A theory of employment guarantees: Contestability,credibility and distributional concerns

Both raw intuition and past experience suggest that the success of an employment guarantee scheme (EGS) in safeguarding the welfare of the poor depends both on the wage it promises, and the ease with which any worker can gain access. An EGS is thus at once a wage guarantee and a rationing device. We chart the positive and normative limits of such an EGS as an efficiency improving and poverty alleviating policy reform in a canonical labor market setting. At its core, an EGS provides an aggregate, not just EGS, employment target. Given the target, the EGS wage and access can be fine-tuned to deliver outcomes ranging from a contestable labor market to a simple universal unemployment benefit. The credibility of any such target, however, is shown to be triggered endogenously by a host of factors: the distributional concerns of the planner, private sector productivity, the prevalence of market power and the need for public works. Paradoxically, the outcome with a planner who cares only about efficiency can be less efficient than the outcome with a planner whose social welfare function also gives weight to poverty!     

包含劳动力市场条件的劳资关系模型及实证分析

本文构建了包括城市失业人口和农村剩余劳动力的全社会角度的失业率指标,以工资和劳动生产率作为劳资之间经济利益关系的考察变量,运用自回归分布滞后模型,实证分析了我国特定劳动力市.场条件下的第二产业和建筑业工资与劳动生产率之间的关系.发现工资增长促进劳动生产率提高的效应,在建筑业存在比第二产业更显著的揭示了通过提高工资改善劳资关系的经济意义.     

中国劳资关系的城乡户籍差异

本文利用最近的企业和农民工调查数据探讨了劳资关系城乡户籍差异问题。城乡工人在劳资关系各方面的巨大差异源于两个方面 :一是人力资本水平差异和就业企业的差异 ;二是农民工受到的户籍歧视。研究结果发现 ,前者解释了两类工人劳资关系差异的 70 %— 80 % ,说明人力资本和企业状况是决定工人待遇的主要因素 ;后者解释了两类工人劳资关系差异的 2 0 %— 3 0 % ,户籍歧视所造成的差距同样是不容忽视的。除劳动合同方面外 ,农民工在工资、养老保险、医疗保险、失业保险以及工会参与等方面均遭到户籍歧视。研究结果暗示仅仅关注工资收入的城乡歧视是不够的 ,同时也为更全面的劳动力市场校正政策提供了经验支持     

Unemployment,Wage Inequality and International Factor Movement in the Presence of Agricultural Dualism

This paper investigates how the international factor movements affect the unemployment and skilled–unskilled wage inequality with the existence of a modern agricultural sector. Our research has the new feature that we not only consider that the rural labor migrates to the urban sector but also to the modern agricultural sector. The main conclusions are that the unskilled labor outflow certainly decreases the wage inequality and unemployment rate and the influences that skilled labor movement and capital inflow have on wage inequality and unemployment rate are dependent on the factor intensity between the urban and modern agricultural sectors.     

最低工资对农民工劳动供给存在空间溢出效应吗？——基于空间面板Durbin模型的分析

通过空间面板杜宾模型分析最低工资对农民工劳动供给是否存在空间溢出效应。研究发现,最低工资对农民工劳动供给不存在空间溢出效应,主要表现为最低工资对农民工的就业不存在显著的空间溢出效应,对农民工工作时间存在显著消极的空间溢出效应。最低工资对女性农民工就业呈现出倒"U"型的影响,对男性农民工就业的影响不显著;最低工资对女性农民工和男性农民工工作时间呈现出倒"U"型的影响。     

Child labor and the minimum wage: Evidence from India

This study examines how changes in the minimum wage affect child labor in India. The analysis uses repeated cross sections of India's NSSO employment data from 1983 to 2008 merged with data on state-level minimum wage rates. Theoretically, the impact of the minimum wage on child work could go either way, so empirical evidence from a country with high rates of child labor and a myriad of minimum wage laws across states and industries helps to lessen the ambiguity. Results indicate that regardless of gender, in urban areas, a higher minimum wage reduces child labor in household work. In rural areas a similar result applies for girls while household labor does rise for boys. The minimum wage has virtually no impact on child work outside of the home across urban and rural areas.     

