lvandervelde

https://grape.org.pl/sites/default/files/user/Zyciorys_VanDerVelde.pdf
https://grape.org.pl/sites/default/files/user/Academic_CV_1.pdf

Opublikowane | Published

2024
Structural labour market change and gender inequality in earnings | Work, Employment and Society

Research from the US argues that women will benefit from a structural labour market change as the importance of social tasks increases and that of manual tasks declines. This article contributes to this discussion in three ways: (a) by extending the standard framework of task content of occupations in order to account for the gender perspective; (b) by developing measures of occupational task content tailored to the European context; and (c) by testing this argument in 13 European countries. Data are analysed from the European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations database and the European Structure of Earnings Survey. The analysis demonstrates that relative to men the structural labour market change improves the earnings potential of women working in low- and middle-skilled occupations but not those in high-skilled occupations. Women are overrepresented in low-paid social tasks (e.g. care) and are paid less for analytical tasks than men.

 

The database with task content of jobs is available here and the replication package is available in here

Lucas
van der Velde
Matching it up: non-standard work and job satisfaction | Journal of Policy Analysis and Management

We leverage the flexibility enactment theory to study the link between working arrangements and job satisfaction. We propose that this link is moderated by individual inclination to non-standard working arrangements. Thus, we provide novel insights on the (mis)match between preferred and actual working arrangements. We apply this approach to data from the European Working Conditions Survey and empirically characterize the extent of mismatch in working arrangements across European countries. We shed new light on several phenomena. First, the extent of mismatch is substantial and reallocating workers between jobs could substantially boost overall job satisfaction in European countries. Second, the mismatch more frequently affects women and parents. Finally, we demonstrate that the extent of mismatch differs across European countries, which hints that one-size-fits-all policies, whether they deregulate or curb non-standard arrangements, are not likely to maximize the happiness of workers.

Katarzyna
Bech
Magdalena
Smyk-Szymańska
Lucas
van der Velde
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Statistical gender discrimination: evidence from young workers across four decades and 56 countries | Journal of Demographic Economics

Statistical discrimination offers a compelling narrative on gender wage gaps among younger workers. Employers could discount women's wages to adjust for probable costs linked to childbearing. Given trends towards lower and delayed fertility one should observe a lower discount in wages and a reduction in the gender wage gap among entrants. We put this conjecture to test. We provide a novel collection of adjusted gender wage gap (AGWG) estimates among young workers from 56 countries spanning four decades. We use these estimates to study the effects of postponing childbirth on AGWG. We find that postponing first parity by a year reduces AGWG by two percentage points (15%). We further benchmark the implied gender inequality with the help of time-use data

Lucas
van der Velde
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Phasing out: routine tasks and retirement | Journal of Comparative Economics

Population ageing poses new challenges to the sustainability of the pension system and possibly to economic growth in advanced economies. In such context, calls are made to increase participation of workers close to their retirement age. Ageing occurs in a period where technological progress has changed the patterns of labor demand, away from physically demanding tasks (opportunity) and into more cognitive-interpersonal type of tasks (challenge). To understand the net effect, we analyze the relation between automation and labor supply of older workers. We explore whether exposure to technological change, measured by the task content of jobs, was connected to labor supply of older workers in Germany and Great Britain. Using panel data, we show that the adjustment in the number of hours of workers in occupations exposed to automation was small, and only negative for a subset of workers. The exposure to automation is related to somehow earlier retirement, but the size of the relation is small.

Lucas
van der Velde
A cautionary note on the reliability of the online survey data – the case of Wage Indicator | Sociological Methods and Research

We investigate the reliability of data from the Wage Indicator (WI), the largest online survey on earnings and working conditions. Comparing WI to nationally representative data sources for 17 countries reveals that participants of WI are not likely to have been representatively drawn from the respective populations. Previous literature has proposed to utilize weights based on inverse propensity scores, but this procedure was shown to leave reweighted WI samples different from the benchmark nationally representative data. We propose a novel procedure, building on covariate balancing propensity score, which achieves complete reweighting of the WI data, making it able to replicate the structure of nationally representative samples on observable characteristics. While rebalancing assures the match between WI and representative benchmark data sources, we show that the wage schedules remain different for a large group of countries. Using the example of a Mincerian wage regression, we find that in more than a third of the cases, our proposed novel reweighting assures that estimates obtained on WI data are not biased relative to nationally representative data. However, in the remaining 60% of the analyzed 95 datasets systematic differences in the estimated coefficients of the Mincerian wage regression between WI and nationally representative data persists even after reweighting. We provide some intuition about the reasons behind these biases. Notably, objective factors such as access to the Internet or richness appear to matter, but self-selection (on unobservable characteristics) among WI participants appears to constitute an important source of bias.

