Neoclassical theories of stationary relative prices and the supply of capital

In the traditional versions of the neoclassical theory of value and distribution, the stock of existing capital, understood as either an amount of value or an endowment of capital goods, was taken as given together with the available quantities of labour and natural resources. This characteristic of the early neoclassical theories is analysed through comparison with the modern neo‐Walrasian models of stationary equilibrium, where the stock of capital is not among the givens. It is shown here that the attempt to present capital as a factor of production on a par with labour and land led the early neoclassical authors to write the zero‐net‐accumulation condition, which was required by the stationarity of relative prices, in the form of a market‐clearing condition for the supply of and demand for capital. The rate of interest was therefore understood as the price determined by this market. As is known, however, the view of capital as a factor of production and the rate of interest as the price for its use failed to work and involved several problems, some of which are discussed here.     

POST‐KEYNESIAN EFFECTIVE DEMAND AND CAPITAL–LABOUR SUBSTITUTION

This paper analyses the relationship between the real wage rate and employment when we induce capital–labour substitution within a Post‐Keynesian Kaleckian model. To avoid the over‐determinacy problem, we consider a non‐homogeneous production function and cost minimization, in contrast to recent work that assumed a homogeneous production function and profit maximization. As a result, we find not only that increasing returns to scale are important in sustaining the long‐run stability condition, but also that if the increasing returns to scale are small, then it is more likely that employment will increase.     

Efficiency wages,unemployment and international factor movements

"This paper examines the implications of unemployment resulting from efficiency wages for international factor movements in a standard Heckscher-Ohlin model where the relative size of the endowments of skilled and unskilled workers and the efficiency wage induced unemployment level in the unskilled labour market are simultaneously determined given the population, supply of capital and its distribution in the economy.... It is shown that the optimum labour inflow in the market with domestic distortion and the optimum capital inflow are always positive because they reduce the severity of distortion by raising employment and income for the residents. The income and employment of foreigners also increase. Under this situation the optimum labour or capital outflow on the other hand is always zero. These conclusions directly contradict the result obtained for international factor movements in the presence of exogenously determined unemployment."     

Efficiency wages,unemployment and international factor movements

This paper examines the implications of unemployment resulting from efficiency wages for international factor movements in a standard Heckscher-Ohlin model where the relative size of the endowments of skilled and unskilled workers and the efficiency wage induced unemployment level in the unskilled labour market are simultaneously determined given the population, supply of capital and its distribution in the economy. Capital in the economy is used only to train individuals for the skilled labour market, where workers are fully employed. It is shown that the optimum labour inflow in the market with domestic distortion and the optimum capital inflow are always positive because they reduce the severity of distortion by raising employment and income for the residents. The income and employment of foreigners also increase. Under this situation the optimum labour or capital outflow on the other hand is always zero. These conclusions directly contradict the result obtained for international factor movements in the presence of exogenously determined unemployment.     

Factor Prices,Factor Substitution and Exporting in US Manufacturing Affiliates Abroad

This paper uses the unique matched individual parent and affiliate data from the foreign investment survey of the Bureau of Economic Analysis to examine how US firms of different industries and capital intensities at home adapt to lower costs of labour and other host‐country characteristics in their foreign production. We find that foreign affiliates of US multinationals carry their parent firms’ technology with them in producing abroad. That is, affiliates of capital‐intensive parents produce in a relatively capital‐intensive manner wherever they are located. Despite these resemblances to their parents, affiliates produce in a more labour‐intensive manner where labour is cheaper and also where the scale of production is small. We found no evidence that more labour‐intensive firms selected production locations where labour was cheaper. Labour costs dominated the methods of production but not its location. Affiliates that export are more responsive in their factor proportions to the labour costs where they produced than affiliates selling only in their host countries. The probability that an affiliate would export, however, did not seem to be much affected by factor proportions. It was much more closely related to the scale of the affiliate's operations; larger affiliates were more likely to be exporters.     

FDI与经济增长、国内资本及劳动力作用机理

基于VAR理论及其模型,实证检验了1983-2006年以来我国利用外商直接投资与经济增长、国内资本及劳动力就业之间的相互作用机理认为外商直接投资对我国经济增长的作用符合新古典经济增长模型,对国内资本形成并无显著的促进作用,对劳动力就业只存在单向影响作用,旨在为我国利用外资提供决策依据。     

TESTING WAGE AND PRICE PHILLIPS CURVES FOR THE UNITED STATES

This paper demonstrates how the labour and product markets interact in determining as outcome a generalized reduced‐form price Phillips curve. For the labour market we consider a wage Phillips curve and for the product market a price Phillips curve. We estimate separately the wage and price Phillips curves for the USA, using ordinary least squares, non‐parametric estimation and three‐stage least squares techniques. The finding is that wages are always more flexible than prices with respect to their respective demand pressure and that price inflation responds somewhat more to a medium‐run cost pressure than does wage inflation. The implications for macroeconomic stability are demonstrated. We also show—as a link between product and labour markets—that employment is related to output as Okun's law states. In comparing linear and non‐linear estimates of the wage and price Phillips curves we find furthermore that for some relationships non‐linearities are important while not for others. Although overall the non‐linear estimates tend to confirm our linear estimates, non‐linearities in some relationships of the Phillips curve are important as well.     

