jtyrowicz

Opublikowane | Published

2024
Gender board diversity across Europe throughout four decades | Nature Scientific Data

We present a Gender Board Diversity Dataset (GBDD), which provides a cross-country perspective on women in management and supervisory boards that spans between 1985 and 2020. The data covers 43 European countries and accounts for private companies in addition to the stock-listed ones. GBBD was created using firm-level Orbis data. Our measures are based on a sample of more than 28 million unique firms observed for nearly seven years on average and reporting data about nearly 59 million individuals on management and supervisory boards. We provide the measures at the level of industry, country and year (the firm-level data is proprietary). We provide three measures. The first is the share of women among all board members in a given industry, country, and year. The second one is the average of the shares of women across firms in a given industry, country and year. We also provide a new measure: the share of firms in a given industry, country and year which report no single woman on their board(s).

 

Replication codes | Data

Hubert
Drążkowski
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Sebastian
Zalas
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
Structural change and inequality in general equilibrium | Economics of Transition & Institutional Change

We study the evolution of wealth inequality in an economy undergoing structural change. Economic intuition hints that structural change should imply increased income inequality, at least transiently. Economic intuition is more ambiguous for the effects on wealth inequality. On the one hand, increased dispersion in incomes implies increased dispersion in the ability to accumulate wealth across individuals. On the other hand, workers experience greater uncertainty, which may push them to more precautionary savings, which works towards equalizing wealth distribution. The net effect of these two opposing forces is essentially an empirical question. We build an overlapping generations model which features heterogeneous sectors and workers. Using this model, we quantify the role of demographics and the structural change in the evolution of wealth inequality in Poland as of 1990.

Krzysztof
Makarski
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Jan
Lutyński
Pension reforms and couples’ labor supply decisions | Labour Economics

To determine how wives’ and husbands’ retirement options affect their spouses’ (and their own) labor supply decisions, we exploit (early) retirement cutoffs by way of a regression discontinuity design. Several German pension reforms since the early 1990s have gradually raised women’s retirement age from 60 to 65, but also increased ages for several early retirement pathways affecting both sexes. We use German Socio-Economic Panel data for a sample of couples aged 50 to 69 whose retirement eligibility occurred (i) prior to the reforms, (ii) during the transition years, and (iii) after the major set of reforms. We find that, prior to the reforms, when several retirement options were available to both husbands and wives, both react almost symmetrically to their spouse reaching an early retirement age, that is both husband and wife decrease their labor supply by about 5 percentage points when the spouse reaches age 60). This speaks in favor of leisure complementarities. However, after the set of reforms, when retiring early was much more difficult, we find no more significant labor supply reaction to the spouse reaching a retirement age, whereas reaching one’s own retirement age still triggers a significant reaction in labor supply. Our results may explain some of the diverse findings in the literature on asymmetric reactions between husbands and wives to their spouse reaching a retirement age: such reactions may in large parts depend on how flexibly workers are able to retire.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Fiscal incentives to pension savings - are they efficient? | Journal of Pension Economics and Finance

Financing consumption of the elderly in the face of the projected increase in life expectancy is a key challenge for economic policy. Moreover, standard structural models with fully rational agents suggest that about 50-60 percent of old-age consumption is financed with voluntary savings, even in the presence of a fairly generous public pension system. This is clearly inconsistent with either the data, or the alarming simulations of old-age poverty in the years to come. Old-age saving (OAS) schemes are widely used policy instruments to address this challenge, but structural evaluations of such instruments remain rare. We develop a framework with incompletely rational agents: lacking financial literacy and experiencing commitment difficulties. We study a broad selection of OAS schemes and find that they raise welfare of financially illiterate agents and to a lesser extent improve welfare of agents with a high degree of time inconsistency. They also reduce the incidence of poverty at old age. Unfortunately, these instruments are fiscally costly, induce considerable crowd-out and direct fiscal transfers mostly to those agents, who need it the least.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Krzysztof
Makarski
Artur
Rutkowski
Welfare effects of fiscal policy in reforming the pension system | Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control

Pension system reforms imply substantial redistribution between cohorts and within cohorts. They also implicitly affect the scope of risk sharing in societies. Linking pensions to individual incomes increases efficiency but reduces the insurance motive implicit in Beveridgean systems. The existing view in the literature argues that the insurance motive dominates the efficiency gains when evaluating the welfare effects. We show that this result is not universal: there exist ways to increase efficiency or compensate the loss of insurance, assuring welfare gains from pension system reform even in economies with uninsurable idiosyncratic income shocks. The fiscal closure, which necessarily accompanies the changes in the pension system, may boost efficiency and/or make up for lower insurance in the pension system. Indeed, fiscal closures inherently interact with the effects of pension system reform, counteracting or reinforcing the original effects. By analyzing a variety of fiscal closures, we reconcile our result with the earlier literature. We also study the political economy context and show that political support is feasible depending on the fiscal closure.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Krzysztof
Makarski
Oliwia
Komada
Internet piracy and book sales: a field experiment | Journal of the Economic Science Association

We report the results of an experimental study analyzing the effects of Internet piracy on book sales. We conducted a year-long controlled large-scale field experiment with pre-treatment pair matching. Half of the book titles received experimental treatment, in which a specialized agency would immediately remove any unauthorized copy appearing on the Internet. For the other half we merely registered such occurrences, but no countermeasures were taken. For all the titles we obtained print and e-book sales statistics from the publishers. We find that removal of unauthorized copies was an effective method of curbing piracy, but this had no bearing on legal sales.