We provide weights and full documentation here.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Lucas
van der Velde
Magdalena
Smyk-Szymańska
When the opportunity knocks: large structural shocks and gender wage gaps | Social Indicators Research

We present empirical evidence that large structural shocks are followed by changes in labor market inequality. Specifically, we study short-run fluctuations in adjusted gender wage gaps (unequal pay for equal work) following episodes of structural shocks in the labor markets, using several decades of individual data for a wide selection of transition countries. We find that for cohorts who entered the labor market after the onset of transition. Labor market shocks lead to significant declines in the gender wage gap. This decrease is driven mostly by episodes experienced among cohorts who enter the labor market during the transition. By contrast, we fail to find any significant relation for cohorts already active in the labor market at the time of transition. We provide plausible explanations based on sociological and economic theories of inequality.

Undergoing a large structural shock, labor markets indeed do become less inclusive, but it has taken us several turns to identify a convincing knowledge gap and hypotheses appealing to the academic community. A much different and earlier version of this text was in the past developed within DISCef project. Our work has since changed substantially: the deeper understanding of theoretical foundations has led to improving the empirical approach and information content of interpretation. Originally, we combined a study into gender wage gaps, with a study into gender employment gaps. This approach had too much empirical clutter and too dispersed theoretical foundations. Eventually, the original work has evolved into two separate studies: the current, focused on structural shocks and wage inequality, and a companion paper looking at long-term drivers of gender inequality in access to employment.  

The files required to reproduce our findings are available below.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Lucas
van der Velde
Within occupation wage dispersion and the task content of jobs | Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics

Most analyses linking task content of jobs to income inequality focus on the effects between occupations, e.g. the growing dispersion between lousy and lovely jobs. Theory, meanwhile, provides insights on links between task content of jobs and inequality also within occupations: models predict compression of wages in more routine jobs, that is those where capital is a direct substitute for labor, and an increase in dispersion in jobs where capital and labor are complements. I document that within occupations dispersion of wages is empirically relevant, as it represents around half of total wage inequality across Europe. I then link wage inequality to the task content of jobs. Using matched employee-employer data from Europe for the period 2002-2014, I show that occupations where tasks complement newer technologies exhibit higher wage dispersion. This relationship is robust to adjusting for a variety of confounding and mitigating channels.

 

Replication files

Lucas
van der Velde
How to make a country look equal | PLOS ONE

Methods for estimating the the scope of inequality in various outcome measures such as income, education, health or poverty are fairly accurate in detecting differences adjusted for individual characteristics. However, the actual estimated inequality may depend on the interaction between (the weakness of) the method and (the weakness of) the institutional environment. We make a case by comparing the country rankings for the adjusted gender wage gap among 23 EU countries. We show that the effects of these interactions are indeed large by comparing the estimates from various methods obtained from the same database. In fact, depending on the control variables and estimation method, a country may change its position in the ranking by as much as 10 positions -- both towards greater equality and towards greater inequality. We argue that this variability in country ranking position may yield important policy insights into prioritizing intervention. We also infer that given the intimate and unbreakable relationship between institutional deficiencies and features of the adjustment methods, ranking per se may be misguiding the public debate and thus should be abandoned or substantially refined.

Gender wage gaps are typically measured by the means of decomposition. Proliferation of methods makes the choice of the correct estimator for a given data a conceptual challenge, especially if data availability necessitates simplifications. The challenge lies in accounting for observable differences adequately, which in itself is not only a data issue, but also a conceptual issue. Ideally, one would want to compare men and women actually “alike” in terms of all relevant characteristics, including hours effectively worked, commitment, talent. However, many of these characteristics are not observable (or are imperfectly measured, e.g. human capital).

Decompositions are prone to multiple risks. For example, the urge to compare only the comparable implies that a decision needs to be made about the use of observations which clearly are not comparable. Nopo (2008) proposes to use these observations to infer about the possible selectivity in this process, but alternative approaches consist of reweighing or neglecting this issue. Similar choices concern the treatment of distributional issues. Finally, for the parametric methods, the dependence on the functional form may influence the results as well. Consequently, depending on the features of a given labor market, an estimate of gender wage gap obtained with a given method is likely to overstate or understate the extent of true unjustified inequality in wages.

