Åsa Rosén

Does Poaching Distort Training

We analyse the efficiency of the labour market outcome in a competitive search equilibrium model with endogenous turnover and endogenous general human capital formation. We show that search frictions do not distort training decisions if firms and their employees are able to coordinate efficiently, for instance, by using long-term contracts. In the absence of efficient coordination devices there is too much turnover and too little investments in general training. Nonetheless, the number of training firms and the amount of training provided are constrained optimal, and training subsidies therefore reduce welfare.

Search, Bargaining, and Employer Discrimination

This paper analyses Becker´s (1971) theory of employer discrimination within a search and wage-bargaining setting. Discriminatory firms pay workers who are discriminated against less, and apply stricter hiring-criteria to these workers. It is shown that the highest profits are realized by firms with a positive discrimination coefficient. Moreover, once ownership and control are separated, both highest profits and highest utility may be realized by firms with a positive discrimination coefficient. Thus, market forces, like entry and/or takeovers do not ensure that wage differentials due to employer discrimination will disappear.

Incentives in Competitive Search Equilibrium

This paper analyses the interaction between internal agency problems within firms and external search frictions when workers have private information. We show that the allocation of resources is determined by a modified Hosios Rule. We then analyze the effect of changes in the macro economic variables on the wage contract and the unemployment rate. We find that private information may increase the responsiveness of the unemployment rate to changes in productivity. The incentive power of the wage contracts is positively related to high productivity, low unemployment benefits and high search frictions.

Performance Pay and Adverse Selection

We study equilibrium wage contracts in a labour market with adverse selection and moral hazard. Firms offer incentive contracts to their employees to motivate them to exert effort. Providing incentives comes, however, at a cost, as it leads to misallocation of effort across tasks. With ex ante identical workers, the optimal wage contract is linear, and the equilibrium resource allocation optimal. With ex ante heterogenous workers, firms may increase the incentive power of the wage contract to attract the better workers. The resulting equilibrium is separating, in the sense that workers self-select on contracts. Furthermore, the contracts offered to the good workers are too high powered compared to the contracts that maximise welfare.

Fixed or Flexible? Wage Setting in Search Equilibrium

Why do some vacancies offer a posted wage whereas others offer a negotiable wage? The paper endogenizes the choice of wage policy in a search model with heterogeneous workers. In particular, we characterize the circumstances under which there exist an equilibrium where all firms negotiate wages. Generally, we find that a tight labor market favors bargaining over posting, as does large worker heterogeneity. In the equilibrium of our model, labor markets are tighter when workers are more productive, suggesting a reason why wages are more often negotiated for highly paid jobs.

Trading off or having it all? Completed fertility and mid-career earnings of Swedish men and women

Earnings in mid-career and children are two fundamental outcomes of the life-choices of men and women. Both require time and other resources and reflect the accumulated priorities of individuals and couples. We explore how these outcomes have changed for Swedish men and women born 1945-1962 by documenting changes in education, assortative mating patterns, completed fertility and mid-career earnings. We find an overall increasing inequality in career and family outcomes of men, reflecting a rise in the family-career complementarity. For women, the family-career trade-off has eased for non-professionals, and there appears to be a convergence in the life-choices of women across education groups. Despite these different developments for men and women, we find that within-family specialization, measured by the average spousal earnings contribution, is remarkably stable through the period.

Gender of the immediate manager and women's wages: The importance of managerial position

One argument for increasing female representation in management is the expectation that female managers will be particularly beneficial for female employees through, e.g., role modeling, mentoring or providing other incentives to enhance female productivity. We explore this issue by analyzing the association between womens wages and the gender of their immediate managers using Swedish matched employee-employer data from 2010. Contrary to the expected positive association, we find that wages are overall 3% lower for female employees with a female instead of male manager. However, dividing the sample by managerial position and controlling for the sorting of employees with respect to, e.g., non-cognitive traits, work tasks, family commitment and establishment gender composition, the negative association is found only for female employees working for lower-level managers, not for women with a manager at the highest rank. One possible explanation could be a difference in decision-making power if lower-level female managers have more limited resources for their subordinates compared to lower-level male managers.

Immediate Manager Gender and Wages of Female Employees: The Importance of Manager Position

One argument for increasing female representation in management is the anticipation that female managers will be particularly beneficial for female employees through, e.g., role modeling, mentoring or providing other incentives to enhance female productivity. We explore this issue by analyzing the association between female wages and the gender of their immediate managers using Swedish matched employee-employer data. Contrary to the expected positive association, we find that wages are overall 3% lower for female employees with a female instead of male manager. However, dividing the sample by managerial position, and controlling for important sorting of employees with respect to, e.g., non-cognitive traits, work tasks and establishment gender composition, the negative association is found only among female employees working for lower-level managers, not for a manager at the highest level of management. One possible explanation could thus be a difference in decision-making power if lower-level female managers have more limited resources for their subordinates compared to lower-level male managers.