Statutory occupational health and safety workplace arrangements for the modern labour market

Over the past 20 years there has been a significant refashioning of the labour market within Australia and other industrialised countries. This paper examines the implications of the growth of more flexible work arrangements for mechanisms designed to facilitate worker involvement in occupational health and safety at the workplace—a pivotal feature of post-Robens OHS legislation in Australia. It is argued that the growth of subcontracting, casual and home-based work has undermined both coverage and the effectiveness of these provisions, especially in a context where union membership and influence has also been declining. Looking at international experience, the paper examines a number of ways of remedying these deficiencies.

Fertility in Australia: The role of policy and the labour market

One of the most discussed topics in labour and demographic studies, population ageing and stability, is closely related to fertility choices. This thesis explores recent developments in the fertility literature in the context of Australia. We investigate individual preferences for child bearing, the determinants of fertility decisions and the effectiveness of policies implemented by the government aimed at improving total fertility. The first study highlights the impact of monetary incentives on the decision to bear children in light of potentially differential responses across the native and immigrant population. The second study analyses the role of unemployment and job stability on the fertility choices of women. The final study examines whether the quality-quantity trade-off exists for Australian families and explores the impact of siblings on a child's health and educational outcomes.

Mexican Workers in the United States Labour Market: A Contemporary Dilemma

"Ever since the present political boundary separating Mexico and the United States was established in 1848 by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and partially amended in 1853 by the Gadsden Purchase, there has been migration of Mexican citizens into the United States. In fact the border between the two nations was completely open until, with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, the Border Patrol was established and it became a felony to enter the United States illegally. No quota, however, was applied to immigration from Mexico until 1968. During that year legislation became effective which restricted total annual immigration from all Western Hemisphere nations to 120,000, with a maximum of 40,000 from any one country. Both these figures are regularly exceeded. In 1973, for instance, there were 173,123 legal immigrants from all Western Hemisphere nations, including 70,141 Mexicans. That the real flow exceeds the quotas is explained by the numerous exemptions allowed. With the exception of only three years since 1960, legal immigration from Mexico to the United States has exceeded that of every other nation in the world."

Studies on Wage Differentials and Labour Market Transitions

This thesis consists of four studies. The first study examines wage differentials between women and men in the Finnish manufacturing sector. A matched employer-employee data set is used to decompose the overall gender wage gap into the contributions of sex differences in human capital, labour market segregation, and residual within-job wage differentials. The topic of the second study is the relationship between the extended unemployment benefits and labour market transitions of older workers. The analysis exploits a quasi-experimental setting caused by a change in the law that raised the eligibility age of workers benefiting from extended benefits. Roughly half of the unemployed workers with extended benefits are estimated to be effectively withdrawn from labour market search. The risk of unemployment declined and the re-employment probability increased among the age groups directly affected by the reform. The third study provides an empirical analysis of a structural equilibrium search model. Estimation results from various model specifications are compared and discussed. The last study is a methodological study where the difficulties of interpreting the results of competing risks hazard models are discussed and a solution for a particular class of models is proposed. It is argued that a common practice of reporting the results of qualitative response models in terms of marginal effects is also useful in the context of competing risks duration models.

Unions, Monetary Shocks and the Labour Market Cycle

Published as an article in: Economic Modelling, 2011, vol. 28, issue 3, pages 1140-1149.

Geographical mobility and the labour market

This paper studies the e ect of home-owners' migration costs on migration and unemployment in an economy where workers move both for work- and nonwork- related reasons. To this end, a search model with heterogeneous locations is developed and calibrated to the U.S. economy. Consistent with the empirical evidence, the model predicts that home-owners have a lower unemployment rate than renters despite their higher migration costs. The result is due to home-owners' higher transition rate to employment and lower transition rate to unemployment.In addition, the model generates lower inequality in home-owners' local unemployment rates than in renters'. In line with this result, it is documented that, for the period 1996-2013, home-owners had less unemployment dispersion across metropolitan areas than renters.

The labour market in the Basque Country: University Employment Centers

This project is a study of the Labour Market in the Basque Country. First of all, we have analysed the position of the Basque Country in the European Union employment situation by gender and age. Secondly, we have studied the educational level of the Basque Country from the European Union perspective. Thirdly, we have showed the importance of labour orientation in educational level, especially in higher education. Finally, the design of new employment policies to promote the creation of jobs and stability of the labour market depends on: new industries and university employment policies.

The emotional costs of caring incurred by men and women in the British labour market

This study investigates whether men and women in caring occupations experience more negative job-related feelings at the end of the day compared to the rest of the working population. The data are from Wave Nine of the British Household Panel Survey (1999) where respondents were asked whether, at the end of the working day, they tended to keep worrying or have trouble unwinding, and the extent to which work left them feeling exhausted or “used up.” Their responses to these questions were used to develop ordinal dependent variables. Control variables in the models include: number of children, age, hours worked per week, managerial responsibilities and job satisfaction, all of which have been shown in previous research to be significantly related to “job burnout.” The results are that those in caring occupations are more likely to feel worried, tense, drained and exhausted at the end of the working day. Women in particular appear to pay a high emotional cost for working in caring occupations. Men do not emerge unscathed, but report significantly lower levels of worry and exhaustion at the end of the day than do women.

The impact of equity markets and corporate governance on labour market flexibility

Drawing from various literatures, this article explores links between equity markets and labour market flexibility. Various data sources are used to test relationships for a set of OECD countries, controlling for other likely influences on flexibility such as government and industrial relations institutions. The results are generally supportive as regards employment flexibility: equity market trading activity is associated with shorter job tenure, higher activity rates, and greater employment change over the cycle. However, the relationship between equity markets and pay flexibility is less statistically robust to the addition of controls.