Wojciech
Hardy
Michał
Krawczyk
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Inequality in OLG economy with endogenous structural change | Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics

We study the evolution of income and wealth inequality in an economy undergoing endogenous structural change with imperfect labor mobility. Our economy features two sectors: services and manufacturing. With faster TFP growth in manufacturing, labor reallocates from manufacturing to services. This reallocation is slower due to labor mobility frictions, which in turn, raises relative wages in services. As a result, income inequality is higher. Moreover, we study the impact of structural change on wealth inequality. Its economic intuition is more ambiguous. On the one hand, increased income dispersion implies increased dispersion in the ability to accumulate wealth across individuals. On the other hand, younger workers who hold the least assets are the most mobile across sectors. Their incomes are improved, which boosts their savings, which works towards equalizing wealth distribution. The consequence of these changes can by only verified with a computational model. To this end we construct and an overlapping generations model with two sectors: manufacturing and services. Our model also features heterogeneous individuals. With our model we are able to show how structural change affected the evolution of income and wealth inequality in Poland as of 1990.%Furthermore, we argue that the effects of structural change are stronger in economies undergoing a demographic transition.

Krzysztof
Makarski
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Preference for redistribution during structural change with labor mobility frictions | European Journal of Political Economy

Thorough structural change occurs periodically across world economies. In a parsimonious overlapping generation setup with political economy, we present a novel result: structural change not only exacerbates the rise in inequality but also strengthens the preference for redistribution. Labor mobility frictions are instrumental in this mechanism.

Krzysztof
Makarski
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Central planning casts long shadows: new evidence on misallocation and growth | Post-Soviet Affairs

We analyze the link between resource misallocation and subsequent long-run economic growth. We use two unique and novel sources of data for Poland and measure misallocation inherited from the period of central planning, i.e. period where input prices did not determine the use of inputs at firm, industry and country level. We assess sectoral, regional and cohort dimension of the inputs misallocation. We then show that undercapitalization was more prevalent that overcapitalization, and that it was due mostly to the firm and sector level variation in factor inputs. Given this insight, subsequent reallocation of the resources required shifting of inputs not only between firms, but also between sectors: a process which is relatively more prone to frictions due to specialization and information. When analyzing the link to the rate of growth once market mechanisms were reinstated, we find that regions with more misaligned firms (especially in terms of undercapitalization) experienced lower subsequent economic growth. This result proves highly robust, even three decades since the market mechanisms were reinstated.

This paper utilizes our novel dataset on survival of all state manufacturing plants from 1988, details here. The full replication package is available here.

In this paper, we received wonderful research assistance from Peter Szewczyk.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Jan
Hagemejer
Political (in)stability of funded pension systems | Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control

We analyze the political stability social security reforms which introduce a funded pillar (a.k.a. privatizations). We consider an economy populated by overlapping generations and intra-cohort heterogeneity, which introduces a funded pillar. This reform is efficient in Kaldor-Hicks sense and has political support. Subsequently, agents vote on abolishing the funded system, capturing the accumulated pension wealth, and replacing it with the pay-as-you-go scheme, i.e. “unprivatizing” the pension system. We show that even if such reform reduces welfare in the long run, the distribution of benefits across cohorts along the transition path implies that “unprivatizing” social security is always politically favored. We conclude that property rights definition over retirement savings may be of crucial importance for determining the stability of retirement systems with a funded pillar. 

Some ideas underlying this paper were originally started as a part of MODELLING project, but with the time, it evolved in terms of research question. Now, it has a new theoretical setup, and it features heterogeneous agents framework.

The full replication package may be found in this GitHub repository.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Krzysztof
Makarski
Oliwia
Komada
Structural change and misallocation. Firm-level evidence from Poland | Economics of Transition

Early transition literature linked large number of firm failures with the inability to overcome the pre-transition misallocation of resources, i.e. the inadequate capital-labor ratio. We look at the link between misallocation and firm survival using a rich firm-level dataset of over 1600 manufacturing plants established in a centrally planned economy after 1945. Our duration models include the standard Olley-Pakes misallocation measures as well as firm-level counterfactual level of capital that takes into account the present day market allocation and productivity. We show that i) misallocation was rather a firm-level than sector-level phenomenon and more importantly ii) it did not have a sizeable effect on the actual firm survival. Moreover, privatization tends to be negatively related to firm survival. This may imply both inappropriate self-selection into privatization programs and possibly inadequate implementation of the privatization.

This paper utilizes our novel dataset on survival of all state manufacturing plants from 1988, details here.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Jan
Hagemejer
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
Digital piracy and the perception of price fairness. Evidence from a field experiment | Journal of Cultural Economics

We study a relationship between perceived price fairness and digital piracy. In a large-scale field experiment on customers of a leading ebook store we employ the Bayesian Truth Serum to elicit the information on acquiring books from unauthorized sources (often referred to as digital piracy). We provide empirical evidence in support of the conjecture that willingness to ‘pirate’ is associated with having experienced subjective overpricing. We propose and verify the relevance of two mechanisms behind this link: reactance theory and moral cleansing/licensing. The results indicate that pricing policy perceived as fair may reduce the scope for digital piracy.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Michał
Krawczyk
Anna
Kukla-Gryz
All on board? New evidence on board gender diversity from a large panel of firms | European Management Journal

Using a unique database of over 20 million firms over two decades, we examine the industry sector and national institution drivers of the prevalence of women directors on supervisory and management boards in both public and private firms across 41 advanced and emerging European economies. We demonstrate that gender board diversity has generally increased, yet women remain rare in both boards of firms in Europe: approximately 70% have no women directors on their supervisory boards, and 60% have no women directors on management boards. We leverage institutional and resource dependency theoretical frameworks to demonstrate that few systematic factors are associated with greater gender diversity for both supervisory and management boards among both private and public firms: the same factor may exhibit a positive correlation to a management board, and a negative correlation to a supervisory board, or vice versa. We interpret these findings as evidence that country-level gender equality and cultural institutions exhibit differentiated correlations with the presence of women directors in management and supervisory boards. We also find little evidence that sector-level competition and innovativeness are systematically associated with the presence of women on either board in either group of firms.

