Small Differences That Matter
Title | Small Differences That Matter PDF eBook |
Author | David Card |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 288 |
Release | 2009-02-15 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 0226092895 |
This volume, the first in a new series by the National Bureau of Economic Research that compares labor markets in different countries, examines social and labor market policies in Canada and the United States during the 1980s. It shows that subtle differences in unemployment compensation, unionization, immigration policies, and income maintenance programs have significantly affected economic outcomes in the two countries. For example: -Canada's social safety net, more generous than the American one, produced markedly lower poverty rates in the 1980s. -Canada saw a smaller increase in earnings inequality than the United States did, in part because of the strength of Canadian unions, which have twice the participation that U.S. unions do. -Canada's unemployment figures were much higher than those in the United States, not because the Canadian economy failed to create jobs but because a higher percentage of nonworking time was reported as unemployment. These disparities have become noteworthy as policy makers cite the experiences of the other country to support or oppose particular initiatives.
Differences That Matter
Title | Differences That Matter PDF eBook |
Author | Dan Zuberi |
Publisher | Cornell University Press |
Pages | 248 |
Release | 2018-07-05 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1501711253 |
This book shines a spotlight on the causes and consequences of working poverty, revealing how the lives of low-wage workers are affected by differences in health care, labor, and social welfare policy in the United States and Canada. Dan Zuberi's conclusions are based on survey data, eighteen months of participant observation fieldwork, and in-depth interviews with seventy-seven hotel employees working in parallel jobs on both sides of the border. Two hotel chains, each with one union and one non-union hotel in Seattle and Vancouver, provide a vivid crossnational comparison because they are similar in so many regards, the one major exception being government policy.Zuberi demonstrates how labor, health, social welfare, and public investment policy affect these hotel workers and their families. His book challenges the myth that globalization necessarily means hospitality jobs must be insecure and pay poverty wages and makes clear the critical role played by government policy in the reduction of poverty and creation of economic equality. Zuberi shows exactly where and how the social policies that distinguish the Canadian welfare state from the U.S. version make a difference in protecting Canadian workers from the hardships that burden low-wage workers in the United States. Differences That Matter, which is filled with first-person accounts, ends with policy recommendations and a call for grassroots community organizing.
Differences that Matter
Title | Differences that Matter PDF eBook |
Author | Dan Zuberi |
Publisher | Cornell University Press |
Pages | 260 |
Release | 2006 |
Genre | Canada |
ISBN | 9780801473128 |
Two hotel chains, each with one union and one non-union hotel in Seattle and Vancouver, provide a vivid crossnational comparison because they are similar in so many regards, the one major exception being government policy. Zuberi demonstrates how labor, health, social welfare, and public investment policy affect these hotel workers and their families. His book challenges the myth that globalization necessarily means hospitality jobs must be insecure and pay poverty wages and makes clear the critical role played by government policy in the reduction of poverty and creation of economic equality. Zuberi shows exactly where and how the social policies that distinguish the Canadian welfare state from the U.S. version make a difference in protecting Canadian workers from the hardships that burden low-wage workers in the United States. - from publisher information.
Small Differences that Matter
Title | Small Differences that Matter PDF eBook |
Author | Amanda Pallais |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 2013 |
Genre | Economics |
ISBN |
This paper estimates the sensitivity of students' college application decisions to a small change in the cost of sending standardized test scores to colleges. Using confidential ACT micro data, I find that when the ACT increased from three to four the number of free score reports that ACT-takers could send, the fraction of test-takers sending four reports rose substantially while the fraction sending three fell by an offsetting amount. Students simultaneously sent their scores to a wider range of colleges. Using micro data from the American Freshman Survey, two identification strategies show that ACT-takers sent more college applications and low-income ACT-takers attended more selective colleges after the cost change. The first strategy compares ACT-takers before and after the cost change, controlling for time trends and covariates, and the second estimates difference-in-difference regressions using SAT-takers as a control group. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that by inducing low-income students to attend more selective colleges, the policy change significantly increased their expected earnings. Because the cost of sending an additional (non-free) ACT score was merely $6 throughout, this sizable behavioral change is surprising and suggests that students may use simple heuristics in making their application decisions. In such a setting, small policy perturbations can have large effects on welfare.
Small Differences
Title | Small Differences PDF eBook |
Author | Donald Harman Akenson |
Publisher | McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP |
Pages | 260 |
Release | 1988 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780773508583 |
Argues that there are fundamental social and economic similarities between the two groups; but that taboos against intermarriage, segregated schools and the nature of Protestant and Catholic religious beliefs keep the Irish at loggerheads.
Pink Brain, Blue Brain
Title | Pink Brain, Blue Brain PDF eBook |
Author | Lise Eliot |
Publisher | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
Pages | 609 |
Release | 2009 |
Genre | Child development |
ISBN | 0618393110 |
A neuroscientist shatters the myths about gender differences, arguing that the brains of boys and girls are largely shaped by how they spend their time, and offers parents and teachers concrete ways to avoid reinforcing harmful stereotypes.
Differences and Changes in Wage Structures
Title | Differences and Changes in Wage Structures PDF eBook |
Author | Richard B. Freeman |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 474 |
Release | 2007-12-01 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0226261840 |
During the past two decades, wages of skilled workers in the United States rose while those of unskilled workers fell; less-educated young men in particular have suffered unprecedented losses in real earnings. These twelve original essays explore whether this trend is unique to the United States or is part of a general growth in inequality in advanced countries. Focusing on labor market institutions and the supply and demand forces that affect wages, the papers compare patterns of earnings inequality and pay differentials in the United States, Australia, Korea, Japan, Western Europe, and the changing economies of Eastern Europe. Cross-country studies examine issues such as managerial compensation, gender differences in earnings, and the relationship of pay to regional unemployment. From this rich store of data, the contributors attribute changes in relative wages and unemployment among countries both to differences in labor market institutions and training and education systems, and to long-term shifts in supply and demand for skilled workers. These shifts are driven in part by skill-biased technological change and the growing internationalization of advanced industrial economies.