Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Divorced women. Women Labor supply'

El desenvolupament més important en el mercat de treball en tots els països industrialitzats ha estat l’increment de dones casades a la força laboral. La literatura econòmica associa l'increment de la participació a la força laboral de les dones amb el canvi en l'estructura salarial. En aquesta Tesi, estudio els tres elements clau en el canvi de posició de les dones en el mercat laboral: la diferència salarial de gènere (gender wage gap, gwg), l’elasticitat de l’oferta de treball femení, i la interacció entre l’oferta laboral femenina i la decisió de tenir fills. A més, exploro com és el rendiment de les dones en el mercat laboral, així com el rol que juguen les institucions del mercat laboral i les seves polítiques en l’oferta laboral femenina. En el primer capíto, exploro l’evolució en el gwg en un grup de països europeus. Utilitzo un nou enfocament que es basa en mesures directes sobre requeriments de capacitats per a treballar en determinades feines. Divideixo les capacitats entre brawns i brains. Durant els anys 90 i els anys 2000, el gwg ha caigut a una majoria de països europeus i als Estats Units. Una part d’aquesta caiguda es pot explicar pels canvis d’ocupació d’homes i de dones i pels diferents requeriments de capacitat que aquestes ocupacions tenen. Malgrat tot, a diferència de l’experiència americana, als països europeus els canvis en els retorns als brains i als brawns han implicat un increment en el gwg. Endemés, una part substancial dels canvis en el gwg no pot ser explicada pels canvis en les diferències de capacitat entre homes i dones, ni tampoc per canvis en les característiques d’homes i dones o en l’estructura salarial. L’anàlisi mostra que hi ha una part inexplicada del gwg que està altament correlacionada amb les institucions del mercat laboral, tot suggerint una forta relació entre els canvis en les institucions que governen el mercat laboral amb canvis en l’evolució del gwg. En el segon capítol, estudio l’elasticitat de l’oferta laboral de les dones i els homes casats. En particular, estimo l’elasticitat de l’oferta laboral de dones i homes casats en el marge extensiu, tenint en compte que existeix heterogeneïtat en l’educacio de les parelles i modelo explícitament com interactuen entre si els membres de la llar quan prenen decisions sobre l'oferta laboral. Els resultats mostren que hi ha una variació considerable entre les parelles en la manera com prenen decisions sobre l'oferta laboral. A més, l’elasticitat en l’oferta laboral difereix en gran mesura entre les llars, depenent del nivell educatiu dels seus membres. Una de les troballes centrals és que, si ignorem l’heterogeneïtat entre els diferents tipus de llars i les diferències entre les parelles en la manera com prenen les seves decisions d’oferta laboral, trobem una elasticitat d’oferta salarial massa baixa per a les dones casades. En el tercer capítol, escrit conjuntament amb Nezih Guner i Virginia Sánchez-Marcos, investiguem com els contractes temporals afecten la fertilitat de les dones a Espanya. Estimem models de duració de temps discret en el naixement del primer i subsegüents fills, i comparem les probabilitats de tenir un fill per part de dones amb contracte temporal i amb contracte permanent. Els resultats d’aquest capítol suggereixen que l’estabilitat laboral és un determinant important de la probabilitat de tenir fills. Trobem que la probabilitat que una dona sense fills, però amb un contracte permanent, tingui un fill l’any següent és més alta que la probabilitat que una dona sense fills amb un contracte temporal en tingui. L’efecte es torna molt més important per a transicions successives (del primer al segon, i del segon al tercer).
