Lara Vivian*, Marie-Christine Apedo-Amah**

Internal seminars
phd seminar

Lara Vivian*, Marie-Christine Apedo-Amah**

AMSE
Service Economy and Job Polarization: The Case of Germany*
Gender, Information and the efficiency in households productive decisions: an experiment in rural Togo**
Joint with
Habiba Djebbari, Roberta Ziparo**
Venue

VC Salle 205

Centre de la Vieille-Charité - Salle 205

Centre de la Vieille Charité
2 rue de la Charité
13002 Marseille

Date(s)
Tuesday, April 25 2017| 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Contact(s)

Edward Levavasseur: edward.levavasseur[at]univ-amu.fr
Lara Vivian: lara.vivian[at]univ-amu.fr

Abstract

*Western economies have been shifting towards more polarized employment in recent years. The share of workers in both high-paying managerial/professional occupations and low-paid personal service jobs increased at the expense of more traditional, middle-paying occupations. At the same time, the share of females in the workforce has also increased, fostering the development of a market for home production substitutes. On the one hand, purchasing substitutes for home production allows high-skilled workers to work more, while, on the other hand, their production means an increase in low-skilled service employment. Previous work found mixed evidence in support of this mechanism. This paper examines whether the marketization of home production is relevant for job polarization by taking advantage of a recent reform of the labor market in Germany. I find evidence that the reform promoted female employment in low-skilled personal service occupations and that such a change favored high-skilled female employment in top-paying jobs, therefore increasing job polarization.

**Empirical evidence on agricultural households in developing countries suggests that they do not maximize their revenues given their resources. This productive inefficiency may be due to inputs misallocation between spouses. The literature however does not provide any theoretical support for this findings that explains underlying mechanisms. We propose a model in which income inequalities and asymmetry of information within the couple are crucial in understanding inefficient productive resources allocation. Findings using results from a lab-in-the-field experiment in Togo supports our theoretical predictions. Setting-up such a controlled environment allows to study how the two factors interact to cause husbands’ inefficient allocation when wives are more productive.