Essays in Labour Economics- Theoretical and empirical assessments of the evolving labour market

我的研究关注的是模拟和评估不断发展的劳动力市场对工资、就业和生命周期进程等相关结果的影响。这可以分为两部分，第一部分涉及所谓的“零工经济”(临时自雇工作)，另一部分涉及最低工资(例如国家最低工资)对职业发展的影响。过去几十年的技术突破使公司(在某些市场内)能够在外包特定工作和任务的同时保持较少的永久劳动力。鉴于英国劳动力市场的这种演变，我打算调整劳动力需求模型，使之包括企业在保持稳定的固定员工水平的同时，进行劳动力扩张和收缩的能力。此外，我打算经验性地评估替代工作安排的增加对工人和公司方面的影响。我想回答的问题涉及对双方的好处和代价、对培训和技能构成的影响，以及相关的积极或潜在的监管途径。最低工资受到了学术界的大量关注，大多数研究都集中在工资和就业的影响上。然而，没有得到重大关注的是，最低工资可能成为各种职位的正常化工资水平，此外，工人们被困在最低工资工作中，职业发展空间很小。这对技能提升和培训有影响，因此对生产率也有影响。

My research is concerned with modelling and assessing the impacts of the evolving labour market on outcomes of interest, such as wages, employment and life-cycle progression. This can be broken down into two sections, the first relates to the so-called "Gig-Economy" (temporary self-employment work) and the other to the impact of wage floors (e.g. the National Minimum Wage) on career progression.Technological breakthroughs over the past couple of decades have resulted in firms (within certain markets) being able to maintain a smaller permanent workforce while contracting out specific jobs and tasks. Given this evolution in the UK labour market, I intend to adapt labour demand models to include the ability for firms to engage in expansion and contractions of their workforce while maintaining a stable level of permanent employees. Furthermore, I intend to empirically assess the impact of rising alternative work arrangements on both the worker and firm side. Questions which I wish to address concern the benefits and costs to both parties, the impact on training and skill make-up, and associated active or potential routes of regulation. Minimum wages have received a large amount of academic attention, with most research focused on the impacts of wages and employment. What however has not received significant attention is the prospect of a wage floor becoming the normalised wage level for a variety of positions, and furthermore, workers getting stuck in minimum wage jobs with little scope for career progression. This has implications for skill upgrading and training, and therefore productivity.