Essays on Aggregate Labor Supply

Essays on Aggregate Labor Supply
Author: Choonsung Park
Publisher:
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2015
Genre: Elasticity (Economics)
ISBN:

"The theme of this thesis is to measure the aggregate labor supply elasticity both at the intensive and extensive margins. The first two chapters concern measuring the labor supply elasticity at the extensive margin in a manner robust to model specifications. The third chapter obtains an intensive margin elasticity of labor supply in an environment in which workers' hours are complements in production. The first chapter exploits micro data on the joint distribution of consumption and wages to measure the Frisch labor supply elasticity at the extensive margin. I derive the following reservation property of the working decision: in a class of models in which the wage process is exogenous (EWP models), given consumption, there exists a unique wage level above which individuals work and below which they do not. In particular, this property is robust to arbitrary heterogeneity in borrowing constraints, discount factors, and wage processes--intuitively, consumption summarizes these factors that affect individual labor supply. Those workers with low wages relative to consumption are inferred to be more marginally attached to the labor market. The number of such workers is key to the magnitude of the Frisch elasticity at the extensive margin. Using the joint distribution of consumption and wages observed from the PSID waves 1999-2011, I find that (i) the aggregate Frisch elasticity of labor supply at the extensive margin is 0.4, and that (ii) across various demographic groups, the elasticity ranges from 0.2 to 0.6. These estimates are similar to those of quasi-experimental studies, suggesting that the number of marginal workers implied by the data is relatively small. In the second chapter, I allow the wage process to be endogenous by writing a class of models in which individuals accumulate human capital through learning-by-doing (LBD). I again measure the labor supply elasticity at the extensive margin, but consider how the human capital accumulation affects the measured elasticity compared to the simpler environment in Chapter 1. I show that in this environment the reservation wage can be defined conditional on consumption and assets choices. Intuitively, if a worker with the same wage and assets with another individual consumes more, then this suggests that the worker has a higher shadow value of LBD. Thus, consumption and assets choices jointly reveal the willingness to work, or the reservation wage. Using the data of consumption, wages, and assets from the PSID waves 1999-2011, I find that the aggregate labor supply elasticity at the extensive margin under the human capital models is 0.36, while that under the EWP models is 0.4. The small elasticity gap is because individuals with low consumption are likely to have low assets as well, implying that understanding the relationship between consumption and wages remains key to predicting the employment responses to wage shocks. Second, for narrowly defined demographic groups, the measured elasticities range from 0.2 to 1. As with the EWP models, relatively elastic groups are those who are younger, single, nonwhite, female, or without college degree. Considering the human capital accumulation does not particularly change the demographic characteristics of more marginal workers. The third chapter is based on a paper coauthored with Michele Battisti of Ifo Institute, and Ryan Michaels of the Department of Economics at the University of Rochester. We study the labor supply elasticity at the intensive margin in an environment in which workers are complements in production. The complementarity of workers implies an incentive to coordinate labor supply within the firm, which compresses working-time adjustments across workers in response to purely idiosyncratic variation in their return from working. This places no restrictions, however, on the response of firm-wide working time to firm-wide shocks. We estimate a model in which heterogeneous firms and workers bargain on working time and earnings using the method of simulated moments. The target moments are from matched firm-worker data from North-East Italy. We revisit earlier findings of a small intertemporal elasticity of labor supply exploiting the model's prediction that this elasticity will be larger for firm-wide fluctuations than evaluated at the individual level. First, the model uncovers the Frisch labor supply elasticity at the intensive margin 0.53. This value is near the top end of the range of estimates found in earlier studies. Second, to study how ignoring the coordination of labor supply affects the implied elasticity, we simulate the model such that only 1/9 of a firm's workforce receives a lump-sum transfer, but the remainder of the firm's workers do not (The fraction of the workforce corresponds to one cohort of workers that shares the same productivity and preference in the model). If we use the treatment effect in this case to infer the Frisch elasticity, the implied elasticity is less than half the estimate 0.53 we uncover."--Pages v-vii.

Essays on Labor Supply

Essays on Labor Supply
Author: Martino Tasso
Publisher:
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2011
Genre:
ISBN:

Abstract: My dissertation consists of three applied studies in the area of public finance and labor economics. In the first chapter, "The effect of financial aid and tax policies on educational choices", I build and estimate a structural dynamic life-cycle model of education choices, labor force participation, and saving decisions by young men in the United States. The model is estimated with the method of simulated moments using a longitudinal sample of white, black, and Hispanic young men from the 1997 panel of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The model incorporates unobservable abilities, tuition costs, and the main features of the U.S. federal income tax. In particular, it takes into account the structure of the Lifetime Learning Tax Credit. I use the estimated model to simulate the impact of a number of education policy changes. I find a sizeable effect on college enrollment from a general tuition reduction as well as a large increase in graduate school attendance from making the Lifetime Learning Tax Credit refundable. In the second chapter, "Aggregate wage dynamics and labor supply: an application to the U.S.", I estimate labor supply elasticities using the change in the return to skills over time as a source of exogenous variation in gross wages. The last few decades have seen a tremendous amount of change in the U.S. labor market: female labor force participation rates have risen, while the wage premium for college education and wage inequality have increased because of an higher demand for skilled labor. The number of hours worked is found to react weakly to changes in the offered wage. In the third chapter, "Labor supply effects of tax-based income-support mechanisms", I build and estimate a static discrete choice model of labor supply for single women in the United States. It incorporates the main features of the federal income tax. I estimate the model using cross-sectional data, and I use it to simulate hypothetical reforms to the tax and benefit system, which is found to have a large effect on the labor force participation decision of single individuals.

Essays on Firms, Aggregate Uncertainty, and the Labor Market

Essays on Firms, Aggregate Uncertainty, and the Labor Market
Author: Nicolò Dalvit
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

This thesis is comprised of three chapters that revolve around two main themes:the micro economic incidence of macro shocks and the role of firms in determining labor market outcomes. In the first chapter I provide new evidence on the cyclical dynamics of firms. I show that firms expecting to lose market share in the futureare hit the hardest during economic downturns. This heterogeneous sensitivity provides a new rationale for the observed counter-cyclical dispersion in firms'growth rates and has implications for the dynamics of aggregate employment. The second chapter studies the role of income tax progressivity in reallocating income risk across heterogeneous workers and stabilizing the economy. We show that eliminating income tax progressivity in Italy would come at the expense of the majority of the work force. The current system of marginal tax rates is effective atreallocating cyclical income risk from low to high wage workers and reducesaggregate employment volatility compared to a counter-factual flat rate system.The third chapter considers the internal hierarchical structure of a firm and its rolein determining wages and internal promotions. We focus in particular on the rolethat internal hierarchies play in propagating gender differences in representation and pay. We study the effect of a change in the gender composition at the top afirm's internal hierarchy on workers further down the organizational ladder and findsome evidence of an effect only on layers close to the top.