The most important development in labor markets, in all industrialized countries was the increase in the entry of women, in particular married women, into the labor force. The economic literature associates the increasing labor force participation of women with the changes in the wage structure, either in terms of the gender wage gap or the elasticity of the female labor supply to changes in their own wages or their husband's wages and with the changing fertility behavior of women. In this thesis, I study the three key aspects of the changing position of women in the labor markets: the gender wage gap, female labor supply elasticities and the interaction between labor supply of women and fertility behavior, and explore how women fare in the labor markets and how labor market institutions and policy affect their behavior. In the first chapter of this thesis, I explore the recent gender wage gap trends in a sample of European countries with a new approach that uses the direct measures of skill requirements of jobs held by men and women. During the 1990s and 2000s, the gender wage gap declined in the majority of European countries and in the U.S. A part of this decline is explained by changes in male-female differences in brain and brawn skill intensities that occur due to the shifts in occupational allocations. However, in contrast to the U.S. experience, in European countries the changes in returns to brain and brawn skills had a widening effect on the gender wage gaps. Furthermore, a substantial part of the changes in the gender wage gaps cannot be explained by the changes in the gender gaps in labor market characteristics, skills or changes in the wage structure. The analysis show that the unexplained part of the gender wage gap is strongly correlated with labor market institutions suggesting a strong link between the changes in the labor market institutions and changes in gender wage gap trends. In the second chapter, I study labor supply elasticities of married women and men and estimate labor supply elasticities of married women and men along the extensive margin allowing for the heterogeneity among couples (in educational attainments of husbands and wives) and explicitly modeling how household members interact and make their labor supply decisions. The results of Chapter 2 show that there is considerable variation among couples in the way they make their labor supply decisions. Moreover, labor supply elasticities differ greatly among households by the relative education levels of spouses. One of the central finding is that ignoring the heterogeneity between household types and differences between couples in the way they make their labor supply decisions yield a lower labor supply wage elasticity for married women. The third chapter, coauthored with Nezih Guner and Virginia Sánchez-Marcos, we investigate how temporary contracts affect the fertility behavior of women in Spain. To this end, we estimate discrete-time duration models of the first and subsequent births and compare the probability of having a child of women working under permanent and temporary contracts. The results of Chapter 3 suggest that job stability is an important determinant of the birth hazards. We find that childless women working under permanent contracts in a given year are more likely to give a birth in the following year than childless women working under temporary contracts in that particular year. Moreover, the effect becomes stronger for the transitions from the first to second and even more pronounced from second to third birth.

Female labor and commuting behavior has been inappropriately approached by traditional economic and location theories. While labor economists assume that commuting is a "fixed" element of the cost-of-entrance, they ignore the spatial variation in wage rate or job opportunities. Urban economists, on the other hand, treat the variation in commuting distance as a function of household housing consumption, and a "fixed" amount of labor supply is assumed. Both assumptions are unrealistic, especially in the case of females. The major contention raised in this study is that labor supply and commuting behavior are interrelated decisions. This "simultaneity" relationship should be captured by any model studying either labor or commuting behavior. In the case of female household members, time as a scarce resource must be allocated more efficiently since women are traditionally assigned housework responsibility--be they housewives or working women. A simultaneous-equation model has been specified to simulate the household decision of appropriating its (economic and human) resources among female income-earning activities--i.e., market labor supply and commuting--and housework. Time is adopted as the measurement unit of the three endogenous variables. Demographic and environmental variables are included in order to obtain the most efficient estimation and to link the results of this research to other economic and sociological studies. A two-stage Tobit and OLS estimation procedure is employed, according to the characteristics of the data, to avoid the selection bias problem (Tobin, 1958; Killingsworth, 1983). The results derived give (empirical) support to the theoretical argument that the relationship between commuting and labor supply is not a single-direction one, suggesting that the estimation of the traditional single-equation model may well be subject to serious specification bias. The theoretical and empirical inferences provided by this study contribute to a better understanding of how a household perceives its female members' domestic service and income-earning activity. Also, theoretically, the estimation can be used to give a more precise measure of the local (potential) labor pool and a more precise prediction of the amount of (female) commuters using certain routes. All these contributions have significance with respect to the firm's location decision and production planning, and the planning for the provisions of other public services.

There are many potential determinants of women?s labour supply including wages, unearned income, human capital endowments, demographic characteristics and family traits. Fertility behaviour, including the number of children and age of children, is also an important factor in women’s labour supply decisions. Many factors which affect women’s decisions on participating in the labour market and hours of work are also key influences on their decisions on starting a family and having a desired number of children. This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of the determinants of labour supply and fertility behaviour of Australian women. Using cross-sectional data, labour supply models corrected for sample selection bias, and fertility models examining different aspects of family size, the thesis finds that women’s labour supply decisions are largely influenced by their wages and fertility behaviour. Their decisions on completed fertility, starting a family and having additional children are largely influenced by their actual or potential wages.

