Market Outcomes Research Articles

The role of noncognitive skills in educational mismatch: evidence from China

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of noncognitive skills on educational mismatch in the context of China and to further explore the potential mechanisms concerning how noncognitive skills determine mismatch outcomes.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses the Chinese Family Panel Survey of 2018, which provides the Big Five Personality Inventory to assess respondents' noncognitive skills and contains information on educational mismatch. The authors estimate the effects of noncognitive skills on educational mismatch by means of a probit model. Additionally, the correlated random effects (CRE) model and instrumental variable (IV) approach have also been exploited in the robust checks.FindingsThe findings show that the composite score of noncognitive skills reduces the probability of being overeducated and, conversely, increases the likelihood of being undereducated. When distinguishing the effects of different personality traits, the authors find significantly negative effects of agreeableness and openness on overeducation and a positive effect of openness on undereducation. With regard to heterogeneous analysis, the effects of noncognitive skills on educational mismatch exist mostly among white-collar employees and employees with fewer than 5 years of work experience. Finally, the authors provide two likely mechanisms related to job search effort and social capital, followed by the presentation of supporting evidence.Practical implicationsThe results of this paper underline the importance of noncognitive skills in raising the quality of jobs that individuals can obtain. This suggests that the development of noncognitive skills should be encouraged to be integrated into formal education systems and social job training programs in China.Originality/valueDespite a growing interest in its consequences in the labor market, the role of noncognitive skills in determining educational mismatch has rarely been discussed in developing countries. This study provides the first evidence regarding the effects of noncognitive skills on education mismatch in China. It contributes to the research on noncognitive skills' labor market outcomes and enhances the understanding of the factors driving educational mismatch.

Perceiving Innovation: Unveiling the Impact on Market Performance

The new challenge confronting leaders is investing in improving customer satisfaction or perceived innovativeness. The challenge also reflects the focus of leadership: to make operations more efficient and effective or invest in tomorrow's solutions? Intuitively, both are linked to the financial impact of the firm. In this article, the author explores the mechanisms “behind the scenes” driving perceived quality, and customer satisfaction on one side, and perceived innovativeness and relative attractiveness on the other side. Both routes are linked to customer loyalty, customer lifetime value, customer equity, and firm value. The findings underscore the importance of customer-centric innovation for market performance, suggesting that innovations must resonate with customer needs and expectations to foster market adoption and growth. The article advocates for the extension of this research into global contexts and digital transformation, highlighting the potential for these insights to inform strategi decision-making in an increasingly digitalized business environment. Bridging academic theory with practical application, the article offers a nuanced understanding of how innovation perceptions influence market outcomes. It suggests future research directions, including exploring strategies to enhance customer perception of innovation and leveraging these perceptions for competitive advantage.

Markets and Medical Decisions

ABSTRACT This essay argues for two conclusions. First, clinical decision-making is not best thought of as analogous to the purchase of other services, such as car repair. Health-care decision-making is far more difficult, collaborative, emotionally fraught, and subject to cognitive distortions. Second, the provision of health care should not be delegated to unregulated markets. Unlike other markets, there is no reason to expect health-care market outcomes to be efficient or fair or to promote individual freedom, properly conceived. Markets may play an important role in implementing an allocation of healthcare, but they are not an ethically acceptable alternative to determining what that allocation should be.

On the impact of institutional change: Rights reassignment and career length

AbstractRottenberg argued that the reassignment of negotiating rights from owners to players, that would accompany free agency in professional sports, would have little impact on locational or market outcomes. Empirical investigations into such reassignment have produced mixed results. The present paper examines the impact such reassignment had on professional sports athletes' career length. By examining the univariate time series and panel data behavior of Major League Baseball players' average tenure and retention rates, we find that the increased negotiating power associated with the advent of free agency had the impact of shortening average player career length.

Unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic: mental health, quality of life and labour market outcome in Nigeria

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, quality of life and the labour market outcome across North and Southern Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach Data was obtained from staff laid off in selected tertiary institutions in North East and South West Nigeria using a self-administered questionnaire with a total sample size of 185. Findings are shown using the heteroscedastic linear regression and descriptive statistics. Findings The results showed a significant negative effect of unemployment during the pandemic on mental health and quality of life. Less than half of those laid off are reabsorbed into the labour market with the majority in the South than the Northern region and most are in self-employment. Practical implications The coronavirus pandemic negatively affected the human race, with a huge socio-economic impact linked to health and well-being. This reality calls for attention to the role it played on mental health and the quality of life as well as how it has influenced the labour market. Labour empowerment during a pandemic is key to cushion the effect of pandemics on health and the labour market. This can be in the form of skill empowerment and increased access to funds for business start-ups to enable self-employment that typifies the labour market after a pandemic. This in turn will reduce mental health challenges and low quality of life associated with pandemics. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first in the literature that provides empirical evidence of the effect of unemployment during the pandemic on well-being captured using mental health and the quality of life in Nigeria. Findings on labour market outcomes due to the pandemic and across regions in Nigeria are also scarce in the literature.

The Power and Roots of Aspirations

Abstract Aspirations have become a common theme in empirical economics studies but there is no unified understanding of the range of outcomes they influence, the factors that shape them, and how to measure them. We survey this growing literature. We argue that there is compelling evidence to consider aspirations as a useful lens to analyze human behavior and development outcomes, at the individual and aggregate levels, in poorer and richer countries. The empirical evidence aligns with the theory that high aspirations can lead individuals to achieve better educational, labor market, and other outcomes and can contribute to making countries more equal and prosperous. The empirical evidence also confirms that the mix of social and circumstantial factors shaping aspirations tends to hinder the aspirations of the disadvantaged—such as the poor, immigrants, and women—and can contribute to vicious circles of poverty, high inequality, low social mobility, and low growth. However, high aspirations should not be considered an end in themselves as they can backfire, with deleterious effects, if unmatched with opportunities. Further, we argue that definitional and measurement issues can affect the understanding of the topic and that studies should more explicitly describe their measures of aspirations to ensure that divergent underlying concepts are not mistaken.

Hukou reform and labor market outcomes of urban natives in China

Hukou reform and labor market outcomes of urban natives in China

Long-term health conditions and UK labour market outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Long-term health conditions can affect labour market outcomes. COVID-19 may have increased labour market inequalities, e.g. due to restricted opportunities for clinically vulnerable people. Evaluating COVID-19's impact could help target support. To quantify the effect of several long-term conditions on UK labour market outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic and compare them to pre-pandemic outcomes. The Understanding Society COVID-19 survey collected responses from around 20,000 UK residents in nine waves from April 2020-September 2021. Participants employed in January/February 2020 with a variety of long-term conditions were matched with people without the condition but with similar baseline characteristics. Models estimated probability of employment, hours worked and earnings. We compared these results with results from a two-year pre-pandemic period. We also modelled probability of furlough and home-working frequency during COVID-19. Most conditions (asthma, arthritis, emotional/nervous/psychiatric problems, vascular/pulmonary/liver conditions, epilepsy) were associated with reduced employment probability and/or hours worked during COVID-19, but not pre-pandemic. Furlough was more likely for people with pulmonary conditions. People with arthritis and cancer were slower to return to in-person working. Few effects were seen for earnings. COVID-19 had a disproportionate impact on people with long-term conditions' labour market outcomes.