Offshoring and the Skill‐premium: Evidence from Individual Workers’ Data

During the 1980s the United States has experienced an increase in both international trade and the skill‐premium. The association between these two phenomena has proven elusive in the early empirical literature on the subject. Indeed, the consensus among labour economists seems to be that trade has not been the main cause of such increase in the skill‐premium. This view has been challenged by Feenstra and Hanson (1999, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 3, 907) who find that offshoring sizably affects the skill‐premium. I revisit this debate using individual workers’ data from the March Current Population Survey combined with industry‐level trade data. This strategy improves upon the work of Feenstra and Hanson who do not control for the demographic characteristics of the labour force. In my results, offshoring can explain between 9 and 30 per cent of the increase in the college wage premium, relative to high‐school workers. In addition, I find that offshoring can explain 21 per cent of the increase in the relative employment of skilled labour. These results suggest that offshoring may play an important role in the increase in the relative demand of skilled workers.     

Class,Entrepreneurship and the Service Sector: Towards a Conceptual Clarification

Opportunities for entrepreneurship within modern economies are concentrated primarily within the service sector. On the basis of recent empirical research this paper develops a conceptual framework which differentiates entrepreneurs according to the relative mix of capital and labour utilised. Four sub-categories within the entrepreneurial middle class are identified and the implications for social mobility on the basis of capital accumulation are explored. In particular, attention is drawn to the significance of employment relationships as a factor which limits the growth of labour-intensive businesses. Despite its neglect within sociological theory the entrepreneurial middle class continues as a significant force within contemporary economies, and several areas for future research are suggested.     

The Trouble with Offshoring: Static and Dynamic Losses in the Presence of Unemployment

This study provides theoretical support for the popular objection to offshoring, whereby firms at home employ services of labour located abroad. In the presence of unemployment, our analysis highlights welfare losses from offshoring – not only for the static case of a fixed stock of capital, but also for the dynamic one of optimal saving and investment. We compare these static and dynamic losses to the gains that would instead arise under full‐employment conditions, assumed by most of the theoretical literature on offshoring. Our results suggest that public concerns over offshoring are justified when unemployment is taken explicitly into account.     

The NAIRU,Aggregate Demand and Investment

The nature of the non‐accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) is analysed. The focus of our analysis is the role of aggregate demand and capacity in the context of the NAIRU. Two aspects of the relationship between the level of aggregate demand and the NAIRU are of particular significance. First, it is argued that the real wage–employment relationship based on enterprise decisions cannot be fully articulated without reference to the level of aggregate demand. Second, a model which allows for variable returns to labour and the notion of full capacity is used to explore the effects of shifts in the capital stock on the real wage–employment relationship. The model is specifically used to explore whether a sufficiently expansionary environment can generate sufficient investment to shift that relationship until the NAIRU is compatible with full employment. A number of limitations on the conclusions reached are considered, and the policy implications are briefly considered.     

Balance‐of‐payments‐constrained cyclical growth with distributive class conflicts and productivity dynamics

This study builds a dynamic balance‐of‐payments‐constrained model that incorporates the endogenous determination of the economic growth rate, conflictive wage/price distribution and employment rate. The wages, commodity prices and employment rate are determined by the profit squeeze effect and labour‐saving technical change. The relative strength of these two effects generates different outcomes for the transitional dynamics and comparative statics analysis. Particularly, the model shows stability, instability and cyclical nature, the latter of which concurs with the evidence reported by previous empirical studies.     

Employment Flexibility,Dual Labour Markets,Growth, and Distribution

Many policymakers and economists have argued in favour of greater labour market flexibility as a part of structural adjustment reforms that are expected to improve economic performance. Existing post‐Keynesian‐Kaleckian (PKK) models are unable to address these issues because they assume away long‐term labour by allowing employment to be short term and adjusting freely with output. This paper introduces long‐term labour into PKK models. We develop a model that provides alternative ways of modelling labour market flexibility and suggest that when aggregate demand issues are important, an increase in employment flexibility is likely to have adverse growth and distributional impacts.     

The Structure of Labour Markets in the Hotel and Catering Industry: What do Employment Law Cases Indicate?

