Conflict displacement and labor market outcomes in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina of the early nineties displaced 1.3 million people. This study uses longitudinal data to document the effects of this displacement on labor market outcomes. To account for endogeneity in displacement, I exploit the fact that the level of violence affected the decision to leave and that pre-war economic performance is orthogonal to local violence levels. I find that displaced Bosnians are less likely to be working relative to the people who stayed. Displaced men experience higher unemployment levels, and displaced women are more likely to drop out of the labor force.     

Child Gender,Intergenerational Kinship and Parental Labor Market Outcomes

This paper provides new evidence of the effects of child gender on parental labor market outcomes. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, I document a son premium on the intensive margin of parental labor supply in two‐parent families with one child. Parents with a newborn to a 6‐year‐old son have higher labor supply than parents with a daughter in the same age group. A further examination indicates that boys are likely to have better access to grandparent‐provided childcare than girls owing to grandson preference, and this allows parents with a preschool‐aged son to work more. The intensification of market work associated with having a son may affect economic outcomes over the lifecycle of parents through labor market attachment. This paper thus sheds light on the important distributional effects of family ties and culture on economic outcomes.     

后奥运时期与北京经济可持续发展研究

随着奥运经济理论的不断丰富和完善,同时,体育产业在一国经济中发挥越来越要的作用,奥运经济以及由此而带来的对城市发展的影响已成为经济学领域的重要课题。采用文献资料法、逻辑归纳法等方法,以“后奥运”时期为文章的背景和切入点,为北京奥运会后经济的可持续发展提供了积极的、具有建设性的对策及建议。     

MEGA‐EVENTS AND SECTORAL EMPLOYMENT: THE CASE OF THE 1996 OLYMPIC GAMES

Using the data of the 1996 Olympic Games, this paper analyzes the economic impact of a mega‐sporting event. Earlier studies are extended in several ways. First, monthly rather than quarterly data are employed. Second, the impact is analyzed for 16 different sectors. Third, we use a nonparametric approach to flexibly isolate employment effects. Hardly any evidence for a persistent shift in the aftermath of or the preparation for the Olympic Games is supported. We find significant positive employment effects exclusively during the Olympic Games. These short‐term effects are concentrated in the sectors of “retail trade,”“accommodation and food services,” and “arts, entertainment, and recreation.” (JEL H54, R12, L83)     

北京奥运正负经济效应初探

2008北京奥运为北京经济的高速增长提供了动力,扩大了就业,带动了北京经济结构的调整·使北京经济更具活力;奥运会把北京朝国际化大都市的方向推进了一大步.但其"虹吸效应"、"挤出效应"、"低谷效应"等负面经济影响,更值得深入研究与关注.     

Labor market distortions and China's WTO accession package:: an applied general equilibrium assessment

The economic implications of China's accession to the World Trade Organization have been analyzed using applied general equilibrium techniques. We explore the consequences of trade reform in the presence of labor market distortions. A formal model of imperfect labor mobility is incorporated into a large-scale, stochastic applied general equilibrium framework with which the consequences of China's trade reform for net welfare are considered. The simulations suggest that distortions in China's labor market, including imperfect labor mobility, rural-urban migration, dual urban markets and surplus rural labor, have significant effects on trade liberalization outcomes and in some cases produce unexpected second-best results. Journal of Comparative Economics 31 (4) (2003) 774–794.     

Task Routineness and Trade Policy Preferences

Understanding the formation of individual trade policy preferences is a fundamental input into the modeling of trade policy outcomes. Surprisingly, past studies have found mixed evidence that various labor market and industry attributes of workers affect their trade policy preferences, even though recent studies have found that trade policy can have substantial impacts on workers' incomes. This paper provides the first analysis of the extent to which task routineness affects trade policy preferences using survey data from the American National Election Studies. We find significant evidence that greater task routineness leads workers to be much more supportive of import restrictions, consistent with recent evidence on how trade openness puts downward pressure on employment and wages for workers whose occupations involve routine tasks. In fact, other than education levels, task routineness is the only labor market attribute that displays a robust correlation with individuals' stated trade policy preferences. We also provide evidence that there are some interactions between the economic and non‐economic factors in our study. For example, women's trade policy views are much more invariant to their labor market attributes than men, suggesting that women's views on this issue are driven more by personal and ideological beliefs than men.     

