Population behaviors and labor supply of the employed and the self-employedefficiency wages and time use, intrahousehold commitment, and intergenerational transmission. Theory, evidence and policy implications for aragón, spain, europe and the us

Resumen

The main purpose of this Thesis is the theoretical and empirical study of a range of population behaviors, from the point of view of the supply side of the labor market, including urban efficiency wages in the United States (US) and Spain, household labor supply decisions, intrahousehold intertemporal commitment in the US and Europe, and intergenerational correlation of employment and self-employment decisions in Europe. The Thesis is divided into three essays. Chapter 1 studies commuting, time use, and employment outcomes of workers in the US and Spain, within an urban efficiency wages theoretical framework, where commuting is considered a shock to time endowments. Leisure time and shirking at work are assumed to be substitutes so, ultimately, commuting has a negative impact on leisure time, and a positive impact on shirking at work. However, that substitution hypothesis leads to an ambiguity that, to now, had not been analyzed. The model is estimated using data from the American Time Use Surveys for years 2001-2014, and the Spanish Time Use Survey for years 2009-2010. The case of Aragón is also investigated, and a model for self-employed workers is proposed. Results show a negative elasticity between leisure time and shirking at work in the US and Spain, providing empirical support to the main hypothesis of the model. Findings also show a negative correlation between commuting and leisure, a positive correlation between commuting and shirking at work, and a positive correlation between commuting time and wages. Furthermore, results suggest that employed workers tend to reside farther from employment cores than the unemployed, with the self-employed workers lying between them. These results are in line with the predictions of the model, thus suggesting the existence of urban efficiency wages in the US and Spain. Chapter 2 studies intertemporal collective behaviors on the basis of collective models. It first develops an intertemporal collective model of labor supply, with the main objective of distinguishing the different models that characterize the ability of spouses to cooperate: the full commitment model, the non-commitment, and the limited commitment model. Under full commitment, workers' wage shocks cannot affect their labor supply, while under non-commitment, only current shocks should determine current household labor supply. However, under limited commitment, wage shocks must have a semi-permanent effect on labor supply decisions, as both current and past shocks should determine spouses' bargaining power. The model is estimated using data from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics from years 2001-2015, and from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions from years 2003-2016. The case of Spain is more closely investigated, with a focus on Aragón and other regions. Results reject the full- and non-commitment models, as past shocks play the role predicted by the limited commitment model. Specifically, when a spouse performed better than expected in the past, (s)he works less, suggesting that (s)he attracts a larger fraction of household resources. This result is maintained for the countries studied, suggesting that the limited commitment version of the collective model is an excellent candidate for future theoretical and empirical models of intrahousehold dynamics. Chapter 3 addresses intergenerational transmission of employment and self-employ-ment, using data from the longitudinal European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions for the years 2003-2016. Fixed effect estimates show a significant short-term correlation between the current employment status of parents and that of their children. On the other hand, the intergenerational correlation of self-employment seems to be limited to father-to-son correlations, as it is not significant for females, in general terms. However, these intergenerational correlations may be reflecting short-term household labor supply decisions, and not transmissions, which are often related to long-term effects. To overcome this issue, we use the 2011 special module on Intergenerational Transmissions of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (in its cross-sectional version), where respondents provide information about the labor status of their parents when they themselves were 14 years old. Thus, we can estimate whether parents' employment status when young has any significant impact on their current employment status. Estimates show a strong and significant correlation between current respondents' self-employment status, and that of their parents when the respondents were 14 years old. This suggests that self-employment decisions are not only related to short-term family labor supply decisions, but also to long-term intergenerational transmissions.