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

我的研究涉及建模和评估不断发展的劳动力市场对利益结果的影响，如工资，就业和生命周期进展。这可以分为两个部分，第一部分涉及所谓的“Gig-Economy”（临时自营职业），另一部分涉及最低工资（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企业（在某些市场）能够维持规模较小的长期劳动力，同时将特定工作和任务外包。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，使其包括企业在扩大和收缩劳动力的同时保持稳定的长期雇员水平的能力。此外，我打算实证评估的影响，不断上升的替代工作安排的工人和公司方面。我想提出的问题涉及双方的利益和成本，对培训和技能构成的影响，以及相关的现行或潜在的监管途径。最低工资受到了学术界的广泛关注，大多数研究都集中在工资和就业的影响上。然而，最低工资成为各种职位的正常工资水平的前景，以及工人被困在最低工资工作中，几乎没有职业发展的空间，这一点没有得到足够的关注。这影响到技能的提高和培训，从而影响到生产力。

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.