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We construct a frictionless matching model of the marriage market where women have bidimensional attributes, one continuous (income) and the other dichotomous (home ability). Equilibrium in the marriage market determines intrahousehold allocation of resources and female labor participation. Our model is able to predict partial non-assortative matching, with rich men marrying women with low income but high home ability. We then perform numerical exercises to evaluate the impacts of income taxes in individual welfare and find that there is considerable divergence in the female labor participation response to taxes between the short run and the long run.

The present investigation examines the roles of women in the rapidly changing society of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and attempts to quantify and optimize their role as active contributors to the development of the country. The study starts out with a review of earlier work on women's roles in the Kingdom and then throws a more recent light on the subject by analyzing the current writings and comments in the popular press. Those findings are supplemented by direct interviews with samples from various segments of the Saudi population; answers are compared with similar inquiries by earlier researchers as well as with opinions expressed in the media. Since these results are primarily of a subjective nature the study then proceeds to quantify the role Saudi women play as educated and productive contributors to the development of the Kingdom. From published data a numerical framework is described, which is followed by a modelling effort, using the goal programming algorithm, aimed at optimizing the use of the female labor force in Saudi Arabia. Under present policies and as a result of social and traditional attitudes many of the labor market positions are now available for occupancy by Saudi women but they are filled by female or male imported labor. The impacts of selected changes in current manpower policies are analyzed.

The role that women play in the economy of any society is a desirable goal for equity and efficiency considerations. Just as with the rest of the world, the South African women lagged behind their male counterparts within the economic empowerment space and in the formal labour force. However, the role of women has undergone some transformations with issues relating to employment opportunities, such that their labour force participation has risen considerably since 1994. The female labour force participation rate is still seen to be persistently lower compared to the male participation rate even in the second decade of democracy. The rate of women labour force participation is even lower than the average. On the other hand, the increases have also been coupled with the rising rate of unemployment among women. The objective of this study was to investigate the determinants of female labour force participation in the South African labour market. The study uses a regression analysis on a cross sectional panel data covering a period of 1995 to 2010. Unlike most popular beliefs, the findings of this study reveal that fertility though not statistically significant, positively influences labour force participation of women. Other variables that are statistically significant in explaining female labour force are HIV/AIDS, marital status, age, household income and education. Race was found to be insignificant in explaining female labour force participation in the South African labour force.

The post-1994 role of women in the South African economy is changing with respect to issues such as education and employment opportunities. In the past, men tended to hold the primary or ‘good’ jobs, which have the greatest stability and promotional potential, whilst women tended to hold the secondary or ‘poor’ jobs, which have lower stability and lower wages (Kelly, 1991). Women’s labour force participation has risen significantly over the years since 1994, but more in depth research is needed in order to determine where and how changes could be implemented to ensure that any past gender inequalities fall away with minimal impact on the economy as a whole. As such, certain dynamics within the labour market need to be considered. Firstly, pre-market types of discrimination, including issues such as gender discrimination during the acquisition of human capital through educational attainment should be considered. In most countries, women enter the labour market with severe disadvantage in that they have been subject to discrimination in schooling opportunities (Standing, Sender & Weeks, 1996). Secondly, the feminisation of the labour force is dealt with, as well as what factors affect the female labour force participation decision (i.e. the decision of whether to participate in the labour market or not). iv Thirdly, employment discrimination is investigated, including the concept of ‘occupational crowding’. An analysis of trends in the occupational structure of economically active women in South Africa shows the typical shift out of agriculture into industrial related jobs (Verhoef, 1996). Lastly, wage discrimination is analysed, in order to determine if women get lower rates of pay for ‘equal work’. The objectives of this study are aimed at determining whether there have been any positive changes with respect to women in any of these focal areas mentioned above. There are studies that have established gender differentials when it comes to formal education, and these place women at the disadvantaged end (Bankole & Eboiyehi, 2000). If one considers the educational measures, namely, the levels of literacy, years of education, and overall educational attainment, employed by this country to determine whether there are in fact observed differences between the education of boys and girls, the following was found: Males rate higher with respect to two of these measures, namely literacy and educational attainment, and are thus able to exhibit lower levels of poverty than females in South Africa. Men exhibit slightly higher literacy rates than women of the same age (Statistics South Africa, 2002), and men also rate higher than women when it comes to university education. With regards to primary and secondary school attainment v since 1994, the gender gap does appear to have disappeared. The ‘neoclassical model of labour-leisure choice’, as applied in this study, shows that as the wage rate increases, women have an incentive to reduce the time they allocate to the household sector and are more likely to enter the labour market. In South Africa, however, the increase in the female participation rate has merely translated into a rise in unemployment and has not been associated with an increase in the demand for female labour. This implies that South African women are being ‘pushed’ into the labour market due to economic need, rather than being ‘pulled’ into the labour market in order to earn a higher wage. Women are gradually becoming better represented at all levels across a wide range of occupations. Women, however, continue to face greater prospects of unemployment and to earn less than their male counterparts even when they do find employment. These lower female wages are partly as a result of ‘occupational crowding’, whereby women are over-represented in certain occupations resulting in excess labour supply which drives down the wage rate. It has been determined that the problem of occupational crowding is a real and immediate one and has been found to depress wages within certain female specific occupations.

