Monthly Labor Force Data, September 2014

Monthly Labor Force Data report produced by the Iowa Workforce Development.

The Demand for Social Insurance: Does Culture Matter?

Does culture shape the demand for social insurance against risks to health and work? We study this issue across language groups in Switzerland where a language border sharply separates social groups at identical actual levels of publicly provided social insurance. We find substantially stronger support for expansions of social insurance among residents of French, Italian or Romansh-speaking language border municipalities compared with their German-speaking neighbours in adjacent municipalities. Informal insurance does not vary enough to explain stark differences in social insurance but differences in ideology and segmented media markets potentially contribute to the discrepancy in demand for social insurance.

Monthly Labor Force Data, October 2014

Monthly Labor Force Data report produced by the Iowa Workforce Development.

Heterogeneity, selection and labor market disparities

We study the incentives to acquire skill in a model where heterogeneous firmsand workers interact in a labor market characterized by matching frictions and costlyscreening. When effort in acquiring skill raises both the mean and the variance of theresulting ability distribution, multiple equilibria may arise. In the high-effort equilibrium, heterogeneity in ability is sufficiently large to induce firms to select the bestworkers, thereby confirming the belief that effort is important for finding good jobs.In the low-effort equilibrium, ability is not sufficiently dispersed to justify screening,thereby confirming the belief that effort is not so important. The model has implications for wage inequality, the distribution of firm characteristics, sorting patternsbetween firms and workers, and unemployment rates that can help explaining observedcross-country variation in socio-economic and labor market outcomes.

Monthly Labor Force Data, November 2014

Monthly Labor Force Data report produced by the Iowa Workforce Development.

Hiring Iowa Teens: A Guide for Employers About Iowa Child Labor Laws, June 2012

As an employer, you are always seeking good employees to add to your business. Many youth are eager to work in Iowa, especially during the summer months.To a teenager, a job means money for school and other expenses, work experience and help in deciding on a career.

How Wages and Employment Adjust to Trade Liberalization: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Austria

We study the response of regional employment and nominal wages to trade liberalization, exploiting the natural experiment provided by the opening of Central and Eastern European markets after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990. Using data for Austrian municipalities, we examine di¤erential pre- and post-1990 wage and employment growth rates between regions bordering the formerly communist economies and interior regions. If the 'border regions'are de...ned narrowly, within a band of less than 50 kilometers, we can identify statistically signi...cant liberalization e¤ects on both employment and wages. While wages responded earlier than employment, the employment e¤ect over the entire adjustment period is estimated to be around three times as large as the wage e¤ect. The implied slope of the regional labor supply curve can be replicated in an economic geography model that features obstacles to labor migration due to immobile housing and to heterogeneous locational preferences.

Who Cares? A comparison of informal and formal care provision in Spain, England and the USA

This paper investigates the prevalence of incapacity in performing daily activities and the associations between household composition and availability of family members and receipt of care among older adults with functioning problems in Spain, England and the United States of America (USA). We examine how living arrangements, marital status, child availability, limitations in functioning ability, age and gender affect the probability of receiving formal care and informal care from household members and from others in three countries with different family structures, living arrangements and policies supporting care of the incapacitated. Data sources include the 2006 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe for Spain, the third wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (2006), and the eighth wave of the USA Health and Retirement Study (2006). Logistic and multinomial logistic regressions are used to estimate the probability of receiving care and the sources of care among persons age 50 and older. The percentage of people with functional limitations receiving care is higher in Spain. More care comes from outside the household in the USA and England than in Spain. The use of formal care among the incapacitated is lowest in the USA and highest in Spain.

Monthly Labor Force Data, December 2014

Monthly Labor Force Data report produced by the Iowa Workforce Development.

Qualitat de vida del cuidador informal davant la demència

Les cures que requereix una persona malalta amb demència, al prolongar-se tant en el temps, no son assumides completament per un sistema de seguretat social, ja que hi ha altres prioritats pressupostàries. Per això el cuidador familiar és qui assumeix la major part d’aquestes tasques en el seu domicili, utilitzant recursos i serveis privats o concertats, resultant ser prioritàriament, un tema de voluntat política L’estudi realitzat a la Fundació del Vallès Amics de la Neurologia (AVAN), ens ha permès conèixer com és la qualitat de vida d’aquests cuidadors informals, que actualment es fan càrrec d’una persona afectada per una demència, un cop utilitzen els serveis de l’Hospital de Dia. Tant la persona afecta, com el cuidador, van conformant un binomi inseparable en el que la qualitat de vida disminueix significativament. En el cas del malalt, degut a les limitacions que imposa la malaltia i a la gravetat del símptomes; en el cas del cuidador, que és aquell que emergeix de l’entorn més proper del malalt, per ocupar-se crònicament i al llarg de les etapes de la malaltia de manera exigent, es produeix per la sobrecàrrega i el desgast que suposa cuidar, a la vegada que vol continuar amb el propi projecte de vida. Tot i les avantatges associades al manteniment de les persones dependents en el domicili, i encara que aquestes es decantin per les cures informals, “la revolució de la longevitat” i altres transformacions socials en l’àmbit familiar, plantegen un desafiament per l’actual i per les futures generacions. L’exigència i el dret a donar i rebre cura es situa, en el centre del debat social, ètic i sobre els drets de ciutadania.

Remote collaborative multi-user informal learning experiences: design and evaluation

This paper presents a customizable system used to develop a collaborative multi-user problem solving game. It addresses the increasing demand for appealing informal learning experiences in museum-like settings. The system facilitates remote collaboration by allowing groups of learners tocommunicate through a videoconferencing system and by allowing them to simultaneously interact through a shared multi-touch interactive surface. A user study with 20 user groups indicates that the game facilitates collaboration between local and remote groups of learners. The videoconference and multitouch surface acted as communication channels, attracted students’ interest, facilitated engagement, and promoted inter- and intra-group collaboration—favoring intra-group collaboration. Our findings suggest that augmentingvideoconferencing systems with a shared multitouch space offers newpossibilities and scenarios for remote collaborative environments and collaborative learning.

A Behavioral Account of the Labor Market: The Role of Fairness Concerns

In this paper, we argue that important labor market phenomena can be better understood if one takes (a) the inherent incompleteness and relational nature of most employment contracts and (b) the existence of reference-dependent fairness concerns among a substantial share of the population into account. Theory shows and experiments confirm that, even if fairness concerns were to exert only weak effects in one-shot interactions, repeated interactions greatly magnify the relevance of such concerns on economic outcomes. We also review evidence from laboratory and field experiments examining the role of wages and fairness on effort, derive predictions from our approach for entry-level wages and incumbent workers' wages, confront these predictions with the evidence, and show that reference-dependent fairness concerns may have important consequences for the effects of economic policies such as minimum wage laws.

Monthly Labor Force Data, April 2015

Monthly Labor Force Data report produced by the Iowa Workforce Development.