Urban Wage Premium in a Labor Market with Informality

Previous studies have established that firm size is associated with a wage premium, but the wage premium has declined in recent decades. The authors examine the risk for unemployment by firm size during the initial outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 in the United States. Using both yearly and state-month variation, the authors find greater excess unemployment among workers in small enterprises than among those in larger firms. The gaps cannot be entirely attributed to the sorting of workers or to industrial context. The firm size advantage is most pronounced in sectors with high remotability but reverses in the sectors most affected by the pandemic. Overall, these findings suggest that firm size is linked to greater job security and that the pandemic may have accelerated prior trends regarding product and labor market concentration. They also point out that the initial policy responses did not provide sufficient protection for workers in small and medium-sized businesses.

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Local labor market size and qualification mismatch

Journal of Economic Geography ◽

10.1093/jeg/lby045 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 19 (6) ◽

pp. 1261-1286

Author(s):

Francesco Berlingieri

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Fixed Effects ◽

Agglomeration Economies ◽

Market Size ◽

Local Labor Market ◽

Skill Mismatch ◽

Large Cities ◽

Urban Wage Premium ◽

Urbanized Areas ◽

The One

Abstract This paper investigates the effect of the size of the local labor market on skill mismatch. Using survey data for Germany, I find that workers in large cities are both less likely to be overqualified for their job and to work in a different field than the one for which they trained. Different empirical strategies are employed to account for the potential sorting of talented workers into more urbanized areas. Results on individuals who have never moved away from the place in which they grew up and fixed effects estimates obtaining identification through regional migrants suggest that sorting does not fully explain the existing differences in qualification mismatch across areas. This provides evidence of the existence of agglomeration economies through better matches. However, lower qualification mismatch in larger cities is found to explain at best a small part of the urban wage premium.

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Higher-Education Policies and the College Wage Premium: Cross-State Evidence from the 1990s

The American Economic Review ◽

10.1257/aer.96.4.959 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 96 (4) ◽

pp. 959-987 ◽

Cited By ~ 40

Author(s):

Nicole M Fortin

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Labor Market ◽

Labor Markets ◽

Wage Premium ◽

Education Policies ◽

Supply Effect ◽

Higher Education Policies ◽

National Market ◽

Enrollment Rates ◽

The U.S

Exploiting differences across U.S. states, this paper demonstrates that there is a tight link between higher education policies, past enrollment rates, and recent changes in the college wage premium among labor market entrants. The analysis reveals, however, that this relationship is much weaker in states with high private enrollment rates, high levels of interstate mobility, or interstate trade. The within-state estimates of the own-cohort relative supply effect shed some light on the extent to which the U.S. labor market can be characterized as a single national market or a collection of state-specific labor markets.

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Human Capital Externalities and the Urban Wage Premium: Two Literatures and their Interrelations

Urban Studies ◽

10.1177/0042098009352363 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 47 (4) ◽

pp. 749-767 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Daniel Heuermann ◽

Benedikt Halfdanarson ◽

Jens Suedekum

Keyword(s):

Human Capital ◽

Wage Premium ◽

Urban Wage Premium ◽

Human Capital Externalities

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Who Receives the College Wage Premium? Assessing the Labor Market Returns to Degrees and College Transfer Patterns

The Journal of Human Resources ◽

10.2307/3558995 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 39 (3) ◽

pp. 746 ◽

Cited By ~ 26

Author(s):

Audrey Light ◽

Wayne Strayer

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Wage Premium ◽

Market Returns ◽

College Transfer ◽

Labor Market Returns

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The Statistical Value of Injury Risk in Pakistan’s Construction and Manufacturing Sectors

THE LAHORE JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS ◽

10.35536/lje.2017.v22.i1.a1 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 1-18

Author(s):

Ahmad Mujtaba Khan ◽

Asma Hyder

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Labor Force ◽

Injury Risk ◽

Health And Safety ◽

Wage Premium ◽

Blue Collar ◽

Compensating Wage Differentials ◽

Safety Regulations ◽

Manufacturing Sectors ◽

Using Data

Although health and safety regulations are a key aspect of labor market policymaking, very few studies have examined compensating wage differentials and the statistical value of injury in Pakistan’s context. This study looks at injury risk against occupation and industry, using data from the Labor Force Survey for 2013/14. We target five blue-collar occupations in two industries (construction and manufacturing), which tend to account for the highest number of injuries. However, we find that the statistical value of injury in these occupations is too small to reflect the wage premium that workers should be paid for risky jobs.

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