With an increasing proportion of older people in the Australian population and increasing health and longevity, paid work after the age of 65 years may become an option or a necessity in the future. The focus of this research is on Australian women of the baby boom generation, their working futures, and the work-retirement decision. This is explored both from the viewpoint of women and from a social policy perspective. The research draws on Considine�s model of public policy, futures studies, and Beck�s concept of risk society. The research comprises three studies. Using focus group research, Study 1 explored the views of Australian women of the baby boom generation on work after the age of 65 years. Study 2 aimed to explore current thinking on the research topic in Australia and overseas. Computer-mediated communication involving an Internet website and four scenarios for the year 2020 were used for this study. Study 3 consists of the analysis of quantitative data from the Healthy Retirement Project, focusing on attitudes towards retirement, retirement plans, and the preferred and expected age of retirement. The importance of choice and a work � life balance emerged throughout the research. Women in high-status occupations were found to be more likely to be open to the option of continuing paid work beyond age 65 than women in low-status jobs. However, the women were equally likely to embrace future volunteering. The research findings suggest that policies for an ageing female workforce should be based on the values of inclusiveness, fairness, self-determination, and social justice, and address issues of workplace flexibility, equality in the workplace, recognition for unpaid community and caring work, opportunities for life-long learning, complexity and inequities of the superannuation system, and planning for retirement. Further, providing a guaranteed minimum income for all Australians should be explored as a viable alternative to the current social security system.

This thesis contributes to two completely unrelated debates in the economic literature, similar only in the relatively high degree of controversy characterizing each one.

The first part is methodological and macroeconomic in nature, addressing the question of whether the distribution of income across countries is converging (i.e. are the poor catching up to the rich?) or diverging (i.e. are we witnessing the formation of two exclusive clubs, one for poor countries and another one for rich countries?). Applications of the simple Markov model to this question have generated evidence in favor of the divergence hypothesis. In the first chapter, I critically review these results. I use statistical inference to show that the divergence results are not statistically robust, and I explain that this instability of the results comes from the application of a model for discrete data to data that is actually continuous. In the second chapter, I reposition the whole convergence-divergence debate by placing it in the context of Silverman’s classic survey of non-parametric density estimation techniques. This allows me to use the basic notions of fuzzy logic to adapt the simple Markov chain model to continuous data. When I apply the newly adapted Markov chain model to the cross-country distribution question, I find evidence against the divergence hypothesis, and this evidence is statistically robust.

The second part of the thesis is empirical and microeconomic in nature. I question whether observed differences between husbands’ and wives’ participation in labor markets are due to different preferences or to different constraints. My identification strategy is based on the idea that the more power an individual has relative to his/her partner, the more his/her actions will reflect his/her preferences. I use 2001 PSID data on cohabiting couples to estimate a simultaneous equations model of the spousal time allocation decision. My results confirm the stylized fact that specialization and trade does not explain time allocation for couples in which the wife is the primary breadwinner, and suggest that power could provide a more general explanation of the observations. My results show that wives with relatively more power choose to work more on the labor market and less at home, whereas husbands with more power choose to do the opposite. Since women start out from a lower level of labor market participation than men do, it would seem that spouses’ agree that the ideal mix of market work and housework lies somewhere between the husbands’ and the wives’ current positions.