We make available a dataset which provides a full selection of gender wage gap estimates for the EU countries, using data from EU-SILC. Across countries and years, everybody can see for themselves, what is the source of the gender wage inequality in a given European country. We provide:

  • A dta file with the full set of estimates for the gender wage gaps and a generating dofile
  • Data documentation
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Karolina
Goraus
Lucas
van der Velde
How (not) to make women work? Evidence from transition countries | Social Science Research

 
Women in developed economies have experienced an unparalleled increase in employment rates, to the point that the gap with respect to men was cut in half. This positive trend has often been attributed to changes in the opportunity costs of working (e.g. access to caring facilities) and not-working (e.g. educational attainment). Meanwhile, the gender employment gaps were stagnant in transition economies. Admittedly, employment equality among genders was initially much higher in transition countries. We exploit this unique evidence from transition and advanced countries, to analyze the distributional nonlinearities in the relationship between the institutional environment and the (adjusted) gender employment gaps. We estimate comparable gender employment gaps on nearly 1600 micro databases from over 40 countries. We relate these estimates to changes in the opportunity costs of working and not-working. Changes in opportunity costs exhibited stronger correlation with gender employment equality where the gap was larger, i.e. advanced economies. We provide some evidence that these results are not explained away by transition-based theories, and argue that the observed patterns reflect a level effect. Currently, advanced and transition economies are at par in terms of gender employment equality. Hence, the existing instruments might not be sufficient to further reduce the gender employment gap.

The data for replication is distributed here.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Karolina
Goraus
Lucas
van der Velde
Identifying age penalty in women's wages: new method and evidence from Germany 1984-2015 | Feminist Economics

Given theoretical premises, gender wage gap adjusted for individual characteristics is likely to vary over age. We extend DiNardo, Fortin and Lemieux (1996) semi-parametric technique to disentangle year, cohort and age effects in adjusted gender wage gaps. We rely on a long panel of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel covering the 1984-2015 period. Our results indicate that the gender wage gap increases over the lifetime, for some birth cohorts also in the post-reproductive age.

 

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Lucas
van der Velde
Labor reallocation and demographics | Journal of Comparative Economics

We explore data from all transition economies over nearly two decades, providing insights on the mechanisms behind labor force reallocation. We show that worker flows between jobs in different industries are rare relative to the demographic flows of youth entry and elderly exit. The same applies to the flows between state-owned enterprises and private firms. In fact, evidence suggest that changes in the demand for labor were accommodated mostly through demographic flows, with a smaller role left for job transitions. We also show that the speed of changing the ownership structure in the economy has driven exits to retirement, in particular the early exits.

This study uses data from LiTS, see the paper tab for replication files as well as the additional controls.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Lucas
van der Velde
Which gender wage gap estimates to trust? A comparative analysis using data from Poland | Review of Income and Wealth

The aim of this paper is to compare estimates of the adjusted wage gap from different methods and sets of conditioning variables. We apply available parametric and non‐parametric methods to LFS data from Poland for 2012. While the raw gap amounts to nearly 10 percent of the female wage; the adjusted wage gap estimates range between 15 percent and as much as 23 percent depending on the method and the choice of conditional variables. The differences across conditioning variables within the same method do not exceed 3pp, but including more variables almost universally results in larger estimates of the adjusted wage gaps. Methods that account for common support and selection into employment yielded higher estimates of the adjusted wage gap. While the actual point estimates of adjusted wage gap are slightly different, all of them are roughly twice as high as the raw gap, which corroborates the policy relevance of this methodological study.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Karolina
Goraus
Lucas
van der Velde
Cyclical trend of labor reallocation in Poland: transition and structural change | Eastern European Economics

Two main features of the reallocation process that took place in Eastern European and Former Soviet Union countries should be distinguished. The first feature was the decline in public sector employment as a result of the collapse of state-owned enterprises, linked with an increase in private sector employment as new private firms emerged and old public companies were privatized. The second feature was, and still is, the reallocation of labor from manufacturing to the service sector. Data from the Polish Labor Force Survey for the period 1995–2015 were used to construct measures of worker flows, gross and net, and their cyclical properties were used as a way to test the predictions of structural change and transition theories. It was found that labor market adjustments tend to amplify in upturns of the business cycle, while worker flows contribute only a fraction to the changing structure of employment. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Lucas
van der Velde
Stanisław
Cichocki
Effects of labor reallocation on productivity and inequality - insights from studies on transition | Journal of Economic Surveys

