Papers by Niall O'Higgins
Social Science Research Network, Jun 25, 2019
Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research pu... more Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2020
We analyse theoretically and empirically the effects on young people’s labour market outcomes of ... more We analyse theoretically and empirically the effects on young people’s labour market outcomes of two specific labour market institutions and their interaction: employment protection legislation and active labour market policy. The paper examines recent policy reforms in Italy focussing on the impact of the 2012 Fornero reforms of employment protection legislation as well as the initial impact of the EU-wide Youth Guarantee scheme introduced in Italy in March 2014. The paper then examines how these two policy reforms interacted. The analysis first confirms the finding that the Fornero reform increased permanent hires particularly amongst the very youngest workers; it then goes on to find that the YG was indeed successful in increasing the hires of young people, although this operated through a statistically significant increase in female hires on temporary contracts. Third, it finds some evidence of a dampening effect of the YG on EPL reforms as predicted by theory.
Job creation is a priority for all countries. Yet satisfactory job creation is an uphill battle '... more Job creation is a priority for all countries. Yet satisfactory job creation is an uphill battle ' aiding this collective effort. Employment challenges have been mounting, but policymakers are faced with limited, and even reduced, fiscal resources. It means that policy interventions for job creation need to be highly effective.
Comparative Economic Studies, Apr 26, 2012
This Time It's Different? Youth Labour Markets During 'The Great Recession' * This paper looks at... more This Time It's Different? Youth Labour Markets During 'The Great Recession' * This paper looks at the effects of the 'Great Recession' on young people's labour market experiences in the European Union. The paper documents some of the key characteristics of young people's labour market experiences during the current recession and then seeks to provide some explanations of these applying both cross-section and time series rolling regression models in order, in particular, to better understand the role of labour market institutions as a determining factor of differing experiences across countries. The analysis finds that labour market flexibility contributed significantly to the negative consequences felt by young people during the recession.
B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, Jul 1, 2020
We analyse theoretically and empirically the effects on young people's labour market outcomes of ... more We analyse theoretically and empirically the effects on young people's labour market outcomes of two specific labour market institutions and their interaction: employment protection legislation and active labour market policy. The paper examines recent policy reforms in Italy focussing on the impact of the 2012 Fornero reforms of employment protection legislation as well as the initial impact of the EU-wide Youth Guarantee scheme introduced in Italy in March 2014. The paper then examines how these two policy reforms interacted. The analysis first confirms the finding that the Fornero reform increased permanent hires particularly amongst the very youngest workers; it then goes on to find that the YG was indeed successful in increasing the hires of young people, although this operated through a statistically significant increase in female hires on temporary contracts. Third, it finds some evidence of a dampening effect of the YG on EPL reforms as predicted by theory.
Les jeunes femmes et les jeunes hommes d'aujourd'hui ont de plus en plus de mal a trouver... more Les jeunes femmes et les jeunes hommes d'aujourd'hui ont de plus en plus de mal a trouver leur place dans le monde du travail. Dans les pays a revenu faible ou intermediaire, l'emploi informel domine desormais l'experience des jeunes sur le marche du travail, tandis que dans les pays a revenu eleve, le travail des jeunes se traduit de plus en plus par des emplois temporaires et d'autres formes d'emploi non conventionnel. Ce livre rassemble les contributions du Programme pour l'emploi des jeunes de l'OIT qui detaillent les politiques qui permettent aux jeunes de trouver un travail decent. Les chapitres s'articulent autour des piliers de l'appel a l'action lance par l'OIT en 2012 en faveur de l'emploi des jeunes et examinent l'impact d'un large eventail d'interventions, notamment les politiques fiscales et sectorielles de developpement, le salaire minimum et les programmes actifs du marche du travail. Un theme important q...
We report the results of a laboratory experiment based on the trust game and designed to assess t... more We report the results of a laboratory experiment based on the trust game and designed to assess the impact of economic growth and inequality on trust in a unified framework. Compared to a control with no inequality, we implement three treatments with exogenously induced inequality in environments characterized by growing, stable or falling initial average endowments. We find that trust and trustworthiness both decrease with inequality, and trust (but not trustworthiness) increases with an increase in the average endowment level. Hence, the negative impact of inequality on trust results to be stronger in the environment with falling average endowment, whereas no effect is recorded in the environment with growing average endowment. These aggregate effects are driven by the significant negative reactions to inequality by those who, due to treatment, end up at the bottom of the endowment distribution. Classification-C91, D31, D90
International Review of Applied Economics, 2016
Jailer of Freedom and Enemy of Growth? * The Role of Personal and Social Identities in Educationa... more Jailer of Freedom and Enemy of Growth? * The Role of Personal and Social Identities in Educational Choices This paper develops a theoretical and empirical model on the influence of identity on educational choices which extends the existing literature in several directions. The theoretical model proposed here allows schooling choices to be independently influenced by both personal and social identities and, in contrast to previous work, the proposed empirical counterpart is derived directly from the theoretical model. The use of UK's British Cohort Study on individuals born in 1970 allows us to identify with precision the relevant explanatory factors and to appropriately control for potentially confounding factors. Both social and personal identities are found to have substantial and statistically significant effects on educational participation decisions and these impacts are robust to a variety of specifications. The key implication is that socio-psychological factors play an important role in children's school performance through their direct influence on the utility derived from studying.
