Gilles Mourre
- 29 February 2008
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 872Details
- Abstract
- This empirical paper seeks to determine the relative contribution of the business cycle and structural factors to the development of part-time employment in the EU-15 countries over the 1980s and 1990s, exploiting a panel of EU countries. In the short-run, the business cycle is found to exert a short-term negative effect on part-time employment developments, which is consistent with firms utilising part-time work to adjust their labour force to changing economic conditions. Institutions and other structural factors such as changes in legislation affecting part-time employment are found to be key drivers of the rate of part-time employment, significant in the longer run. Overall, although the role of individual factors differs in the 1980s and 1990s, a contribution analysis considering the most significant factors shows that the main structural and institutional variables generally well explain the development in the part-time employment rate in the EU countries, which is not the case in the United States.
- JEL Code
- J21 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demand and Supply of Labor→Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
J22 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demand and Supply of Labor→Time Allocation and Labor Supply
J28 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demand and Supply of Labor→Safety, Job Satisfaction, Related Public Policy
J68 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers→Public Policy
- 30 March 2005
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 460Details
- Abstract
- This paper looks at the role of part-time work in labour mobility for 11 European countries. We find some evidence of part-time work being used as a stepping stone into full-time employment, but for a small proportion of individuals (less than 5%). Part-time jobs are also found to be more frequently taken up as a means to enter the labour market than to leave it. Multinomial logit regression of the determinants of part-time work reveals household composition, past labour market history and country of residence as very important for both men and women in their decision to work part time. Random effects regression controlling for individual heterogeneity, and the comparison of results for Europe and the US, reveals that a significantly higher proportion of female workers in Europe prefer inactivity and a significantly lower percentage prefer full-time, over part-time employment, than in the US, with considerable variation across EU countries.
- JEL Code
- J21 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demand and Supply of Labor→Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
J22 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demand and Supply of Labor→Time Allocation and Labor Supply
J16 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demographic Economics→Economics of Gender, Non-labor Discrimination
J60 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers→General
- 25 February 2005
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 24Details
- Abstract
- This paper provides an overview of the magnitude of sectoral wage differentials in the euro area as a whole. Even when adjusting for structural sectoral features such as the skill structure or the proportion of part-timers, average wage levels in services are substantially lower than in manufacturing. The paper also studies how the euro area wage structure compares with that of the United States and the United Kingdom. It discusses some possible determinants of intersectoral wage differentials in the euro area and their likely implications from a policy perspective. A number of worker characteristics (e.g. age, skills, the proportion of temporary or self-employed) are highly correlated with the structure of wage differentials. At the same time, wage differentials are also highly correlated with sector-specific features such as average firm size or capital intensity. Finally, the paper presents some stylised facts on how the euro area wage structure has evolved since the early 1980s.
- JEL Code
- J31 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→Wage Level and Structure, Wage Differentials
E24 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Employment, Unemployment, Wages, Intergenerational Income Distribution, Aggregate Human Capital
J41 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Particular Labor Markets→Labor Contracts
- 14 May 2004
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 358Details
- Abstract
- The paper examines whether the pattern of growth in euro area employment seen in the period 1997-2001 differed from that recorded in the past and what could be the reasons for that. First, a standard employment equation is estimated for the euro area as a whole. This shows that the lagged impact of both output growth and real labour cost growth, together with a productivity trend and employment "inertia", can account for most of the employment developments between 1970 and the early 1990s. Conversely, these traditional determinants can only explain part of the employment development seen in recent years (1997-2001). Second, the paper shows sound evidence of a structural break in the aggregate employment equation in the late 1990s. Third, the paper provides some tentative explanations for this change in aggregate employment developments, using in particular country panels of institutional variables and of active labour market policies but also cross-sectional analyses. Among the relevant factors likely to have contributed to rising aggregate employment in recent years are changes in the sectoral composition of euro area employment, the strong development of part-time jobs, lower labour tax rates and possibly less stringent employment protection legislation and greater subsidies to private employment.
- JEL Code
- C2 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Single Equation Models, Single Variables
E24 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Employment, Unemployment, Wages, Intergenerational Income Distribution, Aggregate Human Capital
H50 : Public Economics→National Government Expenditures and Related Policies→General
J23 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demand and Supply of Labor→Labor Demand