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1. Which Migrant Jobs are Linked with the Adoption of Novel Technologies, Robotisation, and Digitalisation?

Author:
Antea Barišić, Mahdi Ghodsi, and Robert Stehrer
Publication Date:
02-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
In recent decades, the development of novel technologies has intensified due to globalisation, prompting countries to enhance competitiveness through innovation. These technologies have significantly improved global welfare, particularly in sectors like healthcare, where they have facilitated tasks and boosted productivity, for example playing a crucial role in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. However, certain technologies, such as robots, can negatively impact employment by replacing workers and tasks. Additionally, the emergence of artificial intelligence as digital assets not only replaces specific tasks but also introduces complexities that may displace employees who are unable to adapt. While the existing literature extensively explores the heterogeneous effects of these technologies on labour markets, studies of their impact on migrant workers remain scarce. This paper presents pioneering evidence on the effects of various novel technologies on migrant employment in the European Union. The analysis covers 18 EU member states from 2005 to 2019 focusing on the impact of novel innovations, robot adoption, three types of digital assets, and total factor productivity, on migrant employment. The key findings reveal that innovations measured by the number of granted patents increase both the number and proportion of migrant workers relative to the overall workforce. While robots do replace jobs, their impact on native workers surpasses that of migrant workers, resulting in a higher share of migrant workers following robot adoption. Total factor productivity positively influences migrant workers, while the effects of digital assets are heterogeneous. Moreover, the impacts of these technologies on migrant workers vary significantly across different occupation types and educational levels.
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, European Union, Innovation, Robotics, Migrant Workers, Digitalization, and Income Distribution
Political Geography:
Europe

2. How Far from Full Employment? The European Unemployment Problem Revisited

Author:
Meryem Gökten, Philipp Heimberger, and Andreas Lichtenberger
Publication Date:
04-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper analyses deviations from full employment in EU countries, compared with the US and the UK. We apply the Beveridge (full-employment-consistent) rate of unemployment (BECRU), derived from the unemployment-vacancies relationship. The BECRU is the level of unemployment that minimises the non-productive use of labour. Based on a novel dataset for the period 1970-2022, we find full employment episodes in selected EU countries (Germany, Sweden, Austria, Finland) during the 1970s. The European unemployment problem emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, as Beveridgean full employment gaps increased. In the run-up to the global financial crisis, full employment gaps declined, then increased during the Great Recession. Slack in labour markets increased initially during the pandemic. Labour markets became tighter when recovering from the COVID-19 crisis, but few countries hit full employment. Panel regressions highlight that hysteresis, labour market institutions, structural factors, macroeconomic factors and political factors contribute to explaining full employment gaps.
Topic:
Migration, European Union, Employment, Macroeconomics, Unemployment, Labor Market, OECD, and Income Distribution
Political Geography:
Europe

3. On Within-couple Time Allocation: Gendered Disparities in Paid Work and Housework in Europe

Author:
Alireza Sabouniha and Maryna Tverdostup
Publication Date:
06-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper aims to pursue a deeper understanding of gendered within-couple allocation of time into paid work and housework in heterosexual dual-earner couples. Relying on the second wave of Harmonised European Time Use Survey (HETUS) data for 10 European countries, we estimate spousal relative worktime and housework to analyse within-couple time-use arrangements. The results show that the disparity between a wife’s and a husband’s workhours is gradually narrowing, yet housework remains firmly gendered even in couples in which the wife works more hours than the husband. We document strong inertia in the wife’s share of housework. Although it decreases as her labour market commitment increases, the decline is slow. In addition, even if it is approaching a gender-equal split, the within-couple division of housework barely passes the point at which the husband’s contribution to housework surpasses that of his wife. These results suggest that gendered time division aligns broadly with traditional theories of the household, yet the role of the ‘doing-gender’ hypothesis is non-negligible.
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, European Union, Income Inequality, Labor Market, Decision-Making, Gender, Income Distribution, and Unpaid Work
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

4. Gender and Education Gaps in Employment: New Evidence for the EU

Author:
Aleksandr Arsenev, Meryem Gökten, Philipp Heimberger, Andreas Lichtenberger, and Torben Schütz
Publication Date:
06-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper analyses (age-adjusted) employment rates by gender and education. We find that male female gender gaps and high-low education gaps in employment vary markedly across European Union (EU) countries and regions, with larger gaps existing in Eastern and Southern Europe than in Nordic and Continental EU countries. We estimate that closing existing education gaps in employment between high and lower education levels would raise the employment rate in the EU for the year 2022 by 10.6 percentage points, whereas closing the gender gaps between men and women would lead to an increase of 2.5 percentage points. At the same time, closing both the gender and education gaps would raise the EU employment rate from 76% to 89% of the population. Furthermore, we provide new evidence on the cyclical behaviour of employment gaps, finding that gender gaps are procyclical. While female employment rates tend to be more resilient than male employment rates during economic downturns, male employment rates tend to grow at a faster pace than female employment rates during upswings. In contrast, education gaps are more countercyclical, as employment risks are more strongly concentrated where education is low.
Topic:
Education, Labor Issues, European Union, Employment, Inequality, Macroeconomics, Unemployment, Gender, and Income Distribution
Political Geography:
Europe

