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Author: Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan
Resulting in 7 citations.
1. Jun, Tackseung
Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan
Does Wage Volatility Matter in Labor Markets? Theory and Evidence on Labor Mobility
Working Paper, Department of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University, May 2004
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, Columbia University
Keyword(s): Job Turnover; Minimum Wage; Mobility, Job; Modeling; Wage Dynamics; Wage Effects

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

We present theory and evidence on the effects of wage volatility on labor mobility. Our model of job turnover explicitly incorporates variance of within job wages by assuming that wages evolve as random walk processes. With the additional assumption that job changes entail "switching" costs, the key theoretical result is that the optimal threshold of turnover -- the minimum wage difference between outside and inside jobs necessary for a job change -- is positively related to wage volatility. Data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth show that workers who hold more volatile jobs quit less frequently and get bigger wage gains when they do quit. These findings are consistent with the implications of our theoretical model.
Bibliography Citation
Jun, Tackseung and Lalith Roshan Munasinghe. "Does Wage Volatility Matter in Labor Markets? Theory and Evidence on Labor Mobility." Working Paper, Department of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University, May 2004.
2. Kondo, Ayako
Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan
Sethi, Rajiv
Racial Disparities in Neighborhood Affluence: Implications for the Test Scores of Children
Working Paper, Department of Economics, Columbia University, September 17, 2006.
Also: http://www.columbia.edu/~rs328/scores.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, Columbus University
Keyword(s): Geocoded Data; Neighborhood Effects; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Racial Differences

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

American cities are characterized by sharp racial differences in the extent to which affluent individuals have affluent neighbors. We examine the possibility that this might help account for racial disparities in the test scores of children. We examine performance on the mathematics component of the PIAT (Peabody Individual Achievement Test), which has been administered to the children of mothers in the NLSY sample over the past two decades. We use Census data to compute, for each child, an expected value of neighborhood affluence, conditional on their race, net family income, and county of residence. We find neighborhood affluence is positively correlated with the child's score, and highly significant, despite the inclusion of a host of family and individual characteristics.
Bibliography Citation
Kondo, Ayako, Lalith Roshan Munasinghe and Rajiv Sethi. "Racial Disparities in Neighborhood Affluence: Implications for the Test Scores of Children." Working Paper, Department of Economics, Columbia University, September 17, 2006.
3. Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan
Expectations Matter: Job Prospects And Turnover Dynamics
Labour Economics 13,5 (October 2006): 589-609.
Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537105000138
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Elsevier
Keyword(s): Current Population Survey (CPS) / CPS-Fertility Supplement; Heterogeneity; Job Satisfaction; Job Search; Job Tenure; Job Turnover; Labor Market Outcomes; Mobility, Job

This paper presents evidence on the effects of worker expectations on labor turnover, a topic largely ignored in the voluminous literature on labor mobility. Two survey instruments related to expected job duration and chances of promotion in the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth are used to analyze the role of job prospects in predicting turnover dynamics. The key empirical finding is that workers with favorable job assessments have a lower and flatter tenure-turnover profile—i.e. the well-known negative structural relationship between the turnover rate and job tenure-than their counterparts with less favorable job assessments. This finding is consistent with search-and-matching theories that explicitly incorporate heterogeneity of prior beliefs about match quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR; Copyright 2006 Elsevier]
Bibliography Citation
Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan. "Expectations Matter: Job Prospects And Turnover Dynamics." Labour Economics 13,5 (October 2006): 589-609.
4. Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan
Studies in the Dynamics of Labor Turnover
Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1995. DAI-A 56/03, p. 1068, Sep 1995
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: UMI - University Microfilms, Bell and Howell Information and Learning
Keyword(s): Human Capital Theory; Job Tenure; Job Turnover; Labor Economics