P.S. Not to brag, but we were a runner up (finalist) in the Emerald Best International Symposium Award of the 2019 Academy of Management Annual Meeting.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Jakub
Mazurek
A new instrument for measuring the local causal effect of privatization on firm performance | Gospodarka Narodowa

Despite an apparent consensus in the literature that privatization leads universally to an increase in firm performance, the problem of endogeneity bias is profound and has been emphasized in a number of meta-analyses. We propose a new instrument to address the endogeneity bias and apply it Polish medium and large firms over 1995-2008. We find that improvement in firm performance is not universal, in particular, we find no improvement among manufacturing firms privatized to domestic investors. 

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Jan
Hagemejer
Friends or foes? A meta-analysis of the link between "online piracy” and sales of cultural goods | Information Economics and Policy

Over the past decade or so, the literature has sprung in analyses of the impact the so-called online or digital "piracy" has on sales. Since theory posits both positive and negative effects are possible, the question remains purely empirical. Consequently, there is a variety of published articles and working papers arguing in both ways, many of which attempt to account for the challenge of providing a reliable and causal effect. The objective of this survey is to review and discuss the accomplishments of the field so far. We also provide a tentative meta-analysis. Despite the multiplicity of measures and methods used we argue that the literature as a whole fails to reject the null hypothesis of no effects on sales.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Michał
Krawczyk
Wojciech
Hardy
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
Striking a balance: optimal tax policy with labor market duality | Journal of Macroeconomics

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model in which firms may evade the employer contribution component of social security taxes by offering some workers “secondary contracts”. When calibrated, the model yields estimates of secondary labor market participation consistent with empirical evidence for the EU14 countries and the US. We investigate the optimal mix of the avoidable and unavoidable components of labor taxes and analyze the fiscal and macroeconomic effects of bringing the composition to the welfare optimum. We find that partial labor tax evasion makes tax revenues more elastic, but full tax compliance need not be a welfare enhancing policy mix.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Ryszard
Kokoszczyński
Gilbert
Mbara
Online and physical appropriation: evidence from a vignette experiment on copyright infringement | Behaviour and Information Technology

This study employs a vignette experiment to inquire, which features of online  "piracy" make it ethically discernible from a traditional theft. This question is pertinent since the social norm concerning traditional theft is starkly different from the evidence on ethical evaluation of online "piracy". We specifically distinguish between contextual features of theft, such as for example the physical loss of an item, breach of protection, availability of alternatives, emotional proximity to the victim of theft, etc. We find that some of these dimensions have more weight in ethical judgment, but there are no clear differences between online and traditional theft which could explain discrepancy in the frequency of commitment.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Michał
Krawczyk
Wojciech
Hardy
A regression discontinuity evaluation of reducing early retirement eligibility in Poland | International Journal of Manpower

The reform introduced in Poland in 2009 substantially and abruptly reduced the number of workers eligible for early retirement. This paper evaluates the causal effects of this reform on labor force participation and exit to retirement. We use rich rotating panel from the Polish Labor Force Survey and exploit the discontinuity imposed by this reform. We find a statistically significant, but economically small discontinuity at the timing of the reform. The placebo test shows no similar effects in earlier or later quarters, but in a vast majority of specifications the discontinuity is not larger for the treated individuals, i.e. those whose occupation lost eligibility. We interpret these results as follows: the changes in the eligibility criteria were not instrumental in fostering the participation rates among the affected cohort, i.e. the immediate contribution to increased labor force participation of these cohorts is not economically large.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Oliwia
Komada
Paweł
Strzelecki
Wage inequality and structural change | Social Indicators Research

Abstract

Income inequality in the context of large structural change has received a lot of attention in the literature, but most studies relied on household post-transfer inequality measures. This study utilizes a novel and fairly comprehensive collection of micro data sets from between 1980’s and 2010 for both advanced market economies and economies undergoing transition from central planning to market based system. We show that wage inequality was initially lower in transition economies and immediately upon the change of the economic system surpassed the levels observed in advanced economies. We find a very weak link between structural change and wages in both advanced and post-transition economies, despite the predictions from skill-biased technological change literature. The decomposition of changes in wage inequality into a part attributable to changes in characteristics (mainly education) and a part attributable to changes in rewards does not yield any leading factors.

Data

This paper uses a large collection of individual level data, described in detail in the paper. We acquired over 1600 individual level data for 44 countries over three decades. Contact us if you would want to utilize this vast collection of data. The inequality measures are shared here.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Magdalena
Smyk-Szymańska
Fiscal and welfare effects of raised fertility: OLG model estimates | Population and Development Review

In the context of the second demographic transition, many countries consider rising fertility through pro-family polices as a potentially viable solution to the fiscal pressure stemming from longevity. However, an increased number of births implies private and immediate costs, whereas the gains are not likely to surface until later and appear via internalizing the public benefits of younger and larger population. Hence, quantification of the net effects remains a challenge. We propose using an overlapping generations model with a rich family structure to quantify the effects of increased birth rates. We analyze the overall macroeconomic and welfare effects as well as the distribution of these effects across cohorts and study the sensitivity of the final effects to the assumed target value and path of increased fertility. We find that fiscal effects are positive but, even in the case of relatively large fertility increase, they are small. The sign and the size of both welfare and fiscal effects depend substantially on the patterns of increased fertility: if increased fertility occurs via lower childlessness, the fiscal effects are smaller and welfare effects are more likely to be negative than in the case of the intensive margin adjustments.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Krzysztof
Makarski
Magda
Malec
On welfare effects of increasing retirement age | Journal of Policy Modelling

We develop an OLG model with realistic assumptions about longevity to analyze the welfare effects of raising the retirement age. We look at a scenario where an economy has a pay-as-you-go defined benefit scheme and compare it to a scenario with defined contribution schemes (funded or notional). We show that, initially, in both types of pension system schemes the majority of welfare effects comes from adjustments in taxes and/or prices. After the transition period, welfare effects are predominantly generated by the preference for smoothing inherent in many widely used models. We also show that although incentives differ between defined benefit and defined contribution systems, the welfare effects are of comparable magnitude under both schemes. We provide an explanation for this counter-intuitive result.

