Research Seminar w/Takao Kato
Friday, October 30, 2015 - 12:00 to 14:00
Abstracts:
Takao Kato: “Dynamics of the Gender Gap in the Workplace: An Econometric Case Study of a Large Japanese Firm" (joint with Daiji Kawaguchi and Hideo Owan)
This paper provides new evidence on the nature and causes of the gender pay gap using confidential personnel records from a large Japanese chemical manufacturing firm. Controlling only for the human capital variables, the gender pay gap is found to be substantial—16% for unmarried and 31% for married workers. However, additionally controlling for job levels (promotion) and hours worked eliminates much of the unaccounted gender pay gap. Our further analysis of hours and promotion uncovers the presence of a significant career penalty associated with maternity. Yet we also find that such maternity penalty will be reduced if the female worker returns promptly from her parental leave and maintains regular work hours. Furthermore, working long hours is found to be much more strongly associated with the worker’s promotion prospect for women than for men. Our findings point to the importance of women’s ability to signal their commitment to work (or the level of family support they receive)—through working long hours and taking shorter parental leave—for their career advancement.
Gabriel Burdin: “Employee representation and working time flexibility: Evidence from European establishments”
The basic idea behind flexible working time arrangements (FWTA) is that over a certain period of time an employee is able to work longer or shorter hours than contractually agreed, accumulating working time credits or debits, which are later compensated for by additional free time or work. Despite entailing potential benefits for both employers and employees, incomplete contracting problems may prevent the implementation of this type of arrangements. Employers may not be able to commit not to behave opportunistically ex post and renege on their promise to compensate overtime with time-off in a certain time window. Employees may end up performing unpaid overtime hours as the employer can always argue that employees’ claims are not compatible with current company operational needs. This paper provides preliminary evidence on the effect of employee representation (ER) on working time flexibility in private-sector European establishments. The empirical analysis is based on establishment-level data from the last three waves of the European Company Survey. We hypothesize that employee representation may facilitate the introduction of FWTA by improving communication and information flows between the parties and protecting workers against the potential opportunistic manipulation of working time schedules. More precisely, employee representation provides an endogenous enforcement device of FTWA, making more credible the employers’ intertemporal commitment implicit in such schemes.
Information about the speakers:
Takao Kato is W.S. Schupf Professor of Economics and Far Eastern Studies at Colgate University. He is IZA Research Fellow, Research Associate of Center on Japanese Economy and Business at Columbia University, Center for Corporate Performance at Aarhus School of Business, and Tokyo Center for Economic Research. Takao Kato undertook some of the earliest econometric analysis of employee participation and innovative work practices in Japan and Korea. While continuing to work in this area, he has also been studying corporate governance and executive compensation in Japan, Korea, and China. Kato's most recent research involves econometric case studies of firms in the U.S., China, Finland, Denmark, and Japan, with particular focus on the nature and effects of high-performance work practices as well as career development and promotion tournament. His work has appeared in a variety of refereed journals such as American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, etc.
Takao Kato is W.S. Schupf Professor of Economics and Far Eastern Studies at Colgate University. He is IZA Research Fellow, Research Associate of Center on Japanese Economy and Business at Columbia University, Center for Corporate Performance at Aarhus School of Business, and Tokyo Center for Economic Research. Takao Kato undertook some of the earliest econometric analysis of employee participation and innovative work practices in Japan and Korea. While continuing to work in this area, he has also been studying corporate governance and executive compensation in Japan, Korea, and China. Kato's most recent research involves econometric case studies of firms in the U.S., China, Finland, Denmark, and Japan, with particular focus on the nature and effects of high-performance work practices as well as career development and promotion tournament. His work has appeared in a variety of refereed journals such as American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Industrial Relations, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, etc.
Gabriel Burdin is a Marie Curie Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School. He is also IZA Research Fellow and Assistant Professor at Instituto de Economia (IECON), FCEA, Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay. He completed his PhD at the University of Siena, Italy. Gabriel's research focuses on the economics of worker cooperatives and worker participation, organizational economics, and labor economics.
Location:
Porcelænshaven 24A, Room 2.68
Location:
Porcelænshaven 24A, Room 2.68
The page was last edited by: Department of International Economics and Management // 09/26/2023