Doctorat en sciences économiques, Orientation économie
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Die vorliegende Arbeit besteht aus vier Aufsätzen zum Thema Besteuerung, welche sich in drei Themenblöcke unterteilen lassen: Die ersten beiden Aufsätze dieser Arbeit (Maiterth/Chirvi 2015 sowie Chirvi 2019) widmen sich dem deutschen Ehegattensplitting, der dritte Beitrag (Chirvi/Maiterth 2019) behandelt die Besteuerung gesetzlicher Renten in Deutschland und der vierte Aufsatz (Chirvi/Schneider 2019) untersucht Präferenzen bzgl. der Besteuerung von Vermögen in den USA. Eine Aufteilung anhand der behandelten Steuerarten macht die Arbeit noch übersichtlicher: So behandeln die ersten drei Aufsätze jeweils Aspekte der Einkommensteuer, während sich der vierte Beitrag verschiedenen Arten der Vermögensbesteuerung widmet. Es lässt sich ergänzen, dass die Aufsätze zur Einkommensteuer sehr eng mit dem deutschen Steuerrecht verbunden sind. Sie beschäftigen sich mit existierenden Regelungen (§ 26 sowie 32a EStG zum Ehegattensplitting bzw. § 10 sowie 22 EStG zur Rentenbesteuerung) und deren Auswirkungen. Dies gilt insbesondere für die Beiträge Maiterth/Chirvi (2015), in dem ein Forschungs- und Rechtsprechungsüberblick zum Thema Ehegattensplitting geliefert wird, sowie Chirvi/Maiterth (2019), in dem eine potentielle Doppel- oder Minderbesteuerung gesetzlicher Renten durch das AltEinkG untersucht wird. Der Aufsatz Chirvi (2019) untersucht Arbeitsangebotswirkungen des Ehegattensplittings und ist daher etwas weniger eng mit dem deutschen Recht verknüpft, da sich zumindest ähnliche Regelungen auch in anderen Ländern finden. Der Beitrag zur Vermögensbesteuerung, Chirvi/Schneider (2019), untersucht dagegen Präferenzen in Bezug auf – bis auf die Nachlasssteuer („estate tax“) – nicht existierende Vermögensteuern in den USA. Zwei der Aufsätze wurden in der Zeitschrift Steuer und Wirtschaft publiziert, die anderen beiden wurden in der arqus Working-Paper-Reihe veröffentlicht.
This dissertation consists of four papers on taxation that can be divided into three different subject areas: The first and the second paper (Maiterth/Chirvi 2015 as well as Chirvi 2019) deal with the ‘income splitting’, i.e. the taxation of married couples in Germany. The third paper (Chirvi/Maiterth 2019) analyzes effects of a reform regarding the transition to downstream taxation of public pensions. Finally, the last paper (Chirvi/Schneider 2019) examines preferences for the taxation of wealth in the United States. While the first three papers analyze (the effects of) specific regulations within the German income tax code (income splitting in Art. 26 and 32a of the German income tax code; the taxation of public pensions in Art. 10 and 22 of German income tax code), the fourth essay is about partially hypothetical types of capital taxation. Maiterth/Chirvi (2015) review the literature on the topic in the areas of public economics, business taxation and tax law and compile arguments for and against the income splitting. As many researchers point out that the income splitting may lead to disincentives for married women to work, Chirvi (2019) empirically analyzes its labor supply effects based on a new approach. Chirvi/Maiterth (2019) evaluate whether the AltEinkG, a reform that lead to a successive transition to downstream taxation, results in under- or double taxation of public pensions in Germany. They develop a measure and subsequently estimate potential under- or double taxation based on official income tax data. Chirvi/Schneider (2019) are interested in preferences regarding capital taxation and conduct a survey-experiment on mTurk to reveal whether preferences depend on the type of tax and/or attributes of assets and personal characteristics. Two of these papers have already been published in the scientific journal Steuer und Wirtschaft, the others can be found in the arqus working-paper series.

