Network effects across the earnings distribution: Payoffs to visible and invisible job finding assistance

This study makes three critical contributions to the “Do Contacts Matter?” debate. First, the widely reported null relationship between informal job searching and wages is shown to be mostly the artifact of a coding error and sample selection restrictions. Second, previous analyses examined only active informal job searching without fully considering the benefits derived from unsolicited network assistance (the “invisible hand of social capital”) – thereby underestimating the network effect. Third, wage returns to networks are examined across the earnings distribution. Longitudinal data from the NLSY reveal significant wage returns for network-based job finding over formal job searching, especially for individuals who were informally recruited into their jobs (non-searchers). Fixed effects quantile regression analyses show that contacts generate wage premiums among middle and high wage jobs, but not low wage jobs. These findings challenge conventional wisdom on contact effects and advance understanding of how social networks affect wage attainment and inequality.     

Motivation vs. relevance: Using strong ties to find a job in Urban China

While the idea that contacts matter in finding a job is intuitively appealing, we still do not know—after decades of research—how and why strong ties benefit job seekers. To resolve this confusion, we need to theorize how specific characteristics of ties are related to the mechanisms that make job search through contacts effective. We have reasons to expect that, while a contact’s motivation influences the likelihood that a job seeker receives an offer, her homophily with the job seeker on occupation and other job-relevant attributes influences the quality of the offer. The use of strong ties among university students to find jobs in China provides a unique opportunity to empirically isolate the relationship between contact characteristics and the mechanisms through which contacts benefit the job seeker. I tested my hypotheses with data on both the successful and unsuccessful job searches of 478 graduates of China’s flagship universities, who, as first-time job seekers, primarily used strong ties. Survey results are consistent with my hypotheses: job seekers who used strong ties to look for jobs had more offers—but not better offers—than those who used only formal methods.     

Why Do(n't) they leave?: Motherhood and women's job mobility

Although the relationship between motherhood and women's labor market exits has received a great deal of popular and empirical attention in recent years, far less is known about the relationship between motherhood and women's job changes. In this paper, I use panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979) (NLSY79) and Cox regression models to examine how motherhood influences the types of job changes and employment exits women make and how this varies by racial-ethnic group. I find preschool-age children are largely immobilizing for white women, as they discourage these women from making the types of voluntary job changes that are often associated with wage growth. No such effects were found for Black or Hispanic women.     

Training in two-tier labor markets: The role of job match quality

This study examines training investments in two-tier labor markets, focusing on the role of job match quality. Temporary workers are in general more likely than permanent workers to leave their employer and therefore are less likely to receive employer-funded training. However, as firms prefer to continue productive job matches, we hypothesize that the negative effect of holding a temporary contract on the probability to be trained diminishes with the quality of the job match. Using a recent longitudinal survey from the Netherlands, we find that temporary workers indeed participate less frequently in firm-sponsored training. However, this effect is fully driven by mismatches: holding a temporary contract does not significantly decrease the probability to receive training for workers in good job matches. Depending on match quality, a temporary job can either be a stepping stone or a dead-end.     

中国农民工工资走势:1979—2010

在有关中国农民工工资的文献中,农民工工资长期走势的研究仍付之阙如。在系统收集、梳理有关数据资料的基础上,对改革开放时期中国农民工工资水平及其演变轨迹的定量估测表明:过去30余年,其名义货币工资以年均近10%的速度增长;经用消费者价格指数调整的实际工资经历了三个阶段的演变;农民工与正式职工工资的比率呈先高后低走势。     

Bringing the Firms into Globalization Research: The Effects of Foreign Investment and Exports on Wages in Mexican Manufacturing Firms