Workers with longer tenure are less likely to turn over. This is a well known fact. The best known explanations for why individual turnover propensities decline with work experience at a firm, are derived from human capital theory and job matching theory. These explanations, however, assume that workers have uniform assessments of their future job prospects. Therefore, such assessments are excluded from consideration as possible determinants of turnover behavior. The inclusion of workers' prior assessments enables us to better explain mobility patterns. Differences in assessments of future job prospects, such as training opportunities or match quality, can explain observed differences in the time distribution of labor turnover across many worker and job characteristics. Data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth are used to test implications of the differing prior information hypothesis on labor mobility. The empirical findings are largely consistent with this hypothesis.
Bibliography Citation
Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan. Studies in the Dynamics of Labor Turnover. Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1995. DAI-A 56/03, p. 1068, Sep 1995.
5. Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan
Sicherman, Nachum
Wage Dynamics and Unobserved Heterogeneity: Time Preference or Learning Ability?
NBER Working Paper No. 11031, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005.
Also: http://papers.nber.org/papers/w11031.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Keyword(s): Heterogeneity; Modeling; Wage Differentials; Wage Growth; Wage Rates

A large portion of the variation in wages and wage growth rates among individuals is due to "unobserved" heterogeneity, and the source of individual heterogeneity is typically attributed to data limitations and/or the unobservability of certain productivity related factors. In this paper we develop a test that discriminates between two inherently unobservable sources of heterogeneity (both of which can clearly account for the variation in wages and wage growth rates): learning ability and workers' inter-temporal preferences (discounting). We apply this test to the large observed differences in wages and wage growth rates between smokers and non-smokers. The evidence supports the discounting hypothesis.

Data are from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are used to test their model. They find that the interaction term in their equations are negative, that the result supports the time preference alternative, and that the result is robust across several model specifications and controls. Thus, they conclude that research on the sources of individual discount rates would be a fruitful direction for wage research to follow.

Bibliography Citation
Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan and Nachum Sicherman. "Wage Dynamics and Unobserved Heterogeneity: Time Preference or Learning Ability?" NBER Working Paper No. 11031, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005.
6. Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan
Sicherman, Nachum
Why Do Dancers Smoke? Smoking, Time Preference, and Wage Dynamics
Eastern Economic Journal 32,4 (Fall 2006): 595-616.
Also: http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/eej/Archive/Volume32/V32N4P595_616.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Journals
Keyword(s): Occupations; Smoking (see Cigarette Use); Time Preference; Wage Dynamics; Wage Growth

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The focus of the paper is on smoking and wage dynamics. Our main objective is to first empirically assess the correlation between smoking and wage growth over the life cycle, and second, to ask whether the estimated correlation between smoking and wage dynamics is consistent with the above time preference argument. Admittedly, our analysis of smoking and wage growth does not focus on dancers per se, and the intention of the opening paragraph is simply to motivate the hypothesis that individual discount rates may be a potentially important source of the observed differences in wage growth prospects among careers. Hence we need to address two key questions. First, what are the correlations between smoking and wage dynamics? Second, is smoking a reasonable proxy for an individual's discount rate?
Bibliography Citation
Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan and Nachum Sicherman. "Why Do Dancers Smoke? Smoking, Time Preference, and Wage Dynamics." Eastern Economic Journal 32,4 (Fall 2006): 595-616.
7. Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan
Sigman, Karl
A Hobo Syndrome? Mobility, Wages, and Job Turnover
Labour Economics 11,2 (April 2004): 191-219.
Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537103000757
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Elsevier
Keyword(s): Heterogeneity; Human Capital; Job Search; Job Turnover; Mobility, Interfirm; Mobility, Labor Market; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Wage Effects; Wage Growth; Wages

We present an analysis of labor mobility as a predictor of wages and job turnover. Data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth show that workers with a history of less frequent job changes (stayers) earn higher wages and change jobs less frequently in the future than their more mobile counterparts (movers). These mobility effects on wages and turnover are stronger among more experienced workers, are highly robust across various model specifications, and persist despite corrections for unobserved individual fixed effects. In the second half of the paper we present a simple two period stochastic model of job mobility to study wages across movers and stayers. The model, incorporating salient features of human capital and job search, shows that whether stayers earn more than movers depend on the distribution of outside wage offers and firm-specific wage growth rate. Incorporating heterogeneity of wage growth rates among jobs increases the likelihood that stayers earn more than movers. [Copyright 2004 Elsevier]
Bibliography Citation
Munasinghe, Lalith Roshan and Karl Sigman. "A Hobo Syndrome? Mobility, Wages, and Job Turnover." Labour Economics 11,2 (April 2004): 191-219.