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Emiko Usui Associate Professor School of Chikusa, Nagoya 464-8601 “soec.nagoya-u.ac.jp” preceded by “usui” and “@” 臼井恵美子 〒464-8601名古屋市千種区不老町 名古屋大学経済学研究科 |
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Welcome to my webpage!
Research
Wages, Non-Wage
Characteristics, and Predominantly Male Jobs, Labour Economics, vol. 16
(1), January 2009
Many studies report that a wage
premium is paid to men and women who work in predominantly male jobs. There is
little research, however, as to whether this premium is larger than the
compensation workers demand for the less desirable, non-wage characteristics of
such jobs (e.g., longer working hours, more physical effort, and unpleasant
working conditions). This is examined by estimating a regression of the change
in the wage on the change in the proportion of males in an occupation for quits
and layoffs. The difference in the selection between quits and layoffs results
in opposing, biased estimates of the wage premium; because workers who
voluntarily quit move to better matches, but those that are laid-off accept
jobs from the representative distribution of job offers. When the premium paid
over- (under-)compensates for undesirable work characteristics, the quit
estimate is a downward (upward) biased estimate of the wage premium, while the
layoff estimate is biased upward (downward). In both over- and
under-compensating cases, the quit and layoff estimates bound the wage premium.
This approach is implemented using two
Gender Occupational
Segregation in an Equilibrium Search Model
This paper applies an equilibrium search model based on the
heterogeneous-workers, heterogeneous-firms version of the Burdett and Mortensen
model to explain the asymmetry between men’s and women’s labor market behavior. A
worker’s utility depends on salary and working hours, and every employer posts
a single tied-salary/hours offer to maximize the steady-state profit flow. The
disutility of work differs between males and females, with women being more
reluctant to longer market hours. Simulations indicate that women crowd into
shorter-hour, lower-paying jobs, whereas men work in longer-hour, higher-paying
jobs. Two types of gender discrimination are introduced. First, when employers
discriminate against females, they require longer working hours; therefore,
fewer women work on the job. Second, when women have a disutility factor in
their utility toward working in jobs with a higher fraction of men, more females
prefer to remain unemployed rather than work in that job. As with the case of
employer discrimination, employers require longer hours, and their offers are
tailored toward men’s preferences.
Severance Payments in
Equilibrium Unemployment, Economics Letters, vol. 94 (3), March 2007
Existing equilibrium unemployment
models argue that the jointly rational separation decisions of an employer and
a worker are unaffected by the level of severance pay (Burda, 1992; Mortensen
and Pissarides, 1999). However, Lazear (1990) has found an association between
higher severance pay and lower employment. This paper shows that severance pay
negatively affects market tightness under the insider wage model of Mortensen
and Pissarides (1999). Furthermore, this paper shows that there is a limit to
how large the severance pay can be to insure that the bargaining outcome is
rational for an employer.
Work
Hours, Wages, and Vacation Leave, with Joseph Altonji,
Industrial and Labor Relations Review, vol. 60 (3), April 2007
Using the Panel Study of Income
Dynamics, the authors provide a set of facts about vacation leave. They show
that on average, vacation time taken rises one-to-one with paid vacation;
annual hours worked fall by about one full-time week with every week of paid
vacation; the amount by which vacation time taken exceeds time paid is highest
for women, union members, and government workers; paid vacation weeks are
positively associated with hourly wage rates and, to a lesser extent, with
nonwage compensation; and vacation time taken is weakly countercyclical. Vacation
leave seems to be determined by broad employer policy rather than by
negotiation between the worker and the firm. In particular, it is strongly
related to seniority but depends very little on labor market experience, and
for job changers it is only weakly related to vacation on the previous job.
Job Satisfaction and the
Gender Composition of Jobs, Economics Letters, vol. 99 (1), April 2008
Using job satisfaction data from the National Longitudinal Survey of
Youth, I examine whether people who move to predominantly male jobs are fully
compensated through their wages for their new jobs’ disamenities. Estimates from the ordered
probit models indicate that women are satisfied with their pay in predominantly
male jobs, but that they dislike the job amenities. In contrast, men appreciate
both the pay and the amenities of such jobs. Overall, both sexes prefer
predominantly male jobs, but this effect is insignificant for women. This
result suggests that, for women, most of the wage premium paid in male jobs is
a compensating differential.
Concave-Monotone
Treatment Response and Monotone Treatment Selection: With Returns to Schooling
Application, with Tsunao
Okumura
This
paper identifies sharp bounds on the mean treatment response and average
treatment effect under the concave monotone treatment response (concave-MTR)
and monotone treatment selection (MTS) assumptions. We use our bounds and the
National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate the mean returns to
schooling. Our upper bound estimates of the returns to college education are:
0.079 - 0.133 for the local returns and 0.087 for the four-year average. They
are substantially smaller than (1) the estimates using only the concave-MTR
assumption of Manski (1997) and (2) the estimates using only MTR and MTS
assumptions of Manski and Pepper (2000). They fall in the lower range of the
point estimates given in previous studies which assume linear wage functions.
This is because sharp upper bounds are obtained when the curve of the
concave-MTR function is close to linear. Our results, therefore, imply a
possibility that the higher average returns reported in previous studies are
attributed to the specification of linear wage functions.
Intergenerational Correlations of Skills, with
Tsunao Okumura
A number of studies have found that social skills (e.g., communication,
interpersonal interactions, and leadership skills) are important determinants
of labor market outcomes, including occupation and wages. This paper examines
whether social skills are linked across generations; and whether a child's
occupational choice is determined by his/her parent’s abilities and personality traits. There are
few studies on the intergenerational transmission of adult social skills due to
a lack of data on parents’
social skills. To resolve this problem, we use occupational characteristics
from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) to proxy for the parents’ skills. Also utilized is the U.S. National
Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). A model of intergenerational skill
following is presented. Subsequently, by constructing the appropriate measure
of social skills, we find that social skills link across generations. The
correlation coefficient is computed, which measures the closeness of the
direction of the multidimensional parent-child skill vectors. Skill correlation
is found for father-son pairs, and the correlation is greater for whites than
for blacks. White sons earn a wage premium for working in occupations that
require similar skills to their fathers; whereas, black sons incur a wage
penalty. This implies a transfer of occupationally-related human capital for
whites, but not for blacks. Evidence for nepotism is found, when sons earn a
wage premium for working in the same occupation as their fathers.
Teaching
Labor Economics
(Undergraduate and Graduate)
Applied
Econometrics
Useful Links
US Census Bureau;
BLS; NLSY;
PSID; HRS; CPS; SIPP;
ICPSR;
ESTAT; SSJDA; HIT; AEA; Econometric Society; NBER; SOLE; EALE;
Handbook in
Economics; Elsevier; JSTOR;