Researchers specializing in organizations and labor markets have paid insufficient attention to the effects that foreign ownership of a firm and its orientation towards export production may have on the wages it pays to its workers. Using information from a nationally-representative sample of manufacturing firms in Mexico, a paradigmatic case of a developing country that is highly integrated into world markets, we find that foreign-owned and export-oriented firms pay considerably more than nationally-owned firms engaged in the production of goods for sale in the domestic market. Second, beyond paying higher wages to their workers, foreign-owned firms also raise the wages paid by domestic firms operating in the same regional labor markets. The wage premium in foreign and export-oriented firms cannot be explained by their size, industry, geographical location, productivity, use of advanced technology, or the sociodemographic composition of their workforce. We find evidence that wages in foreign-owned companies in Mexico are dependent on the country of origin of the capital investment. A greater difference between the industry-specific wages paid in the country of ownership and Mexico is associated with a higher wage premium in Mexican affiliates. Future work should strive to link information from foreign-owned affiliates with their parent companies abroad.     

民营中小企业新生代农民工用工管理研究——基于上下级人际和谐的视角

组织成员的工作行为在很大程度上受人际关系的影响,尤其是垂直的上下级关系,相较于水平的同事关系,员工更为敏感,上下级关系对组织成员行为的影响力更大。而随着新生代农民工逐渐成为我国民营中小企业劳动力的主力军,如何营造和谐的上下级关系,从而提高新生代农民工的工作满意度,成为了民营中小企业日益重视的问题。本研究以上下级人际和谐为研究视角,在采取问卷调查、实证分析研究方法探讨影响我国民营中小企业新生代农民工上下级关系的关键因素的基础上,进而有针对性地提出相应的对策,对于我国民营中小企业用好新生代农民工具有重要的指导意义。     

Measuring self-reported deviance: Cross-sectional or panel data?

The use of longitudinal designs in research on deviant behavior has recently been questioned on theoretical, methodological, and even economic grounds. One dimension of this questioning has been based on the ability of cross-sectional research to adequately address the issue of causality as demonstrated by the comparability of findings for both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. This research also addresses the comparability of cross-sectional data with longitudinal data by testing modern perceptual deterrence theory hypotheses utilizing a three-wave panel study of self-reported driving while under the influence of alcohol among adults. Findings suggest that cross-sectional measures of drunken driving behavior are strongly correlated with longitudinal measures. However, comparisons of models based on modern deterrence theory produce inconclusive results concerning the ability of cross-sectional measures to approximate longitudinal measures of self-reported deviance.     

Compensating differentials, labor market segmentation, and wage inequality

Two literatures on work and the labor market draw attention to the importance of non-pecuniary job amenities. Social psychological perspectives on work suggest that workers have preferences for a range of job amenities (e.g. Halaby, 2003). The compensating differentials hypothesis predicts that workers navigate tradeoffs among different job amenities such that wage inequality overstates inequality in utility (Smith, 1979). This paper joins these perspectives by constructing a new measure of labor market success that evaluates the degree to which workers’ job amenity preferences and outcomes match. This measure of subjective success is used to predict workers’ job satisfaction and to test the hypothesis that some degree of labor force inequality in wages is due to preference-based tradeoffs among all job amenities. Findings demonstrate that the new measure predicts workers’ job satisfaction and provides evidence for the presence of compensating differentials in the primary and intermediate, but not secondary, labor markets.     

Incarceration and Black–White inequality in Homeownership: A state-level analysis

Rising incarceration rates in the United States, as well as the concentration of incarceration among already marginalized individuals, has led some scholars to suggest that incarceration increases economic inequality among American men. But little is known about the consequences of incarceration for wealth, about incarceration’s contribution to Black–White disparities in wealth, or about the broader effects of incarceration on communities. In this article, we use state-level panel data (from 1985 to 2005) to examine the relationship between incarceration rates and the Black–White gap in homeownership, a distinct and important measure of wealth. Results, which are robust to an array of model specifications and robustness checks, show that incarceration rates diminish homeownership rates among Blacks and, in doing so, widen Black–White inequalities in homeownership. Therefore, the findings suggest that the consequences of incarceration extend beyond the offender and may increase inequality in household wealth.     

