Open Collections

Plotkin, Pascuel

University of British Columbia

Chapter 2 examines the impact of online-delivery platforms on the labor market. These platforms, emblematic of recent technological shifts, alter both workforce composition and product demand. While they can create new opportunities for workers with limited outside options, they may also displace “good jobs.” Using novel Brazilian data that link employer-employee records to both restaurants and a major delivery platform, and applying a matched event-study design, I estimate the effects of platform adoption on labor market outcomes. On average, adopting restaurants substitute in-house labor hours for outsourced platform worker hours nearly one-for-one. Workers at adopting restaurants see modest earnings losses, as most transition into new formal sector jobs. However, workers at non-adopting restaurants face higher risks of job loss and larger earnings declines, as these establishments are more likely to downsize or close. Despite these losses, the aggregate earnings gains for gig workers outweigh the losses among traditional restaurant employees, highlighting important distributional trade-offs. Chapter 3 studies rent-sharing between firms and outsourced workers. Using unique Argentinian administrative data that match temp agencies to user firms, we estimate how wage premia differ between regular and temp workers. Results show that high-wage user firms paying regular employees a 10% premium relative to low-wage firms, pay temp workers only a 4.9% premium. This is midway between full rent-sharing with insiders and a competitive spot-labor market, indicating partial but limited sharing of firm-specific wage premia with outsourced workers. Chapter 4 explores how institutional settings affect domestic outsourcing in Italy, exploiting a novel administrative identifier for outsourcing events. We estimate the impact of outsourcing across various occupations without restricting to continuously employed workers. Results show substantial earnings losses for outsourced workers, mostly due to increased non-employment shortly after outsourcing. The losses are largest for non-routine manual jobs, while workers in abstract, cognitive roles experience some earnings gains following an outsourcing event. Overall, the thesis provides new evidence on how technology and organizational change through platforms and outsourcing reshape labor market outcomes, highlighting trade-offs between flexibility, earnings, and job security.

Text

2025-06-10

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/91324

Economics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/