The role of job sorting and job matching in constitutional political economy
25 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
The importance of Baumol’s cost disease in school cost trends
16 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of education, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: Baumol's disease
Baumol’s cost disease is a phenomenon described by William J. Baumol in the 1960s. It involves a rise of wages in jobs that have experienced no increase of labour productivity in response to rising wages in other jobs which did experience such labour productivity growth.
The rise of wages in jobs without productivity gains is required to compete for employees with jobs that did experience gains and can naturally pay higher wages.
The original study was conducted for the performing arts. Baumol pointed out that the same number of musicians is needed to play a Beethoven string quartet today as was needed in the 19th century: the productivity of classical music performance has not increased, but real wages of musicians (as well as in all other professions) have increased greatly since the 19th century.
In labour-intensive sectors that rely heavily on human interaction such as nursing, education, or the performing arts, there is little or no growth in productivity over time. These sectors must pay more to stay competitive in the labour market. These jobs will survive as long as consumers are willing to pay these wage increases. Entrepreneurs react to Baumol’s disease in several ways:
- Decrease quantity/supply
- Decrease quality
- Increase price
- Increase total factor productivity
Baumol’s cost disease in the education sector would be reinforced by reductions in class sizes, more specialised teaching, and the increase in the higher education premium throughout the economy.
All of these effects would require the schooling sector to pay because would be teachers have many more options than in the past. In days gone by, outside of the professions, teaching was one of the few jobs available to a university graduate. Indeed, in days gone by, many teachers were either teachers college graduates such is the case with the sister or they learnt on-the-job as my mother was going to do.
Recall and waiting unemployment
04 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in business cycles, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, occupational choice, unemployment Tags: recall unemployment, rest unemployment, temporary layoffs, waiting unemployment, work for the dole
Time use surveys in a range of countries show that the unemployed spend maybe a few hours per week looking for a new job. Krueger and Mueller (2008) found that:
…average search time is highest in the U.S.A., at 32.3 minutes per day, closely followed by Canada.
Europeans search much less, but there is considerable variation across countries.
In France the unemployed search around 21 minutes a day compared with 3 minutes in Finland
A small amount of job search per week is rational for many of the unemployed because a major form of job search doesn’t involve any job search any time soon. Instead, they are waiting for a call.
Also, Anglo-Saxon labour market are much more dynamic with many more vacancies opening every month as compared with the Eurosclerosis dual labour markets. In the European Union’s dual labour markets, it is not rational to search for vacancies that will never be there.
Job searches is an entrepreneurial venture that can involve a considerable amount of biding your time. Job seekers must choose between wider job search that may involve switching to a new industry or new occupation and investing in availability for suitable vacancies in their local labour markets or a recall to employment by old employers.
A spell of unemployment followed by a rehire by an old employer is known as recall unemployment or a temporary layoff.
Demand is less stable and more seasonal in industries such as construction, manufacturing and agriculture. When demand rebounds, recalling an old employee is a faster and cheaper hiring process than screening unfamiliar applicants of uncertain quality and training recruits.
Recall is not certain. Temporary layoffs will forecast their chances of recall and review these forecasts as they discover more about the length of drop in local labour demand and the general state of the rest of the labour market. the majority of unemployed who regard themselves as temporary layoffs are indeed recalled to their old job by their old employer after most downturns.
Better prospects of recall by old employers will reduce the intensity of job searches of temporary layoffs and increase their asking wages for other jobs. Workers with considerable industry and firm-specific human capital are likely to risk waiting longer for recall. Workers will search more intensively for other jobs as their forecasts of their chances of recall to old jobs become less encouraging.
There are more temporary layoffs in milder recessions because the lull in demand is expected to be short and there are fewer business closures. The higher levels of recall unemployment will reduce downward pressure on asking wages and slow the filling of vacancies because many well qualified job applicants are waiting for recall to their old jobs rather than applying more widely for new jobs.
Dixon and Crichton (2006) found that 58% of New Zealand benefit-to-work transitions involved starting with a new employer, 30% continued with an employer for whom they worked part-time in the benefit spell and 12% returned to an employer they had worked for in the past 2 years. The prospect of a recall by an old employer has been important for unemployed workers in countries such as the US, Canada, Demark, Sweden, Austria and Norway.
In the context of work-for-the-dole schemes and activation programmes that involve intensive monitoring of job search by the unemployed on unemployment benefits, requiring workers who are temporarily laid off to search for jobs is in many ways counter-productive.
Developing a screening mechanism to find these temporary layoffs and distinguishing them from permanent layoffs would be quite challenging. Countries which have unemployment insurance premiums spend a lot of try trying to adjust those premiums for temporary layoffs. This is so employers and employees do not take advantage of unemployment insurance to have a week or two off work in slack periods at the expense of the unemployment insurance system and top up their wages in the interim.
