The Technology Ladder in Development: the Singapore case

This paper by Singapore's former Deputy Prime Minister explains Singapore's industrial development in which the electronics industry was a major propellant. The growth of industry from the late 1960s cleared the backlog of unemployment, created demand for technical staff which transformed the education system and facilitated technology transfer to Singaporean companies. It also proved a developmental force as it moved into neighbouring countries when labour shortage in Singapore became a constraint. The article traces the role of multinational companies and of technical education in Singapore's ascent of the technology ladder and, more briefly, that of Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia.     

Child Labour in the Philippines: Determinants and Effects

This paper analyses the supply-side socioeconomic determinants of child labour in the Philippines using data from the National Household Survey and the Labour Force Survey of the Philippines. The research methodology is that of a sequential probit model which assumes that household decisions are made in a hierarchical manner. Using this model, the impact of various household and economic characteristics on the probability of child labour is estimated. The findings highlight specific populations that should be targeted, for example, single working mothers in urban areas and poor households in rural areas. Working towards elimination of child labour will involve a multi-angled policy approach with policies complementing each other.     

Averting the construction skills crisis: a regional approach

The East Midlands construction industry is currently suffering from a severe skills shortage across its craft, professional and managerial occupations. The lack of available capacity within the regional labour market coupled with the poor image of the sector, call into question the industry's ability to cope with the levels of new orders and output growth predicted over the next few years. In this paper, it is argued that the casualised nature of the industry's labour market has rendered national, 'top-down' labour market policy measures ineffective in addressing the industry's skills concerns. This hypothesis has been explored through research that canvassed the opinions of key industry stakeholders as to the actions necessary to avert the region's skills crisis. This was achieved through a series of focus groups and workshops involving over 150 individuals with a vested interest in the region's construction skills situation. The insights emerging from the analysis suggested that bespoke regional and sub-regional labour market policies are required to avert the current skills shortage. The recommendations provided by the participants were used as the basis for a strategic package of measures that are currently being implemented across the region's five counties. This strategy aims to join-up hitherto disparate labour market measures within a single centrally coordinated framework. Nevertheless, overcoming the industry's fragmented structure remains an obstacle to resolving successfully the East Midlands' construction skills shortage.     

Employment by level of education and production factor substitutability

Summary Several types of elasticities of substitution and complementarity among three labour force aggregates (lower, intermediate, and higher educated) and capital are calculated, based on estimation of demand equations with cross-sectional data by industry groups over two years. Factor substitutability appears to be rather weak. Higher educated labour and capital are complements, as are lower and intermediate educated labour. Employment of unskilled labour is worsened by a reduction of the price of capital. Upgrading the educational level of labour requires the diminishing of the gap between wages of different labour force aggregates; especially the wages of higher educated labour have to decrease.This paper is based on part I.1 of The Elasticity of Substitution between Lower Educated Labour and Other Factors of Production. Research for this paper was supported by OSA (Organization for Labour Market Research). I wish to thank D.P. Broer for numerous and valuable suggestions, J.M.M. Ritzen for the original set-up of sections 2–4 in a preliminary draft and B. van Bunnik for skillful research assistance. I also benefited from comments and suggestions by P.C. Allaart, J.C. Siebrand, O.H. Swank, and a referee.     

Factor prices and induced technical change in the industrial revolution

Using historical data for the 1700–1914 period, this paper analyses the nature and direction of technical change in Britain. The evidence in this paper indicates that, over this long period, labour-saving technology adoption was a major response to changes in relative factor prices, thus supporting the hypothesis that ‘induced innovation’ was a major driver of technical change during the British industrial revolution. Labour saving was made possible and sustained by capital-augmenting and energy-augmenting technical change coupled with continuous capital accumulation and abundant energy supplies. This process placed the British economy on a higher capital–labour ratio equilibrium, and was the primary force driving sustained productivity growth, which further raised wages and living standards.     

Female Labour Force Participation in Indonesia: Why Has it Stalled?

This paper examines and disentangles the factors that have led to the largely unchanged participation (about 51%) of women in Indonesia’s labour force in the past two decades. We use data from the National Socio-economic Survey (Susenas) and Village Potential Statistics (Podes) from 1996 to 2013 in order to conduct a cohort analysis that distinguishes the effects of time and age on female labour force participation. We find that the raw labour market participation figures, which show little change over time, mask changes that offset one another in the current population. Evidence suggests that social norms are changing to support female participation, but this is offset by the changing industrial structure. Our projections show that the government’s current policies are unlikely to allow Indonesia to reach its G20 goal of decreasing the gender gap in labour force participation by 25% between 2014 and 2025.     

