[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/uunewp/2016_007.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Anti-discrimination Legislation and the Efficiency-Enhancing Role of Mandatory Parental Leave

Author

Listed:
  • Bastani, Spencer

    (Departmentof Economics)

  • Blumkin, Tomer

    (Department of Economics, Ben Gurion University, Israel)

  • Micheletto, Luca

    (Department of Economics)

Abstract
We study a setting where anti-discrimination legislation gives rise to adverse selection in the labor market. Firms rely on nonlinear compensation contracts to screen workers who differ in their family/career orientation. This results in a labor market equilibrium where career-oriented workers are offered an inefficiently low duration of parental leave. In addition, family-oriented workers are offered lower wages as compared to their equally skilled career-oriented counterparts. We demonstrate the usefulness of mandatory parental leave rules in mitigating the distortion in the labor market and derive conditions under which a Pareto improvement is possible. We also characterize the optimal parental leave policy and highlight the possibility for parental leave legislation to eliminate the wage penalty of family-oriented workers by supporting pooling employment contracts.

Suggested Citation

  • Bastani, Spencer & Blumkin, Tomer & Micheletto, Luca, 2016. "Anti-discrimination Legislation and the Efficiency-Enhancing Role of Mandatory Parental Leave," Working Paper Series 2016:7, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2016_007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:930499/FULLTEXT01.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alessandro Cigno, 2011. "Agency in Family Policy: A Survey," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 57(2), pages 305-331, June.
    2. Bastani, Spencer & Blumkin, Tomer & Micheletto, Luca, 2015. "Optimal wage redistribution in the presence of adverse selection in the labor market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 41-57.
    3. Nikolay Angelov & Per Johansson & Erica Lindahl, 2016. "Parenthood and the Gender Gap in Pay," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(3), pages 545-579.
    4. Cigno, Alessandro & Pettini, Anna, 2002. "Taxing family size and subsidizing child-specific commodities?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 75-90, April.
    5. Claudia Goldin, 2014. "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(4), pages 1091-1119, April.
    6. Hajime Miyazaki, 1977. "The Rat Race and Internal Labor Markets," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 8(2), pages 394-418, Autumn.
    7. Gibbons, Robert & Murphy, Kevin J, 1992. "Optimal Incentive Contracts in the Presence of Career Concerns: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(3), pages 468-505, June.
    8. Nordin, Mattias, 2015. "Local Television, Citizen Knowledge and Political Accountability: Evidence from the U.S. Senate," Working Paper Series 2015:5, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    9. Chuan-Zhong Li & Ranjula Bali Swain, 2016. "Growth, Water Resilience, and Sustainability: A DSGE Model Applied to South Africa," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 2(04), pages 1-23, December.
    10. Waldenstrom, Daniel, 2015. "Wealth-income ratios in a small, late-industrializing, welfare-state economy: Sweden, 1810?2014," CEPR Discussion Papers 10878, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1982. "Self-selection and Pareto efficient taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 213-240, March.
    12. Michael Rothschild & Joseph Stiglitz, 1976. "Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(4), pages 629-649.
    13. Marianne Bertrand & Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 2010. "Dynamics of the Gender Gap for Young Professionals in the Financial and Corporate Sectors," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 228-255, July.
    14. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    15. James Albrecht & Anders Bjorklund & Susan Vroman, 2003. "Is There a Glass Ceiling in Sweden?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 145-177, January.
    16. Dahlberg, Matz & Mani, Kevin & Öhman, Mattias & Wanhainen, Anders, 2016. "Health Information and Well-Being: Evidence from an Asymptomatic Disease," Working Paper Series 2016:2, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    17. Summers, Lawrence H, 1989. "Some Simple Economics of Mandated Benefits," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 177-183, May.
    18. Bonnier, Evelina & Poulsen, Jonas & Rogall, Thorsten & Stryjan, Miri, 2015. "Preparing for Genocide: Community Work in Rwanda," Working Paper Series 2015:1, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    19. Stefanie Stantcheva, 2014. "Optimal Income Taxation with Adverse Selection in the Labour Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(3), pages 1296-1329.
    20. Spence, Michael, 1978. "Product differentiation and performance in insurance markets," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 427-447, December.
