Do “inferior” jobs always suffer from a wage penalty? Evidence from temporary workers in Cambodia and Pakistan

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the wage gap between temporary and permanent workers in Pakistan and Cambodia. Design/methodology/approach Quantile regression estimator is likely to be the most relevant to the sample. Findings The estimates indicate the presence of a temporary employment wage penalty in Pakistan and contrarily a wage premium in Cambodia. Moreover, quantile regression estimates show that wage differentials could greatly vary across the wage distribution. The wage gap is wider at the bottom of the wage distribution in Pakistan, suggesting a sticky floor effect that the penalty of being in temporary jobs could be more severe for disadvantaged workers. By contrast, a glass ceilings effect is found in Cambodia, indicating that the wage premium is small at the bottom and becomes high at the top of the pay ladder. Originality/value Despite the rise of temporary jobs in the past several decades, the empirical evidence on wage differentials between temporary and permanent workers is extremely limited in developing Asian countries. This paper is the first research work that systematically examines the temporary-permanent wage gap in selected Asian countries, based on their National Labor Force Survey data.

Wage Differentials in Malaysia: Public Employment, Gender, and Ethnicity

The study examines the earnings differentials between the public and private sector in the Malaysian economy in terms of the moderations of the gender and ethnic wage differences in the public sector. The study uses the annual earnings from the Salaries and Wages Survey for 2011 and 2016. The key findings are that public employees are paid higher wages compared with private sector employees and the overall gender and ethnic wage differentials have declined in recent years. We also find that both gender and ethnic wage differentials are much smaller in the public sector.

College majors and wages in Turkey: OLS and quantile regression with sample selection correction

Purpose This study aims to analyze the wage differentials of the majors in college education in Turkey, which is a country implementing an ongoing expansion in college education in recent years. Design/methodology/approach The study implements Mincreian wage regression using ordinary least squares, Heckman two-step estimation and quantile regression with sample selection correction by using household labor force surveys of TurkStat from the years 2014–2017. Findings The findings indicate one of the highest heterogeneity, close to 0.50 log points, between majors in the literature. The within-heterogeneity created by majors is highest among the graduates of social-behavioral sciences, law, biology, physics, mathematics, statistics, computer, engineering and manufacturing, as shown by a 90–10 difference, which is almost 700% for some of these majors. This study shows that the natural science and technical majors that are expected to be more productive and to be paid more fall behind in the wage distribution. Research limitations/implications Estimation results show that natural science majors, except for subjects allied to medicine and engineering, are paid lower than law and service-sector-related majors. This indicates that the predictions of the skill-biased technical change hypothesis are not valid in the wage profiles in Turkey and that some majors supply more than the sectoral needs. This casts doubts on the effectiveness of the ongoing higher education expansion process of the country. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature on wage differentials of college majors, an area with limited studies. This is the first study analyzing wage differentials of the field of studies by correcting sample selection bias for the Turkish case.