Wherever you work, pick your gig: join WageIndicator’s gig webinar on migration and telemigration on September 24.
GLO and WageIndicator Foundation are partner organizations.
Due to the digital revolution and the COVID-19 pandemic, labor mobility has increased significantly. Migrants use platforms to get a job locally, while telemigrants use platforms to perform remote work.
WageIndicator’s third event on the gig economy focuses on the experiences of these migrants and telemigrants.
Why do they choose this type of work?
And what challenges do they face?
Listen to the stories of researchers and platform representatives by joining the event on Friday 24 September!
Posted inEvents, News|Comments Off on Migration and telemigration in the gig economy. Forthcoming workshop of the WageIndicator Foundation on September 24, 2021.
A new GLO Discussion Paper highlights the impact of delay and the importance of structuring bankruptcy procedures to rapidly resolve uncertainty about firms’ future prospects.
Author Abstract: Bankruptcy restructuring procedures are used in most legal systems to decide the fate of businesses facing financial hardship. We study how bargaining failures in such procedures impact the economic performance of participating firms in the context of Croatia, which introduced a “pre-bankruptcy settlement” (PBS) process in the wake of the Great Recession of 2007 – 2009. Local institutions left over from the communist era provide annual financial statements for both sides of more than 180,000 debtor- creditor pairs, enabling us to address selection into failed negotiations by matching a rich set of creditor and debtor characteristics. Failures to settle at the PBS stage due to idiosyncratic bargaining problems, which effectively delays entry into the standard bankruptcy procedure, leads to a lower rate of survival among debtors as well as re- duced employment, revenue, and profits. We also track how bargaining failures diffuse through the network of creditors, finding a significant negative effect on small creditors, but not others. Our results highlight the impact of delay and the importance of structuring bankruptcy procedures to rapidly resolve uncertainty about firms’ future prospects.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: Information and communication technology (ICT) challenges traditional assumptions about the capacity to manage workers beyond organizational and physical boundaries. A typology connects a variety of non-traditional work organizations made possible by ICT, including offshoring, outsourcing, remote work, virtual companies, and platforms. A model illustrates how new technology serves as a proximate cause for a revision of social contracts between capital, labor and government reached through bargaining, and how external shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the institutional environment, and limitations in practice influence how technology changes the organization of work. An historical case illustrates the general features of the model, and a review of the outsourcing and offshoring literature provides instructive examples of how features of the model will potentially influence the future of post-pandemic remote work
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
A new GLO Discussion Paper revisits the influential theory of monopolistic competition and optimum product variety. Differences in factor endowments across countries determine the pattern of trade between varieties and output per variety, which is indeterminate the standard model.
Author Abstract: In this paper we revisit the influential theory of monopolistic competition and optimum product variety as developed by Dixit and Stiglitz (1977) with applications in international trade by Krugman (1979,1980), by modeling fixed and variable costs of production in terms of underlying use of skilled and unskilled labor in a single good model. This is different from earlier work on multi sector variant of Krugman cum Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model such as Helpman (1981) and others. In our structure factor endowment and factor intensities determine both number of varieties and output per variety in a closed economy mimicking the features of Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model. Differences in factor endowments across countries determine the pattern of trade between varieties and output per variety, which is indeterminate in a standard single good Dixit-Stiglitz-Krugman model. Later we reflect on wage inequality and unemployment providing some interesting results.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Posted inNews, Research|Comments Off on Monopolistic Competition, Optimum Product Diversity, and International Trade – The Role of Factor Endowment and Factor Intensities
Author Abstract: Academic consensus about normative prescriptions on the ethnic and cultural composition of societies has been shifting in recent decades. It has evolved from what seemed desirable but was acknowledged to be unrealistic (the noble idea of a melting pot), to what is realistic because it has already happened, but might be undesirable in the long run: the multicultural diaspora. Plural societies, an unintended consequence of multiculturalism, lurk in the background. Thus scholars of social and economic questions, as well as societies, face a threehorned dilemma. We throw some light on the dilemma by examining school friendship networks in five European countries with recent immigration. Our results highlight the force of elective affinities in overcoming differences, but they also point to the countervailing forces of elective discordance that are currently driving increasing division.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Author Abstract: This article explores the gender gap in time allocation in Europe, offering up-to-date statistics and information on several factors that may help to explain these differences. Prior research has identified several factors affecting the time individuals devote to paid work, unpaid work, and child care, and the gender gaps in these activities, but most research refers to single countries, and general patterns are rarely explored. Cross-country evidence on gender gaps in paid work, unpaid work, and child care is offered, and explanations based on education, earnings, and household structure are presented, using data from the EUROSTAT and the Multinational Time Use Surveys. There are large cross-country differences in the gender gaps in paid work, unpaid work, and child care, which remain after controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, although the gender gap in paid work dissipates when the differential gendered relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and paid work is taken into account. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of gender gaps in Europe, helping to focus recent debates on how to tackle inequality in Europe, and clarifying the factors that contribute to gender inequalities in the uses of time.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that menstrual restriction related rituals can have persistent negative implications on women’s physical and mental health that is not just limited to the time of menstruation.
