As the COVID-19 pandemic causes a record number of people to work from home, this disruptive event will likely have a long-lasting impact on work arrangements. Given existing research on the effects of working from home on hours worked and wages, an increased availability of working from home may provide a chance for women to catch up with their male counterparts. Yet, the need to simultaneously care for children during the COVID-19 lockdown may also revive traditional gender roles, potentially counteracting such gains. We discuss the likely effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender gaps in the labour market and at home in light of recent empirical findings and novel statistics on the heterogeneous structure of work arrangements among couples. We construct a novel teleworkability index that differentiates between fully teleworkable, partly teleworkable and on-site jobs and find that in about a third of households the COVID-19 shock is likely to induce shifts in the intra-household allocation of tasks from mothers to fathers.
Changes in host diversity have been postulated to influence the risk of infectious diseases, including both dilution and amplification effects. The dilution effect refers to a negative relationship between biodiversity and disease risk, whereas the amplification effect occurs when biodiversity increases disease risk. We tested these effects with an influential disease, bovine tuberculosis (BTB), which is widespread in many countries, causing severe economic losses. Based on the BTB outbreak data in cattle from 2005 to 2010, we also tested, using generalized linear mixed models, which other factors were associated with the regional BTB presence in cattle in Africa. The interdependencies of predictors and their correlations with BTB presence were examined using path analysis. Our results suggested a dilution effect, where increased mammal species richness was associated with reduced probability of BTB presence after adjustment for cattle density. In addition, our results also suggested that areas with BTB infection in the preceding year, higher cattle density and larger percentage of area occupied by African buffalo were more likely to report BTB outbreaks. Climatic variables only indirectly influenced the risk of BTB presence through their effects on cattle density and wildlife distribution. Since most studies investigating the role of wildlife species on BTB transmission only involve single-species analysis, more efforts are needed to better understand the effect of the structure of wildlife communities on BTB dynamics.
Working from home (WfH) has become much more common since the early 2000s.We exploit the German Socio-Economic Panel between 1997 and 2014 to investigate how such a work arrangement affects labour market outcomes and life satisfaction.We find that childless employees work an extra hour per week of unpaid overtime and report higher satisfaction after taking up WfH. Among parents, WfH reduces the gender gap in working hours and monthly earnings, as contractual hours increase more among mothers. Hourly wages, however, increase with WfH take-up among fathers, but not among mothers unless they change employer. This points to poorer bargaining outcomes for women compared to men when staying with the same employer. Controlling for selection into paid employment due to changes in unobserved characteristics or preferences does not affect the magnitude of the effects.
Die Dis cus si on Pape rs die nen einer mög lichst schnel len Ver brei tung von neue ren For schungs arbei ten des ZEW. Die Bei trä ge lie gen in allei ni ger Ver ant wor tung der Auto ren und stel len nicht not wen di ger wei se die Mei nung des ZEW dar.Dis cus si on Papers are inten ded to make results of ZEW research prompt ly avai la ble to other eco no mists in order to encou ra ge dis cus si on and sug gesti ons for revi si ons. The aut hors are sole ly respon si ble for the con tents which do not neces sa ri ly repre sent the opi ni on of the ZEW. Non-technical summaryThe mismatch between workers' supply of skills and demand for skills in the labour market is at the forefront of the policy debate in European countries. On the one hand, the education sector is heavily subsidised in Germany and other European countries. Particularly, tertiary education expanded in the last decade with an increase in public investment. In the context of strong public budget constraints, this gives rise to concerns of a possible overinvestment in education resulting in an oversupply of skills. On the other hand, firms claim that they increasingly face difficulties in filling their vacancies because of a lack of sufficiently qualified labour force. The effectiveness of higher education in producing adequately skilled graduates thus represents a concern for many economic actors.In this study, we provide a conceptual underpinning of the possible explanations of job-worker mismatch and its implication for different actors in the economy. We define mismatch distinguishing between the perspective of the employee, the employer and the overall economy. From the overall economy and the employer perspective, optimality of a job match hinges on productivity, while what matters for employees is the utility associated to a job. The empirical literature generally employs two kinds of concepts for identifying job-worker mismatches. Qualification mismatch occurs if the level of formal education a worker possesses deviates from the one required for the job; skill mismatch occurs if the worker possesses a higher or lower level of skills than required to perform the job. This study provides an overview of measures and empirical findings concerning these concepts.Focusing on German graduates, we examine the incidence and direct consequences of job mismatch employing measures from three different datasets. The rate of overqualification and skill mismatch is found to differ strongly between fields of study, type of university and gender. Information about job requirements and the worker's level in jobrelevant competences are employed to infer skill surpluses and deficits among graduates in more detail.Additionally, we investigate to what extent jobs of overqualified or skill mismatched graduates are different from jobs held by matched graduates. The results indicate that jobs of matched graduates exhibit higher complexity and creativity requirements while being less monotone than jobs of mismatched graduates. The highest differences in these job c...
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