JOB MOBILITY AND EARNINGS INSTABILITY

There is still no consensus on the causes of the increase in the variance of transitory earnings (earnings instability) in the United States. It is difficult to attribute the rise in instability to job mobility because there is no evidence of a concurrent increase in job turnover or separations. Using an error component model of the covariance structure of earnings on Panel Survey of Income Dynamics and Survey of Income and Program Participation data, this study shows that job mobility and the increase in the variance of wage changes upon job change accounts for a substantial part of the increase in earnings instability. The empirical evidence is consistent with the simulations of a search and matching model where an increase in the variance of productivity shocks increases on‐the‐job search and earnings instability among job changers while leaving job turnover approximately constant. (JEL J21, J31)     

JOB MOBILITY AND GENDER-BASED WAGE GROWTH DIFFERENTIALS

Studies of gender differences in the returns to job mobility have yielded conflicting results. We examine whether there are gender differences in mobility patterns or in the returns to different types of mobility. Our results, based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, imply that there are gender differences in mobility patterns, but there are not gender differences in the wage growth associated with different types of mobility. Therefore, it appears that empirical estimates of the gender differences in the returns to job mobility may be misleading if they do not consider the cause of separation.     

WORK HOUR MISMATCH AND JOB MOBILITY: ADJUSTMENT CHANNELS AND RESOLUTION RATES

This paper analyses the role of job changes in overcoming work hour mismatches (i.e., differences between actual and desired work hours). It addresses two, yet neglected, questions: (1) How do adjustments in desired work hours, additionally to adjustments in actual work hours, contribute to the resolution of these mismatches? and (2) Does the well‐documented increased work hour flexibility of job movers help to actually resolve work hour mismatches? We find that job change increases the probability of resolving work hour mismatches, but far less than expected with free choice of hours across jobs. (JEL J21, J22)     

CONSOLIDATING THE EVIDENCE ON INCOME MOBILITY IN THE WESTERN STATES OF GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES FROM 1984 TO 2006

The cross‐national intragenerational literature has often analyzed income mobility within short time periods over which mobility might reasonably be thought of as invariant. Here, we argue that a great social transformation—German reunification—abruptly and permanently altered mobility. Using standard measures (with panel data for the western states of Germany and the United States) over the period 1984–2006, we find the conventional result that income mobility is greater in Germany. But when we cut the data into 5‐year windows, we find that income mobility declines significantly over the years immediately following reunification in Germany but not in the United States, using both measures. (JEL J1, J6)     

FROM ZERO TO TEN

The Society for the Promotion of Artisanal and Agricultural Work among the Jews in Russia (ORT) was established in St Petersburg in 1880. In its post‐1921 form, as the World ORT Union, the organisation, with its headquarters in London, still operates in scores of countries throughout the world. This article analyses the ideological changes in ORT's craftsmen‐related programmes during the first decades of its history: from the initial careful attempts to use qualified artisan labour as one of the ways to adapt the Jewish population to the economic, social and political conditions of the Russian empire, to later Jewish nation‐building projects that incorporated elements of economic autonomy. Founded by maskilic intellectuals and entrepreneurs, from the 1900s ORT was gradually taken over by more radical activists. Some of them, including its future chairman Leon Bramson (1869–1941) and its leading economist Boris Brutskus (1874–1938), came from the Petersburg apparatus of the Jewish Colonization Association, which competed with ORT in all domains of philanthropic activities. Materials of two ORT conferences, in 1914 and 1916, help us understand the changes in the organisation's attitudes to vocational education and various forms of cooperatives and employment bureaux. Special attention is paid to ORT's role during World War I.     

TRADE COSTS AND JOB FLOWS: EVIDENCE FROM ESTABLISHMENT‐LEVEL DATA

Changes in the costs of trading inputs or final goods affect establishment‐level job flows. Using a longitudinal database containing the universe of manufacturing establishments in California from 1992 to 2004, we find that a decline in input or final‐good trade costs is associated with job destruction in the least productive establishments, job creation in the most productive establishments, and an increase in the death likelihood of the least productive establishments. The evidence is consistent with predictions of models of trade with heterogeneous firms. Additionally, the evidence shows that the effects of input trade costs on establishment‐level job flows are larger than the effects of final‐good trade costs. (JEL F14, F16)     

ASYMMETRIES IN THE RESPONSES OF REGIONAL JOB FLOWS TO OIL PRICE SHOCKS

This paper studies the effect of oil price innovations on manufacturing job flows across U.S. states. First, I estimate a nonlinear structural equation model and compute impulse response functions by Monte Carlo integration. I find asymmetries in the responses of job flows to positive and negative oil price innovations. Yet, these asymmetries do not pass a test of symmetry on the impulse responses, especially after accounting for data mining. Third, I use a test for the absence of job reallocation to evaluate whether an unexpected increase in the real price of oil price triggers an important change in job reallocation. I find that oil price shocks have limited regional allocative effects. (JEL E24, E32, Q43)     

FROM CREATIVE TO CULTURAL INDUSTRIES

In response to Daniel Mato's essay, this article argues against the concept of the creative industries and for a capacious understanding of culture to redefine the culture industries     

FROM MEDIA POLITICS TO E-PROTEST

New forms of political expression are often taken as further evidence of the 'cultural turn' within contemporary societies. Taking two recent cases - the use of popular culture in the election campaigns of British political parties (and particularly the Labour Party) and the so-called 'Carnival Against Capital' of June 18th 1999 - this article argues for caution in assuming that such cultural modi vivendi necessarily require culturalist forms of explanation and analysis. Weargue that both established political parties and extra-parliamentary social movements have found new opportunities for political communication and mobilization through media and information technology (particularly the Internet). However, the resource and organizational problems they confront remain the same, as does the familiar instrumental rationality of their actions. Rather than leading us to abandon established analytical tools such as political intermediation, political opportunity structures or resource mobilization, shifting opportunities and conditions require the adaptation and extension of such concepts. In this spirit, we attempt to offer an analysis of the cultural mode adopted by parties and movements without losing sight of their broader goals and motivations.     

