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Essays in Labor Economics and Synthetic Data Methods

Author : Robert Kaj Gittings

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Page : 0 pages

File Size : 32,79 MB

Release : 2009

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ISBN :

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Three topics are investigated in these chapters: the causes and consequences of lateral job mobility within firms, the impact of incentives on human behavior in the context of capital punishment and deterrence, and the development of new synthetic data methods for confidentiality protection of public use data. The extent and importance of lateral mobility is not well-established in economics and Chapter 1 contributes new and important findings to the literature. Using a panel of more than 500 firms and 48,000 white-collar workers, I find relatively high rates of lateral mobility, that this mobility is statistically different from other transitions, and that the compensation growth associated with lateral mobility is economically meaningful. I also investigate the relationships between worker performance, compensation growth and job mobility. Even when controlling for productivity differences, significant earnings growth occurs directly through the change in jobs. The results provide some evidence that the observed lateral mobility may be the result of job rotation. In light of continued debate of whether capital punishment deters crime, Chapter 2 revisits my previous work on this issue and shows that the deterrence results hold under alternative measurements of key variables, multiple statistical specifications and subsets of the data. Chapter 3 develops methodology that solves the need for statistical agencies to suppress certain data items because releasing those cells to the public yields a risk of exposing someone's personal information. I show that the synthetic data adequately protect the confidential data and are superior in terms of its analytical validity.





Three Essays on Labor Economics

Author : Fanghua Li

Publisher :

Page : 221 pages

File Size : 12,72 MB

Release : 2018

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This thesis contribute towards the understanding of labor economics and applied econometrics; the thesis is made up of three chapters. The first chapter explores the causal effect of parents' social capital on the intergenerational occupational inertia in addition to individuals' labor market outcomes. A new data extract was constructed by re-weighting and combining the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to correct the selection biases induced by children's endogenous moving behaviors post-graduation. By exploiting the recent technological revolution and the resulting changes in occupational skill compositions measured by Dictionary of Titles (DOT) and its successor O*NET, it became possible to isolate the effect of inherited social capital from inherited human capital through a regression discontinuity design. Besides, a correction of the selection bias induced by the social capital advantage through children's occupational switching patterns after the first jobs was made. The results indicate that around 30% of individuals choose the same occupation as their parents for their first job; such people rely more on their parents' social connections in job hunting. Also, they enjoy a positive wage premium of about 5% of the percentile ranks of annual labor income for entry-level jobs but this positive effect fades away in the long-run. The second chapter studies the estimation and inference of nonlinear econometric model when the economic variables are contained in different datasets. We show that the unknown structural parameters of interest can be possibly uniquely identified if there are some common conditioning variables in different datasets. The identification result is constructive, which enables us to estimate the unknown parameters based on a simple minimum distance (MD) estimator. We study the asymptotic properties of the MD estimator and provide inference procedure. A simple model specification test on the key identification conditions is also provided. The third chapter provides an application example of the method developed in the second chapter. It is a long-standing problem in the empirical research that the economic variables are contained in different datasets. One well-accepted solution to this problem is the imputation method, which serves as a crucial step in the seminal work, Blundell, Pistaferri, and Preston (2008) studied the dynamic relationship between consumption and income, with consumption data from CEX and income data from PSID. In this chapter, we first prove that the imputation method is biased because they are significantly different from those based on true data, which is the newly available PSID from 1999 which includes both consumption and income data. Furthermore, we investigate the finite sample performance of our new method with this new PSID data and show that our method delivers comparable results with those based on the true data. We conclude that the imputation gives largely biased estimation compared to the real data results and the new estimator developed in Chapter 2 performs better. The three chapters share the same interests in the long-lasting question that how we can deal with the situation in which the economic variables or the study population is contained in different datasets. The first chapter starts off from the simplest scenario that the data set is complete in terms of variables but biased in terms of representativeness. The other two chapters deal with the other more difficult and more usual case that the data set is incomplete in terms of economic variables. We not only contribute methodologically by providing a new estimator but also implement the method in an important application case and discuss the implications.



