IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/acb/cbeeco/2023-692.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Employer vs Government Parental Leave: Labour Market Effects

Author

Listed:
  • Elena Del Rey
  • Maria Racionero
  • Jose I. Silva

Abstract

WA relatively large number of firms in Australia and in the US offer employer-funded parental leave to their employees beyond legal requirements. We introduce government-funded parental leave in a theoretical labour search and matching model. Firms choose the duration of paid parental leave offered to prospective employees. Matched firms and workers then negotiate wages through a Nash bargaining process. In equilibrium, the wage and the labour market tightness are determined by the point at which the wage and job creation curves intercept. We study the reasons behind the presence of employer-funded parental leave and its effects on wages and employment. We also explore the labour market and welfare effects of the introduction and extension of government-funded parental leave.

Suggested Citation

  • Elena Del Rey & Maria Racionero & Jose I. Silva, 2023. "Employer vs Government Parental Leave: Labour Market Effects," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2023-692, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2023-692
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/econ/wp692.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher A. Pissarides, 2000. "Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262161877, April.
    2. Peter Blair & Benjamin Posmanick, 2023. "Why Did Gender Wage Convergence in the United States Stall?," Working Papers 2023-001, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    3. Christina Felfe, 2012. "The Willingness to Pay for Job Amenities: Evidence from Mothers' Return to Work," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 65(2), pages 427-454, April.
    4. Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo, 2017. "The Economic Consequences of Family Policies: Lessons from a Century of Legislation in High-Income Countries," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(1), pages 205-230, Winter.
    5. Rita Ginja & Arizo Karimi & Pengpeng Xiao, 2023. "Employer Responses to Family Leave Programs," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 107-135, January.
    6. Rebecca Edwards, 2006. "Maternity Leave and the Evidence for Compensating Wage Differentials in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 82(258), pages 281-297, September.
    7. Aslim, Erkmen Giray & Panovska, Irina & Taş, M. Anıl, 2021. "Macroeconomic effects of maternity leave legislation in emerging economies," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    8. Christopher A. Pissarides & Barbara Petrongolo, 2001. "Looking into the Black Box: A Survey of the Matching Function," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(2), pages 390-431, June.
    9. Del Rey, Elena & Racionero, Maria & Silva, Jose I., 2017. "On the effect of parental leave duration on unemployment and wages," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 14-17.
    10. Claudia Goldin & Sari Pekkala Kerr & Claudia Olivetti, 2020. "Why Firms Offer Paid Parental Leave: An Exploratory Study," NBER Working Papers 26617, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Barigozzi, Francesca & Cremer, Helmuth & Roeder, Kerstin, 2018. "Women's career choices, social norms and child care policies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 162-173.
    12. Michael W. L. Elsby & Bart Hobijn & Ayşegül Şahin, 2013. "Unemployment Dynamics in the OECD," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 530-548, May.
    13. Xiao, Pengpeng, 2021. "Wage and Employment Discrimination by Gender in Labor Market Equilibrium," Working Papers 144, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    14. Girsberger, Esther Mirjam & Hassani-Nezhad, Lena & Karunanethy, Kalaivani & Lalive, Rafael, 2023. "Mothers at work: How mandating a short maternity leave affects work and fertility," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    15. Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo, 2017. "The Economic Consequences of Family Policies: Lessons from a Century of Legislation," Working Papers 811, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    16. Spencer Bastani & Tomer Blumkin & Luca Micheletto, 2019. "The Welfare-Enhancing Role of Parental Leave Mandates," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 35(1), pages 77-126.
    17. Peter Q. Blair & Benjamin Posmanick, 2023. "Why Did Gender Wage Convergence in the United States Stall?," NBER Working Papers 30821, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Elena Rey & Andreas Kyriacou & José I. Silva, 2021. "Maternity leave and female labor force participation: evidence from 159 countries," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(3), pages 803-824, July.
