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ESSAYS ON LABOR AND DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
by
Voraprapa Nakavachara
________________________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ECONOMICS)
December 2007
Copyright 2007 Voraprapa Nakavachara
Object Description
| Title | Essays on labor and development economics |
| Author | Nakavachara, Voraprapa |
| Author email | nakavach@usc.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Economics |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2007-10-10 |
| Date submitted | 2007 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2007-10-22 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Strauss, John |
| Advisor (committee member) |
MacLeod, W. Bentley Ham, John C. Painter, Gary D. |
| Abstract | The dissertation consists of two essays on labor and development economics. The first essay seeks to identify the main factors that contributed to the decline in gender earnings gap in Thailand's wage and salary sector from 1985-2005. Two parametric methodologies, Neumark's version of the Blinder-Oaxaca method and the Juhn-Murphy-Pierce method, are implemented in order to decompose gender earnings gap at a point in time and across time period. I also make a methodological contribution by proposing a way to modify the DiNardo-Fortin-Lemieux nonparametric decomposition method so that its results are comparable to those from Neumark's version of the Blinder-Oaxaca method. The key findings of this essay are as follows. First, I find that increases in female education and changes in unobserved factors, which were concurrent with modernization, were the main sources of the decline in gender earnings gap. Second, over time, improvements in the education of females in this sector surpassed that of males. However, the superior education of females did not result in higher female earnings because of the overwhelming effect of the unexplained factors that supported higher male earnings. Finally, the nonparametric investigation corroborated the results from the parametric methodologies.; The second essay investigates how the Wrongful Discharge Laws (WDLs), imposed during the 1970s and 1980s, affect workers in the United States. Most economists conjecture that WDLs increase firing costs for firms. In terms of employment, the literature found a negative or at best zero impact. In terms of wages, most papers found no impact. Thus the laws seemed to adversely affect an "average" worker. These papers implicitly assumed that labor force was homogeneous. They did not recognize the fact that labor can be heterogeneous and that firms may treat different types of labor as different forms of input. My study attempts to overcome this limitation. I treat labor as heterogeneous (high-skilled and low-skilled) thus allowing the laws to affect firms' decisions regarding not only the quantity of labor input but also the combination ofdifferent types of labor input. The key finding of this essay is that WDLs are associated with increases in employment of high-skilled labor, a result unacknowledged in early studies. WDLs, however, adversely affect employment of low-skilled labor, a result consistent with the literature. |
| Keyword | gender inequality; Thailand; Blinder Oaxaca; Juhn Murphy Pierce; DiNardo Fortin Lemieux; Wrongful Discharge Law |
| Geographic subject (country) | Thailand; USA |
| Coverage date | circa 1970/2005 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m879 |
| Rights | Nakavachara, Voraprapa |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | http://www.usc.edu/isd/libraries/services/ask_a_librarian/email/ |
| Filename | etd-Nakavachara-20071022 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume35/etd-Nakavachara-20071022.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Full text | ESSAYS ON LABOR AND DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS by Voraprapa Nakavachara ________________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (ECONOMICS) December 2007 Copyright 2007 Voraprapa Nakavachara |
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