Labor Economics – Page 79 – artdiamondblog.com

Happiness Depends Most on Being Free to Choose

(p. 27) Getting richer is not the only or even the best way of getting happier. Social and political liberation is far more effective, says the political scientist Ronald Ingleheart: the big gains in happiness come from living in a society that frees you to make choices about your lifestyle – about where to live, who to marry, how to express your sexuality and so on. It is the increase in free (p. 28) choice since 1981 that has been responsible for the increase in happiness recorded since then in forty-five out of fifty-two countries. Ruut Veenhoven finds that ‘the more individualized the nation, the more citizens enjoy their life.’

Source:
Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. New York: Harper, 2010.

Federal Subsidies Create Few Green Jobs

(p. F2) . . . solar power, which makes extensive use of robots in fabricating the cells, and has no moving parts to service once it is up and running, may be an odd choice for job creation.
“It’s just not that labor-intensive,” said Howard Axelrod, an engineer and economist. And as for the jobs it creates, there may be a price elsewhere, Dr. Axelrod said.
. . .
Build enough solar plants and some coal plants will shut down; that would amount to firing Peter to hire Paul.
. . .
And, economists point out, some of the work that renewable energy creates goes to people who already have jobs — roofers who install the panels or truck drivers who move them around, or steel workers who make towers for new wind machines.
Some of the jobs could eventually go elsewhere. Two years ago, Evergreen Solar, which got $58 million in aid from Massachusetts for a factory in Devens, said it would shift production to China instead.
. . .
The debate is part of a larger discussion of what constitutes a “green” job. In October 2009, Congress gave the Bureau of Labor Statistics a special appropriation to count them.
. . .
“Driving a bus is driving a bus, right?” said Connie Mack, Republican of Florida. Hilda Solis, the secretary of labor, said they were “green buses.” But aides later clarified that the bureau counted any bus driving job as green because it preserved natural resources.
None of this suggests that green is bad, just that it is not particularly job-heavy. In December 2010, Susan Combs, the comptroller of Texas, reported that school districts in her state were giving tax abatements to lure new jobs, but had to give $1.6 million for every wind energy job. Manufacturing jobs could be created for $166,000 each.

For the full story, see:
MATTHEW L. WALD. “Solar Power Industry Falls Short of Hopes in Job Creation.” The New York Times (Weds., October 26, 2011): F2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date October 25, 2011.)

More Firms Adopt ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) Policies to Empower Workers and Cut Costs

“At Citrix Systems, Berkley Reynolds, left, uses his Alienware laptop, and Alan Meridian, his MacBook Pro, paid for with stipends.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) SAN FRANCISCO — Throughout the information age, the corporate I.T. department has stood at the chokepoint of office technology with a firm hand on what equipment and software employees use in the workplace.

They are now in retreat. Employees are bringing in the technology they use at home and demanding the I.T. department accommodate them. The I.T. department often complies.
Some companies have even surrendered to what is being called the consumerization of I.T. At Kraft Foods, the I.T. department’s involvement in choosing technology for employees is limited to handing out a stipend. Employees use the money to buy whatever laptop they want from Best Buy, Amazon.com or the local Apple store.
“We heard from people saying, ‘How come I have better equipment at home?’ ” said Mike Cunningham, chief technology officer for Kraft Foods. “We said, hey, we can address that.”
Encouraging employees to buy their own laptops, or bring their mobile phones and iPads from home, is gaining traction in the workplace. A survey published on Thursday by Forrester Research found that 48 percent of information workers buy smartphones for work without considering what their I.T. department supports. By being more flexible, companies are hoping that workers will be more comfortable with their devices and therefore more productive.
“Bring your own device” policies, as they are called, are also shifting the balance of power among electronics makers. Manufacturers good at selling to consumers are increasingly gaining the upper hand, while those focused on bulk corporate sales are slipping.
. . .
(p. B6) Letting workers bring their iPhones and iPads to work can . . . save companies money. In some cases, employees pay for equipment themselves and seek tech help from store staff rather than their company’s I.T. department. “You can basically outsource your I.T. department to Apple,” said Ben Reitzes, an analyst with Barclays Capital.
A similar B.Y.O.D. program at Citrix Systems, a software maker that also helps its clients implement such programs, saves the company about 20 percent on each laptop over three years. Of the 1,000 or so employees in Citrix’s program, 46 percent have bought Mac computers, according to Paul Martine, Citrix’s chief information officer. “That was a little bit of a surprise.”

For the full story, see:
VERNE G. KOPYTOFF. “More Offices Let Workers Choose Their Own Devices.” The New York Times (Fri., September 23, 2011): B1 & B6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated September 22, 2011.)

Fantasizing about Achieving Goals Has Opportunity Cost in Terms of Energy to Actually Achieve Goals

(p. C4) Fantasizing about achieving goals can make people less likely to achieve them, by sapping the energy required to do the necessary work, a study finds.
. . .
The researchers concluded: “Positive fantasies will sap job-seekers of the energy to pound the pavement, and drain the lovelorn of the energy to approach the one they like.”

For the full story, see:
Christopher Shea. “Week in Ideas; Psychology; Lost in Fantasy.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., JUNE 4, 2011): C4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

The article summarized is:
Kappes, Heather Barry, and Gabriele Oettingen. “Positive Fantasies About Idealized Futures Sap Energy.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011): 719-29.