Industrial organization,economic conditions,and the labor market success of young men: An overview and extension

The relationship between workplace organization and socioeconomic attainments of workers, although an issue of some currency in contemporary stratification research, is complex and as yet not well understood. In contrast to dual economic theory, this paper attempts to sort out the separate effects of various components of the social organization of production on job rewards by adopting an explicit multidimensional approach to the conceptualization and measurement of organizational structure. Moreover, various considerations suggest that these structural impacts vary with business cycle activity. Accordingly, one of the research aims is to examine the extent to which various dimensions of organizational structure serve to differentially insulate workers from wage stagnation as economic conditions deteriorate. Finally, because firms may devise different institutional responses to declining product demand, these structural effects on both wage rates and unemployment propensities are examined.     

Enduring an Economic Crisis: The Effect of Macroeconomic Shocks on Intragenerational Mobility in Japan

After the burst of its "bubble" economy in 1989, Japan experienced an astonishingly long economic recession whose gravity surpassed any seen in the industrialized world since the 1930s. While this recession is likely to have important consequences on the well-known workplace arrangements and career mobility patterns in that country, systematic analyses of such consequences are nearly absent. This study examines changes in the rates and directions of job mobility in Japan using work history data collected in 2005 from a nationally representative sample of men and women. I find evidence that Japanese firms have largely retained the core elements of the permanent employment system. The norm that stresses men's loyalty to their employers, however, appears to have weakened, resulting in higher voluntary job turnover among male workers. In addition, the gender gap in lifetime mobility processes has narrowed, but not because Japanese women have gained opportunities in the workplace. Rather, economic stagnation has led to greater fluctuations in employment and wages over men's life course, thereby closing the gender gap. Beyond illustrating the changing stratification process in Japan, the findings have general implications for understanding how economic crises impact employment relations, institutional transformations, and social change in advanced industrialized countries.     

Skin color,sex, and educational attainment in the post-civil rights era

We assess the relationship between skin color and educational attainment for native-born non-Hispanic Black and White men and women, using data from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study. CARDIA is a medical cohort study with twenty years of social background data and a continuous measure of skin color, recorded as the percent of light reflected off skin. For Black men and women, we find a one-standard-deviation increase in skin lightness to be associated with a quarter-year increase in educational attainment. For White women, we find an association approximately equal in magnitude to that found for Black respondents, and the pattern of significance across educational transitions suggests that skin color for White women is not simply a proxy for family background. For White men, any relationship between skin color and attainment is not robust and, analyses suggest, might primarily reflect differences in family background. Findings suggest that discrimination on the basis of skin color may be less specific to race than previously thought.     

Examining macroeconomic determinants of trust in parliament: A dynamic multilevel framework

The extensive literature on political trust has long suggested a link between macroeconomic conditions and public trust in political institutions. However, empirical evidence regarding this relationship remains ambiguous. Conflicting results appear to be related to differences in research design: while cross-sectional studies tend not to find evidence of a link between macroeconomic variables and trust in political institutions, most longitudinal studies do. In this paper, using recent advances in multilevel methodology, we examine both cross-sectional and longitudinal effects of macroeconomic variables on trust in national parliament within a single dynamic multilevel framework. By analyzing all seven waves of the European Social Survey (2002–2014), we demonstrate that declining macroeconomic performance has a negative within-country effect on trust in national parliament. At the same time, we find limited evidence in support of this association at the between-country level. This discrepancy suggests the presence of confounding factors that are unaccounted for in cross-sectional designs. We therefore argue for the importance of examining within-country effects as they provide a more stringent test of causality.     

A causal approach to the measurement of job statisfaction

Differences in indicators used to measure job satisfaction raise the question of their comparability. Four commonly used measures of job satisfaction are thus compared with respect to their relationship to three independent variables—education, occupational status, and income (i.e., wages)—in the context of a causal model that incorporates considerations of measurement error in both independent and dependent variables. It is found that in some cases, different indicators imply different conclusions regarding the influence of education and occupational status on job satisfaction. The utility of a causal modeling approach to these problems is also demonstrated.     

