143 research outputs found
Gender and the UK labour market: The evidence on whether ‘family-friendly’ policies can make a difference
No full textWhile there has been improvement over the last couple of decades, there remains large ‘gender gaps’ in employment and wages. Ghazala Azmat explores the evidence on the key drivers of gender gaps and the effectiveness of ‘family-friendly’ policies to address them, highlighting the policy proposals of the main political parties in this election
Field experiments, such as audit and correspondence studies, are a compelling way to test for gender discrimination in the labor market
No full textCan differences in men and women’s pay and employment opportunities be explained by discrimination or by differences in their preferences or productivity? Ghazala Azmat and Barbara Petrongolo explore what has been learned from economic experiments about the continued prevalence of gender gaps in the labor market
Women looking for work
No full textFemale unemployment rates differ widely from county to country. Ghazala Azmat, Maia Güell and Alan Manning look for the reasons that might explain this particular gender gap
Evidence from East Germany: how young people’s education plans are shaped by their environment
No full textThe decision to go to university can have a major impact on an individual’s financial future and quality of life. Yet we know relatively little about how these decisions are made and adapted within different contexts. Drawing on a new study of East German students following German reunification, Ghazala Azmat and Katja M. Kaufmann show how the education plans of young people are shaped by their environment
Competition among contests
No full textWhen several contests compete for the participation of a common set of players, a contest's allocation of prizes not only induces incentive effects but also participation effects. Our model predicts that an increase in the sensitivity with which contest outcomes depend on players' efforts makes flatter prize structures more attractive to participants. In equilibrium, contests that aim to maximize the number of participants will award multiple prizes if and only if this sensitivity is sufficiently high. Moreover, the prize awarded to the winner is decreasing in the contests' sensitivity. We provide empirical evidence from professional road running using race-distance as a measure of sensitivity. We show that steeper prize structures are more attractive to top-ranked runners in longer, that is, less sensitive, races. In line with our theory, longer races do in fact offer steeper prize structures. Copyright (c) 2009, RAND.
Unions and Procedural Justice: An Alternative to the Common Rule
No full textCan unions substitute a procedural justice role for their traditional reliance on establishing a¿common rule¿? The decline of ¿bureaucratic¿ models of employee management and the riseof performance pay and performance management conflicts with the common rule asmanagement seek to tie rewards more closely to individual and organisational performance.CEP studies of performance pay in the British public services illustrate the potential for aprocedural justice role to ensure that such pay systems are operated fairly, otherwise they riskdemotivating staff. Evidence is presented to show that employees regard unions as effectivevehicles for procedural justice. In this way, management can achieve better operation of theirincentive schemes, and employees may experience less unfairness and poisoned workrelations.performance-related pay, public services, procedural justice, management
Is There an Impact of Household Computer Ownership on Childrens Educational Attainment in Britain?
No full textIf personal computers (PCs) are used to enhance learning and information gathering across avariety of subjects, then a home computer might reasonably be considered an input in aneducational production function. Using data on British youths from the British HouseholdPanel Survey between 1991 and 2001, this paper attempts to explore the link betweenownership of a home computer at ages 15 and 17 and subsequent educational attainment inthe principal British school examinations taken at ages 16 (GCSEs) and 18 (A levels). Thedata show a significant positive associatio n between PC ownership and both the number ofGCSEs obtained and the probability of passing five or more GCSEs. These results survive aset of individual, household, and area controls, including using other household durables and\"future\" PC ownership as proxies for household wealth and other unobservable householdlevel effects. Home computer ownership is also associated with a significant increase in theprobability of passing at least one A level conditional on having passed five and increase inthe probability of successfully completing three or more A levels, conditional on havingpassed at least one A level.Human capital, Economic Impact, Personal Computers
The distribution of talent across contests
No full textDo the contests with the largest prizes attract the most-able contestants? To what extent do contestants avoid competition? In this paper, we show, theoretically and empirically, that the distribution of abilities plays a crucial role in determining contest choice. Complete sorting exists only when the proportion of high-ability contestants is sufficiently small. As this proportion increases, high-ability contestants shy away from competition and sorting decreases, such that, reverse sorting becomes a possibility. We test our theoretical predictions with a large panel data set containing contest choice over twenty years. We use exogenous variation in the participation of highly-able competitors to provide empirical evidence for the relationship among prizes, competition, and sorting
On the Existence of the Maximum Likelihood Estimates for Poisson Regression
No full textWe note that the existence of the maximum likelihood estimates for Poisson regression depends on the data configuration. Because standard software does not check for this problem, the practitioner may be surprised to find that in some applications estimation of the Poisson regression is unusually difficult or even impossible. More seriously, the estimation algorithm may lead to spurious maximum likelihood estimates. We identify the signs of the non-existence of the maximum likelihood estimates and propose a simple empirical strategy to single out the regressors causing this type of identification failure.Poisson estimation, gravity equation
The provision of relative performance feedback information: An experimental analysis of performance and happiness
No full textThis paper studies the effect of providing relative performance feedback information on individual performance and on individual affective response, when agents are rewarded according to their absolute performance. In a laboratory set-up, agents perform a real effort task and when receiving feedback, they are asked to rate their happiness, arousal and feeling of dominance. Control subjects learn only their absolute performance, while the treated subjects additionally learn the average performance in the session. Performance is 17 percent higher when relative performance feedback is provided. Furthermore, although feedback increases the performance independent of the content (i.e., performing above or below the average), the content is determinant for the affective response. When subjects are treated, the inequality in the happiness and the feeling of dominance between those subjects performing above and below the average increases by 8 and 6 percentage points, respectively.relative performance, piece-rate, feedback, social comparison, happiness., leex
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