THE EFFECTS OF JOB RELOCATION ON SPOUSAL CAREERS: EVIDENCE FROM MILITARY CHANGE OF STATION MOVES

We investigate the impact of military job relocation on spousal earnings and employment by creating a unique longitudinal database that tracks over 900,000 military spouses over the period 2001–2012, based on data from two administrative sources—military records on personnel and their dependents, and Social Security earnings records. This database allows us to estimate the effects of military change of station moves controlling for some key observable characteristics of the service‐member and household and controlling for individual spouse fixed effects. We find that military moves cause a substantial decline in spousal earnings in the year of the move, on the order of $2,100, or 14% of average spousal earnings. Moves also increase the likelihood that the spouse has no earnings for the year. We find larger earnings reductions for moves that cross state lines, and for older spouses, male spouses, and those with young children. The career costs persist over time and spouses continue to experience significantly lower earnings 2 years after the move. This persistence, combined with the typical military member experiencing a change of station move every 2 or 3 years, may substantially limit the ability of military spouses to accumulate human capital over time. (JEL H56, R23, J45, J16, J64)     

JOB SECURITY and JOB SEARCH IN MORE THAN ONE LABOR MARKET

I analyze job search behavior of unemployed workers who may search for work in several sectors of the economy. Although reservation wages are equal in each sector, workers search more intensively in sectors with lower layoff rates. Thus workers more quickly find and accept jobs with more security.     

FROM WOMEN AND TECHNOLOGY TO GENDERED TECHNOSCIENCE

This paper situates current discussions of women's position in ICTs in the wider context of feminist debates on gender and technology. While a common trend among early feminist theorists was a profound pessimism about the inherent masculinity of technology, this was replaced during the 1990s by an unwarranted optimism about the liberating potential of technoscience for women. This article gives an account of both technophobia and technophilia, arguing that recent approaches drawing on the social studies of technology provide a more subtle analysis. Avoiding both technological determinism and gender essentialism, technofeminist approaches emphasize that the gender-technology relationship is fluid and flexible, and that feminist politics and not technology per se is the key to gender equality.     

FROM FREEDOM FLOTILLA TO AMERICA'S BURDEN:

Between April and October 1980, almost 125,000 Cubans left Mariel Harbor and came to the United States. The so-called "Freedom Flotilla' was an important, continuing news story during that period. Initially, the media's frame of coverage was positive: the Mariel immigrants were political refugees fleeing Cuba and needing our help. However, upon reports that Castro was sending criminals and other undersirables via the flotilla, media coverage grew negative. That negative news frame shaped the definition and the consequent stigmatization of the immigrants as a deviant population. The media's construction of the Mariel story reflected the historical and ideological context of Cuban-U.S. relations.     

INFORMAL LABOR MARKETS AND ON‐THE‐JOB TRAINING: EVIDENCE FROM WAGE DATA

This study examines whether informal sector jobs are a source of training for young less‐educated workers. Controlling for worker and job characteristics, it is found that, in the early years of workers' careers in Mexico, wage growth in the informal sector is higher than in the formal sector. This result is consistent with general human capital investment on‐the‐job if the informal labor market is more competitive than the formal labor market due to frictions generated by labor regulations. (JEL O17, J24, J310)     

EXTERNAL RECRUITMENT AND INTRAFIRM MOBILITY

In Chan (1996), I suggest that a contest between internal and external candidates for a position within a firm is generally biased in favor of the former to maintain work incentive for existing workers. This implies that a successful external candidate tends to be superior in ability relative to internally promoted colleagues and therefore enjoys a higher probability of subsequent promotion. Moreover, this effect tends to diminish up the hierarchy if external competition is more of a threat at lower job levels. Analyzing personnel data from a U.S. financial corporation, I find consistent support for this hypothesis. (JEL J00 , J41 )     

FROM JUKE BOX BOYS TO BOBBY SOX BRIGADE

Through its analysis of the complex discursive struggle over Times Square's – and later America's – ‘bobby sox brigade’, this article reintroduces young women into historical and theoretical accounts of youth culture. In doing so it challenges subculture and moral panic theories for their over-emphasis on working-class masculinity and their inability to account for the complexity and localized specificity – both historical and geographic – that such case studies command. The bobby soxer and the conflicting debates she engendered must be understood as a product of wartime contingency and in relation to the contested discourses within and between different localized contexts and media forms; the bobby soxer was simultaneously positioned as the key problem of wartime and promise of the post-war prosperity ahead. This article ultimately proposes a theoretical framework focusing on localized and contested terrains of discourse, appropriate to (sub)cultural activity in times of war and other disruptions.