One of the very interesting demographic features in the US over the last three decades of the 20th century is the increase of the married women labor force participation rate. Over the same period, estimated labor supply elasticity varies substantially. This dissertation is to investigate the reasons behind them. I first study the determinants of the increase of the labor participation rate for married women with preschool-aged children over the last three decades of the 20th century. Using 5% samples of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) for 1980, 1990 and 2000, I find that the existing explanations proposed in the literature may only account for 9.6% increase in the 1980s and 70% decrease in the 1990s. In this paper, I find that the rising ratio of career type women can explain 30.33% of the growth in the labor force participation rate, and the change in the composition of career motivating career type women can at least explain 17.22% growth across cohorts. Women who have been working three years before their first childbearing are more likely to return to work after the childbearing period. The analyzing data is the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women (NLSYW) from 1968 to 2003 and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) from 1979 to 2008. This dissertation sheds some insight about a puzzle on estimated married women's labor supply elasticity variation. This important puzzle (sometimes referred to as the Hausman puzzle) is that the estimated labor supply elasticity varies substantially even when similar frameworks and similar datasets are used. I study the role of budget sets in producing this wide range of estimates. In particular, I study the effect of the typical convexification approximation of the non-convex budgets, and the well-known Heckman critique of the lack of bunching at the kink points of budget sets in the Hausman model. I introduce measurement error in nonlabor income to create an uncertain budget constraint that no longer implies bunching at kink points. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) of 1984 and 2001, I find that neither the convexification approximation nor using a model with random budget sets affects the estimates. These results demonstrate that variations in budget constraints alone do not explain the different estimates of labor supply elasticity. Changing the level of budget sets, for example by ignoring the state individual income tax, could affect the variation in elasticities.

This dissertation focuses on two main research questions related to the effect of a factor in a local labor market. Both relate to a finding of Black et al. (2014) that married women are less likely to work in Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) with more traffic congestion. The first essay evaluates the appropriateness of an MSA as a geographical entity in estimating the effect of congestion on labor supply of married women. One concern with such aggregated data is that they do not take into account within-city variation in congestion. In order to address this issue, I replicate the works by Black et al. (2014) at smaller geographical levels. Once the coefficient on commute time at each level is estimated, I compare the coefficients from smaller geographical entities with one from the MSA to examine if they are statistically similar. I find that an MSA is a geographically proper unity when the effect of commute time on the LFP of married women is examined. Additionally, I explore whether commuting time has also a significant effect on other related to labor market issues. First, I find longer commuting time is associated with shorter weekly working time of high school educated women. Secondly, fewer married women are self-employed in the area with longer commuting time. The second essay begins with the possibility of correlation between congestion and the error term in the estimation equation by Black et al. (2014). The coefficient on congestion in their equation might be biased due to the endogeneity problem. I employ a structural approach with a multinomial logit in order to deal with the endogeneity issue. By examining the effect of congestion and its interaction term on city-specific fixed effects that can be estimated using a discrete-choice model of residential decision, I find that the negative relationship between congestion and labor supply of married women discovered by Black et al. (2014) is partially true. The effect of congestion is statistically uncertain or depends on the model specifications, with the exception of a finding that married women with children are especially responsive to the effect of traffic congestion on their willingness to work.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2003. Graduate Programme in Economics.
Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-95). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ99189

Kuwait is a small, developing oil-producing country with a total population of approximately 2.6 million. Kuwaiti citizens represent approximately 40% of the total population. Less than 20% of the total labour force are Kuwaiti citizens. The government sector acts as the main provider of jobs for Kuwaiti citizens. Approximately three-quarters of Kuwaiti citizens are employed in the public sector, whereas non-Kuwaitis represent over 90% of the private sector labour force. The aim of this thesis is to assess the factors determining demand for and supply of national labour in the State of Kuwait. A number of surveys are conducted to collect information on issues relating to the views of employers and employees regarding various aspects of the labour market. The results of the surveys are analysed using multivariate statistical techniques. The sample results of this thesis suggest that approximately 80 percent of Kuwaiti male workers and 96 percent of Kuwaiti female workers are employed in the Government sector, while approximately 11 percent of Kuwaiti males and less than three percent of Kuwaiti females are employed in the private sector. Approximately nine percent of Kuwaiti males and two percent of Kuwaiti females work in the mixed government-private sector. The majority of Kuwaiti citizens seem to be employed as professionals, clerks and services. Twenty percent of Kuwaiti males and 49 percent of Kuwaiti females are professionals, while 51 percent of both Kuwaiti males and Kuwaiti females work as clerks. Many researchers have devoted their time and skill to analysing factors affecting the demand for supply of labour, the impact of wage differentials on employment, the role of government in offering employment and how to minimize the percentage of unemployment. Only a few researchers have given their attention to labour force issues in Middle Eastern countries. This thesis attempts to close some of the existing gaps in the literature on the Kuwaiti economy. In particular, it examines the distribution of manpower in the state of Kuwait; analyses the structure of employment of Kuwaiti citizens; evaluates the main motives of Kuwaiti citizens in searching for jobs in the public sector; and examines the reasons why firms operating in the private sector prefer to employ expatriates rather than Kuwaiti citizens. It also models decisions by Kuwaiti female citizens to participate in the labour force and decision as to whether an unemployed Kuwaiti will join the market conditions for Kuwaiti citizens over the next five years. In order to achieve these objectives, this thesis conducted surveys based on random samples, related to Kuwaiti labour force, Kuwaiti females and private companies. Multivariate statistical techniques such as discriminant analysis, factor analysis, probit-logit regression analysis and multiple regression analysis are applied to collected data. The results of factor analysis, using the principal component method and varimax rotation, reduce the large number of variables that motivate Kuwaiti citizens to prefer employment in the Government Sector to four factors: job suitability, job prospects and convenience, job security and, most importantly, the level of wages offered by the Government compared to that offered by the private sector. The canonical discriminant functions evaluated at group means (group centroid) suggest that small firms who do not employ nationals are concerned mainly about the wage levels these employees wish to receive. These firms believe that nationals ask for much higher wages than expatriates. Medium-sized employers are not eager to employ nationals for fear that they will not be satisfied with the offered positions and may not stay in employment for long periods. Large employers who elect to employ expatriates rather than nationals do so because they believe that nationals do not possess the necessary qualifications and experience for the positions they wish to occupy. Discriminant analysis of survey results suggest that the probability that a Kuwaiti woman will join the labour force grows the higher the wage rate, the more educated the woman, the more suitable jobs are available and the easier it is to get domestic help. Participation of Kuwaiti women in the labour force is negatively related to marital status, family income and number of children under the age of six. The prevailing wage rate is the most influential factor affecting Kuwaiti women participation in the labour force, whether they are married or unmarried. The second most important factor influencing Kuwaiti women’s decision to participate in the labour force is education. While age seems to be the third most important factor that positively influences Kuwaiti unmarried women’s decision to participate in the labour force, the age factor does not seem to be as significant for married women. Availability of suitable jobs is the third most significant factor in positively influencing Kuwaiti married women to participate in the labour force. This factor does not seem to exert such a great influence on unmarried women. Many Kuwaiti women, particularly if married, indicate that they would prefer to work part-time (i.e. for some part of the day or for only a few days a week) or engage in home-based employment (e.g. caring for others’ young children, tailoring, manufacturing simple products, selling over the phone or internet). The family income has a much higher (negative) effect on the participation rate for married than unmarried Kuwaiti women. Married women are less likely to participate in the labour force if they have children of preschool age. Both the logit and probit regression models gave a good fit. The econometric results suggest that the longer the Kuwaiti citizen is unemployed, the higher the probability that he or she will accept employment in the private sector. On the other hand, the higher the level of education or the average family income, the lower the probability that a person will look for jobs in the private sector. Age does not seem to have any significant impact on the decision to accept employment in the private sector. There is no clear distinction in the attitudes of unemployed Kuwaiti citizens of different ages towards accepting jobs in the Government or the private sector. Sex is a significant factor, however: Kuwaiti females are reluctant to work in the private sector, and the probability that unemployed female Kuwaiti citizens will join the private sector is lower than the probability that a male Kuwaiti unemployed citizen will do so. Unemployed Kuwaiti citizens who enjoy a relatively high family income are more likely to search for jobs in the Government sector where current terms and conditions of employment are much more lucrative, and are prepared to wait for lengthy periods until offered employment in the Government sector.