Skilled Labor

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters' suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

Evidence shows that most foreign direct investment (FDI) flows from developed to developed countries (North-to-North) in skilled-labor-intensive industries. This paper builds a model which incorporates labor training to the proximity-concentration tradeoffs to analyze multinationals' entry mode to a foreign country. Production requires both skilled labor and unskilled labor. A multinational taking FDI needs to provide training to some workers in the host country to equip them with skills which are specific to the firm's production. Labor training and skill specificity leads to contract friction. We show that in skilled-labor-intensive industries, FDI increases with the host country's economic development level; but in unskilled-labor-intensive industries, the reverse is true. This paper provides a theoretical explanation to the empirical findings on the prevalence of North-to-North FDI in skilled-labor-industries and North-to-South FDI in unskilled-labor-intensive industries.

We study a dynamic general equilibrium model where innovation takes the form of the introduction of new goods whose production requires skilled workers. Innovation is followed by a costly process of standardization, whereby these new goods are adapted to be produced using unskilled labor. Our framework highlights a number of novel results. First, standardization is both an engine of growth and a potential barrier to it. As a result, growth is an inverse U-shaped function of the standardization rate (and of competition). Second, we characterize the growth and welfare maximizing speed of standardization. We show how optimal protection of intellectual property rights a¤ecting the cost of standardization vary with the skill-endowment, the elasticity of substitution between goods and other parameters. Third, we show that, depending on how competition between innovating and standardizing …rms is modelled and on parameter values, a new type of multiplicity of equilibria may arise. Finally, we study the implications of our model for the skill-premium and we illustrate novel reasons for linking North-South trade to intellectual property rights protection.

An increase in the supply of skilled labor has been common across the world. However, despite the rise in skilled labor force, not all countries have achieved high income levels, even when their structural transformation follows the same path (from agriculture to industry and, then, from industry to services). Skilled workers might end up in either high or low TFP sectors, according to two opposite theories of structural change (skill-biased structural transformation and stagnant structural transformation). We show that directed technical change is needed to achieve skill-biased structural transformation and, therefore, skilled workers are allocated to high TFP sectors. We present macrodata and microdata evidence to identify the existence of directed technical change. We reveal that in the U.S., South Korea and France, skilled workers have ended up in high TFP sectors due to the existence of directed technical change in the process of structural transformation, but not in Canada. There is a lack of clear evidence for Italy and Spain.

We model the links between skills and changes in work organization. As the proportion of skilled workers increases, the economy travels through a sequence of organizational equilibria. We show that as the relative supply of skills increases the organization of work becomes more decentralized. Both skilled and unskilled workers become more autonomous and perform a wider range of tasks: decentralization spreads across firms at the expense of the old centralized organization based on a strict division of labor. Moreover, as firms switch to decentralization, their employment structure becomes more homogeneous and wage inequality stops decreasing. These predictions are compared with empirical evidence based on French establishment-level data and we find support for both of them. This suggests that the long-term increase in the skill level of the workforce may have been one important factor driving the recent introduction of new work practices by a large number of firms.

Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.

This paper identifies the Welsh as a distinct ethno-linguistic community in the city of Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio during the late decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. The paper analyses the nature of the Welsh community in the city, assesses the extent of involvement in its cultural expression, and considers socioeconomic improvement as indicated by occupational change. Further, the study considers culture maintenance, and suggests that Welsh ethnic integrity was undermined by a variety of forces, primarily: occupational diversity, bilingualism, high levels of exogamy, and the cessation of immigration from Wales. The article further posits that assimilation was aided by the desire of the Welsh to enter mainstream American society, with some actively abandoning their Old-World characteristics, and the host society's perception, strongly promulgated by Welsh community leaders, that they were ideal immigrants.

Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.

This thesis consists of three essays that contribute to the empirical literature on the economics of violent conflict. More specifically, this work analyzes socio-economic consequences of conflict involvement which is often overseen next to the direct monetary cost of war. The first essay studies the effect of the Operation Iraqi Freedom and the following civil war on schooling outcomes of Iraqi children in mandatory schooling age. Several conflict measures which vary over geographic regions are proposed to capture different traits of conflict involvement. A special focus is laid on overcoming the potential endogeneity arising from non-random involvement into conflicts. I find decreased school enrollment of six-year-old boys and girls. Depending on the intensity of the conflict enrollment of girls is reduced by six to twelve percent. The detrimental effect measured for boys ranges between one and nine percent. The second essay examines wage differentials of high-skilled workers in r...

