This thesis examines individuals’, organizations’, and nations’ characteristics and actions as determinants of labor market inequality. Labor market inequality is an important question in both public policy and sociology, and has been of particular interest in recent years as American and European wage inequality (before taxes and transfers) has increased.
While there are many hypothesized causes, one that has drawn significant attention is the decline of “traditional” jobs in contrast to the perceived growth of “atypical employment” (work that is not full time and permanent). This kind of employment is often held culpable, as it is generally less well paid and more unstable. While the first three papers (chapters 2 to 4) focus on atypical employment and its effects on inequality, the last paper (chapter 5) takes a different perspective, examining how the labor market can generate inequality across organizations, in this case universities’ sociology departments.
The first paper focuses on why countries have different levels of atypical employment. Three main hypotheses are tested for three types of atypical employment (self employment, part-time work, and fixed term work) including: Do entrepreneurial cultures encourage atypical employment? Do institutional constraints like employment protection legislation encourage atypical employment? And, do labor market conditions (e.g., unemployment) encourage atypical employment? This paper includes a historical narrative of the three European countries with the highest levels of atypical employment (fixed term workers in Spain, part-time workers in the Netherlands, and the self employed in Greece) and exam-ines how well a quantitative analysis can capture the historical dynamics of these three exceptional cases. The paper ends with a review of policy approaches for protecting atypical workers.
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
List of Tables
List of Figures
List of Appendices
Abstract
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 National Context and Atypical Employment
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Literature
2.3 Atypical employment
2.4 Research design
2.5 Results
2.6 Atypical employment policy
2.7 Conclusion
Chapter 3 European Labor Institutions and the Fixed Term Wage Gap
3.1 Introduction
- 3.1.1 National context,theory,and policy
3.2 Data methods
- 3.2.1 Data
3.2.2 Matching model
3.2.3 Regression analysis
3.3 Results
- 3.3.1 Matching
3.3.2 Regression analysis
3.3.3 Relative wages and institutional differences
3.4 Fixedtermemploymentpolicy
3.5 Conclusion
Chapter 4 Employment Intermediaries: A model of firm incentives
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Background
4.3 Model
4.4 Experiment One: Fees vs match quality
4.5 Experiment Two: Occupation-specific incentives
4.6 Empiricaltrendsandmodelverification
4.7 Conclusion
Chapter 5 Academic Employment Networks & Departmental Prestige
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Dataandmethods
5.3 Analysis
5.4 Conclusion
Chapter 6 Conclusion
Appendices
Bibliography