Immigration vs. outsourcing: Effects on labor markets

Anti-globalizers are concerned, inter alia, with the effects on a developed country's real wage rate of legal or illegal immigration, as well as the outsourcing of labor-intensive activities abroad. Although a lowering of the wage rate may ensue, it is by no means a logical necessity. I show that either immigration or outsourcing of a labor-intensive fragment of production may serve to raise the wage rate of national labor in a developed country. As well, I point out how these two effects differ from each other.     

Competing wage claims,cost inflation,and capacity utilization

This paper develops a theory of competing wage claims and cost inflation, and attempts to integrate this theory into the core of modern macroeconomic analysis. Specifically, the paper proposes an explanation for wage inertia and wage interdependence based on an application of duopoly theory to labor unions, and incorporates this microeconomic theory of labor union behavior into a macroeconomic general equilibrium model with goods, money, and bonds as well as two kinds of labor. Special emphasis is placed on the interplay between demand and cost factors in the inflation process and on the implications of wage competition among labor unions for the relationship between inflation and unemployment in the short and long run.     

Rural Public Works and Poverty Alleviation--the case of the employment guarantee scheme in Maharashtra

This paper focuses on the poverty alleviating potential of the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) in (the Indian state of) Maharashtra. A point of departure is the shift of emphasis from the static to the dynamic effects of the EGS targeting, measured in terms of individuals moving into and out of poverty, over the period 1979-84. An assessment is made of whether the EGS prevents the vulnerable from falling into poverty or enables the poor to move out of poverty, by distinguishing between the protective and promotional roles of the scheme. Simulations involving a wide range of poverty thresholds and different assumptions about the distribution of EGS earnings reveal that the poverty alleviating potential is limited in most cases. If, however, a larger EGS outlay is combined with more accurate targeting, the potential is substantially greater. Larger outlays are feasible if other rural public works are merged under the EGS. If this is combined with a reallocation in favour of backward areas, the targeting may improve substantially.     

Labor supply with stochastic wage rate and non-labor income uncertainty

This paper deals with the labor supply problem in the contemporaneous presence of wage rate and non-labor income uncertainties. We examine the effect of a stochastic wage rate(a non-labor income uncertainty) on labor supply in the presence of a non-labor income uncertainty(a stochastic wage rate) and provide some conditions of utility function for assuring larger labor supply. We study the joint effect of two types of uncertainty on labor supply when two risks are either small or positive quadrant dependent. Our work extends the previous model of labor supply to two-risk framework and shows some new explorations on the classical issue of labor supply under uncertainty.     

影子工资率对农村劳动力迁移与就业的影响

利用对陕西省农户所做的调查数据,采用多重分类概率模型,就农民对不同就业方式的参与概率进行估计,重点分析了影子工资率及人力资本、就业成本、收入差距对农民迁移与就业的影响,进而讨论了农村劳动市场的发育状况、农村社区环境的发展、农户家庭特征、个体人力资本积累对劳动力要素有效配置的影响。最后提出了相应的对策建议。     

EARNJNGS INEQUALITY IN PORTUGAL: HIGH AND RISING?

The level of earnings inequality and its change during the 1980s in Portugal are analyzed, relying on several inequality measures and on international comparisons to generate insight into their patterns. A high level of inequality at the beginning of the eighties is detected, together with a pronounced rise in wage dispersion, brought about by growing inequality at the top. Changes taking place within economic activities, possibly technical progress, are the main forces driving these changes in the wage pattern, while demographic forces, as well as international trade, which could have generated shifts in the demand for labor across economic activities, should be dismissed as explanations for the rise in labor market inequality in Portugal from 1983 to 1992.     

二元社会结构中的工资决定模型与人口流动 --当前"民工荒"现象分析

近年来,国内各地区不断出现的"民工荒"现象已经凸现出中国劳动力市场所存在的深层次矛盾问题.基于此,文章在刘易斯-拉尼斯-费模型的基础上,通过对当前中国二元社会结构下工资决定过程的理论探讨,得到关于劳动力在二元结构中的流动条件、均衡条件等理论结果.     

The effect of minimum wage on firm markup: Evidence from China

Our paper examines the impact of minimum wage on firm markup in China. We find that minimum wage generates a positive effect on firm markup. More value-enhancing innovative activities, TFP improvement, and efficient labor resource allocation are the potential channels. Further, the positive influence of minimum wage is more pronounced for privately-owned firms, for firms with higher labor intensity and firms with less financial constraints. Besides, these findings are generally robust to different estimation methods. Our results provide new insights into understanding the channels through which labor regulation may cause the change of markup for the emerging markets countries.     