The paper links finance theory to labor economics and political economy in the context of migration and immigration policy. Most research treating the impact of immigration has focused on the consequences for employees as measured by wages, earnings, and employment. Less is known about the impact on employers. We lack answers to basic questions concerning the quantitative impact of immigrants on employer profit, and which employers are most likely to gain (suffer) increased (reduced) profits as a result of immigration. Using event study analysis, I measure the impact of immigration policy on the profit of employers and shareholders, particularly in those industries with high needs for skilled immigrants. The American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act (ACWIA) of 1998 nearly doubled the available number of H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers in FY 1999. It was the first time that the U.S. government raised the annual cap of H-1B visa since 1990. I focus on this bill and analyze whether and by how much its passage increased shareholders' profit. The empirical results show that employers and shareholders in the top H-1B visa user industries enjoyed significant and positive returns with the passage of the ACWIA of 1998. Shareholders in high-tech industries (the top users of H-1B visa, 80% of total) such as "Computers and related equipment", and "Computer and data processing services" gained, respectively, an average 21.54% (15.88 if weighted) and 22.77% (18.11 if weighted) in cumulative excess returns in the month after the Act was passed, while industries with little need for H-1B visas experienced no significant changes in cumulative excess returns. Robustness testing including international factor comparisons, semiparametric modeling and a sample-split Chow structural break test support the results.

We analyze an economy where firms undertake both innovation and adoption of technologies from the world technology frontier. The selection of high-skill managers and firms is more important for innovation than for adoption. As the economy approaches the frontier, selection becomes more important. Countries at early stages of development pursue an investment-based strategy, which relies on existing firms and managers to maximize investment but sacrifices selection. Closer to the world technology frontier, economies switch to an innovation-based strategy with short-term relationships, younger firms, less investment, and better selection of firms and managers. We show that relatively backward economies may switch out of the investment-based strategy too soon, so certain policies such as limits on product market competition or investment subsidies, which encourage the investment-based strategy, may be beneficial. However, these policies may have significant long-run costs because they make it more likely that a society will be trapped in the investment-based strategy and fail to converge to the world technology frontier.

We study a dynamic general equilibrium model where innovation takes the form of the introduction of new goods whose production requires skilled workers. Innovation is followed by a costly process of standardization, whereby these new goods are adapted to be produced using unskilled labor. Our framework highlights a number of novel results. First, standardization is both an engine of growth and a potential barrier to it. As a result, growth is an inverse U-shaped function of the standardization rate (and of competition). Second, we characterize the growth and welfare maximizing speed of standardization. We show how optimal protection of intellectual property rights a¤ecting the cost of standardization vary with the skill-endowment, the elasticity of substitution between goods and other parameters. Third, we show that, depending on how competition between innovating and standardizing …rms is modelled and on parameter values, a new type of multiplicity of equilibria may arise. Finally, we study the implications of our model for the skill-premium and we illustrate novel reasons for linking North-South trade to intellectual property rights protection.

A full understanding of nineteenth century Irish America requires close examination of emigration as well as immigration. Knowledge of Irish pre-emigration experiences is a key to making sense of their post-emigration lives. This work analyzes the regional origins, the migration and settlement patterns, and the work and associational life of the Catholic Irish in Brooklyn between 1850 and 1900. Over this pivotal half century, the Brooklyn Irish developed a rich associational life which included temperance, Irish nationalism, land reform and Gaelic language and athletic leagues. This era marked the emergence of a more diverse, mature Irish-Catholic community, a community which responded in a new ways to a variety of internal and

Evidence shows that most foreign direct investment (FDI) flows from developed to developed countries (North-to-North) in skilled-labor-intensive industries. This paper builds a model which incorporates labor training to the proximity-concentration tradeoffs to analyze multinationals' entry mode to a foreign country. Production requires both skilled labor and unskilled labor. A multinational taking FDI needs to provide training to some workers in the host country to equip them with skills which are specific to the firm's production. Labor training and skill specificity leads to contract friction. We show that in skilled-labor-intensive industries, FDI increases with the host country's economic development level; but in unskilled-labor-intensive industries, the reverse is true. This paper provides a theoretical explanation to the empirical findings on the prevalence of North-to-North FDI in skilled-labor-industries and North-to-South FDI in unskilled-labor-intensive industries.

If Australian young people are to acquire trades skills employers need to invest in apprenticeships. The 457 temporary-entry work-visa system offers employers a relatively easy alternative and the government imposes few training obligations on those who take advantage of it. This means that employers who do invest in apprenticeships are put at a competitive disadvantage and that there is a systemic disincentive to invest in local training. Copyright. Monash University and the author/s

Based on in-depth interviews with highly skilled and business Turkish nationals (HSBTN) in Canada and Germany, this study aims to explore why HSBTN decide to move and whether migration policy differences among the countries of destination affect recent migration motivations of HSBTN. It mainly focuses on the reasons and rationale of HSBTN and their explanations. This study argues that the high skilled and business migrants in general and HSBTN in particular move internationally as a consequence of individual-level gain beyond economic prospects.