Maia Güell

Gender Gaps in Unemployment Rates in OECD Countries

In some OECD countries the male and female unemployment rates are very similar but in others (notably the Mediterranean countries) the female unemployment rate is much higher than the male. Explaining these cross‐country differences is the subject of this article. We show that, in countries where there is a large gender gap in unemployment rates, there is a gender gap in both flows from employment into unemployment and from unemployment into employment. We conclude that differences in human capital accumulation between men and women interacted with labor market institutions is an important part of the explanation.

Dismissal conflicts and unemployment

Firing costs are often blamed for unemployment. In this paper, we investigate this widespread belief theoretically. Firing costs are introduced in a efficiency wage model to capture their effects on employment through wages. In addition, dismissal conflicts are modelled explicitly and their cost is derived. These two elements are included and linked. Modelling firing costs in a context where worker effort is not perfectly observable implies that a double moral hazard problem could arise. Whenever firms face a redundancy, they tend to use disciplinary dismissals in order to avoid paying firing costs. Similarly, workers will then tend to deny any disciplinary case to get a party will be imperfect given the information problem. This implies that disciplinary dismissals will not be costless. Firing costs in turn will have a negative effect on aggregate employment because they modify the rent that has to be paid to workers to prevent shirking. We also find that the solution to the problem does not necessarily imply the elimination of firing costs.

Intergenerational Mobility and the Informative Content of Surnames

We propose an alternative method for measuring intergenerational mobility. Measurements obtained from traditional methods (based on panel data) are scarce, difficult to compare across countries and almost impossible to get across time. In particular, this means that we do not know how intergenerational mobility is correlated with growth, income or the degree of inequality. Our proposal is to measure the informative content of surnames in one census. The more information the surname has on the income of an individual, the more important is her background in determining her outcomes; and thus, the less mobility there is. The reason is that surnames provide information about family relationships because the distribution of surnames is necessarily very skewed. A large percentage of the population is bound to have a very unfrequent surname. For them the partition generated by surnames is very informative on family linkages. First, we develop a model whose endogenous variable is the joint distribution of surnames and income. There, we explore the relationship between mobility and the informative content of surnames. We allow for assortative mating to be a determinant of both. Second, we use our methodology to show that in large Spanish region the informative content of surnames is large and consistent with the model. We also show that it has increased over time, indicating a substantial drop in the degree of mobility. Finally, using the peculiarities of the Spanish surname convention we show that the degree of assortative mating has also increased over time, in such a manner that might explain the decrease in mobility observed. Our method allows us to provide measures of mobility comparable across time. It should also allow us to study other issues related to inheritance.

Structural Estimation of a Model of School Choices: the Boston Mechanism vs. Its Alternatives

We model household choice of schools under the Boston mechanism (BM) and develop a new method, applicable to a broad class of mechanisms, to fully solve the choice problem even if it is infeasible via the traditional method. We estimate the joint distribution of household preferences and sophistication types using administrative data from Barcelona. Counterfactual policy analyses show that a change from BM to the Deferred Acceptance mechanism would decrease average welfare by 1,020 euros, while a change to the top trading cycles mechanism would increase average welfare by 460 euros.

Is Seniority-Based Pay Used as a Motivation Device? Evidence from Plant Level Data

In this paper we use data from industrial plants to investigate if seniority-based pay is used as a motivational device for production workers. Alternatively, seniority-based pay could simply be a wage setting rule not necessarily related to the provision of incentives. Unlike previous papers, we use a direct measure of seniority-based pay as well as measures of monitoring devices and piece-rates. We find that firms that offer seniority-based pay are less likely to offer explicit incentives. They are also less likely to invest in monitoring devices. We also find that firms that offer seniority-based pay are more likely to engage in other human resource management policies that result in long employment relationships. Overall these results suggest that seniority-based pay is indeed used as a motivation device.