THE MEASUREMENT OF EMPLOYMENT STATUS IN SOUTH AFRICA USING COHORT ANALYSIS, 1994‐20041

We analyse trends in employment, unemployment and labour force participation by simple graphical techniques, using all the October Household Surveys and the September Labour Force Surveys. We show that African male employment in 1995 seems high, when compared to all the other surveys. Furthermore much of the increase in African female labour force participation is concentrated in the period 1998 to 2000, which suggests that measurement and sampling changes may be partially responsible for the trend. We track cohorts of individuals over the eleven years for which we have data. We show that young people are leaving school earlier, while being better educated than their elders. They are not, however, being absorbed into employment at a faster rate. This has led to a spike in youth unemployment.     

Catching up with the Technology Frontier: Finnish Manufacturing Productivity, 1975–2003

Abstract

Labour productivity in Finnish manufacturing industry grew at the rapid average annual rate of 5 per cent from 1975 to 2003. The labour productivity growth was broad-based, or yeast-like, in the 1970s and 1980s, with contributions from multi-factor productivity gains in the paper and metal industries dominating. In the 1990s productivity growth was much more mushroom-like, that is, concentrated in the electronics industry. The level of labour productivity in Finnish manufacturing matched that of the USA by the end of the second millennium. Labour costs and unit labour costs remained at only three-quarters of the US level, although real hourly compensation increased steadily. After 1995 manufacturing industry constituted a quarter of the Finnish economy but contributed a third of overall economic growth.     

Contrived dualism and government policy

If the government's goal is to maximiza current employment (as the International Labour Office has advised for Columbia), family farms become the desirable land tenure system. This article suggests policies by which family farms, and non-mechanized agricultural techniques, can be encouraged. The context is Columbian agriculture which faces distortions in factor prices, and the article suggests policies by which these distortions can be corrected to favour family farms. Both the prices of labour and of capital can be adjusted by the government, a process called ‘contrived dualism’.     

劳动的科学概念考订

劳动价值论以劳动的科学概念为奠基。可以从四个方面——劳动过程、劳动力、劳动的实现形态、劳动的协同方式一对劳动概念的生成、发展及流变加以详察,通过对比分析凸显出劳动规定的内在意涵。这一理论发掘沟通了劳动价值论与唯物史观相互嵌入的中介,使马克思方法论提升为从劳动出发的整体主义分析方法。文章研究的进一步方向是建立劳动政治经济学的科学研究纲领,指导建构马克思主义企业理论。     

European Labour Mobility: Challenges and Potentials

European Union economies are pressed by (i) a demographic change that induces population ageing and a decline of the workforce, and (ii) a split labour market that is characterized by high levels of unemployment for low-skilled people and a simultaneous shortage of skilled workers. This lack of flexible high-skilled workers and the aging process has created the image of an immobile labour force and the eurosklerosis phenomenon. In such a situation, an economically motivated immigration policy at the European level can generate welfare improvements. A selective policy that discourages unskilled migrants and attracts skilled foreign workers will vitalize the labour market, foster growth and increase demand for unskilled native workers. The paper summarizes the available economic insights, and suggests (i) the need to harmonize the single-country migration policies across Europe and (ii) that the European Union needs to become an active player on the international labour markets by providing competitive institutional settings for European companies. The author is President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), Director of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Professor of Economics at the University of Bonn, and Honorary Professor at the Free University of Berlin. Revised version of a paper presented at the high-level expert conference ‘Jobs for Europe’ on the Social Policy Agenda for the European Union on October 25–26, 2004 in Amsterdam. The author thanks Aart Jan Bette, Henk Don, Renske Gerstel, Klara Scheepers, Jan van der Velden and other members of the editorial committee of this conference as well as conference participants, two anonymous referees of this journal, and Amelie Constant, Don DeVoretz, Holger Hinte and Stephanie Wei Wang for many useful comments on earlier drafts.     

International labour migration in the Asian-Pacific region: patterns,policies and economic implications

"This paper reviews the literature on international labour migration from and within the Asian-Pacific region. It deals with patterns and characteristics of migration flows, government policies towards labour migration, and economic implications of labour migration for both labour-exporting and importing countries in the region. The indications are that, despite gradual slowing down of labour flows to the western industrial countries and the Middle East, labour migration will continue to be a major economic influence on surplus-labour countries in the region. As an integral part of the growth dynamism in the region, labour migration has now begun to take on a regional dimension, with immense implications for the process of industrial restructuring in high growth economies and the changing pattern of economic interdependence among countries."     

Eastern European trade and the Austrian labour market

Eastern European Trade and the Austrian Labour Market. — Recent years have seen a major break in trade relations between Western and Eastern European countries. Austria experienced a large bilateral trade creation with these countries. In this paper, the authors take a closer look at the impact this trade growth had on the Austrian labour market. To differentiate as far as possible between different segments of the labour market, they concentrate on unemployment experience and wage growth for a panel of individual workers in Austrian industry. The results show rather small employment effects, the impact on wage growth is more pronounced with interesting modifications for mobile and immobile workers.     