    19. Del Rey, Elena & Racionero, Maria & Silva, Jose I., 2021. "Labour market effects of reducing the gender gap in parental leave entitlements," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    20. Robert Shimer, 2012. "Reassessing the Ins and Outs of Unemployment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 15(2), pages 127-148, April.
    21. Alessandra Casarico & Elena Del Rey & Jose I. Silva, 2023. "Child care costs, household liquidity constraints, and gender inequality," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(3), pages 1461-1487, July.
    22. Felfe, Christina, 2012. "The motherhood wage gap: What about job amenities?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 59-67.
    23. Paula Garda, 2016. "The Ins and Outs of Employment in 25 OECD Countries," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1350, OECD Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Del Rey, Elena & Racionero, Maria & Silva, Jose I., 2021. "Labour market effects of reducing the gender gap in parental leave entitlements," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    2. Francesca Barigozzi & Helmuth Cremer & Emmanuel Thibault, 2023. "The Motherhood Wage and Income Traps," CESifo Working Paper Series 10380, CESifo.
    3. Alessandra Casarico & Elena Del Rey & Jose I. Silva, 2023. "Child care costs, household liquidity constraints, and gender inequality," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(3), pages 1461-1487, July.
    4. Timpe, Brenden, 2024. "The labor market impacts of America’s first paid maternity leave policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    5. Kohlbrecher, Britta & Merkl, Christian & Nordmeier, Daniela, 2016. "Revisiting the matching function," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 350-374.
    6. Ortego-Marti, Victor, 2017. "Loss of skill during unemployment and TFP differences across countries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 215-235.
    7. Alfonso Arpaia & Aron Kiss & Alessandro Turrini, 2014. "Is unemployment structural or cyclical? Main features of job matching in the EU after the crisis," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 527, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    8. Domenico Ferraro, 2018. "The Asymmetric Cyclical Behavior of the U.S. Labor Market," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 30, pages 145-162, October.
    9. Haroon Mumtaz & Francesco Zanetti, 2015. "Labor Market Dynamics: A Time-Varying Analysis," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 77(3), pages 319-338, June.
    10. Ortego-Marti, Victor, 2016. "Unemployment history and frictional wage dispersion," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 5-22.
    11. Cecilia Machado & Valdemar Neto & Christiane Szerman, 2023. "Firm and Worker Responses to Extensions in Paid Maternity Leave," CESifo Working Paper Series 10736, CESifo.
    12. Miyazaki, Koichi, 2023. "Efficiency-enhancing role of mandatory leave policy in a search-theoretic model of the labor market," MPRA Paper 116614, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Estefanía Galván & Cecilia Parada & Martina Querejeta & Soledad Salvador, 2024. "Gender Gaps and Family Leaves in Latin America," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 387-414, June.
    14. Rogerson, Richard & Shimer, Robert, 2011. "Search in Macroeconomic Models of the Labor Market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 7, pages Pages: 61, Elsevier.
    15. Regmi, Krishna & Wang, Le, 2022. "Maternity Leave," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1184, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    16. Lucifora, Claudio & Meurs, Dominique & Villar, Elena, 2021. "The “mommy track” in the workplace. Evidence from a large French firm," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    17. Machado, Cecilia & Neto, Valdemar & Szerman, Christiane, 2023. "Firm and Worker Responses to Extensions in Paid Maternity Leave," IZA Discussion Papers 16555, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Ilaria D'Angelis, 2023. "The Search for Parental Leave and the Early-Career Gender Wage Gap," Working Papers 2023-01, University of Massachusetts Boston, Economics Department.
    19. Christopher A. Pissarides, 2007. "Unemployment And Hours Of Work: The North Atlantic Divide Revisited," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 48(1), pages 1-36, February.
    20. Amaral, Pedro S. & Tasci, Murat, 2016. "The cyclical behavior of equilibrium unemployment and vacancies across OECD countries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 184-201.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Employer-funded paid parental leave; wages; unemployment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2023-692. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feanuau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.