Giuseppe Ragusa

Spillovers from High-Skill Consumption to Low-Skill Labor Markets

The least-skilled workforce in the United States is disproportionally employed in the provision of time-intensive services that can be thought of as market substitutes for home production activities. At the same time, skilled workers, with their high opportunity cost of time, spend a larger fraction of their budget in these services. Given the skill asymmetry between consumers and providers in this market, product demand shiftssuch as those arising when relative skilled wages increaseshould boost relative labor demand for the least-skilled workforce. We estimate that this channel may explain one-third of the growth of employment of noncollege workers in low-skill services in the 1990s.

Minimum Divergence, Generalized Empirical Likelihoods, and Higher Order Expansions

This article studies the minimum divergence (MD) class of estimators for econometric models specified through moment restrictions. We show that MD estimators can be obtained as solutions to a tractable lower dimensional optimization problem. This problem is similar to the one solved by the generalized empirical likelihood estimators of Newey and Smith (2004), but it is equivalent to it only for a subclass of divergences. The MD framework provides a coherent testing theory: tests for overidentification and parametric restrictions in this framework can be interpreted as semiparametric versions of Pearson-type goodness of fit tests. The higher order properties of MD estimators are also studied and it is shown that MD estimators that have the same higher order bias as the empirical likelihood (EL) estimator also share the same higher order mean square error and are all higher order efficient. We identify members of the MD class that are not only higher order efficient, but also, unlike the EL estimator, well behaved when the moment restrictions are misspecified.

Total nucleated cells as a sole predictor of distinct targets of hematopoietic potential (CD34+ cells) in cord blood units: the results of a large series analysis in autologous cord blood units

Rapid identification of eligible cord blood units (CBUs) for banking is an important issue in hematopoietic stem cell procurement. Distinct contents of CD34+ cells in CBU can contribute to identify grafts that may be banked also for unrelated transplants or limited to family‐directed or autologous use.

FROM EMPTY PEWS TO EMPTY CRADLES: FERTILITY DECLINE AMONG EUROPEAN CATHOLICS

Total fertility in the Catholic countries of Southern Europe has dropped to remarkably low rates (=1.4) despite continuing low rates female labor force participation and high historic fertility. We model three ways in which religion affects the demand for children – through norms, market wages, and childrearing costs. We estimate these effects using new panel data on church attendance and clergy employment for 13 European countries from 1960 to 2000, spanning the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). Using nuns per capita as a proxy for service provision, we estimate fertility effects on the order of 300 to 400 children per nun. Moreover, nuns outperform priests as a predictor of fertility, suggesting that changes in childrearing costs dominate changes in theology and norms. Reduced church attendance also predicts fertility decline, but only for Catholics, not for Protestants. Service provision and attendance complement each other, a finding consistent with club models of religion.

EXISTENCE AND CHARACTERIZATION OF CONDITIONAL DENSITY PROJECTIONS

In this paper we propose primitive conditions under which a projection of a conditional density onto a set defined by conditional moment restrictions exists and is unique. Moreover, we provide an analytic expression of the obtained projection. The range of applications where conditional density projections are used is wide. The derived results are potentially useful in a variety of areas including: semiparametric efficient estimation and optimal testing in (conditional) moment models, Bayesian prior determination and inference in semiparametric models, density forecasting, and simulation-based econometric analysis. Regarding existence, we propose three different combinations of assumptions that are all sufficient to show that the projection exists and is unique. The proposed conditions exhibit a clear trade off between restrictions put on the divergence between the conditional densities and on the moment function which defines the projection set. Depending on the nature of the application, the researcher can pick and choose which set of conditions to use. Our second set of results characterizes the projection. The expression for the projected density is new though not surprising given the previously obtained results for the unconditional case. The projection is characterized by the dual of the original projection problem. In establishing the strong duality, however, we work with a constraint qualification condition that is weaker than that used by Borwein and Lewis (1991a, 1992a, 1993 in their seminal work concerning the unconditional case.

Routinization and the Labour Market: Evidence from European Countries

In this chapter, we analyse the routinization process in European countries, using the longitudinal component of the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC). Our findings confirm that routine jobs and the routine intensity of jobs are decreasing in time. Further, we study the determinants of routinization, using the EU-SILC data, and find that young individuals are more likely to hold routine jobs, as are workers with lower education or those employed in temporary jobs. This evidence applies for overall Europe as well as for different groups of countries. Finally, routinization represents a driver of unemployment inflows: individuals in routine jobs display, ceteris paribus, a higher probability to become unemployed: a one standard deviation increase in the RTI index entails a 10% increase of getting into unemployment.

Sensitivity, Moment Conditions, and the Risk-Free Rate in Yogo (2006)

In this paper we show that results presented in the seminal paper by Yogo, A Consumption Based Explanation of Expected Stock Returns, cannot be replicated. We find different estimates for the parameters and we obtain values of over-identified statistics that being much larger than those in the original paper indicate rejection of the durable consumption asset pricing model. By careful inspection of Yogo’s replication files, we were able to track down the inconsistency to a coding bug. The rejection of the durable model is exemplified by its inability to simultaneously explain the risk-free rate and excess stock returns.

Information Technology and Labor Market Polarization in Europe

The US labor market has become increasingly polarized both in terms of jobs and wages, and the routinization explanation is well established for these trends. Recent papers have found job polarization patterns also in Europe, while few evidence is available for wages. The goal of the paper is to investigate the dynamics of unconditional and conditional—on technology—wages in Europe, using industry (EU KLEMS) data. As for unconditional wages, there are no wage polarization trends at work, as the wage structure is broadly constant over time. For the conditional polarization, we investigate the impact of ICT intensity on wages and hours worked by three skill groups by education levels. Our analysis does not provide evidence supporting the conditional polarization of wages, while we detect job polarization trends.