Administrative Records for Survey Methodology

Author : Asaph Young Chun

Publisher : John Wiley & Sons

Page : 384 pages

File Size : 46,83 MB

Release : 2021-02-25

Category : Mathematics

ISBN : 1119272068

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Book Description

ADMINISTRATIVE RECORDS FOR SURVEY METHODOLOGY Addresses the international use of administrative records for large-scale surveys, censuses, and other statistical purposes Administrative Records for Survey Methodology is a comprehensive guide to improving the quality, cost-efficiency, and interpretability of surveys and censuses using administrative data research. Contributions from a team of internationally-recognized experts provide practical approaches for integrating administrative data in statistical surveys, and discuss the methodological issues—including concerns of privacy, confidentiality, and legality—involved in collecting and analyzing administrative records. Numerous real-world examples highlight technological and statistical innovations, helping readers gain a better understanding of both fundamental methods and advanced techniques for controlling data quality reducing total survey error. Divided into four sections, the first describes the basics of administrative records research and addresses disclosure limitation and confidentiality protection in linked data. Section two focuses on data quality and linking methodology, covering topics such as quality evaluation, measuring and controlling for non-consent bias, and cleaning and using administrative lists. The third section examines the use of administrative records in surveys and includes case studies of the Swedish register-based census and the administrative records applications used for the US 2020 Census. The book’s final section discusses combining administrative and survey data to improve income measurement, enhancing health surveys with data linkage, and other uses of administrative data in evidence-based policymaking. This state-of-the-art resource: Discusses important administrative data issues and suggests how administrative data can be integrated with more traditional surveys Describes practical uses of administrative records for evidence-driven decisions in both public and private sectors Emphasizes using interdisciplinary methodology and linking administrative records with other data sources Explores techniques to leverage administrative data to improve the survey frame, reduce nonresponse follow-up, assess coverage error, measure linkage non-consent bias, and perform small area estimation. Administrative Records for Survey Methodology is an indispensable reference and guide for statistical researchers and methodologists in academia, industry, and government, particularly census bureaus and national statistical offices, and an ideal supplemental text for undergraduate and graduate courses in data science, survey methodology, data collection, and data analysis methods.



Essays on Labor and Education Economics

Author : Vasil Iliyanov Yasenov

Publisher :

Page : pages

File Size : 37,50 MB

Release : 2017

Category :

ISBN : 9780355151558

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This dissertation studies two classic questions in labor and education economics. Specifically, it estimates the labor market impacts of immigrants on natives in the United States and the effect of school scheduling on the students' academic performance. It is divided into four chapters, the first two dedicated to immigration and the last two to school start time. A common theme throughout is the use of cutting--edge econometric techniques with a strong focus on getting causal estimates in an attempt to improve on previous studies. In Chapter 1 (revise and resubmit at Journal of Human Resources), joint with Giovanni Peri, we apply the Synthetic Control Method to re-examine the labor market effects of the Mariel Boatlift, a large inflow of Cubans into Miami in 1980, first studied by David Card (1990). This method improves on previous studies by choosing a control group of cities that best match Miami's labor market trends between 1972 and the Boatlift. We also provide more reliable standard errors for the inference and we analyze a set of outcomes for low-skilled workers, ranging from wages to unemployment. Using the sample of non-Cuban high school dropouts in the age range 19-65 we find no significant difference in the wages and employment of workers in Miami relative to its control after 1979. The result is robust to several checks and is valid in most sub-samples. In performing a systematic comparison with Borjas (2017) we show that, especially when using the March-CPS data, focusing on specific sub-samples and matching the control group on short pre-1979 data series can produce large differences between Miami wages and control. However, when studied more systematically, those wage differences across subgroups and over time appear to be the result of classical measurement error in small samples rather than the labor market effect of the Boatlift. Chapter 2 provides a much--needed fresh look at measuring the labor market impacts of immigrants on natives under very weak assumptions. To identify the labor market impacts of immigrants on natives, prior empirical studies have relied on strict econometric assumptions. Additionally, the literature lacks a consensus on the sign and magnitude of this effects. I take an entirely different approach by weakening routinely made assumptions and provide the first non–parametric estimates. In particular, I apply conservative empirical and theoretical bounding strategies. The estimated bounds on the effects on natives’ wages under minimal assumptions rule out elasticities smaller than -0.37 or larger than 0.38. To tighten this interval, I explore mild instrumental variable and monotonicity assumptions motivated by economic theory which narrow the lower bound to -0.11. After summarizing the estimates from 63 papers on the topic, I show this effect is much smaller in magnitude than some previous studies claim it to be. Moreover, I show that the data reject the lower bound prediction of an extreme version of the canonical labor demand and supply model. Chapter 3 (published in Economics Letters, Vol.139, pp 36-39 (2016)), joint with Lester Lusher, examines the impact of a double--shift schooling system on students' performance. School scheduling systems are frequently at the forefront of policy discussions around the world. This paper provides the first causal evidence of student performance during double-shift schooling systems. We exploit a six-year quasi-experiment from a country in Eastern Europe where students alternated between morning and afternoon school blocks every month. We estimate models with student--class and month fixed effects using data on over 260,000 assignment-level grades. We find a small, precisely estimated drop in student performance during afternoon blocks. In Chapter 4 (revise and resubmit in Economic Inquiry), joint with Lester Lusher, we study to what extend differences in sleep cycles between boys and girls can explain the observed gender performance gap in middle and high schools. Sleep studies suggest that girls go to sleep earlier, are more active in the morning, and cope with sleep deprivation better than boys. We provide the first causal evidence on how gender differences in sleep cycles can help explain the gender performance gap. We exploit over 240,000 assignment-level grades from a quasi-experiment where students’ schedules alternated between morning and afternoon start times each month. Relative to girls, we find that boys achievement benefits from a later start time. For classes taught at the beginning of the school day, our estimates explain up to 16% of the gender performance gap.