Haltiwanger Paper Says New Firms Create More Jobs than Old Firms

(p. A2) A recent study called into question whether size should matter at all when comparing businesses and their contribution to job creation.
The paper–co-authored by University of Maryland economist John Haltiwanger and two Census Bureau economists–confirmed that small businesses create more net new jobs, per employee, than do bigger businesses.
But the effect vanishes once each company’s age is taken into account. It is young businesses that outperform old ones, according to the paper. Size isn’t the important factor.
If you control for age, “you wipe out that effect” of small businesses creating a disproportionate share of net new jobs, says Prof. Haltiwanger. “There’s no systematic relationship. If anything it goes the opposite way of conventional wisdom.”

For the full commentary, see:
CARL BIALIK. “THE NUMBERS GUY; Sizing Up the Small-Business Jobs Machine.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., OCTOBER 15, 2011): A2.

The Haltiwanger paper referred to in the passage above is:
Haltiwanger, John C., Ron S. Jarmin, and Javier Miranda. “Who Creates Jobs? Small Vs. Large Vs. Young.” NBER Working Paper #16300, August 2010.

Berkeley Environmentalist Sticks to Her Knitting

“Avid knitter Shelby Stofle, gathering wool from sheep in Vacaville Calif., hopes to set up a business making scarves and selling them at craft fairs.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A5) Shelby Stofle graduated in December from the University of California at Berkeley with $10,250 in student-loan debt–and no job offers from a dozen applications.

The 24-year-old had hoped to work in environmental conservation or sustainable agriculture but struck out even at a grocery store near her rural hometown of Suisun City, Calif.
. . .
With many employment options exhausted, she said she feels her best shot is to set up her own business, selling her hand-made scarves at craft fairs and farmers’ markets.

For the full story, see:
VAUHINI VARA. “As Jobs Vanish, Sticking to Knitting.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., OCTOBER 31, 2011): A5.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Schumpeter’s Simile for Capitalist Mobility

(p. 156) In fact, the upper strata of society are like hotels which are indeed always full of people, but people who are forever changing.

Source:
Schumpeter, Joseph A. The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle. Translated by Redvers Opie. translation of 2nd German edition that appeared in 1926; translation first published by Harvard in 1934 ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1983.

My Jobs Haiku “Most Popular”

Yesterday (10/31/11) the Kauffman Foundation issued a press release reporting the results of their fourth-quarter survey of “top economics bloggers.” The URL for the press release is:
http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/only-half-of-economics-bloggers-expect-employment-growth-in-the-next-three-years.aspx

The last few lines of the press release are summarized below:
In their fourth-quarter survey of “top economics bloggers” the Kauffman Foundation asked the panel of bloggers “to describe the U.S. economy in haiku. Nearly 20 haiku were submitted and subsequently voted on by more than 500 public readers. The most popular was by Professor Art Diamond (http://artdiamondblog.com):”

jobs and Jobs are gone
need more Jobs to get more jobs
innovate to grow

More on Jobs Haiku

My Jobs haiku has received some discussion in the blogosphere.

It is reproduced, along with haikus submitted by other economics bloggers, in an entry of the blog of the Economist magazine:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/10/poetry?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/theeconomyinhaiku

I especially like a comment to the Economist blog entry:

CaitP

Oct 26th 2011 7:59 GMT

What a creative way to describe the economy. It is so interesting to see how everyone interprets the economy through poem. I personally like the “jobs and Jobs” one. I think it describes our economy, and gives a snapshot of a major moment in our history.

kbuch5

Nov 2nd 2011 1:41 GMT

It is interesting to see people’s opinions about the economy being put into haikus. My favorite out of these is the haiku that refers to the fact that we have lost Steve Jobs and many jobs for US citizens. And in order to regain these jobs we are going to need more people to contribute in ways Steve Jobs has.

(Note: I added kbuch5’s comment on 11/7/11.)

CNBC correspondent Jane Wells describes my haiku as “poetic” on her blog:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/45078738

Fewer Entrepreneurial Startups Leads to Fewer New Jobs

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) Start-ups fuel job growth disproportionately since by definition they are starting and growing, adding employees, says the Kauffman Foundation, which researches and advocates for entrepreneurship.
Though there was start-up activity during and after the recession, driven partly by unemployed individuals putting out a shingle, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show the total number of “births” of new businesses declined sharply from previous years. What’s more, the number of people employed by new businesses that are less than a year old–a common definition of a start-up–also declined. That trend started a decade ago.
In a recent report on entrepreneurship, the BLS said the number of new businesses less than a year old that existed in the year ending March 2010 “was lower than any other year” since its research began in 1994. The downdraft started with the recession.
“More people who were self-employed failed and left self-employment than people who entered,” says Scott Shane, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University who wrote a study on entrepreneurship and the recession for the Cleveland Fed. “The net effect is negative, not positive, largely because downturns hurt those in business and those thinking of entering business.”

For the full story, see:
JOHN BUSSEY. “THE BUSINESS; Shrinking in a Bad Economy: America’s Entrepreneur Class.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., AUGUST 12, 2011): B1 & B2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

The BLS report mentioned above can be found at: http://www.bls.gov/bdm/entrepreneurship/entrepreneurship.htm

The Scott Shane commentary mentioned above can be found at:
http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/commentary/2011/2011-04.cfm

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

Jobs Haiku

jobs and Jobs are gone
need more Jobs to get more jobs
innovate to grow

Arthur Diamond

In his Q4 survey of influential economics bloggers, Tim Kane of the Kauffman Foundation whimsically requested that we create a haiku that speaks to the state of the economy. I sent him my haiku, above, on Sunday, October 16, 2011.
(Do not worry—I have no plans to retire and devote myself to writing poetry.)