Title:
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The role of non-wage job characteristics in labour markets characterised by search frictions
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In this thesis, I analyse the interactions of wages and job attributes in labour markets in the UK and Germany. In the first chapter, I estimate female workers' marginal willingness to pay to reduce commuting distance using a flexible stratified partial likelihood model on a large administrative dataset for West Germany. I find that men's marginal willingness to pay as a share of their wage is 20% lower than childless women's, which nearly doubles after the birth of a child. In sensitivity analyses I discuss the role of childcare, housing cost, regional structure and part-time work. In the second chapter, I use innovative survey data to analyse workers' willingness to pay for schedule autonomy. I find that whilst childless women's willingness to pay is lower than childless men's, motherhood (but not fatherhood) significantly increases willingness to pay. Moreover, I find that workers who enjoy schedule autonomy perceive their wages to be fairer, feel a greater sense of loyalty towards their employer and are more likely to report making an "above-and-beyond" effort at work. In the third chapter, I analyse the impact of a series of minimum wage increases in the UK on a range of schedule amenities. Using region-industry level data, I find that in regions and industries most impacted by minimum wage policies, the prevalence of zero-hours contracts increases. The effect is robust to a range of specification choices, including a dynamic Arellano-Bond model. I find less strong evidence of a decrease in schedule amenities valued by workers including flexitime. The effects are concentrated in industries with a majority of women workers.
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