Re-examining the relationship between Latino immigration and racial/ethnic violence

Whether immigration increases crime has long been a source of political debate and scholarly interest. Despite widespread public opinion to the contrary, the weight of evidence suggests the most recent wave of U.S. immigration has not increased crime, and may have actually helped reduce criminal violence. However, with recent shifts in immigrant settlement patterns away from traditional receiving destinations, a series of contemporary studies suggests a more complicated immigration-crime relationship, whereby Latino immigration is said to increase violence in newer immigrant destinations (but not in established destinations) and has varied effects for different racial/ethnic groups. With few exceptions, these more recent studies rely on cross-sectional analyses, thus limiting their ability to examine the longitudinal nexus between Latino immigration and violent crime. This study brings to bear the first longitudinal data set to test the relationship between immigration and racial/ethnic homicide in U.S. metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2010. Results from bivariate longitudinal associations and multivariate fixed effects models are contrary to recent findings – Latino immigration is generally associated with decreases in homicide victimization for whites, blacks, and Hispanics in both established and non-established immigrant destinations, though these associations are not significant in all cases.     

Insecure times? Workers' perceived job and labor market security in 23 OECD countries

By examining the association between employees' perceptions of job security and central labor market policies and characteristics, this paper seeks to understand the mechanisms through which institutions generate confidence and positive expectations among individuals regarding their economic future. The analyses distinguish between different facets of perceived job security and different institutional mechanisms. My multilevel analyses of a data set that contains information on 12,431 individuals and 23 countries show that some labor market policies and characteristics are more likely than others to provide workers with subjective security. Unemployment assistance in particular is an effective means of reducing workers' worries about job loss. Dismissal protection, by contrast, only unleashes its psychologically protective effects under certain conditions. The paper's main conclusion is that the effectiveness of policies varies and that different types of labor market institutions serve as complements rather than as substitutes.     

劳动力市场分割、职业流动与城市劳动者经济地位获得的二元路径模式

使用2009年中国社会网络与职业经历调查广州、上海、厦门、济南和西安5城市数据,检验了改革以后影响中国城市劳动者职业流动模式以及经济地位获得的因素。研究结果表明,高学历劳动者与低学历劳动者群体处于两个分割的劳动力市场中,他们的经济地位获得路径完全不同。对于低学历劳动者,职业流动是提升他们收入水平的最重要因素,而人力资本因素(受教育年限和工作经验)对他们的收入没有影响。高学历劳动者的情况刚好相反,职业流动对收入获得没有任何作用,影响他们收入分层的最重要因素是人力资本。本研究揭示了转型期中国城市地区不同劳动力市场劳动者经济地位获得的二元路径模式。     

Competing for jobs: Labor queues and gender sorting in the hiring process

While much research has documented the pattern and extent of sex segregation of workers once they are employed, few studies have addressed the pre-hire mechanisms that are posited to produce sex segregation in employment. While the notion of a labor queue—the rank order of the set of people that employers choose among—plays a prominent role in pre-hire accounts of job sex sorting mechanisms, few studies have examined the ways in which job candidates are sorted into labor queues. In this paper, we explore the mechanisms by which labor queues contribute to the gendering of jobs by studying the hiring process for all jobs at a call center. Being placed in a queue has a clear gendering effect on the hiring process: the sex distribution of applicants who are matched to queues and those who are rejected at this phase diverge, and among those assigned to queues, women are prevalent in queues for low pay, low status jobs. The screening process also contributes to the gendering of the population of hires at this firm. Females are more prevalent among hires than they are among candidates at initial queue assignment. Among high status jobs, however, males are more prevalent than females. Moreover, there are important wage implications associated with matching to queues. While there are large between-queue sex differences in the paid wages associated with allocation to queues, once allocated to queues the wage differences between male and female candidates are nil. Consequently, the roots of gender wage inequality in this setting lie in the initial sorting of candidates to labor queues.