An earlier version of this text was circulated under a title "Does social security reform reduce gains from increasing the retirement age?". This earlier version was coauthored by Karolina Goraus.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Krzysztof
Makarski
Illusory gains from privatizing social security when reform is politically unstable | Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy

With compulsory funded public social security systems, pension savings constitute a large stock of assets. In this paper we consider an economy populated by overlapping generations, which may decide about abolishing the funded system and replacing it with the pay-as-you-go scheme (i.e. unprivatizing the pension system). We compare politically stable as well as politically unstable reforms and show that even if the funded system is overall welfare enhancing, the cohort distribution of benefits along the transition path may turn privatizing social security politically unsustainable.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Krzysztof
Makarski
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
File sharing as conditional cooperation: evidence from a framed field experiment | Applied Economics Letters

We investigate willingness to share and download cultural content by implementing a novel "piracy game" modelled after standard public good games. Subjects' decisions have real consequence, as they are rewarded with individual "transfer" on a file-sharing service. We find that willingness to share depends positively on the sharing by others. Interestingly, however, this tendency does not seem to be associated with reciprocity or other-regarding social preferences. We employ several measures of sharing - from self-reporting to experimental - and incorporate to the analysis other factors which may explain the autonomous willingness to share, irrespective of the group effects. We find that conditional cooperation in content sharing is fairly prevalent, but unrelated to personality traits, attitude towards risk, attitude towards the other, marginal valuation, as well as socio-demographic characteristics.

Wojciech
Hardy
Michał
Krawczyk
Joanna
Tyrowicz
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
Inequality in an OLG economy with intra-cohort heterogeneity and an obligatory pension system | Journal of Economic Inequality

While the inequalities of endowments are widely recognized as areas of policy intervention, the dispersion in preferences may also imply inequalities of outcomes. In this paper, we analyze the inequalities in an OLG model with obligatory pension systems. We model both policy relevant pension systems (a defined benefit system — DB — and a transition from a DB to a defined contribution system, DC). We introduce within cohort heterogeneity of endowments (individual productivities) and heterogeneity of preferences (preference for leisure and time preference). We introduce two policy instruments, which are widely used: a contribution cap and a minimum pension. In theory these instruments affect both the incentives to work and the incentives to save for the retirement with different strength and via different channels, but the actual effect attributable to these policy instruments cannot be judged in an environment with a single representative agent. We show four main results. First, longevity increases aggregate consumption inequalities substantially in both pension systems, whereas the effect of a pension system reform works to reinforce the consumption inequalities and reduce the wealth inequalities. Second, the contribution cap has negligible effect on inequalities, but the role for minimum pension benefit guarantee is more pronounced. Third, the reduction in inequalities due to minimum pension benefit guarantee is achieved with virtually no effect on capital accumulation. Finally, the minimum pension benefit guarantee addresses mostly the inequalities which stem from differentiated endowments and not those that stem from differentiated preferences.

Our data are shared here.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Krzysztof
Makarski
Zmienne pominięte a luka płacowa kobiet – wnioski z analizy uwzględniającej wydajność | Gospodarka Narodowa

Celem artykułu jest zmierzenie skali obciążenia oszacowań luki płacowej kobiet, w warunkach gdy wydajność nie jest obserwowalna. Korzystamy z unikatowych danych jednostkowych o wydajności i wynagrodzeniach dla 2 292 pracowników polskiej firmy zajmującej się handlem detalicznym w branży odzieżowej. Korzystamy z parametrycznych metod dekompozycji do oszacowania skorygowanej luki płacowej z uwzględnieniem i bez uwzględnienia miar wydajności. Wyniki wskazują, że obciążenie wynikające z pominięcia miar wydajności jest istotne statystycznie i wysokie w sensie ekonomicznym, w niektórych specyfikacjach zasadniczo zmieniając wnioskowanie o występowaniu nieuzasadnionej różnicy w wynagrodzeniach pomiędzy kobietami i mężczyznami. Większość oszacowań tzw. skorygowanej luki płacowej nie uwzględnia miar produktywności, głównie z uwagi na brak stosownych miar w dostępnych zbiorach. Choć nasze wyniki dotyczą tylko dla jednego przedsiębiorstwa, dają przesłanki by stwierdzić, że oszacowania, którymi posługuje się literatura, cechować może znaczne obciążenie.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
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
Talent workers as entrepreneurs: a new approach to aspirational self-employment | Bank i Kredyt

What is necessary to make entrepreneurship sector successful? It seems like two key factors in this matter are quantity of financial capital and quality of human capital. So far, studies on innovative firms were rather focused on spending on resources, and not on qualification of people who are entering entrepreneurship sector. Using concept of so-called talent workers (Hsieh et al. 2013) we check who is entering self-employment in Poland. Our question is whether people who enter self-employment are more likely to create successful businesses. The analysis is based on the labor force survey panel data for Poland for over a decade between 2001 and 2013. We found that talent workers were more likely to become self-employed in this period. Results are robust on two possibly confounding effects – within sector mobility and productivity of workers before entering self-employment.

