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Strobl, Eric
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Strobl, Eric
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Strobl, Eric
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Publication
The formal sector wage premium and firm size for self-employed workers
2012-03, Bargain, Olivier, Badaoui, Eliane, Kwenda, Prudence, Strobl, Eric, Walsh, Frank
We develop a model where workers may enter self-employment or search for jobs as employees and where there is heterogeneity across workers’ managerial ability. Workers
with higher skills will manage larger firms while workers with low managerial ability
will run smaller firms and will be in self-employment only when they cannot find a
salaried job. For these workers self-employment is a secondary/informal form of
employment. The Burdett and Mortensen (1998) equilibrium search model is used for illustration as a special case of our more general framework. Empirical evidence from
Mexico is provided and demonstrates that firm size wage effects for employees and self-employed workers are broadly consistent with the model.
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Foreign direct investment, agglomerations and demonstration effects : an empirical investigation
2001-03, Barry, Frank, Görg, Holger, Strobl, Eric
Many previous studies have shown that the localisation of firms can be an important
factor in attracting new foreign direct investment into a host country. What has been missing in this literature thus far, however, is an investigation into the reasons why industry clusters attract firms. We distinguish between “efficiency agglomerations” as firms locating close to each other because they can increase their efficiency by doing so, and “demonstration effects”, whereby existing firms send signals to new investors as to the reliability of the host country and newly entering firms follow previous firms. In this paper we try to disentangle these two effects, by examining the location of US and UK firms in Ireland. We calculate proxies for “efficiency agglomerations” and
“demonstration effects” and include these proxies in an empirical model of the location decision of firms. For US firms, we find that both efficiency agglomeration and demonstration effects are important determinants of entry. For UK firms, however, the evidence is not as clear cut.
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Multinational companies, backward linkages and labour demand elasticities
2006-12, Walsh, Frank, Görg, Holger, Henry, Michael, Strobl, Eric
This paper investigates the link between nationality of ownership and wage elasticities of labour demand at the level of the plant. In particular, we examine whether labour demand in multinationals becomes less elastic with respect to the wage if the plant has backward linkages with the local economy. Our empirical evidence, based on a rich plant level
dataset, shows that the extent of local linkages indeed reduces the wage elasticity of labour demand. This result is economically important and holds for a number of different specifications.
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Structural change and long-term unemployment in Ireland
1996, Strobl, Eric, Walsh, Patrick P.
In this paper we investigate the build-up in male long-term unemployment by allowing for heterogeneity both in the unemployment inflow and conditional survival rates. We construct semi-annual series of the male flows into and out of the Irish Live Register for the period 1967 to 1995 and develop a methodology that allows us to decompose the unemployment inflow by age and unemployment scheme and the unemployment outflow by duration of spell, age and unemployment scheme. Our results in conjunction with other evidence indicate that it was heterogeneity in the unemployment inflow caused by the changing occupational structure of employment over the 1980s that caused the build-up and persistance of male long-term unemployment in Ireland.
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The ambiguous effect of minimum wages on workers and total hours
2007-08, Strobl, Eric, Walsh, Frank
We model a standard competitive labour market where firms choose combinations of
workers and hours per worker to produce output. If one assumes that the scale of
production has no impact on hours per worker, then the change in the number of
workers and hours per worker resulting from a minimum wage are inversely related.
We also demonstrate that total hours worked at the firm may rise if there are small
fixed costs to hiring workers.
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An equilibrium search model of the informal sector
2006-12, Badaoui, Eliane, Strobl, Eric, Walsh, Frank
We use an equilibrium search framework to model a formal- informal sector labour
market where the informal sector arises endogenously. In our model large firms will
be in the formal sector and pay a wage premium, while small firms are characterised
by low wages and tend to be in the informal sector. Using data from the South African
labour force survey we illustrate that the data is consistent with these predictions.
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The Formal Sector Wage Premium and Firm Size for Self-employed Workers
2013-10, Bargain, Olivier, Badaoui, Eliane, Kwenda, Prudence, Strobl, Eric, Walsh, Frank
We develop a model where workers may enter self-employment or search for jobs as
employees and where there is heterogeneity across workers’ managerial ability. Workers with higher skills will manage larger firms while workers with low managerial ability will run smaller firms and will be in self-employment only when they cannot find a
salaried job. For these workers self-employment is a secondary/informal form of
employment. The Burdett and Mortensen (1998) equilibrium search model is used for
illustration as a special case of our more general framework. Empirical evidence from
Mexico is provided and demonstrates that firm size wage effects for employees and selfemployed workers are broadly consistent with the model.
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Publication
The minimum wage and hours per worker
2010-10, Strobl, Eric, Walsh, Frank
In a competitive model we ease the assumption that efficiency units of labour are the
product of hours and workers. We show that a minimum wage may either increase or
decrease hours per worker and the change will have the opposite sign to the slope of
the equilibrium hours hourly wage locus. Similarly, total hours worked may rise or
fall. We illustrate the results throughout with a Cobb-Douglas example.
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The impact of discriminatory legislation on Irish female unemployment flows
1995, Harrison, Michael J., Strobl, Eric, Walsh, Patrick P.
Ireland provides us with a unique case-study of the effects of discrimination in the labour market. Since the ninteen-sixties and until the late nineteen-eighties, gradual reforms of explicit discrimination against females with regard to entitlement to and duration of unemployment assistance and benefit have been introduced. The primary aim of this paper is to asses the impact that these reforms have had on the level of female turnover activity in the Live Register. The results show that the reforms may be modelled as well defined discrete shifts in the inflows and it is noteworthy that the more significant of the estimated effects of reforms are those corresponding to those which gave the large numbers of females that were in non-activity the option of entering the Live Register without any prior need of employment contributions. The results also provide evidence of a secondary effect of reforms on the level of female outflows, and appear to support the hypothesis that the reforms have encouraged females to remain on the Live Register for longer periods of time.
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Changes in the gender wage gap and the returns to firm specific human capital
1999-03, Walsh, Frank, Strobl, Eric
If employers believe females are more likely to separate from a job than males,
efficient cost sharing of on-the-job training implies that females will have higher returns to tenure. Becker and Lindsay (1994) argue that this is true empirically. (1994). Updating the analysis we find that that there is no longer a difference in the probability of leaving jobs or in returns to tenure by gender. Differences in contracts to finance on the job training can no longer explain any of the “discrimination” component in the gender wage gap.