Robert Drago

The Determinants of Labor Absence: Economic Factors and Workgroup Norms across Countries

The authors analyze causes of absence from work using data from a survey distributed in 1988 to workers in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. The results indicate that workgroup cohesion (the degree to which employees work together closely and harmoniously) was associated with low levels of absence if job satisfaction was high, but with high levels of absence if job satisfaction was low. Some employee characteristics associated with lower rates of absence were male gender, short tenure, part-time status, and high wages; shiftwork, sick leave entitlements, and low unemployment rates were associated with higher rates of absence. The authors also find that the determinants of whether a worker was absent at least once in a given year are distinct from the determinants of the frequency and duration of absences among those workers who were absent at least once.

Working Time Mismatch and Subjective Well-Being

This study uses nationally representative panel survey data for Australia to identify the role played by mismatches between hours actually worked and working time preferences in contributing to reported levels of job and life satisfaction. Three main conclusions emerge. First, it is not the number of hours worked that matters for subjective well-being, but working time mismatch. Second, overemployment is a more serious problem than is underemployment. Third, while the magnitude of the impact of overemployment may seem small in absolute terms, relative to other variables, such as disability, the effect is quite large.

The Avoidance of Bias Against Caregiving The Case of Academic Faculty

The authors analyze bias avoidance behaviors, whereby employees respond to biases against caregiving in the workplace by strategically minimizing or hiding family commitments. They divide bias avoidance behaviors into productive types that improve work performance and unproductive types that are inefficient. Original survey data from 4,188 chemistry and English faculty in 507 U.S. colleges and universities suggest both types of bias avoidance are relatively common and women more often report both types of behavior. Regression analyses show few disciplinary differences, find supportive supervisors associated with reductions in reports of bias avoidance, suggest low levels of bias avoidance for women are linked to institutional gender equity, and support the possibility that there are subjective components to bias avoidance behaviors.

Female Breadwinner Families: Their Existence, Persistence and Sources

We develop a typology for understanding couple households where the female is the major earner - what we term female breadwinner households - and test it using data from the first two waves of the HILDA Survey. We distinguish temporary from persistent female breadwinner households and hypothesize, and confirm, that these two groups diverge on demographic, socio-economic status (SES), labour market and family commitment characteristics. Among the persistent group we further distinguish those couples where the dominance of a female earner is related to economic factors and those where it appears associated with a purposeful gender equity strategy. We again hypothesize and confirm that these household types significantly diverge, finding that men in the economic group exhibit low SES, poor labour market position, and low levels of commitment to family, while both the women and men in the equity type often achieve positive outcomes regarding gender equity and economic and family success.

Long Work Hours: Volunteers and Conscripts

Panel data from Australia are used to study the prevalence of work hours mismatch among long hours workers and, more importantly, how that mismatch persists and changes over time, and what factors are associated with these changes. Particular attention is paid to the roles played by household debt, ideal worker characteristics and gender. Both static and dynamic multinomial logit models are estimated, with the dependent variable distinguishing long hours workers from other workers, and within the former, between “volunteers”, who prefer long hours, and “conscripts”, who do not. The results suggest that: (i) high levels of debt are mainly associated with conscript status; (ii) ideal worker types can be found among both volunteers and conscripts, but are much more likely to be conscripts; and (iii) women are relatively rare among long hours workers, and especially long hours volunteers, suggesting long hours jobs may be discriminatory. The research highlights the importance of distinguishing conscripts and volunteers to understand the prevalence and dynamics of long work hours.

Competition and cooperation in the workplace

Abstract This paper examines promotion systems which are competitive (a tournament) or noncompetitive (a quota scheme). We introduce helping technologies where some aid to co-workers is efficient and consider various worker bargaining strategies. It is shown that the competitive scheme consistently prevents helping efforts, while the non-competitive scheme induces an efficient allocation of effort if workers bargain over help. Because the non-competitive scheme is less risky, it may dominate the competitive scheme even if workers do not help each other. If workers bargain over help, the non-competitive scheme will typically enhance welfare.

Individual versus group piece rates under team technologies

We consider pay schemes under technologies where it is efficient for each worker to help other workers. Depending upon worker behavior assumptions, we find that individual piece rates may cause inefficient undercooperation, while group piece rates may cause inefficient overcooperation. J. Japan Int. Econ., March 1988, 2(1), pp. 1–10. Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201; Department of Economics, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge Louisiana 70803-6306.

Incentives, pay, and performance: a study of Australian employees

The paper analyses the determinants of self-reported work effort using a 1988 survery of Australian employees. While controlling for the endogeneity of the firms choice of incentives and pay, it is found that direct incentive schemes have predicted effects, and the efficiency wage hypothesis is supported: pay and work effort are positively correlated. Two efficiency wage models are tested: Akerlofs gift exchange model, and work discipline arguments regarding monitoring difficulties and threats of dismissal. The latter argument is broadly consistent with the data.

The Willingness-to-Pay for Work/Family Policies: A Study of Teachers.

Recent evidence suggests that employers and employees may benefit from work/family policies and that even non-beneficiaries may support such policies. The authors posit that these policies generate not only “use” values (values for those who rely on them), but also, based on a particular norm of social justice, “need” values (values received by all individuals, regardless of expectations of direct benefit). Combining the median voter model with the contingent valuation method, which was designed to measure the willingness-to-pay for environmental goods such as national parks, the authors capture the willingness-to-pay for seven distinct work/family policies within a sample of 343 public, elementary school teachers. The results suggest that referenda to initiate work/family policies in exchange for payroll deductions from teachers would pass, depending on the specific deduction. Even respondents with no expectation of direct benefit may place a positive value on the policies, consistent with the notion of “need” values.

Mapping the Terrain of Work/Family Journals

An expanding body of published research addresses the relationship between paid employment and commitments to kin, an area referred to as work/family research. Largely relying on an electronic database located at Boston College, the authors analyze the prevalence of relevant articles in various journals and the extent of the likely audience for such articles in those journals in an attempt to obtain a well-defined map. The analysis yields rankings of journals. The rankings demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of the field and highlight the need for researchers to read across disciplines but are unstable. For this and other reasons, the authors recommend reliance on an unranked set of 23 core journals.