Privacy in Statistical Databases

Author : Josep Domingo-Ferrer

Publisher : Springer

Page : 376 pages

File Size : 29,43 MB

Release : 2014-09-10

Category : Computers

ISBN : 3319112570

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Book Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Privacy in Statistical Databases, PSD 2014, held in Ibiza, Spain in September 2014 under the sponsorship of the UNESCO chair in Data Privacy. The 27 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 41 submissions. The scope of the conference is on following topics: tabular data protection, microdata masking, protection using privacy models, synthetic data, record linkage, remote access, privacy-preserving protocols, and case studies.





Essays in Labor Economics

Author : Priyankar Datta

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Page : 0 pages

File Size : 11,9 MB

Release : 2022

Category : Electronic dissertations

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This dissertation contains three chapters that study the impact of a labor market policy on nursing home staffing and patient outcomes, the impact of parental divorce on long-term market outcomes, and the impact of a change in housing wealth on children's schooling decisions.Chapter one examines the effect of paid sick leave mandates on nursing home outcomes, with a focus on low-paid nursing staff. I use the synthetic control group method and traditional difference-in-differences models along with Nursing Home Compare data and Vital Statistics microdata to estimate the causal effect of paid sick leave mandates on nursing home outcomes. I find significant increases in part-time nursing assistant staffing and resident health and safety improvements. Nursing homes in areas with sick pay mandates also show reductions in the elderly mortality rate. Nursing assistant hours per resident day increase by 2.3 percent driven by a 12 percent increase in the hours for part-time workers, and there are no significant reductions in hours of full-time nursing assistants. I find improvements along multiple measures of patient health and safety. My calculations show that sick pay mandates helped prevent at least 4000 nursing home deaths per year among the elderly.Chapter two explores the importance of divorce in explaining the gender gap in children's long-term educational outcomes. I find large differences in the gender gap between divorced and non-divorced families. Boys perform much worse in divorced families. I use a sibling fixed effects model to find that boys in divorced families have a lower likelihood of graduating high school and attending college relative to their sisters. My results show that boys' likelihood of graduating high school declines by 6.4 percentage points if their parents are divorced before they turn 13, and their chances of attending college decline by 12.2 percentage points if they are a teenager at the time of divorce. I find that parents' divorce is unrelated to the gender gap in achievement scores. My event study models show a drop in boys' achievement scores relative to girls around the time of divorce.Chapter three examines the effect of housing wealth changes on private school enrolment. I use data from The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth's child supplement to examine the relationship between housing wealth and private school enrolment. I use a multinomial logit model and find that self-reported housing price changes increase the likelihood that respondents switch from private to public school. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that house price increases have a positive relationship between switching from private to public school across income, gender, race, and religion. Finally, a rise in house prices increases the likelihood that a child moves from public school to private school when transitioning from middle school to private school.





