http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/1669/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/13965/ 2008-11-27T00:00:00Z The main chapters of this book, “Essays on Labour Markets”, focus on analyzing the dynamics of the employment relationship between workers and firms (chapters 2 and 3), modelling occupational segregation and labour market inequalities between social groups (chapter 4) and characterizing the link between a firm’s health & safety work conditions and its financial performance (chapter 5). Each essay contributes with original insights often using innovative and uncommon techniques, such as real options theory applied to wage-tenure profile analysis, social network analysis of occupational segregation, or estimation of firm production functions augmented with workplace environment indicators. Particularly intriguing conclusions of this thesis include: the effect of the selectivity on the worker’s outside option explains the largest part of the observed wage-tenure profiles; at least part of the wage return to “tenure” is in fact a wage return to “s! eniority”, i.e. the worker’s position in the tenure hierarchy of her firm; if informal contacts are relevant in job search, occupational segregation is the optimal social welfare policy for social groups with homophilous preferences; improving certain physical dimensions of the workplace health & safety environment raises a firm’s productivity, whereas other dimensions do not appear to matter in this regard. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/14031/ 2008-06-01T00:00:00Z This paper estimates the impact of work environment health and safety practice on firm performance, and examines which firm-characteristic factors are associated with good work conditions. We use Danish longitudinal register matched employer-employee data, merged with firm business accounts and detailed cross-sectional survey data on workplace conditions. This enables us to address typical econometric problems such as omitted variables bias or endogeneity in estimating i) standard production functions augmented with work environment indicators and aggregate employee characteristics and ii) firm mean wage regressions on the same explanatory variables. Our findings suggest that improvement in some of the physical dimensions of the work health and safety environment (specifically, “internal climate” and “repetitive and strenuous activity”) strongly impacts the firm productivity, whereas “internal climate” problems are the only workplace hazards compensated for by higher mean wages. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/10910/ 2008-01-18T00:00:00Z This study documents two empirical regularities, using data for Denmark and Portugal. First, workers who are hired last, are the first to leave the firm (Last In, First Out; LIFO). Second, workers’ wages rise with seniority (= a worker’s tenure relative to the tenure of her colleagues). We seek to explain these regularities by developing a dynamic model of the firm with stochastic product demand and hiring cost (= irreversible specific investments). There is wage bargaining between a worker and its firm. Separations (quits or layoffs) obey the LIFO rule and bargaining is efficient (a zero surplus at the moment of separation). The LIFO rule provides a stronger bargaining position for senior workers, leading to a return to seniority in wages. Efficiency in hiring requires the workers’ bargaining power to be in line with their share in the cost of specific investment. Then, the LIFO rule is a way to protect their property right on the specific investment. We consider the effects of Employment Protection Legislation and risk aversion. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/7418/ 2006-01-27T00:00:00Z This paper proposes a simple social network model of occupational segregation, generated by the existence of inbreeding bias among individuals of the same social group. If network referrals are important in getting a job, then expected inbreeding bias in the social structure results in different career choices for individuals from different social groups, which further translates into stable occupational segregation equilibria within the labour market. Our framework can be regarded as complementary to existing discrimination or rational bias theories used to explain persistent observed occupational disparities between various social groups. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/7005/ 2005-10-20T00:00:00Z This paper provides a new way of analyzing tenure profiles in wages, by modelling simultaneously the evolution of wages and the distribution of tenures. Starting point is the observation that within-job log wages for an individual can be described by random walk. We develop a theoretical model based on efficient bargaining, where both log outside wage and log wage in the current job follow a random walk. This setting allows the application of real option theory. We derive the efficient separation rule, which stipulates that workers switch jobs when the difference between the outside wage and the wage in the current job reaches a threshold. The model fits well the observed distribution of job tenures. Since we observe outside wages only at job start and job separation, our empirical analysis of with job wage growth is based on expected wage growth conditional on the outside wages at both dates. Our modelling allows testing of the efficient bargaining hypothesis. The model is estimated on the PSID.