The allocation of labour in the hotel and catering industry remains an under-researched and little understood process. Direct empirical observation of the labour market involves methodological difficulties requiring a major research project. An attempt is made to explore the labour market by analysing the facts of employment law cases which must be considered as secondary sources of data. The main conclusions are that the labour market approximates to the neo-classical model and that recent legislation has not provided statutory protection for employees at work.     

The Effects of Globalisation on the US Labour Mark'et: Service Sectors Considered

How has globalisation affected employment and wages in the United States? Existing studies largely ignore the intersector labour movement between the manufacturing and service sectors by focusing only on the intrasector movement within the manufacturing sector. However, by decomposing the aggregate labour demand in the United States, we find that the intersector movement is more substantial than intrasector movement. Motivated by the decomposition results, this study presents a three‐sector model that includes a manufacturing sector and two service sectors at varying skill intensities. The model shows that offshoring might translate into smaller‐than‐expected wage changes because of the intersector labour movement. In line with the theoretical predictions, two notable empirical results are presented. First, an occupation's exposure to offshoring has non‐significant, albeit negative, effects on wages. Second, the more an occupation is exposed to offshoring, the lower its employment in the manufacturing sector as a share of its total employment. Furthermore, these effects are larger for more routine occupations or those requiring less education.     

Distributive Policies and Economic Growth: An Optimal Taxation Approach

In an infinite‐horizon endogenous growth model a capital income cum investment subsidy tax is considered to investigate if distribution of income towards the non‐accumulated factor of production (labour) retards growth and if capital income taxes are bad instruments to finance investment subsidies. The paper identifies conditions under which the tax scheme is better for growth than other distorting tax schemes. In the model a pro‐labour government acts growth maximizing and distributing income towards labour raises growth. A pro‐capital government's preferred policy is not growth maximizing under the tax scheme, but may generate higher growth than its optimal policy under other tax schemes.     

Short‐term Consequences of Trade Reform for Industry Employment and Wages: Survey of Evidence from Colombia

Recent research has focused on the short‐ to medium‐term implications of trade reforms for the labour market outcomes and poverty in poor economies. This article summarises the evidence on the short‐term consequences of the Colombian trade reform initiated in 1985 for industry employment and industry wages. Although the reform reduced manufacturing tariffs on average by 40 percentage points from 1984 to 1994, tariff declines were not significantly associated with labour reallocation across sectors. The reform, however, was associated with bigger declines in relative industry wages in sectors that experienced bigger tariff cuts. This evidence is in line with the predictions of short‐ to medium‐run models of trade in which labour is not mobile across sectors. It is also consistent with the predictions of models where imperfectly competitive industries share rents with workers and trade reduces the firms’ profit margins and thus workers’ rents.     

Management and the Taff Vale Strike of 1900

The Taff Vale Railway strike of 1900 stands as a landmark in the history of industrial relations in Britain. There is a substantial literature dealing with the strike and resulting court case. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the underlying pressures and tensions which gave rise to the strike nor to its wider consequences: the focus hitherto has been on labour, politics and labour law rather than the dynamics of the struggle between capital and labour which raged throughout the railway industry. The strike resulted from a clash between an assertive labour movement and a beleaguered management with little financial room for manoeuvre. Victory for capital paved the way for far-reaching changes in technology and working methods without conceding the gains to labour through the agency of trade union action.     

HRM in Hong Kong since 1997

A diverse set of human resource management (HRM) practices became institutionalized during Hong Kong's industrialization from the 1950s through the 1970s within the context of an open economy, a government disinclined to intervene in business decisions or the labour market and a weak trade union movement. Economic restructuring, labour market changes and rising labour costs during the 1980s and 1990s pressured employers to find more effective ways of using their human resources. We focus on how the economic downturn following the Asian Financial Crisis has impacted on employment practices including employment security, compensation, skill formation, work reorganization and employment relations. We discuss changes in the public as well as private sector and argue that reforms in the former are loosening the rigidities of its highly structured internal labour market system. Public sector employment practices are thus likely to converge increasingly with the ‘best practices’ of private sector and overseas government HRM systems.     

Child Labour Use and Economic Growth: An Econometric Analysis

We present a simple dynamic theory of child labour, human capital formation, and economic growth that is consistent with some of the main features of child labour and economic development. The model supports a number of testable hypotheses, which we investigate econometrically in a systems approach. Using panel data from 64 countries in the period 1960–1980, the econometric results match the theory well. The incidence of child labour is negatively related to parental human capital and education quality, but is positively correlated with education cost. Further, countries with higher amounts of child labour tend to have lower stocks of human capital in the future. There is also a convergence phenomenon between the level and growth of human capital. The lower the current stock of human capital, the higher is current child‐labour use and the faster is the growth rate of human capital.