5. Employment Effects of Offshoring, Technological Change and Migration in a Group of Western European Economies: Impact on Different Occupations

Author:
Michael Landesmann and Sandra Leitner
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper estimates conditional demand models to examine the impact of offshoring, technological change, and migration on the labour demand of native workers differentiated by four different types of occupational groups: managers/professionals, clerical workers, craft (skilled) workers and manual workers. The analysis is conducted for an unbalanced panel of five economies Austria, Belgium, France, Spain, and Switzerland covering the period 2005-2018. Our results point to important and occupation-specific effects: offshoring seems to have beneficial employment effects for native craft workers in this set of economies, while negative effects for native manual workers across a wide set of industries (including manufacturing and services industries) and managers/professionals in manufacturing. Furthermore, there are important distinctions whether offshoring occurs in other advanced economies, in the EU13 or in developing countries. The analysis of the impact of technological change shows the strong positive impact which the additional IT equipment has on most occupational groups of native workers (with the exception of manual workers), while robotisation in manufacturing showed strongly negative impacts on the employment of all groups of workers and especially of craft workers. Increasing immigrant shares in the work forces showed strongly negative impacts on native workers – however, considering only the partial substitution effects and not including the potential for productivity and demand effects – and this is mostly accounted for by immigration from low- to medium-income source countries.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Migration, Labor Issues, Immigration, Foreign Direct Investment, Employment, Competition, Income Distribution, and Offshoring
Political Geography:
Europe, France, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, and Austria

6. Why do Preferences for Redistribution Differ Across Countries?

Author:
Gianluca Grimalda, Francesco Farina, Anna Conte, and Ulrich Schmidt
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
Abstract:
We test for different theories purporting to explain cross-country differences in income redistribution through standardized experimental choices. US Americans and Italians demand less redistribution than Norwegians and Germans, regardless of whether self-interest is relevant. Those earning (or expecting to earn) below-median incomes behave as "libertarians" more frequently in the US and Italy than in Germany and Norway. Above-the-median earners behave similarly across countries. Higher overconfidence by US Americans and Italians further reduces their demand for redistribution under uncertainty. The "Prospect of Upward Mobility" hypothesis holds similarly in all countries. US Americans do not reward individual merit more than others.
Topic:
Economic Mobility, Redistribution, Income Distribution, and Behavioral Economics
Political Geography:
Europe, Italy, North America, and United States of America

7. Employment Gaps Between Refugees, Migrants and Natives: Evidence from Austrian Register Based Labour Market Data

Author:
Stefan Jestl, Michael Landesmann, Sebastian Leitner, and Barbara Wanek-Zajic
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper analyses labour market integration in Austria of non-European refugees originating from middle and low income countries for the period 2009-2018. We assess their probability of being employed in comparison to non-humanitarian migrants, European third country immigrants and natives. We draw on a register based panel dataset covering the complete labour market careers of all individuals residing in Austria. We control for macro level explanatory variables (e.g. the labour market situation at the time and the place of settlement) and individual characteristics. The analysis shows that initial refugee employment gaps are large in the first years when labour market access is difficult. After a period of seven years the unconditional gap between refugees and natives declines to 30 percentage points, similar to the one of non-humanitarian migrants, but the gap is still further decreasing. After controlling for a set of additional explanatory variables, the conditional gap amounts to only 10 percentage points at the same time. Moreover, our analysis provides insights into differences between employment gaps across population subgroups of immigrant groups and natives by gender, age and education level.
Topic:
Employment, Refugees, Labor Market, Migrants, and Income Distribution
Political Geography:
Europe and Austria

8. Factors Driving Wealth Inequality in European Countries

Author:
Sebastian Leitner
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
This paper analyses how microeconomic factors drive inequality in household wealth across nine European countries when applying the Shapley value approach to decomposition. The research draws on micro data from the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey 2014. Disparity in inheritance and gifts obtained by households are found to have a considerable effect on wealth inequality that is on average stronger than that of income differences and other factors. In Austria, Germany, France, Portugal and Spain, the contribution of real and financial assets received as bequests or inter vivos transfers attains more than 30% to explained wealth inequality. The distribution of household characteristics (age, education, size, number of adults and children in the household, marital status) within countries however also shapes the observed wealth dispersion. The results resemble those obtained in a similar study (Leitner, 2016) based on data from the first wave of the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS 2010).
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, European Union, Inequality, Wealth, Inheritance, and Income Distribution
Political Geography:
Europe