A cousin of recall unemployment is rest unemployment or waiting unemployment – job seekers who are waiting for conditions in a depressed sector to improve (Hamilton 1988; Alvarez and Shimer 2008).
Some job seekers may wait for local labour market conditions to improve, rather than search for jobs in other industries and new occupations. A job seeker’s old industry may offer better wage and job finding prospects than other industries If the newly unemployed worker waits a while.
Rest unemployment or waiting unemployment strives to salvage as much of the occupation and industry-specific human capital of the newly unemployed worker as possible.
A significant share of job seekers have been found to be waiting for local labour market conditions to improve rather than searching further afield in different industries or new occupations (Alvarez and Shimer 2008).
Again, rest unemployment or waiting unemployment is a type of job search that cannot be well handled by work-for-the-dole schemes and intensive monitoring of the job search of unemployed workers.
The demand for labour is a derived demand
03 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: demand for labour, derived demand for labour, in reputation the, marginal revenue product of labour
The willingness to pay of buyers is the fundamental constraint on wages, conditions, and job amenities including reduced hours of work. Entrepreneurs will not pay no more for inputs – be it labour, land, machinery, or raw materials – than they expect to recoup later on from the sale of their final product (Hicks 1932; Hamermesh 1996).
Wages reflect the value the employee adds to the sales of the firm. The value of what an employee adds is set by the consumers who buy or abstain from buying the output of the firm.
The prices that the final consumer will pay or refuse to pay for products assigns to each kind of labour used in its production a maximum profitable wage. An employer cannot pay higher wages or provide more generous working conditions if buyers are not willing to pay more to cover the extra cost of this (Hicks 1932; Stigler 1987). A profit minded employer cannot grant favours to employees at the expense of customers.
Employers compete for the services of workers who are seeking a range of jobs in industry and occupational labour markets in the areas in which they live. An employer who offers wages, working hours and conditions below what others are paying for the extra value added by a worker will experience higher staff turnover as employees quit to more rewarded jobs elsewhere (Stigler 1987).
These less alert employers will also struggle to recruit and retain the types of workers that are the most profitable for that firm to employ unless they pay the going rate. Rivalry with other sellers sets the maximum on what an employer can profitably pay in wages and survive.
Competition from other employers sets a minimum in wages, hours, working conditions and job amenities to recruit and retain a profitable workforce. Wages are demarked both by what consumers are willing to pay for what the firm produces and by what wages that rival employers are offering in comparable jobs (Stigler 1987).
H.L. Mencken on poverty as a cause of crime
03 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, labour economics, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: crime and punishment, H.L Mencken
HT: David Skarbek
Walter Williams Asks: “How Much Can Discrimination Explain?”
04 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
via Cafe Hayek
The reversing gender gap in education
03 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, occupational choice Tags: reversing gender gap
The difference in reading and verbal skills between girls and boys at the age of 15 is equal to 6-months extra schooling. Six months schooling explains a lot of the wage gaps with a long ethnic, racial and previously on gender lines.
Not surprisingly, fewer women do science and engineering degrees because their superior reading and verbal skills qualify them for medicine and other sciences that take advantage of these talents.
Adam Smith as a pioneering labour economist
21 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in Adam Smith, health and safety, history of economic thought, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, compensating differences, george stigler, human capital, The wealth of nations, wage determination
Adam Smith anticipated much of labour economics by basing it on his principle that individuals invest resources to earn the highest possible return. All uses of a resource must yield an equal rate of return adjusted for relative riskiness for otherwise reallocation would result.
The whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock must, in the same neighbourhood, be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality.
If in the same neighbourhood, there was any employment evidently either more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so many would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other employments.
Smith used this insight on be equality of returns to explain why wage rates differed. Workers care about the whole aspects of the job, not only the cash wage payment: it is the “whole advantages and disadvantages” of the job that is equated across jobs in a competitive market, not wage alone. Smith set out criteria that determined how wages compensated or were discounted for the different characteristics of specific jobs:
- the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves: better for more enjoyable working conditions will lead an individual to accept lower wages for their labour. Likewise, unpleasant work will have a higher wage. Wages vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness of a job.
- The easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them: jobs that are difficult or time-intensive to learn will pay more. Those who invest the time are being compensated for their additional effort with higher wages. The opportunity cost of forgoing the time-spent in training will be compensated for through higher wages. The difference between the wages of skilled labour and common labour is founded upon this principle.
- The constancy or inconstancy of employment: workers who face only partial or inconsistent employment throughout the course of the year, such as seasonal workers of agriculture, must be paid more for their labour. Their wages carry them not only during times of employment, but also during times of unemployment.
- The small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them: individuals who have high levels of responsibility in their jobs will be compensated with higher wages.
- The probability or improbability of success: this is an entrepreneurial element in wages. Employment where the chance of success is high will be paid lower than those who take more risks. If individuals were not compensated for risk, there would lack an incentive to seek employment that may not be successful.