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This dissertation analyzes how cultural and behavioral frictions affect decision-making in labor markets of developing economies. It studies factors that have received relatively little attention in economics—namely concerns about preserving identity, cognitive strain from financial stress, and gender norms—and examines their impacts on labor supply and productivity. Field experiments in the state of Odisha, India are used to provide direct empirical evidence on these relationships. Chapter 1 investigates how identity—one's concept of self—influences economic behavior in the labor market, focusing on the effect of caste identity on labor supply. In the experiment, casual laborers belonging to different castes choose whether to take up various real job offers. All offers involve working on a default manufacturing task and an additional task. The additional task changes across offers, is performed in private, and differs in its association with specific castes. Workers' average take-up rate of offers is 23 percentage points lower if offers involve working on tasks that are associated with castes other than their own. This gap increases to 47 pp if the castes associated with the relevant offers rank lower than workers' own in the caste hierarchy. Responses to job offers are invariant to whether or not workers' choices are publicized, suggesting that the role of identity itself—rather than social image—is paramount. Using a supplementary experiment, I show that 43% of workers refuse to spend ten minutes working on tasks associated with other castes, even when offered ten times their daily wage. Results indicate that identity may be an important constraint on labor supply, contributing to misallocation of talent in the economy. Chapter 2—joint work with Supreet Kaur, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Frank Schilbach—tests for a direct causal impact of financial strain on worker productivity. The experiment randomly varies timing of income receipt among laborers who earn piece rates for manufacturing tasks: some workers receive their wages on earlier dates, altering when cash constraints are eased while holding overall wealth constant. Workers increase productivity by 5.3% on average in the days after cash receipt. The impacts are concentrated among poorer workers in the sample, who increase output by over 10%. This effect of cash on hand on productivity is not explained by mechanisms such as gift exchange, trust in the employer, or nutrition. The chapter also presents positive evidence that productivity increases are mediated through lower attentional errors in production, indicating a role for improved cognition after cash receipt. Finally, directing workers’ attention to their finances via a salience intervention produced mixed results—consistent with concerns about priming highlighted in the literature. Results indicate a direct relationship between financial constraints and worker productivity and suggest that psychological channels mediated through attention play a role in this relationship. Chapter 3 examines whether gender norms lead women to hold back their potential in the labor market. While the existing literature has shown that women tend to earn less than their husbands, there is limited direct evidence on whether women actively avoid earning more than their spouses and the determinants of such behavior. The experiment engages married couples working as casual laborers in a short-term manufacturing job that pays piece-rate on output. The experiment provides women an extra hour to work without this difference being salient, making it likely that they could earn more than their husbands. After husbands finish piece-rate production, women are randomized into one of three conditions in which 1) the wife is informed of her husband’s production and expects both spouses to learn how much each spouse has produced, 2) the wife is informed of her husband’s production and expects that only she will learn how much each spouse has produced, or 3) both spouses are only informed of their joint total production. Results show that women in the last two conditions achieve on average one hour’s worth of production more than that of their husbands, suggesting that women do not face intrinsic concerns about earning more than their husbands. However, this productivity gap substantially decreases when husbands are expected to learn about individual production. This finding suggests that norms in marriage may be an important factor contributing to gender inequality in the labor market.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
Conventional interpretations of WWII hold that the war brought the United States out of the Great Depression and laid the path for future economic prosperity. However, this was not the case for all businesses and industries. During WWII, unprecedented production output was required of U.S. industries to supply the great “Arsenal of Democracy.” Industrial mobilization required the creation of new agencies and commissions to manage the nation’s resources. These organizations created policies that deeply impacted U.S. industries involved in war production. Policies governing such areas as the allocation of raw materials, transportation of finished goods, and distribution of war contracts created challenges for businesses that often resulted in lost productivity and in some cases, loss of profitability. Government regulation of the labor force and labor problems such as labor shortages, high absenteeism and turnover rates, and labor disputes presented further challenges for businesses navigating the wartime economy. Most studies of WWII industrial mobilization have focused on large corporations in high priority industries, such as the aircraft, petroleum, or steel industries, which achieved great success during the war. This thesis presents a case study of The Real Silk Hosiery Mills of Indianapolis, Indiana, a company that is representative of small and mid-sized companies that produced lower priority goods. The study demonstrates that the policies created by the military and civilian wartime agencies favored large corporations and had a negative affect on some businesses like Real Silk. As such,the economic boost associated with the war did not occur across the board.