Democracy,labour and development: transforming industrial relations in Africa

Here the authors assess the status of labour development in Africa. The continental constraints of the political context and overall environment of the employment relationships are discussed. They conclude that the longer term role of African unions should be facilitated by greater tripartite concertation and government flexibility.     

Dynamic labour supply effects of childcare subsidies: Evidence from a Canadian natural experiment on low-fee universal child care

This paper shows that a temporary incentive to join the labor market or to work more can also produce substantial life-cycle labour supply effects. On September 1997, a new childcare policy was initiated by the provincial government of Québec, the second most populous province in Canada. Licensed and regulated providers of childcare services began offering day care spaces at the subsidized fee of $5/day/child for children aged 4. In successive years, the government reduced the age requirement, created new childcare facilities and spaces, and paid for the additional costs entailed by this low-fee policy. No such important policy changes for preschool (including kindergarten) children were enacted in the nine other Canadian provinces over the years 1997–2004. Using annual data drawn from Statistics Canada's Survey on Labour and Income Dynamics and a difference-in-differences quasi-experimental methodology, the paper estimates the dynamic labour supply effects of the program. The results demonstrate that the policy had long-term labour supply effects on mothers who benefited from the program when their child was less than 6. A striking feature of the results is that they are driven by changes in the labour supply of less educated mothers.     

Public school availability for two-year olds and mothers' labour supply

French children start public school either the year they turn two or the year they turn three. We evaluate the impact of this unique schooling policy on maternal labour supply. Using a Regression–Discontinuity design, we show that early school availability has a significant employment effect on lone mothers, but no effect on two-parent families. Also we show that the effect grows larger as the child grows older and as the family loses eligibility for child benefits. Finally, we provide some new evidence that school enrolment at the age of two has no adverse effect on children's subsequent educational outcomes.     

Maternal employment,migration, and child development

We analyze the roles of and interrelationships among school inputs and parental inputs in affecting child development through the specification and estimation of a behavioral model of household migration and maternal employment decisions. We integrate information on these decisions with observations on child outcomes over a 13-year period from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY). We find that the impact of our school quality measures diminishes by factors of 2 to 4 after accounting for the fact that families may choose where to live in part based on school characteristics and labor market opportunities. The positive statistical relationship between child outcomes and maternal employment reverses sign and remains statistically significant after controlling for its possible endogeneity. Our estimates imply that when parental responses are taken into account, policy changes in school quality end up having only minor impacts on child test scores.     

Migrant wages,remittances and recipient labour supply in a moral hazard model

This paper analyzes the interaction between migrants’ income and remittances and between remittances and the labour supply of residents. The model is cast as a two-period game with imperfect information about the residents’ real economic situation. Residents subject to a good economic situation may behave as if they were in a poor economic situation only in order to manipulate remitters’ expectations. The latter, being aware of this risk, reduce the remitted amount accordingly. Therefore, in the equilibrium, residents who really are victims of the bad economic outlook are penalized as compared to the perfect information set-up. In some circumstances, they can signal their type by drastically cutting working hours, thus further enhancing their precarity right when their economic situation is the worst.     

Legislation to combat child labour: an international perspective

Child labour persists in alarming proportions in third world countries inspite of the adoption of elaborate legislative measures to combat it. here the author attempts to delineate the reasons for the poor performance of these measures and suggests ways in which the process of combating child labour might be hastened.     

Flexible work practices in South Africa: economic,labour relations and regulatory considerations

Here the author reviews flexible work practices in South Africa (SA) using Blyton's typology of functional, numerical, temporal and wage flexibility. Workplace flexibility implications for SA labour market and increased use of numerical flexibility are discussed. The article identifies factors limiting the introduction of flexible work practices.     

Indeterminacy and nonlinear dynamics in an OLG growth model with endogenous labour supply and inherited tastes

This study analyses the dynamics of a two-dimensional overlapping generations economy with endogenous labour supply à la Reichlin (J Econ Theory 40(1):89–102, 1986) and aspirations. We show that the degree of nonlinearity of consumption externality in individual utility is responsible for the existence of either one steady state or two steady states. In addition, some interesting global dynamic properties, such as cyclical behaviour and/or global indeterminacy, emerge depending on the relative importance of aspirations in utility.     

