Audit report on the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium (CIETC) for the year ended June 30, 2006

Audit report on the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium (CIETC) for the year ended June 30, 2006

Assesing the political viability of labour market reform: The case of employment protection

We analyze the political support for employment protection legislation.Unlike my previous work on the same topic, this paper pays a lot ofattention to the role of obsolescence in the growth process.In voting in favour of employment protection, incumbent employeestrade off lower living standards (because employment protectionmaintains workers in less productive activities) against longer jobduration. The support for employment protection will then depend onthe value of the latter relative to the cost of the former. Wehighlight two key deeterminants of this trade-off: first, the workers'bargaining power, second, the economy's growth rate-more preciselyits rate of creative destruction.

Labour market in the Catalan cotton textile sector: Employment and fertility (1850-1913)

This paper deals whit the dynamics of the Catalan textile labour market (theSpanish region that concentrated most of the industrial and factory activity duringthe 19 Century) and offers hypotheses and results on the impact it had on livingstandards and fertility levels. We observe the formation of an uneven labourmarket in which male supply for labour (excluding women and children) grewmuch faster than the demand. We stress the fact that labour supply is verydependant on institutional factors liked to the transmition of household propertybetween generations. Instead the slow path of growth of adult males demand forlabour is witnessing the limits of this industry to expand and to compete ininternational markets. The strategy of working class families to adapt to scarceopportunities of employment we document here is the diminution of legitimatefertility levels. Fertility control is the direct instrument we think workers have tocontrol their number in a situation that was likely to create labour surpluses in theshort and mid run.

Product market deregulation and the U.S. employment miracle

We consider the dynamic relationship between product market entry regulation and equilibrium unemployment. The main theoretical contribution is combining a job matchingmodel with monopolistic competition in the goods market and individual wage bargaining.Product market competition affects unemployment by two channels: the output expansion effect and a countervailing effect due to a hiring externality. Competition is then linked to barriers to entry. We calibrate the model to US data and perform a policy experiment to assess whether the decrease in trend unemployment during the 1980 s and 1990 s could be attributed to product market deregulation. Our quantitative analysis suggests that under individual bargaining, a decrease of less than two tenths of a percentage point of unemployment rates can be attributed to product market deregulation, a surprisingly small amount.

Body size, activity, employment and wages in Europe: A first approach

This paper examines the associations between obesity, employment status and wages for several European countries. Our results provide weak evidence that obese workers are more likely to be unemployed or tend to be more segregated in self-employment jobs than their non-obese counterparts. We also find difficult to detect statistically significant relationships between obesity and wages. As previously reported in the literature, the association between obesity, unemployment and wages seems to be different for men and women. Moreover, heterogeneity is also found across countries. Such heterogeneity can be somewhat explained by some labor market institutions, such as the collective bargaining coverage and the employer-provided health insurance.

Report of recommendations of the Public Employment Relations Board for the year ended June 30, 2007

Report of recommendations of the Public Employment Relations Board for the year ended June 30, 2007

Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning, Department of Human Rights Performance Plan, FY 2009

Agency Performance Plan, Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning, Department of Human Rights

Public Employment Relations Board Performance Plan, FY 2009

Agency Performance Plan, Public Employment Relations Board

Organizational capital and employment fluctuations

In this paper I present a model in which production requires two types of labor inputs: regular productive tasks and organizational capital, which is accumulated by workers performing organizational tasks. By allocating more workers from organizational to productive tasks, firms can temporarily increase production without hiring. The availability of this intensive margin of labor adjustment, in combination with adjustment costs along the extensive margin (search frictions, firing costs, training costs), makes it optimal to delay employment adjustments. Simulations indicate that this mechanism is quantitatively important even if only a small fraction of workers perform organizational tasks, and explains why the hiring rate is persistent and why employment is slow to recover after the end of a recession.

Effects of employment protection and product market regulations on the Italian labor market

Labor market regulations have often being blamed for high and persistentunemployment in Europe, but evidence on their impact remains mixed. Morerecently, attention has turned to the impact of product market regulationson employment growth. This paper analyzes how labor and product marketregulations interact to affect turnover and employment. We present a matchingmodel which illustrates how barriers to entry in the product market mitigatethe impact of labor market deregulation. We, then, use the Italian SocialSecurity employer-employee panel to study the interaction between barriersto entry and dismissal costs. We exploit the fact that costs for unjustdismissals in Italy increased for firms below 15 employees relative to biggerfirms after 1990. We find that the increase in dismissal costs after 1990decreased accessions and separations in small relative to big firms,especially for women. Moreover, consistent with our model, we find evidencethat the increase in dismissal costs had smaller effects on turnover for womenin sectors faced with strict product market regulations.

The political economy of employment protection

This paper develops a model of job creation and job destruction in agrowing economy with embodied technical progress, that we use toanalyze the political support for employment protection legislationssuch as the ones that are observed in most European countries.We analyze the possibility of Condorcet cycles due to the fact thatworkers about to become unemployed prefer both an increase and areduction in firing costs over the status quo. Despite this problem, we show the existence of local, and sometimes global majority winners.In voting in favour of employment protection, incumbent employeestrade off lower living standards (because employment protectionmaintains workers in less productive activities) against longer job duration. We show that the gains from, and consequently the politicalsupport for employment protection (as defined by maximunjob tenure) are larger, the lower the rate of creative destruction and the largerthe worker's bargaining power. Numerical simulations suggest a hump-shaped response of firing costs to these variables, as well as negative impact of exogeneous turnover on employment protection.

Iowa Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning, Strategic Plan, 2007

This report outlines the strategic plan for Iowa Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning including,goals and mission.

Audit report on the North Iowa Juvenile Detention Services Commission for the year ended June 30, 2008

Audit report on the North Iowa Juvenile Detention Services Commission for the year ended June 30, 2008

Shoulder arthroplasty for patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

Between 1986 and 1997, 13 shoulders in adult patients who had severe polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis were treated with primary arthroplasty. Eleven shoulders were evaluated retrospectively by an independent observer with a mean follow-up of 9 years. Patient evaluation included pain Visual Analogue Scale, range of motion, Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand score, and Short-Form 36. Patients' pain decreased significantly after surgery (mean 6.7). Forward elevation improved on average by 41.1 degrees and external rotation by 39.1 degrees , without evidence of shoulder instability. Final Short-Form 36 scores and Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand results (mean, 44.7) were poor, but all patients rated themselves satisfied with the procedure. Shoulder arthroplasty provided pain relief for end-stage shoulder involvement in adult juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Improvement in external rotation in this severely affected group appears to have a beneficial effect on functional outcome.

Financing constraints and fixed-term employment contracts

This paper studies the interactions between financing constraints and theemployment decisions of firms when both fixed-term and permanent employmentcontracts are available. We first develop a dynamic model that shows theeffects of financing constraints and firing costs on employment decisions. Oncecalibrated, the model shows that financially constrained firms tend to use moreintensely fixed term workers, and to make them absorb a larger fraction of thetotal employment volatility than financially unconstrained firms do. We testand confirm the predictions of the model on a unique panel data of Italian manufacturingfirms with detailed information about the type of workers employedby the firms and about firm financing constraints.