From a theoretical perspective, the link between the speed and scope of rapid labor reallocation and productivity growth or income inequality is ambiguous. Do reallocations with more flows tend to produce higher productivity growth? Does such a link appear at the expense of higher income inequality? We explore the rich evidence from earlier studies on worker flows in the period of massive and rapid labor reallocation, that is, the economic transition from a centrally planned to a market-oriented economy in CEE. We have collected over 450 estimates of job flows from the literature and used these inputs to estimate the short-run and long-run relationship between labor market flows, labor productivity, and income inequality. We apply the tools typical for a meta-analysis to verify the empirical regularities between labor flows and productivity growth as well as income inequality. Our findings suggest only weak and short-term links with productivity, driven predominantly by business cycles. However, data reveal a strong pattern for income inequality in the short run—more churning during reallocation is associated with a level effect toward increased Gini indices.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Lucas
van der Velde
Jan
Svejnar
Luki płacowe w kraju pochodzenia i w kraju docelowym na przykładzie kobiet imigrujących na amerykański rynek pracy | Bank i Kredyt

Jedną z istotnych przesłanek decyzji migracyjnej są różnice w płacach na domowym i docelowym rynku pracy. Różnice te wynikać mogą jednak nie tylko z względnej różnicy w produktywności czy ew. zapotrzebowania na kapitał ludzki. Istotną przyczyną może być także nierówność płac, np. ze względu na płeć. Tymczasem ekonomia behawioralna i psychologiczna dają silne przesłanki, by oczekiwać, ze grupa dyskryminowana w krajach o większej skali nierówności płacowych może akceptować wyższe luki płacowe także na docelowym rynku pracy. Wykorzystując oszacowania nierówności płacowych ze względu na płeć w krajach pochodzenia imigrantek w Stanach Zjednoczonych oraz oszacowania luk płacowych na amerykańskim rynku pracy poddajemy empirycznej weryfikacji tezę, że wysokość luki płacowej imigrantek zależy od (skorygowanych) luk płacowych doświadczanych przez kobiety w kraju pochodzenia. Otrzymane wyniki wskazują na brak korelacji pomiędzy lukami płacowymi na rynku pracy w Stanach Zjednoczonych i w kraju pochodzenia.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Lucas
van der Velde
Language and (the Estimates of) the Gender Wage Gap | Economics Letters

In this paper we link the estimates of the gender wage gap with the gender sensitivity of the language spoken in a given country. We find that nations with more gender neutral languages tend to be characterized by lower estimates of GWG. The results are robust to a number of sensitivity checks.

In this paper we link the estimates of the gender wage gap with the gender sensitivity of the language spoken in a given country. We find that nations with more gender neutral languages tend to be characterized by lower estimates of GWG. The results are robust to a number of sensitivity checks.

Our source of estimates for the adjusted gender wage gap is an updated version of the dataset developed by Doris Wichselbaumer and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer for a paper published in Journal of Economic Surveys in 2005 and a paper published in Kyklos in 2008. The original data covers articles published until 2005, whereas we include studies published between 2005 and 2014. In total we added 1197 estimates of the adjusted GWG from 117 new studies for 56 countries.

To ensure continuity, we adopted the same conventions with respect to the language of publication (English) and the search engine (EconLit). We also used the same keywords: “(wage* or salar* or earning*) and (discrimination or differen*) and (sex or gender)”. To test if this search was not excessively narrow, we erased one keyword at a time from the first parenthesis, subsequently erasing the logical connectors (“or” “and”). We included published final or the most recent available versions of articles (chapters and books excluded). The complete list is available upon request.} Similarly to WWE, we excluded incomparable estimates of the adjusted GWG (e.g. non-parametric estimates along the wage distribution).

All the data needed to replicate our analysis is available below. The zip file contains:

  • A csv file with the information on the articles added.
  • Data on language gender intensity come from World Atlas of Language Structures
  • Complete data set (combining meta-data and country characteristics)
  • Do files
Joanna
Siwińska-Gorzelak
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Lucas
van der Velde

W toku | Work in progress

  • Affirmative action clauses and gender-neutral hiring of junior scholars

    We examine the role for external experts in providing unbiased evaluations of candidates. Affirmative action can promote the advancement of minority candidates, but the empirical results have been inconclusive. We conduct a field experiment with Polish academics, asking them to assess the quality of job candidates and decide which candidates should be invited for interviews. We implement two treatments: a binding and a non-binding equal opportunity clause. Additionally, we vary the gender composition of the candidates being evaluated. Our findings show no evidence of bias against women, either in quality assessments or in subsequent interview invitations. Under the binding equal opportunity clause, external evaluators tend to favor women, suggesting alignment between external experts and institutional objectives.