An index of education and child health in the Horn of Africa

Synthetic indicators are intended to provide an overview of the situation of individuals in a community in relation to a concept to be studied such as quality of life. This study aims to propose a territorial measure and classification of education and child health for countries of the Horn of Africa based on the criteria set out in the United Nations Declaration of the Millennium Development Goals. We construct a synthetic indicator from a multidimensional approach taking into account a large number of variables defined in the Millennium Declaration. For this purpose, we use the Pena distance method for the year 2010, which is the latest year for which data is available. We believe that the situation of the countries in the Horn of Africa differ with respect to the Millennium Development Goal indicators for education and child health. The most striking differences relate to basic quality of life variables.     

Sons,daughters, wives,and the labour market outcomes of West German men

We find a strong association between family status and labor market outcomes for recent cohorts of West German men in the German Socio-Economic Panel. Living with a partner and living with a child both have substantial positive effects on earnings and work hours. These effects persist in individual fixed effects models that control for correlation in time-invariant unobservables that affect both family and work outcomes, though the inclusion of length of marriage reduces the effects of children. Child gender also matters — a first son increases fathers' work hours by 100 hours per year more than a first daughter, and positive effects of sons on work hours and earnings are particularly strong for men with higher levels of education. There is evidence of son “preference” in the probability that a German man is observed to be coresiding with a son — men are more likely to remain in the same household with a male child than a female child.     

With a little help from abroad: The effect of low-skilled immigration on the female labour supply

We examine whether and how the inflow of female immigrants who specialize in household production affects the labour supply of Italian women. To identify the causal effect, we exploit the family reunification motives and network effects (i.e., the tendency of newly arriving female immigrants to settle in places where males of the same country already live) which is used as an instrument for the geographical distribution of female foreign workers. We find that when the number of immigrants who provide household services is higher, native Italian women spend more time at work (intensive margin) without affecting their labour force participation (extensive margin). This impact is concentrated on highly skilled women whose time has a higher opportunity cost. These results also hold after a battery of robustness checks. We present some further evidence that is also consistent with the idea that the impact works through substitution in household work rather than complementarities in the production sector. Finally, we show that immigration arises as a substitute to publicly provided welfare services, although this phenomenon raises concerns regarding the fairness and sustainability of this private and informal welfare model.     

Semi-parametric estimation of simultaneous equations with limited dependent variables: A case study of female labour supply

We propose a general strategy to estimate semi-parametrically simultaneous equations with limited dependent variables. First, each reduced form (RF) is estimated with various semi-parametric methods. Second, the specification of each RF is tested to select an appropriate method. Third, the structural form (SF) equations are estimated using minimum distance methods and the restrictions among the SF and RF parameters. A case study of female labour supply is presented.     

Wages,employment, labour turnover and the accessibility of local labour markets

In this paper, we extend a dynamic efficiency wage model to the case of multiple local labour markets that interact through migration. Firms are concerned about turnover costs. The quitting behaviour of workers is a function of local labour market conditions, non-wage income and the costs and benefits of migration to other local labour markets. A synthetic micro sample of 20,302 observations from the 1986, 1991 and 1996 New Zealand Censuses of Population and Dwellings provides evidence supporting the theory. Across subgroups, the wages of workers with relatively inelastic local labour supply and/or lower geographical mobility are relatively more responsive to changes in the local employment rate. The evidence is consistent with the notion that local employers engage in monopsonistic competition with respect to the employment of such workers.     

Replacement rates and labour market behaviour

This paper studies how the replacement rate, defined as the ratio of disposable income when unemployed to expected disposable income if beginning to work, affects individuals’ transition rate from unemployment. Linked register data, representing a local Finnish labour market in 1996, are analysed with piece-wise constant exponential hazard models. Results suggest that the effect of the replacement rate and, thus, of “unemployment traps”, is fairly modest. It does not seem to change with time spent unemployed. The impact on the transition rate into employment is lower than on the transition rate out of the labour force. Unemployment insurance recipients are found to be less sensitive to changes in the replacement rate than are unemployment assistance recipients.     

Flags of convenience and maritime labour

One of the few industrial areas where extensive transnational bargaining has occurred is the international transport trade. This article reviews the progress made by the ITF in organising workers aboard ships plying an international trade and analyses the problems and future prospects for collective bargaining.     

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