Barbara
Liberda
Magdalena
Smyk-Szymańska
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Do pirates play fair? Ethical judgment of unauthorized sports broadcasts | Behaviour & Information Technology

Ethical norms on the Internet are believed to be more permissive than in the ‘real’ world and this belief often serves as an explanation for the prevalence of the so-called digital “piracy”. In this study we provide evidence from a vignette experiment that contradicts this claim. Analyzing the case of sports broadcast, we compare explicitly the ethical judgment of legal and illegal sharing in the offline and online context. We find that the norms concerning legality, availability of alternatives and deriving material benefits from sharing content do not differ substantially between the virtual and real worlds. We also test explicitly for the role of legal awareness and find that emphasizing what is prohibited (copyright infringement) is less effective than focusing on what is permitted (fair use) in reducing the disparity between legal and ethical norms.

Wojciech
Hardy
Michał
Krawczyk
Anna
Kukla-Gryz
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Czynniki wpływające na czas poszukiwania pierwszego zatrudnienia | Gospodarka Narodowa

This article aims to investigate factors that influence the time needed for young people to find their first job. Using data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), a Cox proportional hazard model was estimated for all respondents and for five subgroups of respondents coming from countries with similar labor markets. The results for all the respondents show that factors influencing the time needed for young people to find their first job are in line with the literature. In the case of the five subgroups, there are significant differences between countries in terms of these factors. It seems that, in order to shorten the time needed for young people to find their first job, measures from labor markets with similar characteristics, where similar factors influence the process of people searching for work, should be applied. However, one should bear in mind that this process of “copying” may not be completely successful.

Stanisław
Cichocki
Joanna
Tyrowicz
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
Analyzing the efficiency of the pension reform: the role for the welfare effects of fiscal closures | Macroeconomic Dynamics

Pension system reforms involve fiscal consequences. In practice, a variety of fiscal closures may be implemented, while not all of them involve the same extent of distortions. This paper develops an overlapping generations model to analyze the case of a shift from pay-as-you-go defined benefit system to a partly funded defined contribution system. We calibrate the system to mimic the economy of Poland, which actually implemented such reform in 1999. We analyze the efficiency of the reform with two main closure types: public debt and taxes. Regardless of the fiscal closure scenario this particular reform seems to be efficient in terms of welfare and enhances economic performance. Comparing the welfare of various closures we find that while labor taxation yields relatively higher welfare gain, public debt closure involves least need for the redistribution if capital pillar is to be implemented.

This paper was awarded Joseph A. Schumpeter Prize from Deutsche Bundesbank.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Krzysztof
Makarski
Jan
Hagemejer
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
Próba empirycznej weryfikacji hipotezy płac efektywnościowych w Polsce | Ekonomista

The efficiency wage hypothesis suggests that wages are higher than labor productivity in labor markets where workers may shirk. The paper presents an attempt to verify empirically prevalence of efficiency wages in Poland. We utilize Labor Force Survey data for the years 1995-2010. Our identification strategy relies on differences in residuals from the Mincer wage regression between movers (i.e. people changing jobs) and stayers (i.e. persons who did not change employment in the observational window). The results provide tentative confirmation to the prevalence of efficiency wages in Poland.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Reforming retirement age in DB and DC pension systems in an aging OLG economy with heterogenous agents | IZA Journal of Labor Policy

We analyze the effects of increasing the retirement age in two economies with overlapping generations and within cohort ex ante heterogeneity. The first economy has a defined benefit system and the second economy is in transition from a defined benefit to a defined contribution. We find that if increase in the retirement age is phased in a way that allows agents to adjust, welfare is not reduced and welfare effects have a similar magnitude and between cohort distribution in both types of the pension systems.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Krzysztof
Makarski
Marcin
Bielecki
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
We all do it, but are we willing to admit? Incentivizing digital pirates’ confessions | Applied Economics Letters

In this study, we try to assess the prevalence of illicit downloading in the market of audio books and the willingness to admit to such practices. We compare the Bayesian Truth Serum (Prelec, 2004) treatment in which truthful responses and precise estimates are rewarded to the control treatment with a flat participation fee. We find a sizable treatment effect – incentivized ‘pirates’ admit approximately 60% more often than the nonincentivized ones.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Michał
Krawczyk
Anna
Kukla-Gryz
„Piracy is not theft!” Is it just students who think so? | Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics

A fair share of studies analyzing “online piracy” are based on easily accessible student samples. However, it has been argued that the youths tend to have more lax social and ethical norms concerning both property rights and online behavior. In this study we present the results of a vignette experiment, i.e. a scenario survey where responders are asked to provide an ethical judgment on different forms of unauthorized acquisition of a full season of a popular TV series described in a number of hypothetical stories. The survey is conducted both on a student sample and on a sample of individuals who openly endorse protection of intellectual property rights for cultural goods. In this way we can investigate the possibly limited external validity of studies relying solely on the student samples. The vignette experiment concerned ethical evaluation of unauthorized acquisition of cultural content in both virtual and real context and was focused on six dimensions previously identified as relevant to the ethical judgment. Surprisingly, we found that the rules for the ethical judgment do not differ between our samples, suggesting that the social norms on “online piracy” follow similar patterns in student and in other populations. Findings from studies relying on ethical or moral judgments of students may thus be valid in a much broader population.