European Economic Review, 2018
This paper reports the results of an experimental investigation which allows a deeper insight int... more This paper reports the results of an experimental investigation which allows a deeper insight into the nature of social preferences amongst organized criminals and how these differ from "ordinary" criminals on the one hand and from the non-criminal population in the same geographical area on the other. We provide experimental evidence on cooperation and response to sanctions by running Prisoner's Dilemma and Third Party Punishment games on three different pools of subjects; students, 'Ordinary Criminals' and Camorristi (Neapolitan 'Mafiosi'). The latter two groups being recruited from within prisons. We are thus able to separately identify 'Prison' and 'Camorra' effects. Camorra prisoners show a high degree of cooperativeness and a strong tendency to punish, as well as a clear rejection of the imposition of external rules even at significant cost to themselves. In contrast, ordinary criminals behave in a much more opportunistic fashion, displaying lower levels of cooperation and, in the game with Third Party punishment, punishing less as well as tending to punish cooperation (almost as much) as defection. Our econometric analyses further enriches the analysis demonstrating inter alia that individuals' locus of control and reciprocity are associated with quite different and opposing behaviours amongst different participant types; a strong sense of self-determination and reciprocity both imply a higher propensity to cooperate and to punish for both students and Camorra inmates, but quite the opposite for ordinary criminals, further reinforcing the contrast between the behaviour of ordinary criminals and the strong internal mores of Camorra clans.
Recent Developments in the Theory of Industrial Organization, 1992
In this chapter we examine the Schumpeterian hypothesis that concentrated markets act as a spur t... more In this chapter we examine the Schumpeterian hypothesis that concentrated markets act as a spur to industrial innovation, examining evidence for Italy over the period 1981–5. The central idea underlying our analysis is that the testing of the Schumpeterian hypothesis on market structure and innovation needs to be modified in order to take into account the possibility of different responses of small and large innovators to changes in market concentration, barriers to entry, technological opportunities and demand conditions. The existence of such differences would support the claim advanced by Acs and Audretsch (1988) that in asymmetric market structures small and large firms may respond to different technological and economic regimes, and more or less competition may have a different effect on their incentive to innovate.
This paper looks at the situation of vulnerable Roma in the labour market in twelve countries of ... more This paper looks at the situation of vulnerable Roma in the labour market in twelve countries of Central and South Eastern Europe. Data from the 2011 UNDP/WB/EC regional survey on Roma communities are analysed and compared with the 2004 UNDP regional Roma survey in order to gain some understanding of the extent and nature of Roma labour market disadvantage. The paper documents the existence of substantial labour market disadvantage amongst Roma-which is particularly accentuated in the case of women. Positive developments in the form of significant economic and employment growth across much of the region and substantial increases in participation in higher-upper secondary and tertiary-educational levels between 2004 and 2011 have not been translated into anything more than very marginal gains in employment. To some extent this may be attributed to the recession and the tendency for the Global slowdown to hit more marginalized groups in the labour market more severely, however, the analysis also shows that educational differences cannot account for the substantial differences which remain in labour market opportunities between Roma and non-Roma and that a substantial part of this differential is explainable in terms of discrimination and other non-observable factors. School quality seems to be playing a role and there is clear evidence that a major factor underlying Roma/non-Roma wage differences concerns their labour market marginalization and specifically, the heavy concentration of Roma in informal employment. The study ends by arguing in favour of more rigorous impact evaluation of employment initiatives in order to better understand which labour market measures have been and/or are likely to be more effective and why. 1 Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission funded the survey in the EU Member States. 8 2 The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, further in the text referred to as "Macedonia" 3 The presentation of the survey methodology is largely based on: Ivanov, A., Kling, J., and Kagin J. (2012). The UNDP/WB/EC survey was conducted in May-July 2011 on a random sample of Roma and non-Roma households living in areas with higher density (or concentration) of Roma populations in the
In recent years, crowdworking has emerged as a small but rapidly growing source of employment and... more In recent years, crowdworking has emerged as a small but rapidly growing source of employment and income principally for young(er) people. Here, we build on previous work in identifying the determinants of crowdworkers’ earnings. We focus on the reasons why young crowdworkers earn significantly higher hourly wages than their older counterparts. We show that this is due to the higher returns to experience accruing to younger crowd-workers. Educational attainment does not explain this age-based differential, as education is a negligible factor in determining crowdworkers’ earnings. We also analyse why young women earn around 20% less than their male counterparts despite blind hiring. We confirm that this is partly explained by constraints on working time faced by women with children. The analysis also shows that ‘freely chosen’ crowd work - as opposed to, young people crowd-working because of a lack of alternative employment opportunities - is conducive to higher levels of job satisfa...
