A field experiment investigating age discrimination in four European labour markets

In a field experiment investigating age discrimination, pairs of men, aged 27 and 47, inquired about employment as waiters in towns across England, France, Germany and Spain. Statistically significant discrimination against the older waiter was found in all four countries, but it was considerably higher in France and Spain than in England and Germany.     

均衡视角下集体化转型对中小企业劳动关系的影响研究

当前我国劳动关系出现集体化新趋势,这必将对中小企业劳动关系产生深远影响。为适应新趋势,中小企业首先要进一步规范个别劳动关系,并在此基础上逐步构建适合中小企业特点的集体劳动关系,同时要在理念、方式和机制上进行变革。     

论墨子的劳动观及其当代价值

墨子是我国古代劳动人民利益的伟大代表,被尊称为"平民圣人"。墨子的劳动观内在地蕴涵着三个价值判断:尊重劳动;保护劳动人权;珍惜劳动价值。当前,我国正处于全面建成小康社会和实现中华民族伟大复兴的关键阶段,墨子劳动观的合理思想无疑对我们具有十分重要的借鉴意义:尊重劳动,大力彰显劳动价值;尊重劳动者,努力使其实现体面劳动;珍惜劳动成果,厉行节约,反对浪费,共圆中国梦。     

自然资源禀赋与经济增长：资源诅咒还是资源福音?--基于劳动力结构的一个理论与实证分析框架

文章构建了一个包含自然资源存量和劳动力结构因素的经济增长理论模型，探索劳动力结构是否是引起“资源诅咒”或“资源福音”的一个原因。理论研究发现，在不同限制条件下，自然资源开发部门劳动力数量的增加对经济增长的作用不同，而劳动者素质的提高对缓解“资源诅咒”效应而言始终是一个有利因素。实证研究进一步表明：从总体上讲，我国省域层面的“资源诅咒”现象是存在的，但在一定条件下并非没有逆转的可能，避免“资源诅咒”问题的发生，使丰裕的自然资源成为地区发展的“福音”，关键在于劳动者素质的提高，因为资源开发部门劳动力数量的增加所起的作用有限；分地区讲，“资源诅咒”效应在经济发展水平不同的地区存在差异，而劳动力结构的异质性主导着这种差异。     

Creating Opportunities for Women in the Renewable Energy Sector: Findings from India

This paper identifies opportunities and constraints that low-income women face in accessing livelihoods in the renewable-energy sector in India through qualitative and quantitative research conducted in collaboration with The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) and the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in 2012–13. Whereas previous research has focused on women mostly as end users of solar and biomass technologies, this research attempts also to understand women's potential as entrepreneurs, facilitators, designers, and innovators. Findings reveal that although access to technology and employment in the energy sector is limited by inadequate purchasing power and low social status, there is tremendous potential to create livelihoods for women at all levels of the energy supply chain. Broader findings indicate that women can gain optimal traction from employment in the energy sector only if there are wider socially progressive policies in place, including state intervention to create a robust social welfare infrastructure and accessible, high-quality, public services.     

Stuck in the Middle: Off-Farm Employment and Caregiving Among Middle-Aged Rural Chinese

ABSTRACT

Using the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) 2011–12 baseline data, this contribution explores to what extent taking care of grandchildren and frail parents influences rural middle-aged Chinese adults’ off-farm employment. The findings show that, conditional on socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, taking care of grandchildren has a negative effect on rural middle-aged men's and women's off-farm job participation and hours worked. Caregiving for parents does not have the same negative effects on off-farm employment and hours worked. Furthermore, the study finds that annual earnings are also negatively affected by caregiving responsibilities, especially for women and men taking care of grandchildren.     

Reorganizing School Lunch for a More Just and Sustainable Food System in the US

Public school lunch programs in the United States are contested political terrains shaped by government agencies, civil society activists, and agri-food companies. The particular organization of these programs has consequences for public health, social justice, and ecological sustainability. This contribution draws on political economy, critical food studies, and feminist economics to analyze the US National School Lunch Program, one of the world's oldest and largest government-sponsored school lunch programs. It makes visible the social and environmental costs of the “heat-and-serve” economy, where widely used metrics consider only the speed and volume of service as productive work. This study demonstrates that such a narrow understanding of the labor of lunch devalues care and undercuts the potential for school food provisioning to promote ecological and feminist goals. Further, it proposes a “high road” alternative and outlines an agenda for reorganizing school food provisioning to maximize care in all its dimensions.     

Patterns of growth in Chinese cities: Implications of the land lease

A special feature of China’s housing market is land use rights in the form of land leasehold contracts granted by the government. We consider an equilibrium model in which a representative developer may choose to redevelop existing centrally located housing or to develop new housing at the periphery of the city. We show that as the city grows, the land leasehold system results in the city center being developed less intensely and more land being used on the outskirts of the city when compared to a fee simple environment. Thus, cities in China are likely to be relatively more spread out, with city centers relatively older than would be the case with “fee simple” ownership. Our model suggests that excess residential land use is about 6 percent. In addition, compared with the ownership case, housing supply will grow more quickly in the near future, but more slowly later on during the transition of the Chinese economy. Parallel to the supply growth pattern, equilibrium price grows relative slowly in the near future, but more quickly later on. While we focus on residential uses, we believe our model can be applied to other land uses.     

Labor Market Effects of Spatial Licensing Requirements: Evidence from CPA Mobility

We exploit the staggered introduction of CPA Mobility provisions in the United States to study the effects of spatial licensing requirements on the labor market for accounting professionals. Specifically, we examine whether the removal of licensing‐induced geographic barriers affects CPA wages and employment levels, as well as the pricing and quality of professional services. We find that, subsequent to the adoption of CPA Mobility provisions, wages of accounting professionals decrease, whereas employment levels are unaffected. The documented wage effect stems from smaller CPA firms, is more pronounced for CPAs holding senior positions, and persists over time. We also find that service prices decline and that this effect is concentrated in local CPA firms. Moreover, we document that the increased wage and price pressure is not associated with deteriorating service quality. Collectively, our results suggest that the removal of occupational licensing barriers has sizable effects on labor supply and service prices. Our findings inform the current regulatory debate on occupational licensing.     

General existence of competitive equilibrium in the growth model with an endogenous labor–leisure choice

We prove the existence of competitive equilibrium in the canonical optimal growth model with elastic labor supply under general conditions. In this model, strong conditions to rule out corner solutions are often not well justified. We show using a separation argument that there exist Lagrange multipliers that can be viewed as a system of competitive prices. Neither Inada conditions, nor strict concavity, nor homogeneity, nor differentiability are required for existence of a competitive equilibrium. Thus, we cover important specifications used in the macroeconomics literature for which existence of a competitive equilibrium is not well understood. We give examples to illustrate the violation of the conditions used in earlier existence results but where a competitive equilibrium can be shown to exist following the approach in this paper.