Wojciech
Hardy
Michał
Krawczyk
Anna
Kukla-Gryz
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Unprivatizing the pension system: The case of Poland | Applied Economics | Applied Economics

In many countries, the fiscal tension associated with the global financial crisis brings about the discussion about unprivatizing the social security system. This article employs an Overlapping Generations model to assess ex ante the effects of such changes to the pension reform in Poland from 1999 as implemented in 2011 and in 2013. We simulate the behaviour of the economy without the implemented/proposed changes and compare it to a status quo defined by the reform from 1999. We find that the changes implemented in 2011 and in 2013 are detrimental to welfare. The effects on capital and output are small and depend on the selected fiscal closure. Implied effective replacement rates are lower. These findings are robust to time inconsistency. The shortsightedness of the governments imposes welfare costs.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Krzysztof
Makarski
Jan
Hagemejer
Decreasing fertility vs increasing longevity: raising the retirement age in the context of ageing processes | Economic Modelling

Given the decreasing fertility and increasing longevity, in many countries the policy debate emphasizes the role of either raising the minimum eligible retirement age (MERA) or raising fertility to avoid adverse changes in the population structure. In this paper we evaluate the welfare and macroeconomic effects of increasing the retirement age for various demographic scenarios under three major pension systems (defined benefit, notionally defined contribution and funded defined contribution). We compare populations with decreasing fertility, increasing longevity and one subject to both of these changes, and show that the welfare effects of raising MERA stem mainly from longevity. We show that – for increasing longevity – raising the retirement age is universally welfare enhancing for all living and future cohorts, regardless of the pension system and fertility. Finally, we show scope for further welfare gains if productivity is relatively high at old ages.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Jan
Hagemejer
Karolina
Goraus
Marcin
Bielecki
Small assumptions (can) have a large bearing: evaluating pension system reforms with OLG models | Economic Modelling

The objective of this paper is to inquire the consequences of some simplifying assumptions typically made in the overlapping generations (OLG) models of pension systems and pension system reforms. This literature is largely driven by policy motivations. Consequently, the majority of the papers is extremely detailed in the dimension under scrutiny. On the other hand, complexity of general equilibrium OLG modeling necessitates some simplifications in the model. We run a series of experiments in which the same reform in the same economy is modeled with six different sets of assumptions concerning the shape of the utility function, time inconsistency, bequests? redistribution, labor supply decisions and internalizing the linkage between social security contributions and benefits in these decisions as well as public spending. We find that these assumptions significantly affect both the size and the sign of the macroeconomic and welfare measures of policy effects with the order of magnitude comparable to the reform itself.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Krzysztof
Makarski
Jan
Hagemejer
Karolina
Goraus
Marcin
Bielecki
Gender Wage Gap in Poland – Can It Be Explained by Differences in Observable Characteristics? | Ekonomia

The raw gender wage gap over the period 1995-2012 amounts to app. 9% of hourly wage and is fairly stable. However, the raw gap does not account for differences in endowments between genders. In fact, the adjusted wage gap amounts to as much as 20% on average over the analysed period and shows some cyclical properties. The estimates of adjusted gender wage gap do not seem to exhibit any long-term trends, which suggest that in general neither demographic changes nor the progressing transition underlie the phenomenon of unequal pay for the same work among men and women.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Karolina
Goraus
Age-productivity patterns in talent occupations for men and women: a decomposition | Post-Communist Economies

One could expect that in the so-called talent occupations, while access to these professions may differ between men and women, the gender wage gap should actually be smaller owing to the high relevance of human capital quality. Wage regressions typically suggest an inverted U-shaped age–productivity pattern. However, such analyses confuse age, cohort and year effects. Deaton decomposition allows us to disentangle these effects. We apply this method to investigate the age–productivity pattern for the so-called ‘talent’ occupations. Using data from a transition economy (Poland) we find that talent occupations indeed have a steeper age–productivity pattern. However, gender differences are larger for talent occupations than for general occupations.

Barbara
Liberda
Magdalena
Smyk-Szymańska
Joanna
Tyrowicz

W toku | Work in progress

2024
Revisiting gender board diversity and firm performance

We study the effects of gender board diversity on firm performance. We use novel and rich firm-level data covering over 400 thousand private and public firms spanning the years 1995-2020 in Europe. We augment a standard TFP estimation with firm fixed effects to explore the role of gender board diversity. We construct a shift-share instrument for gender board diversity and find that increasing the share of women on boards is conducive to better economic performance. The results prove robust to a variety of sensitivity analysis. This outcome is driven primarily by firms from the service sector and by smaller firms. The impact was stronger during the early years of our sample.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Sebastian
Zalas
Katarzyna
Bech
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 tokenism in corporate boardrooms in Europe

While women constitute 25% of the board members in private European corporations, firms with no women are dominant and merely 10% of firms report more than one woman in the boardroom. We leverage new data, covering 5 million companies from 29 European countries spanning 1986-2020. Using this data, we provide novel stylized facts about the phenomenon of token women in European corporate boardrooms. We emphasize the differences between two types of situation when the corporate boardroom hosts a singular woman: the appointment of the first woman and the barriers to further rise in diversity. We thus contribute to improving our understanding of the conflict between the tokenism hypothesis and diversity spillover hypothesis.

Hubert
Drążkowski
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Gender board diversity spillovers and the public eye

A range of policy recommendations mandating gender board quotas is based on the idea that "women help women". We analyze potential gender diversity spillovers from supervisory to top managerial positions over three decades in Europe. Contrary to previous studies which worked with stock listed firms or were region locked, we use a large data base of circa 2 000 000 firms. We find evidence that women do not help women in corporate Europe, unless the firm is stock listed. Only within public firms, going from no woman to at least one woman on supervisory position is associated with a 10-15% higher probability of appointing at least one woman to the executive position. This pattern aligns with signaling, stakeholder and institutional theories, suggesting that external visibility influences corporate gender diversity practices. The study implies that diversity policies, while impactfull in public firms, might have limited effectiveness in promoting gender diversity in corporate Europe.

