计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

Policy makers view public sector-sponsored employment and training programs and other active labor market policies as tools for integrating the unemployed and economically disadvantaged into the work force. Few public sector programs have received such intensive scrutiny, and been subjected to so many different evaluation strategies. This chapter examines the impacts of active labor market policies, such as job training, job search assistance, and job subsidies, and the methods used to evaluate their effectiveness. Previous evaluations of policies in OECD countries indicate that these programs usually have at best a modest impact on participants’ labor market prospects. But at the same time, they also indicate that there is considerable heterogeneity in the impact of these programs. For some groups, a compelling case can be made that these policies generate high rates of return, while for other groups these policies have had no impact and may have been harmful. Our discussion of the methods used to evaluate these policies has more general interest. We believe that the same issues arise generally in the social sciences and are no easier to address elsewhere. As a result, a major focus of this chapter is on the methodological lessons learned from evaluating these programs. One of the most important of these lessons is that there is no inherent method of choice for conducting program evaluations. The choice between experimental and non-experimental methods or among alternative econometric estimators should be guided by the underlying economic models, the available data, and the questions being addressed. Too much emphasis has been placed on formulating alternative econometric methods for correcting for selection bias and too little given to the quality of the underlying data. Although it is expensive, obtaining better data is the only way to solve the evaluation problem in a convincing way. However, better data are not synonymous with social experiments. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

The Economics and Econometrics of Active Labor Market Programs

The fraction of U.S. college graduate women entering professional programs increased substantially just after 1970, and the age at first marriage among all U.S. college graduate women began to soar around the same year. We explore the relationship between these two changes and the diffusion of the birth control pill (“the pill”) among young, unmarried college graduate women. Although the pill was approved in 1960 by the Food and Drug Administration and spread rapidly among married women, it did not diffuse among young, single women until the late 1960s after state law changes reduced the age of majority and extended “mature minor” decisions. We present both descriptive time series and formal econometric evidence that exploit cross-state and cross-cohort variation in pill availability to young, unmarried women, establishing the “power of the pill” in lowering the costs of long-duration professional education for women and raising the age at first marriage.

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The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women’s Career and Marriage Decisions

The fraction of U.S. college graduate women entering professional programs increased substantially around 1970 and the age at first marriage among all U.S. college graduate women soared just after 1972. We explore the relationship between these two changes and how each was shaped by the diffusion of the birth control pill among young, single college educated women. Although the pill' was approved in 1960 by the FDA and diffused rapidly among married women, it did not diffuse among young single women until the late 1960s when a series of state law changes reduced the age of majority and extended mature minor decisions. We model the impact of the pill on women's careers as consisting of two effects. The pill had a direct positive effect on women's career investment by almost eliminating the chance of becoming pregnant and thus the cost of having sex. The pill also created a social multiplier effect by encouraging the delay of marriage generally and thus increasing a career woman's likelihood of finding an appropriate mate after professional school. We present a collage of evidence pointing to the power of the pill in lowering the costs of long-duration professional education for women. The evidence consists of the striking coincidences in the timing of changes in career investment, marriage age, state laws, and pill use among young single women. The connection between changes in the age at first marriage and the pill is further explored using state variation in laws affecting young single women's pill access. We also evaluate alternative explanations for the changes in career and marriage.

The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women's Career and Marriage Decisions

Four alternative but related approaches to empirical evaluation of policy interventions are studied: social experiments, natural experiments, matching methods, and instrumental variables. In each case the necessary assumptions and the data requirements are considered for estimation of a number of key parameters of interest. These key parameters include the average treatment effect, the treatment of the treated and the local average treatment effect. Some issues of implementation and interpretation are discussed drawing on the labour market programme evaluation literature.

Alternative approaches to evaluation in empirical microeconomics

This paper shows how internationally and intertemporally consistent information on sickness absence can be constructed from Labour Force Surveys, and describes some important features of data that we have generated using the Luxembourg Employment Study. We also analyse sickness absence rates by age, gender and other socio-economic characteristics of workers. These relationships prove to be similar across countries with widely differing mean rates of absence. In this dataset, workers with longer tenure tend to have higher absence rates even when age is controlled for. Absence is also positively correlated with higher usual hours of work. We show how internationally and intertemporally consistent information on sickness absence can be constructed from Labour Force Surveys (LFS), and describe some important features of data that we have generated using the Luxembourg Employment Study (LES). Such data fill an important gap in available information about absence, since they have the potential to provide answers to a number of issues that remain unresolved in its study. There is now substantial evidence, going back to the work of the Industrial Fatigue Research Board in the 1920s and 1930s,I that sickness absence is not purely a response to a medical condition. Workers who have access to compensation payments are more likely to be absent than those without (Buzzard and Shaw, 1952); the higher the rate of compensation, the more absences workers are likely to take (Buzzard and Shaw, 1952); furthermore, the higher the rate of compensation, the longer absences are likely to be (Barmby et al., 1991). The analysis of sickness absence is placed firmly in the agenda of economics by the idea that sickness absence rates are the consequence of choices that can be mediated by financial (and other) incentives. The provision and level of sickpay is typically determined at two levels: by negotiation between firms and their workforces, and by government regulation. Interfirm variations in absence and their correlates are not well understood. Coles and Treble (1996) have argued that the marginal cost of an absence is partially in the control of firms, and can be usefully seen as driven by the nature of the technology adopted. These theoretical arguments remain largely unexplored empirically, but the ability to compare similar industries across different countries is likely to be revealing. * This paper was drafted during a visit to CEPS/INSTEAD in the Summer of 1999. The research was funded by a grant of the European Commission under the TMR Programme, Access to Large Scale Facilities, hosted by IRISS-C/I at CEPS/INSTEAD in Differdange, Luxembourg. We are also grateful for support from the Leverhulme Foundation through a grant to the Institute for Labour Research at the University of Essex and to colleagues at the ILR for their constructive comments. Acknowledgements to LES data providers are given at the end of the paper. We would also like to thank Paul Alkemade, Elena Bardasi and Pascal Garin for their help. Any remaining errors are our own, and the views expressed herein are not necessarily those of CEPS/INSTEAD. 1 See, for example, Vernon and Bedford (1928).

/pdf/sickness-absence-an-international-comparison-5dlir7ng70.pdf

Sickness absence: an international comparison*

Worker absence histories: a panel data study

Using the personnel records of a large British financial sector employer we investigate how workers respond to remuneration differences and “luck” in the promotion system. The results confirm that workers respond to larger remuneration spreads by working harder. Increased certainty in the promotion process also has this effect. There appears to be no difference between men’s and women’s reactions to promotion incentives. Gender differences in the raw data therefore appear not due to incentives. We need to look elsewhere for an explanation.

/pdf/luck-effort-and-reward-in-an-organizational-hierarchy-2cmku42z3w.pdf

Luck, Effort, and Reward in an Organizational Hierarchy

Data from the Youth Cohort Study of Britain are used to estimate hazard functions for time to first job by school leavers. Participants in the Youth Training Scheme (YTS) are compared with non-participants. When time taken to obtain a job is modeled, YTS trainees obtain jobs at a slower rate than non-trainees even when time spent on YTS is excluded. However, female YTS trainees obtain 'good' jobs at a faster rate than non-trainees when time spent on YTS is excluded. Our main results are robust to the inclusion of a selectivity effect, and to the inclusion of local labor market conditions as a time-dependent covariate. Copyright 1994 by Royal Economic Society.

The youth training scheme and the school-to-work transition

On the Economics of Marriage: A Theory of Marriage, Labor, and Divorce.

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