Effect of Transformational Leadership Behaviour on Employees’ Career Development in Zenith International Bank (ZIB) Plc, North East 3 Zone, Adamawa State, Nigeria: Post COVID-19 Pandemic Experience

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as a global pandemic. The pandemic has left organisations with a number of challenges, including decreased revenue, decreased consumer spending, poor marketing outcomes, firm closures, reduced staff motivation, virtual working, increasing unemployment, and changes in service delivery and lifestyle. However, due to the rapid growth in global competition, advancements in technology, innovativeness, and growing demands for better customer service, organisational leaders were challenged to devise performance-improvement strategies in order to survive the challenges posed by COVID-19, particularly in Deposit Money Banks (DMBs). Against this backdrop, this study investigates the impact of transformational leadership (TL) behaviours on employee career development (i.e. employee mentoring and coaching). This study conceptualised TL behaviours as idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration, while career development as career coaching and career mentoring. The study used an explanatory survey research approach with a sampl of 130 employees from four (4) branches of Zenith International Bank Plc North East 3 Zone, Adamawa State. This study's data were collected via questionnaire. Descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation and correlation were used in analysing the data collected, while study's hypotheses were tested using the multiple regression technique. The regression results show that TL behaviours such as inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration have favourable significant effect on career development (Mentoring and coaching). While idealised influence has significant adverse effects on career development in both career mentoring and coaching. Overall, the findings indicate that TL positively and strongly predicts career development (i.e. career mentoring and coaching). As a result, this study concludes that TL actions are critical for organisational development and should be supported by managers since they improve employees' career progression within the organisation and have significant effects on numerous employee outcomes.

The cybersecurity entrepreneur

AbstractCybersecurity is a major U.S. policy issue with a sizable coalition asserting that self-regulation is failing, primarily due to rampant low quality security products and a dearth of threat information sharing. State intervention proponents, however, generally disregard the role of cybersecurity entrepreneurial activity in fixing disequilibria. My research identifies how entrepreneurs adeptly satisfy consumers’ cybersecurity preferences by developing strong self-regulating mechanisms where data valuations are relatively high. I then empirically examine how entrepreneurial innovations have ameliorated discoordination and significantly improved market outcomes over time through the application of the market process and price theory.

Don’t be a hamster! Social appeals to curb panic buying at the point-of-sale

The COVID-19 pandemic confronted retailers with an unprecedented challenge: convincing customers to buy less. Given the ineffectiveness of real-life strategies against panic buying, we explore the power of social appeals to convince consumers of buying less voluntarily. In three multi-method studies based on field and lab data, we demonstrate that the use of social appeals not only comes with favorable marketing outcomes for retailers (i.e., loyalty and attitudes), but that adequately designed social appeals are also a promising instrument to curb undesirable consumer behaviors such as panic buying in a health crisis.

The unintended consequences of IMF programs: Women left behind in the labor market

AbstractDespite societal progress toward achieving gender equality, women remain disadvantaged across all walks of life. We examine how pressures by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for austerity and liberalization policies affect women’s economic empowerment in developing countries. Focusing on labor market outcomes, we expect that IMF programs increase the gender unemployment gap. This effect will hold regardless of existing societal gender norms, reflecting that women work in less ‘crisis-proof’ jobs. In contrast, we believe that prevailing societal gender norms will adversely impact women’s ability to remain in the labor force, resulting in widening gender labor force participation gaps. Relying on a dataset covering 128 developing countries between 1992 and 2018, we confirm these expectations. Our findings underscore how, during economically turbulent times, policy demands of the Fund can amplify existing gender inequalities.

An Energy Management System to Schedule the Optimal Participation to Electricity Markets and A Statistical Analysis of the Bidding Strategies over Long Time Horizons