Hubert
Drążkowski
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
Implicit gender quota in European boardrooms

We test for implicit gender quotas in the boardroom. We use novel dataset covering 11 million European corporations over three decades. We find that -- accounting for the pool of available candidates -- gender-blind hiring of women to board positions is highly improbable. Implicit quotas refer to unspoken policies or practices that result in a specific gender composition. Tokenism is one such example: in order to project the reputation of supporting diversity, an organization may prefer to invite a single representative of minority (or representatives of minorities) without endowing them with actual decision power.

Hubert
Drążkowski
Joanna
Tyrowicz
The European Unemployment Puzzle: implications from population aging

We study the link between the evolving age structure of the working population and unemployment. We build a large New Keynesian OLG model with a realistic age structure, labor market frictions, sticky prices and aggregate shocks. Once calibrated to the European economies, we use this model to provide comparative statics across past and contemporaneous age structures of the working population. Thus, we quantify the extent to which the response of labor markets to adverse TFP shocks and monetary policy shocks becomes muted with the aging of the working population. Our findings have important policy implications for European labor markets and beyond. For example, the working population is expected to further age in Europe, whereas the share of young workers will remain robust in the US. Our results suggest a partial reversal of the European-US unemployment puzzle.

Krzysztof
Makarski
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Sylwia
Radomska
Rising longevity and US wealth inequality

We offer a novel decomposition of wealth inequality and quantify principal factors determining changes in US wealth inequality. We show that the rise in inequality reflects mainly demographic factors related to rising life expectancy and associated increases in savings -- it is not per se evidence of growing inequity and a ”threat to society”. Importantly, the rise in inequality has been largely driven by differences between rather than within birth cohorts, a phenomenon that has gone largely unnoticed in the literature. Moreover, while changes in saving behavior mitigate the rise in wealth inequality, demographic factors increasingly amplify it. We discuss implications for policy and for structural modeling.

Krzysztof
Makarski
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Marcin
Lewandowski
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
Progressing towards efficiency: the role for labor tax progression in reforming social security

We study interactions between the progressive labor tax and the social security reform. Increasing longevity necessitates reforming social security due to raising the fiscal strain on the current systems. The current systems are redistributive, which provides (at least partial) insurance against idiosyncratic income shocks, but at the expense of labor supply distortions. Analogously, linking pensions to individual incomes reduces distortions associated with social security contributions, but ushers insurance loss. The existing view in the literature is that net outcome of such reform is negative. Contrary to this view, we show that progressive labor tax can partially substitute for the insurance loss when social security becomes less redistributive.

Krzysztof
Makarski
Oliwia
Komada
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
What shapes the US wealth distribution? Longevity vs income inequality

We study the role of longevity and rising income inequality in growth of wealth inequality in the U.S. during the past several decades. A rich body of literature documents a rise in income inequality and attributes growing wealth inequality in the United States to rising income inequality, including capital incomes. However, during the post-war period, the U.S. has experienced a colossal rise in life expectancy, especially the rise in probability to survive to old ages, the longevity. Through the lens of any standard overlapping generational model model, this rise in longevity would translate to a rise in wealth inequality due to two mechanisms. A permanent mechanism involves higher wealth accumulation at the peak for each subsequent birth cohort. A transitory mechanism stems from a rising share of individuals close to the peak of wealth accumulation (the so-called baby boomers generation).

Krzysztof
Makarski
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Piotr
Żoch
Are rushed privatizations substandard? Analyzing firm-level privatization under fiscal pressure

In this paper we provide the first analysis of whether rushed privatizations, usually carried out under fiscal duress, increase or decrease firms’ efficiency, scale of operation (size) and employment. Using a large panel of firm-level data from Poland over 1995-2015, we show that rushed privatization has negative efficiency, scale and employment effects relative to non-rush privatization. The negative effect of rushed privatization on the scale of operations and employment is even stronger than its negative effect on efficiency. Our results suggest that when policy makers resort to rushed privatization, they ought to weigh these negative effects against other expected effects (e.g. on fiscal revenue).

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Jan
Hagemejer
Jan
Svejnar
Estimating gender wage gap in the presence of efficiency wages - evidence from European data

Gender wage gap (adjusted for individual characteristics) as a phenomenon means that women are paid unjustifiably less than men, i.e. below their productivity. Meanwhile, efficiency wages as a phenomenon mean that a group of workers is paid in excess of productivity. However, productivity is typically unobservable, hence it is proxied by some observable characteristics. If efficiency wages are effective only in selected occupations and/or industries, and these happen to be dominated by men, measures of adjusted gender wage gaps will confound (possibly) below productivity compensating of women with above productivity efficiency wage prevalence. We propose to utilize endogenous switching models to estimate adjusted gender wage gaps. We find that without correction for the prevalence of efficiency wages, the estimates of the adjusted gender wage gaps tend to be substantially inflated.

Joanna
Tyrowicz
Katarzyna
Bech
Pushed into necessity? Labor market inequality and entrepreneurship of disadvantaged group

Theoretical literature on entrepreneurship hints that labor market inequality may constitute a relevant push factor for necessity self-employment, as opposed to aspirational self-employment. Drawing on empirical confirmation, this insight is used in many policy recommendations. We provide a new approach to test and quantify the link between labor market inequality and self-employment. We exploit rich and diverse international data on patterns of self-employment from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. We focus on measures of labor market inequality for women, utilizing estimates of adjusted gender wage and gender employment gap, comparable for a large selection of countries and years. Our results show that greater gender disparities in access to and in compensation for wage employment are associated with necessity self-employment, but the effect is small. We find no link for the aspirational self-employment.