    Magdalena
    Smyk-Szymańska
    Lucas
    van der Velde
    Joanna
    Tyrowicz
  • (Gender) Tone at the top: the effects of gender board diversity on gender wage inequality in Europe

    We address the gender wage gap in Europe, focusing on the impact of female representation in executive and non-executive boards. We use a novel dataset to identify gender board diversity across European firms, which covers a comprehensive sample of private firms in addition to publicly listed ones. Our study spans three waves of the Structure of Earnings Survey, covering 26 countries and multiple industries. Despite low prevalence of female representation and the complex nature of gender wage inequality, our findings reveal a robust causal link: increased gender diversity significantly decreases the adjusted gender wage gap. We also demonstrate that to meaningfully impact gender wage gaps, the presence of a single female representative in leadership is insufficient.

    Lucas
    van der Velde
    Joanna
    Tyrowicz
  • Incentivizing participation in an Internet-based survey

    Internet-based surveys provide data for social research for many years right now. Pandemic times sped up need for such sources, making seeking for effective ways to attract participants, especially in the panel studies, particularly important. In this study, we experiment on the existing panel study to test effectiveness of financial and non-financial incentives to participate in the subsequent wave of the Internet-based survey.

    The experimental treatments were about to test several dimensions of such incentives. We compare whether when the reward is provided - before or after completing the survey - differentiate willingness to participate again. We test whether the fact that the reward is certain in comparison to a lottery with the same expected value makes a difference for participants. Then, we also test whether high stake in the lottery attract more current participants.

    Not only financial incentives were tested. We also incentivized participants by providing them a motivational paragraph either highlighting what is going to be gained thanks to their participation, or what will be lost if they resign (in comparison to a neutral message).

     

    Magdalena
    Smyk-Szymańska
    Lucas
    van der Velde
  • Paying for ideal discretion: a framed field experiment on working time arrangements

    The notion of ideal worker necessitates being available at the discretion of the employer in terms of time. By contrast, the ability to set one's own schedule is widely considered a cornerstone of work-life balance and job satisfaction. We provide causal evidence on the pecuniary and social valuation of the discretion to decide about working schedules. We embed our study in the context of gender and compare employee-initiated and employer-initiated request for a change towards more discretion over working hours. We show that employer-initiated availability should be reflected in higher wages, but the premium is small. There appears to be no penalty to employee-initiated request for autonomy to decide about working schedules. While our results lend support to the ideal worker model, they cast doubt on explanations linking  gender wage inequality to labor market flexibility.

    Magdalena
    Smyk-Szymańska
    Lucas
    van der Velde
    Joanna
    Tyrowicz
  • Will working from home eventually work? Revisiting survey evidence with an information experiment

    We provide survey subjects with a mild information treatment about consequences of working from home (WFH) for productivity, life satisfaction and career prospects. With a spiking prevalence of WFH during the covid-19 pandemic, existing research utilizes stated preferences for WFH from surveys to argue that workers' preferences were permanently shifted. We put into empirical test the stability of stated preferences for WFH. We find robust treatment effects for stated preference for WFH, attitude towards WFH as well as self-assessed changes in productivity

    Magdalena
    Smyk-Szymańska
    Lucas
    van der Velde
    Joanna
    Tyrowicz
20/Mar/2018
WSE internal seminar
  • Estimates of the gender employment gap

    This data contains the estimates of gender employment gaps on nearly 1600 micro databases from over 40 countries, spanning from Kazakhstan to Spain and covering 30 years of history. The estimates of gender employment gap are adjusted for individual characteristics. We use this data to ask if the existing instruments are sufficient to further reduce the gender inequality in employment.

  • Gender wage gaps around EU and across methods

    Gender wage gaps are typically measured by the means of decomposition. Proliferation of methods makes the choice of the correct estimator for a given data a conceptual challenge, especially if data availability necessitates simplifications. The challenge lies in accounting for observable differences adequately, which in itself is not only a data issue, but also a conceptual issue. Ideally, one would want to compare men and women actually “alike” in terms of all relevant characteristics, including hours effectively worked, commitment, talent.

  • Language and (the estimates of) the gender wage gap

    In this paper we link the estimates of the gender wage gap with the gender sensitivity of the language spoken in a given country. We find that nations with more gender neutral languages tend to be characterized by lower estimates of GWG. The results are robust to a number of sensitivity checks.

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