Essays in Labour Economics
Abstract
This thesis studies two important aspects of labour market earnings dynamics:
the post-displacement earning losses experienced by high-tenure workers, and the
evolution of the gender wage gap within rms linked to export activity.
The rst two essays aim at understanding and quantifying the forces behind
the post-displacement earning losses observed in the data. I rst introduce
the main empirical and theoretical works in the literature. Then, I propose
a structural model of the labour market with on the job search, in which
rms are heterogeneous in productivity and workers accumulate both general
and speci c skills while employed. Jobs are destroyed at an endogenous rate
due to idiosyncratic productivity shocks and workers' skills depreciate during
unemployment. The model is estimated via simulated method of moments using
matched employer-employee data on Germany. By matching moments related
to workers' mobility and wage dynamics, the model reproduces the size and
persistence of the earning losses observed in the data. The key driver of the
post-displacement earning losses is the interaction between the loss in speci c
(mostly) and general human capital and endogenous separation.
Finally, the third essay studies the e ect of rms' export activity on the
gender wage gap among its workers. Using matched employer-employee data from
Germany for the period between 1993 and 2007, we show that an increase in a
rm's export widens the wage gap between male and female blue collar workers,
while it reduces it between male and female white collars. In particular, the former
e ect is stronger for workers in routine manual tasks, while the latter is driven
by employees performing interactive tasks. This evidence is consistent with the
hypothesis that serving foreign markets relies more on interpersonal skills, which
reinforces female comparative advantage and reduces (widens) the gender wage
gap in white (blue) collar occupations.
Authors
De Pace, FedericaCollections
- Theses [4116]