Collective bargaining,firm heterogeneity and unemployment

We compare labor market outcomes under firm-level and sector-level bargaining in a one-sector Mortensen-Pissarides economy with firm-specific productivity shocks. Our main theoretical results are two-fold. First, unemployment is lower under firm-level bargaining, due both to a lower job destruction rate and a higher job-finding rate. Key to this result is the interplay between firm heterogeneity and wage compression under sector-level bargaining. Second, introducing efficient opting-out of sector-level agreements suffices to bring unemployment down to its level under decentralized bargaining.     

International migration and real wages: is there any neo-classical ambiguity?

"Recent research has shown that while labor emigration increases the nominal wage rate, the impact on the real wage rate remains quite ambiguous. The present paper reexamines the issue under the standard two-factor, two-commodity international trade model normally employed for this purpose. The principal finding of this paper is that once the problem is correctly formulated and analyzed, introducing utility-maximizing consumers, no such ambiguity exists. Indeed, labor emigration always leads to an increase in the welfare (real wage) of labor in the source country."     

不完全劳动市场、政府干预与失业率

本文针对我国不完全的劳动市场,建立了一个短视一搜寻模型,目的是要说明,第一,虽然政府直接干预下的就业率高于无政府干预的劳动市场的均衡就业率,但是后者的社会总福利水平高于前者,而且,无政府干预情形下失业者的福利水平不会低于政府干预时在低工资岗位上的就业者的福利水平.这说明政府直接干预劳动市场虽然有可能降低失业率,但可能导致整个社会福利损失,也不利于提高低收入人群的福利水平.第二,我国现行的社会保障制度、户籍制度以及地方保护政策妨碍城乡劳动力自由流动,造成城市居民一般占据了工资较高的岗位,农村居民一般只能找到工资较低的岗位.这种匹配过程达到的劳动市场均衡,虽然有可能最大限度降低城镇失业率,但不是使得全国总失业率最低的均衡.     

The effects of stochastic wages and non-labor income on labor supply: update and extensions

The analysis of labor supply under risk has a long history dating back to Hicks (The theory of wages, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2003) and Knight (Risk, uncertainty and profit, Kelly, New York, 1964). In the 1980s more technical papers investigated the impact of stochastic non-labor income and/or wage rate upon labor supply. In this paper, we show that the effect of a mean-preserving increase in risk in wage rate or non-labor income on labor supply is best understood as a special case of an Nth degree risk increase (as defined by Ekern (Econ Lett 6:329–333, 1980)) and the conditions for signing the effect of a higher-order risk increase in wage rate or non-labor income on labor supply are analogous to those for signing the effect of a simple non-stochastic decrease in wage rate or non-labor income. We thus extend, and provide new and more intuitive interpretations for, related earlier results.     

Appropriation,migration, and unemployment

This article builds general equilibrium models to explore the relationship among appropriation, rural–urban migration, the minimum wage and unemployment. We find that the proportion of appropriated capital plays a key role in the effects of appropriation on unemployment and rural–urban migration. When the proportion of appropriated capital is large, a stronger control on appropriation by the government results in a lower unemployment rate and more rural–urban migrants, and vice versa. In the extended models, the conclusion may be different when the plundered factor changes from capital to land. In the situation with the agricultural sector employing unskilled labour and capital, appropriation has no impact on unemployment, and the effect on migration remains the same. We also discuss the implications of the minimum wage, and find that under plausible conditions, the rise of the minimum wage can alleviate appropriation and reduce unemployment. The situation of migration is ambiguous due to the impacts of two opposite factors.     

Labor supply,uncertainty, and efficient taxation

We analyze the structure of an optimal linear income tax when workers are uncertain about their wages at the time they choose their labor supplies. Background for the normative analysis is provided by an outline of the positive theory of wage taxation and labor supply under uncertainty. It is then shown that given imperfect information about wages, lump-sum taxation is not necessarily efficient. Because a wage tax reduces the riskiness of wage income, some combination of a lump-sum tax and a wage tax generally will minimize excess burden.