This paper presents a tool that allows to perform an ex-ante estimation of the profitability to participate to the electric energy and service markets for a microgrid or a polygeneration power plant. The tool is the evolution of an Energy Management System (EMS) previously developed by the University of Genoa and Renantis Solutions Srl. Constraints are added to the original EMS to model the Ancillary Service Market (ASM) and Day Ahead Market (DAM) mechanisms in the framework of a planning tool that allows to get estimates of the microgrid/plant costs/revenues over a long-time horizon. As the market outcome strongly depends on the Transmission System Operator (TSO) acceptance/rejection of bids and offers, a statistical approach is proposed. The optimization process is split in two steps: the first one optimally dispatches the energy units and proposes DAM offers and ASM bid and offers over a specified time horizon. Then, a Monte Carlo method is launched; at each extraction the TSO acceptance/rejection of each ASM bid and offer is simulated and there is a second step of optimization in which the energy sources are optimally re-dispatched to meet the bidding program and so to avoid imbalance power exchange that would increase the energy cost. The cost/revenue is thus computed at each extraction. The result is the Probability Density Function of the costs/revenues that allows to estimate the profitability of the participation to the electricity markets. One test performed on a real microgrid shows that the computational time needed to complete one iteration related to a time horizon of one month is approximately 20 seconds. Moreover, the comparison of the outcomes with two independent launches to define the set of bids and offers to be accepted in ASM demonstrates that the statistical analysis allows to avoid misleading conclusions on the costs/revenues. Consequently, the fact that the developed EMS allows to perform a statistical analysis in a reasonable time enables the possibility of comparing multiple scenarios and gives an indication related to the range of cost/revenues in which the microgrid/plant may incur. Finally, the computational efficiency of the proposed approach allows to conclude that the developed EMS is appropriate to perform a long-time horizon (of the order of magnitude of years) analysis and, at the same time, allow to model all the involved components with a high level of details.

Does maternity leave reform impact on the labour supply of the elderly? Evidence from a natural experiment in Vietnam

AbstractThe aging population has been rising rapidly in every country, slowing the labour force and causing lower per capita growth. Many policies incentivize working in old age as it can alleviate the challenges of the aging population. This study examines the impacts of the extended maternity leave reform in Vietnam on elderly labour market outcomes. As grandparents' childcare responsibility may be reduced by maternal childcare following the extended maternal leave, especially for elderly living with children smaller than 1 year old, the reform gives older adults or grandparents more flexibility to join the labour market. Using the difference‐in‐differences model, we find that older people in the treatment group are more likely to return to the labour market following the reform implementation. The effect is positive and most robust for the self‐employment group rather than waged employment and for males rather than females. Our study suggests that there is a need for a policy design to shift public finance into the healthcare and pension system.

Effects of workload allocation per course on students’ academic outcomes: Evidence from STEM degrees

We investigate how the allocation of workload across university courses affects students’ outcomes. Using a difference in differences design, we provide novel evidence that reducing the number of courses in a degree, while keeping the total course work unchanged, strongly reduces students’ performance and increases first-year dropout rates. We show procrastination accounts for these effects, suggesting that students struggle to adjust their study time to handle the intensified courses. We also show that the adverse impacts on dropouts are significantly stronger for students from less affluent families, indicating that the reform likely increases inequality. On the other hand, post-reform graduates exhibit better labor market outcomes. The discussion on potential mechanisms suggests that the reform enhanced the skills of the graduates who successfully navigated the unified exams.

Long-run consequences of informal elderly care and implications of public long-term care insurance

We estimate a dynamic structural model of labor supply, retirement, and informal caregiving to study short and long-term costs of informal caregiving in Germany. Incorporating labor market frictions and the German tax and benefit system, we find that in the absence of Germany’s public long-term insurance scheme, informal elderly care has adverse and persistent effects on labor market outcomes and, thus, negatively affects lifetime earnings and future pension benefits. These consequences of caregiving are heterogeneous and depend on age, previous earnings, and institutional regulations. Policy simulations suggest that while public long-term care insurance policies are fiscally costly and induce negative labor market effects, they can largely offset the personal costs of caregiving and increase welfare, especially for low-income individuals.