    21. Jane Waldfogel, 1998. "Understanding the "Family Gap" in Pay for Women with Children," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 137-156, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:ces:ifodic:v:15:y:2017:i:2:p:19337549 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. repec:ces:ifodic:v:15:y:2017:i:2:p:03-07 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Tallås Ahlzén, Malin, 2021. "Peer effects and parental leave of fathers," Working Paper Series 1/2021, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    4. Spencer Bastani & Tomer Blumkin & Luca Micheletto, 2017. "Gender Wage Gap and the Welfare-Enhancing Role of Parental Leave Rules," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 15(02), pages 03-07, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Spencer Bastani & Tomer Blumkin & Luca Micheletto, 2019. "The Welfare-Enhancing Role of Parental Leave Mandates," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 35(1), pages 77-126.
    2. Bastani, Spencer & Blumkin, Tomer & Micheletto, Luca, 2015. "Optimal wage redistribution in the presence of adverse selection in the labor market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 41-57.
    3. Andrea Attar & Thomas Mariotti & François Salanié, 2020. "The Social Costs of Side Trading," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(630), pages 1608-1622.
    4. Bütikofer, Aline & Jensen, Sissel & Salvanes, Kjell G., 2018. "The role of parenthood on the gender gap among top earners," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 103-123.
    5. Paweł Doligalski & Abdoulaye Ndiaye & Nicolas Werquin, 2023. "Redistribution with Performance Pay," Journal of Political Economy Macroeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(2), pages 371-402.
    6. Mary Ann Bronson, 2018. "The Lifecycle Wage Growth of Men and Women: Explaining Gender Differences in Wage Trajectories," 2018 Meeting Papers 923, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Spencer Bastani & Tomer Blumkin & Luca Micheletto, 2021. "Optimal Redistribution in the Presence of Signaling," CESifo Working Paper Series 9210, CESifo.
    8. Davoodalhosseini, Seyed Mohammadreza, 2022. "Optimal taxation in asset markets with adverse selection," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    9. Cemal Eren Arbatlı & Quamrul H. Ashraf & Oded Galor & Marc Klemp, 2020. "Diversity and Conflict," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 727-797, March.
    10. Robert J. Gary-Bobo & Alain Trannoy, 2015. "Optimal student loans and graduate tax under moral hazard and adverse selection," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 46(3), pages 546-576, September.
    11. Berniell, Inés & Berniell, Lucila & de la Mata, Dolores & Edo, María & Marchionni, Mariana, 2023. "Motherhood and flexible jobs: Evidence from Latin American countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    12. Aronsson, Thomas & Micheletto, Luca, 2017. "Optimal Redistributive Income Taxation and Efficiency Wages," Umeå Economic Studies 953, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    13. Albrecht, James & Bronson, Mary Ann & Thoursie, Peter Skogman & Vroman, Susan, 2018. "The career dynamics of high-skilled women and men: Evidence from Sweden," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 83-102.
    14. Nan L. Maxwell & Nathan Wozny, "undated". "Gender Gaps in Time Use and Earnings: What's Norms Got to Do With It?," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 38f127bf7f494794807db7a3a, Mathematica Policy Research.
    15. Strittmatter, Anthony & Wunsch, Conny, 2021. "The Gender Pay Gap Revisited with Big Data: Do Methodological Choices Matter?," Working papers 2021/05, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    16. Anja Roth, 2020. "How the provision of childcare affects attitudes towards maternal employment," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 156(1), pages 1-30, December.
    17. Jon H Fiva & Max-Emil M King, 2024. "Child Penalties in Politics," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(658), pages 648-670.
    18. Hardoy, Inés & Schøne, Pål & Østbakken, Kjersti Misje, 2017. "Children and the gender gap in management," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 124-137.
    19. Tchai Tavor & Limor Dina Gonen & Uriel Spiegel, 2021. "Reservations on the classical Laffer curve," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 34(4), pages 479-493, December.
    20. Rick Glaubitz & Astrid Harnack-Eber & Miriam Wetter, 2022. "The Gender Gap in Lifetime Earnings: The Role of Parenthood," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2001, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    anti-discrimination; adverse selection; parental leave; efficiency;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J83 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Workers' Rights

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2016_007. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ulrika Öjdeby (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nekuuse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.