024 | |||||||
| Promotionsantrag am: | 10.02.2023 | |||||||
| Datum der Promotion: | 13.12.2023 |