Magdalena
Smyk-Szymańska
Joanna
Tyrowicz
Pushed by the crowd or pulled by the leaders? Peer effects in Pay-What-You-Want

Literature on charitable giving often finds that seed money matters: the example of a wealthy donor is followed by others (List and Lucking-Riley, 2002). Nearly all relevant theoretical accounts (e.g. that leaders possess superior information on quality of the project) seem to apply to the closely related environment of Pay-What-You-Want mechanisms as well. Yet, as far as we can tell, no empirical study has tested for that until now. To fill this gap, we analyze data from 16 campaigns of BookRage (an equivalent of Humble Bundle, offering bundles of e-books). We make use of the fact that a fixed number of currently highest contributions are always displayed (along with mean contribution and total amount raised). Thus a discontinuity may be expected: contributions that are displayed might directly affect subsequent donors’ behavior, in contrast to just slightly lower donations that are only observable as a (small) change in mean contribution. We find that the example of leaders makes no impact on willingness to purchase and amount paid. By contrast, the mean of past contributions has a positive impact on current contribution, yet a negative impact on the probability of contributing.

Michał
Krawczyk
Anna
Kukla-Gryz
Joanna
Tyrowicz
20/Mar/2018
WSE internal seminar

 

[Ekonomia instytucjonalna] | [Ekonomia pracy] | [Ekonomia pracy - IPS] | [Międzynarodowe stosunki gospodarcze] [Seminarium magisterskie] | [Seminarium licencjackie]

 

Andrzej Waligórski
Modlitwa laika (z cytatami z Tuwima i z Konopnickiej)

Panie! Najmędrszy z profesorów!
Chciej przyjąć wniosek mój paniczny:
zachowaj nas od Nikiforów w dziedzinach pozaartystycznych!
Niech żyją wolni i szczęśliwi, niech rzeźbią lub malują jaja,
lecz niech naiwny prymitywizm po innych pionach się nie szlaja.

Wszyscyśmy winni im uznanie, podziw dla formy i pomysłów,
lecz ty fachowców daj nam, Panie, do ekonomii i przemysłu.
Chmury nad nami rozpal w łunę, uderz nam w serca złotym dzwonem,
niech ruszą w kraj ogromnym tłumem kadry, dogłębnie wyszkolone.

O Panie, co telewizorów oczyma widzisz nas w całości,
deglomerację Nikiforów zechciej zarządzić w swej mądrości,
I weź jej ster w surowe dłonie, bo czas tracimy wciąż w nadmiarze,
błagając różne stare konie: - Pójdź, koniu, ja cię uczyć każę!

  • Ubóstwo w Polsce

    Dane dotyczące zasięgu ubóstwa w Polsce w latach 1993-2019. Miary policzono dla  emerytów, pracujących i rolników oraz wg typów gospodarstw domowch (dwoje pracujących rodziców, samodzielny rodzic, rodzina wielopokoleniowa z samodzielnym rodzicem, rodzina wielopokoleniowa z dwojgiem rodziców, samodzielnie gospodarujący emeryt i dwoje emerytów). Zastosowano definicje ubóstwa absolutnego i relatywnego, tak wg konsumpcji jak i wg dochodu. Obliczenia na podstawie danych z Badanie Budżetów Gospodarstw Domowych. 

  • 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.

  • Wage inequality and structural change

    In this project, we created a large set of wage inequality indicators. We used a large collection of individual level data. We acquired over 1600 individual level data for 44 countries over three decades. We provide several measures of wage inequality (Gini Index, mean log deviation, log of 90/10 percentiles, log of 90/50 percentiles, log of 50/10 percentiles, log of 75/25 percentiles) for each country and year.

  • 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.

  • Kalkulator emerytalny

    Aplikacja szacująca skutki reformy emerytalnej z 1999 oraz późniejszych zmian w systemie emerytalnym (2011 i 2013). Możesz samodzielnie dowolnie modyfikować założenia demograficzne i makroekonomiczne.

Systemy emerytalne, Społeczne

Społeczne

Systemy emerytalne

  • Fostering old-age saving under incomplete rationality

    87% of us are not Homo Oeconomicus. But we are not doomed to poverty at retirement!

  • Świat bez PPK byłby lepszy

    Najważniejszy  wniosek z ewaluacji projektu PPK: świat bez PPK jest lepszy niż świat z PPK. Pomimo dobrowolnego uczestnictwa, 74% obecnie żyjących traci na jego wprowadzeniu (w tym 96% emerytów).

  • Longevity and old-age poverty

    Many people think that they are cautious and taking proper care of their future. But the truth is that we do not. The scope of old-age poverty in six Central European countries is simply scary.

  • Przedziwne przypadki ZUS

    Ustawodawca (nieumyślnie) skonstruował system emerytalny tak, że jest on stale niezbilansowany. To znaczy, że w budżecie Zakładu Ubezpieczeń Społecznych jest i będzie zawsze za mało pieniędzy na wypłaty należnych emerytur. Brakujące środki musi finansować budżet państwa. Co jest problemem w ustawie o emeryturach i rentach wypłacanych z FUS, na podstawie której działa system emerytalny?

  • Niski wiek emerytalny, wysoka cena

    Polska się zestarzeje, zanim zdąży się wzbogacić – przed takim wyzwaniem właśnie stajemy. Co to znaczy ilościowo?

  • Obniżanie wieku

    Około 70% roczników urodzonych na przełomie lat 1970-tych i 1980-tych otrzyma świadczenie na poziomie emerytury minimalnej. Sfinansowanie tych (niskich!) emerytur i ich waloryzacja będzie wymagało np. podniesienia VAT o  ok. 2pp.

  • Emerytura – DIY

    Udostępniamy aplikację pozwalającą na samodzielne zreplikowanie (i udoskonalenie) badań GRAPE.

  • Ograniczanie OFE

    Spadną emerytury i dobrobyt. Ograniczenie OFE pozwoli na ograniczenie długu publicznego teraz, obciążając jednocześnie przyszłe pokolenia.

Rynek pracy