Rural labour markets: the welsh example

This paper examines the rural labour market within Wales over the last decade. Data from the Labour Force Survey and the New Earnings Survey are used to compare trends in economic activity rates, employment, education and earnings in rural Wales with the rest of the country. In addition to the rural-urban comparison, evidence presented from other rural labour market studies is used to establish similarities between the rural labour market within Wales and the rest of the UK. In this respect, the paper collects evidence from which the need for differential labour market policy between the rural and urban area can be assessed.     

关于日本经济长期停滞理论与政策的思考

泡沫危机以后,日本试图通过凯恩斯经济政策和结构改革的交替运用来恢复经济增长。20世纪90年代前期,凯恩斯经济政策的运用取得了短期效果。由于供给结构的变化,这一政策并没有使日本经济真正摆脱危机的困境。90年代后期,日本开始改为实施结构改革来提高其潜在增长率。由于总需求的持续减少,日本经济开始由短期衰退转为长期停滞。本文认为,泡沫危机后日本资产价格的持续下跌,导致各经济主体出现大量的不良资产,抵消了以上两大政策的经济效应。其中,商业银行对不良债权处理的拖延造成供给结构效率下降、企业投资和个人消费持续减少,使日本经济的停滞趋于长期化。     

The supplier network and aircraft production in wartime Japan

The Japanese aircraft industry, which was very small scale before the Second World War, became Japan's largest manufacturing industry by the end of the war. This article explores the basis for the growth of the aircraft industry during this time by focusing on Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Company's No. 5 Works. It was revealed that during the war, the supply of basic inputs increased substantially: labour force, equipment, and ‘machinery parts’ were in sufficient supply and none of these was a binding constraint on production. The binding constraint existed in the supply of ‘special parts’. In other words, aircraft production expanded as the supply of special parts increased. This increase in the supply of special parts and still faster growth in the supply of machinery parts came about through the expansion of the supplier network in terms of both the number of suppliers and the geographical area in which they were located. These findings imply that outsourcing played a key role in the growth of aircraft production in wartime Japan.     

‘To help keep the home going’: female labour supply in interwar London

Most prior work on historical female labour supply has been confined to looking at the female labour force participation decision. This article uses the detailed information on weekly hours of work and wages contained in the New Survey of London Life and Labour (NSLLL) (1928–32) to provide the first estimation of both the participation and the hours‐of‐work decisions for female workers prior to the Second World War. The main finding is that the labour supply curve was negatively sloped—women worked longer hours at lower wages. It is also possible to compare the determinants of the labour force participation decision and the hours of work decision among females in the NSLLL. It appears that the labour force participation decision was more strongly related to household income level than to own wages, while the hours of work decision among working women was more strongly related to the wage level than to household income. Finally, the article also examines the differential labour market behaviour of married women, female household heads, and young single women; most striking among these results is the evident added‐worker effect on married women of the onset of the Great Depression in 1930.     

China's new Labour Contract Law: No harm to employment?

In January 2008, China adopted a new labour contract law. This new law represents the most significant reform to the legislation on employment relations in mainland China in more than a decade. The paper provides a theoretical framework on the inter-linkages between labour market regulation, option value and the choice and timing of employment. All in all, the paper demonstrates that the Labour Contract Law in its own right will have only small impacts upon employment in the fast-growing Chinese economy. Rather, possibly induced increasing unit labour costs may adversely affect employment.     

IS THERE EVIDENCE OF A WAGE PENALTY TO FEMALE PART‐TIME EMPLOYMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA?

In this paper, we investigate female part‐time employment in South Africa. Using household survey data for South Africa from 1995 to 2004, we show that women are over‐represented in part‐time employment, and that the growth in part‐time work has been an important feature of the feminisation of the labour force. In contrast to many studies of part‐time work in other countries, however, we find evidence of a significant wage premium to female part‐time employment. The premium is also robust to fixed effects estimations using Labour Force Survey panel data from 2001 to 2004, where controlling for unobservable differences increases its size. The premium persists with different hourly thresholds defining part‐time employment and when we account for possible reporting errors in hours worked.     

国际劳工标准的贸易效应分析

随着贸易自由化的发展，传统的关税壁垒逐渐下降，然而劳工标准等社会壁垒问题随之产生，劳工标准与贸易交织在一起，其与贸易的联系具有必然性，二者的挂钩对贸易将产生不容忽视的影响。正因为如此，国际劳工标准正日益受到多角度的关注，并引发发达国家与发展中国家之间的争论。文章将主要就劳工标准的贸易效应加以具体分析。