Author Abstract: We study the association between the ritual of menstrual restrictions and maternal health- care access as well as women’s subjective well-being. Similar restrictions, also practised around the time of childbirth, are based on the assumption that women are ritually impure during these phases of their lives. Although menstrual taboos and restrictions are common across many developing countries, we use micro-data from Nepal where these rituals are widely prevalent. We use a rich set of controls as well as assess the sensitivity of our results to alternative estimation methods. We find that women who face any menstrual restriction are also more likely to give birth at home and receive assistance only from untrained individuals during childbirth, which increases the risk of maternal mortality. We find that only the strictest menstrual restrictions are associated with a decline in subjective well-being. These findings indicate that menstrual restriction related rituals can have persistent negative implications on women’s physical and mental health that is not just limited to the time of menstruation.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
The article “Walls and Fences: A Journey Through History and Economics” by GLO Fellow Victoria Vernon and GLO President Klaus F. Zimmermann was recently published.
Zimmermann will present the joint article with Victoria Vernon on August 27, 2021 in a Special Academic Session on The Economic Geography of Cross-Border Migration as part of the 60th Annual Congress of the European Regional Science Association (ERSA), which is organized virtually from Bozen.
The Special Academic Session at the ERSA congress presents the book project.
Throughout history, border walls and fences have been built for defense, to claim land, to signal power, and to control migration. The costs of fortifications are large while the benefits are questionable. The recent trend of building walls and fences signals a paradox: In spite of the anti-immigration rhetoric of policymakers, there is little evidence that walls are effective in reducing terrorism, migration, and smuggling. Economic research suggests large benefits to open border policies in the face of increasing global migration pressures. Less restrictive migration policies should be accompanied by institutional changes aimed at increasing growth, improving security and reducing income inequality in poorer countries.
Posted inEvents, News, Research|Comments Off on Walls and Fences: Insights from the article presented on August 27, 2021 in a Special Academic Session at the 60th Annual Congress of the European Regional Science Association.
A new GLO Discussion Paper reports a stark difference in rural India between men and women: while many male workers took up informal employment, most female workers dropped out of the labor force.
Author Abstract: This paper presents evidence on the short and long-term impact of the first COVID-19 wave on India’s rural youth. We interviewed about 2,000 vocational trainees from Bihar and Jharkhand between March 2020 and March 2021. We report a stark difference between men and women: while many male workers took up informal employment, most female workers dropped out of the labour force. Using a randomised experiment, we find that a government supported digital job platform does not increase job search or employment. Our findings suggest that bridging the gap between rural youths and urban formal labour markets requires much more active and targeted policy interventions, especially for female workers.
The Global Labor Organization (GLO) is an independent, non-partisan and non-governmental organization that functions as an international network and virtual platform to stimulate global research, debate and collaboration.
Presentations in this series are based on the projects that GLO-VirtYS program scholars complete as part of the their program participation. See for the VirtYs program and the cohort 2021.
Mark your calendar. Registration details will be announced in time.
September 9th 2021 Program on 1 pm London/UK time.
Jun Hyung Kim, Jinan University and GLO Affiliate Mental Health Consequences of Working from Home during the Pandemic (GLO VirtYS program advisor Professor Jan van Ours)
Femke Cnossen, University of Groningen and GLO Affiliate Learning the Right Skill: Revealed Local Labour Demand for Underlying Skills in STEM and Non-STEM Graduates (GLO VirtYS program advisors Dr Matloob Piracha and Dr Guy Tchuente)
Chaired by GLO VirtYS Program Director Olena Nizalova.
Jun Hyung Kim is an assistant professor of economics at the Institute of Economic and Social Research at Jinan University. His research is focused on parenting and child development, with particular attention on how life cycle decisions of parents interact with parenting decisions. He received B.A. in economics at UC Berkeley and PhD in economic at the University of Chicago.
GLO VirtYS project: Mental Health Consequences of Working from Home during the Pandemic
This paper examines the effects of working from home on mental health, using unique real time survey data from South Korea collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that working from home negatively affects the mental health of workers in the first half of 2020. Furthermore, we find substantial heterogeneity across gender and home environment. The negative impact of working from home is concentrated on women, and on those who are primarily responsible for housework while also maintaining market work. Surprisingly, workers who live with children in the household do not suffer from the negative effects of working from home. Our findings suggest that family-work interaction may be an important factor in the optimal design of working from home.
Femke Cnossen is a PhD student at the University of Groningen. Her PhD focuses on the micro-dynamics of technological change and labour markets, by linking survey data to registerdata. She studies skill demand, (routine) task prices, and on the impact of technological progress on meaningfulness of work. From september, she is a postdoctoral researcher in regional skill analysis at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences at the University of Groningen.
GLO VirtYS project: Learning the Right Skill: Revealed Local Labour Demand for Underlying Skills in STEM and Non-STEM Graduates
Technological change and globalization have sparked debates on the changing demand for skills in western labour markets, especially for middle skilled workers who have seen their tasks replaced. This paper provides a new data set, which is based on text data from curricula of the entire Dutch vocational education system. We extract verbs and nouns to measure social, technical and basic skills in a novel way. This method allows us to uncover the skills middle-skilled students learn in school. Using this data, we show that skill returns vary across students specialized in STEM, services or health. Furthermore, we show that social and technical skills differentially relate to the probability of being employed in either the low or high skill sector or in the goods sector. Our findings can guide future research on the complementarity between skills and production technologies.
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