Essays on Labor Issues : Performance and Efficiency

This thesis consists of two essays which focus on labor issues. They are (1) job performance and (2) labor efficiency. In an attempt to understand which factors determine working people’s job performance, the first essay aims to examine the importance of locus of control to job performance. We draw Australian panel data and utilize the fixed effects model to estimate the causal effect of locus of control on working people’s job performance. Our findings reveal that locus of control positively affects the adaptive performance dimension of job performance. This implies that employees with more internal locus of control tend to be more adaptive to conditions and happenings in the workplace, leading to better performance on their job. The positive effect of locus of control on adaptability still holds when we address the endogeneity of locus of control by applying Lewbel’s identification method (Lewbel, 2012) and control for attrition bias driven by panel survey. Our finding also suggests that gender and job complexity matter in how locus of control influences job performance. Particularly, locus of control drives adaptive performance, especially among males with high complexity jobs. The second essay investigates the labor-use efficiency in the context of ASEAN countries using the balanced panel data of the six largest ASEAN economies (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines) from 1990-2018. We use a flexible translog functional form to specify the labor demand, which is defined as a function of output (real GDP), average wage, capital stock, country-specific variables, and time effects. We generalize the model by incorporating a variance function, which accommodates marginal effects. The parameters of the demand and variance functions are estimated through a multi-step procedure using generalized least squares and a nonlinear method, respectively. The empirical results show that the average labor-use efficiency among ASEAN countries is about 96.3%, implying that the six ASEAN countries are very efficient in labor use relative to the country with the best labor-use practice in our sample which is Singapore. The two-sample t-test results show that the labor-use efficiency is significantly different between countries.

本论文包含两篇聚焦劳动议题的研究论文，分别为（1）工作绩效与（2）劳动效率。为厘清影响劳动者工作绩效的核心因素，首篇研究旨在探讨内控点（locus of control）对工作绩效的影响权重。本研究采用澳大利亚面板数据，运用固定效应模型估算内控点对劳动者工作绩效的因果效应。研究结果表明，内控点对工作绩效的适应性绩效维度具有正向影响。这意味着内控倾向更强的员工更能适配工作场所的各类情境与事件，进而实现更优异的工作表现。当我们采用Lewbel识别法（Lewbel, 2012）解决内控点的内生性问题，并控制面板调研带来的流失偏差后，内控点对适应性绩效的正向影响依然稳健。本研究还发现，性别与工作复杂度会调节内控点对工作绩效的作用路径。具体而言，内控点对适应性绩效的提升效应在从事高复杂度工作的男性群体中尤为显著。第二篇研究则聚焦东盟国家的劳动使用效率，采用1990-2018年间东盟六大经济体（新加坡、马来西亚、泰国、越南、印度尼西亚与菲律宾）的平衡面板数据展开分析。本研究采用灵活的超越对数（translog）函数形式设定劳动需求模型，其中劳动需求被定义为产出（实际GDP）、平均工资、资本存量、国家层面特征变量以及时间效应的函数。此外，本研究通过引入适配边际效应的方差函数对模型进行拓展，并分别采用广义最小二乘法与非线性方法，通过多步骤流程估算劳动需求函数与方差函数的参数。实证结果显示，东盟六国的平均劳动使用效率约为96.3%，这意味着相较于样本中劳动使用实践最优的新加坡，上述六国的劳动资源配置效率已处于较高水平。双样本t检验结果表明，各国之间的劳动使用效率存在显著差异。