The supply and demand for labour in different industries determines relative wages and the relative numbers of employees in different occupations. Individuals are willing to make a trade-off between less desirable occupations and increased income. Smith spoke of how these five circumstances listed above lead to considerable inequalities in the wages and profits.
George Stigler thought that the second greatest triumph of Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations was his famous list of cost factors that generate apparent but not real differences in rates of wages and profits because of training, hardships, unemployment, risk and trust. This list was quoted almost verbatim by his successors down to this day and is the direct ancestor of both Alfred Marshall’s famous chapters on wages and of the modern theory of human capital.
President Obama’s persistent ’77-cent’ claim on the wage gap gets a new Pinocchio rating–updated
13 Apr 2014 Leave a comment
in human capital, labour economics, occupational choice, politics - USA Tags: gender wage gap, lies dam lies and statistics, obama
The fact checker at the Washington Post said:
Few experts dispute that there is a wage gap, but differences in the life choices of men and women — such as women tending to leave the workforce when they have children — make it difficult to make simple comparisons.
…From a political perspective, the Census Bureau’s 77-cent figure is golden. Unless women stop getting married and having children, and start abandoning careers in childhood education for naval architecture, this huge gap in wages will almost certainly persist. Democrats thus can keep bringing it up every two years.
…There appears to be some sort of wage gap and closing it is certainly a worthy goal. But it’s a bit rich for the president to repeatedly cite this statistic as an “embarrassment.” …The president must begin to acknowledge that “77 cents” does not begin to capture what is actually happening in the work force and society.
In premiere episode of ‘Factual Feminist’ Christina Sommers explains how the gender wage gap is based on bogus statistics
Ernest Shackleton’s famous job ad
06 Apr 2014 Leave a comment
in health and safety, labour economics, occupational choice, personnel economics
Academics and their bias against the market
19 Mar 2014 1 Comment
in F.A. Hayek, market efficiency, occupational choice, organisational economics, personnel economics Tags: academic bias, compensating differences, Hayek, intellectuals, Richard Posner, Robert Nozick, Schumpeter
The expansion of jobs for graduates from the 1960s onwards increased the choices for well-educated people more disposed to the market of working outside the teaching profession. Those left behind in academia were even more of the Leftist persuasion than earlier in the 20th century.
Dan Klein showed that in the hard sciences, there were 159 Democrats and 16 Republicans at UC-Berkley. Similar at Stanford. No registered Republicans in the sociology department and one each in the history and music departments. For UC-Berkeley, an overall Democrat:Republican ratio of 9.9:1. For Stanford, an overall D:R ratio of 7.6:1. Registered Democrats easily outnumber registered Republicans in most economics departments in the USA. The registered Democrat to Republican ratio in sociology departments is 44:1! For the humanities overall, only 10 to 1.
The left-wing bias of universities is no surprise, given Hayek’s 1948 analysis of intellectuals in light of opportunities available to people of varying talents:
- exceptionally intelligent people who favour the market tend to find opportunities for professional and financial success outside the universities in the business or professional world; and
- those who are highly intelligent but more ill-disposed toward the market are more likely to choose an academic career.
People are guided into different occupations based on their net agreeableness and disagreeableness including any personal distaste that they might have for different jobs and careers. There is growing evidence of the role of personality traits in occupational choice and career success.
The theories of occupational choice, compensating differentials and the division of labour suggest plenty of market opportunities both for caring people and for the more selfish rest of us:
- Personalities with a high degree of openness are strongly over-represented in creative, theoretical fields such as writing, the arts, and pure science, and under-represented in practical, detail-oriented fields such as business, police work and manual labour.
- High extraversion is over-represented in people-oriented fields like sales and business and under-represented in fields such as accounting and library work.
- High agreeableness is over-represented in caring fields like teaching, nursing, religion and counselling, and under-represented in pure science, engineering and law.
Schumpeter explained in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy that it is “the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs” that distinguishes the academic intellectual from others “who wield the power of the spoken and the written word.”
Schumpeter and Robert Nozick argued that intellectuals were bitter that the skills so well-rewarded at school and at university with top grades were less well-rewarded in the market.
- For Nozick, the intellectual wants the whole society to be a school writ large, to be like the environment where he or she did so well and was so well appreciated.
- For Schumpeter, the intellectual’s main chance of asserting himself lies in his actual or potential nuisance value.
Richard Posner also had little time for academics who say they speak truth to power:
- The individuals who do so do it with the quality of a risk-free lark.
- Academics, far from being marginalized outsiders, are insiders with the security of well-paid jobs from which they can be fired with difficulty.
- Academics flatter themselves that they are lonely, independent seekers of truth, living at the edge.
- Most academics take no risks in expressing conventional left-leaning (or politically correct) views to the public, which is part of the reason they are not regarded with much seriousness by the general public.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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