Essays in Empirical Labor Economics

Author : Shahriar Sadighi

Publisher :

Page : 116 pages

File Size : 44,57 MB

Release : 2017

Category : Labor economics

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My dissertation consists of three essays in empirical labor economics which are self-contained and can be read independently of the others. The first essay, coauthored with Professor Modestino, measures mismatch unemployment in US economy in the post-recession era and explores the heterogeneity among educational groupings. The second essay estimates the changing effects of cognitive ability on wage determination of college bound and non-college bound young adults between 1980s and 2000s. The third essay, coauthored with Professor Dickens, examines the impact of measurement error in survey data on identifying the extent of downward nominal wage rigidity in US economy. Essay I: No Longer Qualified? Changes in the Supply and Demand for Skills within Occupations-- In this study, we extend the framework developed by Sahin et al. (2014) to measure mismatch unemployment since the end of the Great Recession and explore the heterogeneity among educational groupings. Our findings indicate that mismatch across two-digit industries and two- digit occupations explain around 17- 20 percent of the recent recovery in the US unemployment rate since 2010. We also capture movements in employer education requirements over time using a novel database of 87 million online job posting aggregated by Burning Glass Technologies and further show that mismatch is not only greater in magnitude for high-skill occupations but also is more persistent over the course of the recent labor market recovery, possible accounting for the shift rightward that has been observed in the aggregate Beveridge Curve by other researchers. Furthermore, we shed light on at least one of the potential causes of mismatch on the demand side, providing evidence that labor demand shifts among high-skilled occupation groups exhibit a permanent increase in the share of employers requiring a Bachelor's degree as well as other baseline, specialized, and software skills listed on job postings, suggesting a role for structural shifts associated with changes in technology or capital investment. Our results demonstrate that equilibrium models where unemployed workers accumulate specific human capital and, in equilibrium, make explicit mobility decisions across distinct labor markets, can mean that workers are chasing a moving target-at least among high-skilled occupations. Furthermore, our findings inform debates focused on workforce development strategies and related educational policies where decision making could benefit from the use of real-time labor market information on employer demands to provide guidance for both job placement as well as program development. Essay II: The Changing Impacts of Cognitive Ability on Determining Earnings of College Bound and Non-College Bound Young Adults-- Using data on young adults from the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I investigate the changing impact of cognitive ability, as captured by performance on AFQT tests, on wage determination of college bound and non-college bound young adults. My findings indicate that cognitive ability plays a substantially diminished role for the most recent cohort and its impact on wage determination has undergone a drastic change between 1980s and 2000s. My results tend to corroborate the findings of previous studies which emphasize the lifecycle path of technological development from adoption to maturation and trace back the labor market outcomes observed over these periods to pre- and post-2000 patterns in technology investment and its consequent boom-and-bust cycles in the demand for cognitive skills. Essay III: Measurement Error in Survey Data and its Impact on Identifying the Extent of Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity-- In this study, we employ data drawn from the 1996, 2001, 2004 and 2008 panels of the SIPP, which cover the years 1996-2013, to assess the effectiveness of dependent interviewing at reducing bias in the estimates of the extent of downward nominal wage rigidity in the US economy. In the 2004 and 2008 panels of the SIPP, dependent interviewing was used much more extensively than in the past. This questioning method by focusing on changes rather than levels of wages and using responses from prior interviews to query apparent inconsistencies over time reduces the incidence of reporting and measurement errors. Our change-in-wage distributions derived from SIPP 2004 and 2008 panels exhibit remarkably larger zero-spikes and asymmetries vis-℗♭℗ -vis those derived from 1996 and 2001 panels before dependent interviewing was used. These results are consistent with the findings of previous studies that used payroll data or statistical techniques to correct for reporting error. We apply one such technique to the SIPP panels before and after the introduction of dependent interviewing. In the pre-2004 panels the correction is large and results in a distribution that closely resembles the uncorrected distributions of the 2004 panel. When the correction is applied to the 2004 panel no evidence of errors is found.