Extreme Lockdowns and the Gendered Informalization of Employment: Evidence from the Philippines

The adverse effects of COVID-19 on labour market outcomes are amplified by and partly attributable to the imposition of extreme mobility restrictions. While gendered disparities in job losses and reduction in working hours are demonstrated in the literature, is an informalization of employment observed, and is this phenomenon likewise gendered? This article analyses the Philippines, a country that imposed one of the world’s longest and strictest lockdowns, and specifically how its imposition affected informal employment. A conceptual and empirical distinction between compositional and survivalist informalization is proffered – the former referring to informality induced by changes in the size and composition of overall employment, and the latter referring to informality induced by the need to work owing to absent sufficient welfare support and precautionary household savings. Examining the regional variation in lockdowns as a quasi-experiment, results demonstrate that extreme lockdowns increased the probability of informal employment among employed women but not among employed men.

The impact of excess body weight on employment outcomes: A systematic review of the evidence

BackgroundExcess body weight has been recognised as an important factor in influencing labour market outcomes. Several hypotheses explain the causal effect of excess body weight on employment outcomes, including productivity, labour supply, and discrimination. In this review, we provide a systematic synthesis of the evidence on the causal impact of excess body weight on labour market outcomes worldwide. MethodsWe searched Econ Lit, and Web of Science databases for relevant studies published from 1st Jan 2010–20 th Jan 2023. Studies were included if they were either longitudinal analysis, pooled cross-sectional or cross-sectional studies if they used instrumental variable methodology based on Mendelian Randomisation. Only studies with measures of body weight and employment outcomes were included. ResultsThe number of potentially relevant studies constituted 4321 hits. A total of 59 studies met the inclusion criteria and were qualitatively reviewed by the authors. Most of the included studies were conducted in the USA (N=18), followed by the UK (N=9), Germany (N=6), Finland (N=4), and non-EU countries (N=22). Evidence from the included studies suggests that the effect of excess weight differs by gender, ethnicity, country, and time period. White women with excess weight in the USA, the UK, Germany, Canada, and in the EU (multi-country analyses) are less likely to be employed, and when employed they face lower wages compared to normal weight counterparts. For men there is no effect of excess weight on employment outcomes or the magnitude of the effect is much smaller or even positive in some cases. ConclusionsThis review has shown that despite ample research on the relationship between excess weight and employment status and wages, robust causal evidence of the effects of excess weight on employment outcomes remains scarce and relies significantly on strong statistical and theoretical assumptions. Further research into these relationships outside of USA and Western Europe context is needed.

Employment discrimination and labor market protections for sexual minorities in Brazil

This study estimates the impacts of an employment non-discrimination act (ENDA) for sexual minorities in Brazil. We contribute new evidence on ENDA impacts for sexual minorities in a distinct context from the current literature. Additionally, this is one of few studies to document labor market gaps by sexual orientation in Latin America. In this paper, we first present evidence of labor market gaps in employment, formal sector employment, hours worked, income and hourly earnings for lesbian and gay individuals in Brazil. For the same groups, we then estimate the impact of Brazilian legislation forbidding employment discrimination based on sexual orientation on these same labor market outcomes. Regarding initial pre-policy labor market gaps, conditioning on individual and work-related controls, we see that lesbian women experience wage premiums compared to straight women, while gay men experience wage penalties compared to straight men. We then estimate robust evidence that the implementation of employment protections increased income for gay men. For lesbian women, we estimate evidence of post-policy reductions in employment, but higher income and hourly earnings for those still working. Focusing on a Latin American country, we find many impacts consistent with the more recent existing evidence on ENDAs for sexual minorities.

Mapping the distinct patterns of educational and social stratification in European countries

This article analyses how educational and initial vocational training systems in Europe vary regarding the way in which they structure educational routes for pupils of different academic ability. The study uses cluster analysis to explore the degree of similarity between 25 European countries, including variables related to: stratification within compulsory education; vocational orientation; links between initial vocational education and the labour market; transitions from secondary education; stratification within tertiary education; and links between educational qualifications and labour market outcomes. I identify three clusters of countries that have distinct patterns of stratification. This article contributes to the literature on educational regimes and school-to-work transitions by adding countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and integrating multiple dimensions pertaining to the link between educational and social stratification. Thus, it develops a more encompassing representation of the architecture of educational pathways in different European countries.