Eric Maurin

Persistence of Interindustry Wage Differentials: A Reexamination Using Matched Worker‐Firm Panel Data

We estimate interindustry wage differentials using new French longitudinal data that allow a tracking of workers and their firms over time. We find that, when measured on a cross‐sectional basis, they primarily reflect the interindustry variations in unmeasured labor quality. However, interindustry wage differentials are only a minor component of interfirm wage differentials. The average differential in wages paid to the same workers by different firms is about 20%–30%. In a given industry, wage policies are more favorable to workers in large, capital‐intensive firms.

The impact of parental income on early schooling transitions A re-examination using data over three generations

Abstract This paper applies new semi-parametric techniques to estimate the effects of parental income on the probability of being held back in elementary school in France. We use information on grandparents’ past socioeconomic status and parents’ education level to separate the parental income effects from the effects of the unmeasured determinants of children’s performance at school that are correlated with parental income. When considering the probability of being held back in elementary school, we find that the effects of parental poverty are much larger than the effects of a child’s sex or age (age within his/her class) or of the parents’ education level. Our findings suggest that policy decisions that increase income transfers to relatively poor families have a potentially very large impact on children’s early performance at school.

Fixed-term contracts and the dynamics of labour demand

Abstract We estimate a model of labour demand that accounts for dynamics arising from the relative costs of hiring and firing workers on either indefinite-term contract (ITC) or fixed-term contract (FTC). We use a panel of 1000 French firms, for which we can measure the number of entries and exits for each type of contract between 1988 and 1992. Our estimates suggest that (1) it is much more costly to lay off workers under ITC than to hire them; (2) it is much less costly to adjust the number of FTC than to adjust the number of ITC; (3) the asymmetry between hiring and layoff costs is more important for non-production than for production workers.

Changes in Job Security and their Causes: An Empirical Analysis for France, 1982-2002

In this Paper, we analyse the changes in the risks of involuntary job loss in France between 1982 and 2002. We find that these risks are higher in the 1990s than they were in the 1980s. We develop an econometric analysis to separate the effects of institutional changes from the effects of new technologies. Our estimates show that the rise in job loss rates is significantly more pronounced in industries that have the largest share of R&D workers and the largest rate of new technologies’ users. These findings suggest that technological changes contribute to decreasing the incentive to keep workers for long period of time and to increasing job insecurity.

The European Job Security Gap

The authors use a large-scale data set covering 13 European countries during the period 1995 to 2001 to compare trends in cross-skill inequalities in terms of wages and exposure to insecure job positions. Cross-country comparisons of these two facets of inequality show that (a) higher wage gaps generally come along with lower job security gaps and (b) job security represents the main lever for adjustment to macroeconomic changes in most European countries. The authors conclude that transatlantic differences in attitude toward inequality is more in the type of inequality that each society is more inclined to tolerate than in overall tolerance for inequality.

Changes in the Functional Structure of Firms and the Demand for Skill

We analyze recent changes in the occupational structure of French manufacturing firms. Firms employ a greater proportion of engineers working on the design and marketing of new products and a lower proportion of high‐skill experts working in administration‐related activities. Firms have also reduced the share of production‐related activities at both the levels of high‐skill and low‐skill workers. We develop a labor demand model that shows the role played by technological change. New technologies make it possible to allocate more human resources to the activities that are the most difficult to program in advance.

Unequal Uncertainties and Uncertain Inequalities: An Axiomatic Approach

In this paper, we provide an axiomatic characterization of social welfare functions for uncertain incomes. Our most general result is that a small number of reasonable assumptions regarding welfare orderings under uncertainty rule out pure ex ante as well as pure ex post evaluations. Any social welfare function that satisfies these axioms should lie strictly between the ex ante and the ex post evaluations of income distributions. We also provide an axiomatic characterization of the weighted average of the minimum and the maximum of ex post and the ex ante evaluations.

Demand for Education and Labor Market Outcomes: Lessons from the Abolition of Compulsory Conscription in France

Before 1997, education was a way for young French men to avoid military service in the army. After the abolition of compulsory conscription in 1997, this incentive to stay on in education disappeared. We show that the decrease in the benefit of pursuing education for men was followed by a fall in their educational achievement relative to women and by a decrease in their relative entry wages. These results suggest that high school dropout rates could be reduced by policies increasing the immediate benefits of pursuing education and that it would yield a substantial improvement in early labor market outcomes.

L'évaluation sociale des professions en France. Construction et analyse d'une échelle des professions

Christine Chambaz, Eric Maurin, Constance Torelli : Die soziale Bewertung der Berufe in Frankreich. Aufbau und Analyse einer Berufsskala. Die soziale Bewertung der Berufe und der Aufbau einer Gewerbeskala stiessen in Frankreich nie auf viel Erfolg. Eine solche Naherung wird als vereinfachte Darstellung des sozialen Raums und als eine funktionalistische Interpretation der Ungleichheiten aufgefasst. In der vorliegenden Untersuchung schlagen wir eine andere, mehr literale Interpretation dieses Werkzeugs vor, und bilden wir, gestutzt auf eine kurzliche Umfrage des statistischen Amtes INSEE, eine Skala fur Frankreich. Wir zeigen die starke Beziehung zwischen den Bewertungen auf, die von den verschiedenen Bewerterkategorien abgegeben werden. Die Stellensicherheit und die Autonomie in der Arbeit erscheinen im ubrigen fast ebenso ausschlaggebend wie das Gehalt zur positiven Auffassung eines Berufs. Im Gegenteil dazu werden die Berufe um so geringer bewertet, bei vorhandenen Gehalt und Stellensicherheit, wie sie Forderungen nach Personalfuhrung oder kommerziellen Aufgaben beinhalten. Wir vergleichen unsere Skala mit denen, die aus nach dem Krieg in der ganzen Welt durchgefuhrten Untersuchungen hervorgehen. Die Berufe scheinen in der Skala der sozialen Wahrnehmungen um so mehr abgewertet worden zu sein, wie sie von diplomierten Personen ausgefullt werden.

Origine sociale et destinée scolaire. L'inégalité des chances devant l'enseignement à travers les enquêtes FQP 1970, 1977, 1985 et 1993

Dominique Goux, Eric Maurin : Soziale Herkunft und Schullaufbahn. Die Ungleichheit der Chancen im Schulwesen, wie sie aus den FQP Untersuchungen 1970, 1977, 1985 und 1993 hervorgehen. ; ; Ziel dieser Forschung ist, ein moglichst genaues Bild der Ungleichheiten im Schulwesen und ihrer Entwicklung im Laufe der letzten Jahrzehnte nachzuvollziehen. Die in regelmassigen Abstanden durchgefuhrte Untersuchung uber die Ausbildung und die berufliche Qualifizierung liefert eine besonders solide Grundlage zu dieser Art Forschung. Die Mechanismen zur Hervorhebung von Ungleichheiten werden untersucht. Die hauptsachlichen theoretischen Modelle wurden vor mehr als zwanzig Jahren in einer Umwelt starken Wirtschaftlichen Wachstums entwickelt : ihre Konfrontierung mit kurzlichen Daten fuhrt dazu, gewisse alternative Hypothesen vorzuschlagen und zu testen.