In recent years, crowdworking has emerged as a small but rapidly growing source of employment and... more In recent years, crowdworking has emerged as a small but rapidly growing source of employment and income principally for young(er) people. Here, we build on previous work in identifying the determinants of crowdworkers’ earnings. We focus on the reasons why young crowdworkers earn significantly higher hourly wages than their older counterparts. We show that this is due to the higher returns to experience accruing to younger crowd-workers. Educational attainment does not explain this age-based differential, as education is a negligible factor in determining crowdworkers’ earnings. We also analyse why young women earn around 20% less than their male counterparts despite blind hiring. We confirm that this is partly explained by constraints on working time faced by women with children. The analysis also shows that ‘freely chosen’ crowd work as opposed to, young people crowd-working because of a lack of alternative employment opportunities is conducive to higher levels of job satisfactio...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018
Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research pu... more Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
The analysis seeks to evaluate the potential that expansionary fiscal policy can have – and under... more The analysis seeks to evaluate the potential that expansionary fiscal policy can have – and under which conditions – to ameliorate, and restrictive fiscal policy to worsen, conditions in youth labour markets. Through a panel econometric model applied to European countries, the analysis finds that a fully countercyclical fiscal policy is an instrument well-suited to ameliorating youth unemployment.
Revista Internacional De Seguridad Social, 1997
… Laboratory University of …, 2010
In this paper we provide an experimental test of a dynamic Bertrand duopolistic model, where firm... more In this paper we provide an experimental test of a dynamic Bertrand duopolistic model, where firms move sequentially and their informational setting varies across different designs. Our experiment is composed of three treatments. In the first treatment, subjects receive information only on the costs and demand parameters and on the price' choices of their opponent in the market in which they are positioned (matching is fixed); in the second and third treatments, subjects are also informed on the behaviour of players who are not directly operating in their market. Our aim is to study whether the individual behaviour and the process of equilibrium convergence are affected by the specific informational setting adopted. In all treatments we selected students who had previously studied market games and industrial organization, conjecturing that the specific participants' expertise decreased the chances of imitation in treatment II and III. However, our results prove the opposite: the extra information provided in treatment II and III strongly affects the long run convergence to the market equilibrium. In fact, whilst in the first session, a high proportion of markets converge to the Nash-Bertrand symmetric solution, we observe that a high proportion of markets converge to more collusive outcomes in treatment II and more competitive outcomes in treatment III. By the same token, players' profits significantly differ in three settings. An interesting point of our analysis relates to the assessment of the individual behavioural rules in the second and third treatments. When information on the behaviour of participants on uncorrelated markets is provided, players begin to adopt mixed behavioural rules, in the sense that they follow myopic best reply rules as long as their profits are in line with the average profits on all markets, and , when their gains fall below that threshold, they start imitating successful strategies adopted on other markets.
Journal of Institutional Economics
In a novel experimental design, we investigate the impact of exogenous variation in economic grow... more In a novel experimental design, we investigate the impact of exogenous variation in economic growth and inequality on trusting behaviour. In addition to a control with uniform endowment, three treatments were implemented where the initial endowment is exogenously changed to produce inequality and three growth scenarios where average endowments increase (boom), decrease (recession) or remain unaltered (steady state). We find that aggregate trust and trustworthiness both decrease due to the induced heterogeneity in endowments. Also, trust (but not trustworthiness) decreases (increases) due to recessions (booms). The impact of inequality on trust is greatest in a recession and absent in a boom. These aggregate effects are driven mainly by the reactions of those who, after treatment, end up at the bottom of the endowment distribution. These findings are close in sign and in the order of magnitude to those reported in observational studies on the relationship between growth, inequality a...
Too often the voices of young people are neglected in the analysis of youth in the labour market.... more Too often the voices of young people are neglected in the analysis of youth in the labour market. This synthesis report summarises key findings and policy issues identified inWork Package 9 of the STYLE project, which focused on examining the attitudes and aspirations of young people. Our analytical tasks employed a diverse range of methodological approaches, including quantitative statistical analysis, experiments, in-depth interviews and a qualitative participative approach, to examine beliefs and attitudes of young people towards work, families and society. Specifically, we assessed values towards work, the impact of youth unemployment/labour market outsiderness on social capital and political participation as well asaspirations of vulnerable young people in foster care.The reportraises the following issues for policy and practice: a) attitudes between generations relating to work do not differ significantly; b) youth unemployment is an insufficient measure for the labour market ...
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Papers by Niall O'Higgins