Collectivism in the labor market: Evidence from second generation immigrants in the United States

This study investigates the role of collectivism on labor market outcomes in an individualist country. We explore collectivism as an intergenerationally transmitted cultural value and analyze its explanatory power for the economic outcome of 21,000 male homogamous second generation immigrants in the US. Our collectivism proxy is derived from the country of ancestry’s historical disease environment because collectivistic values have been particularly advantageous in countries with a greater prevalence of disease-causing pathogens. Employing this new collectivism proxy that identifies collectivism more precisely than previously used cultural proxies, we find that higher scores of collectivism are associated with higher labor force participation and income earned in the US. The results on income are channeled through the number of hours worked and self-selection into jobs that require collectivistic traits. By analyzing the labor market performance of second generation immigrants, we are the first to show an occupational selection along cultural skills implying that second generation immigrants sort into occupations that demand skills on which they have a “cultural comparative advantage”.     

Is Racial Exclusion Gendered? The Role of Residential Segregation in the Employment Status of Black Women and Men in the US

This paper explores one angle of the race/gender/class intersection by examining the effect of residential segregation on black women and men's employment status in the US. Do the exclusionary mechanisms embedded in racially-based residential segregation affect black women and men's economic outcomes similarly, or are their employment outcomes differentiated by their different gender statuses? This paper lays out a theoretical framework for understanding the role residential segregation may play in shaping black men and women's labor market outcomes, outlining key mechanisms that link residential segregation to labor market inequality, highlighting the ways in which many of these mechanisms are gendered as well as racialized. This paper also offers an analytic design to test the hypotheses developed in this exploration.     

论中国经济管理陪都的建立

近20年来,随着北京社会经济的快速发展和城市规模的迅速扩大,出现了城市严重缺水、沙尘笼罩、三废污染以及城市用地紧张等问题;而且2008年奥运会又提出了“绿色奥运、科技奥运、文化奥运”等新要求,为了解决老问题,满足新要求,本文提出了尽快在我国人口中心地带建立经济管理陪都是非常必要的;其长株潭城市群则是我国陪都的最佳候选城市。这样既可以减轻北京城市的总体压力,又有利于国家经济的管理,并能促进陪都地区的经济发展。     

The Labor Contract Law,Macro Conditions,Self‐Selection,and Labor Market Outcomes for Migrants in China

China introduced a new Labor Contract Law (LCL, 2008) to protect employees’ working conditions and welfare. Early evaluations of labour market outcomes suggest positive effects for workers. In the same period, however, China faced labor market tightening, which facilitated the LCL's introduction and enforcement. Existing evaluations of the LCL treat the introduction of the LCL as being exogenous. We show that labor market tightening and individuals’ self‐selection into jobs whichcomply with the Law have affected migrant labor market outcomes. Taking these factors separately into account suggests that, the LCL has had varying effects on labor market outcomes: a negative effect on wages and hours; an unclear effect on having a written contract, and a positive effect on social insurance participation. Data inadequacies prevent us from considering these factors simultaneously.     

Moving markets? Government bond investors and microeconomic policy changes

Do sovereign bond markets react systematically to microeconomic policy reforms? Some observers suggest that investors are very attentive to supply‐side policies such as those related to labor markets, corporate taxation, and product standards. They argue that, along with macroeconomic outcomes and broad financial market conditions, such reforms affect sovereign bond premiums, for developed as well as emerging economies. In contrast, we predict few systematic effects of supply‐side policy reforms on sovereign bond market outcomes. Our theory draws on a standard three‐equation model of the economy, widely accepted among economic and finance professionals. That model makes few clear predictions regarding the anticipated effects of microeconomic policy changes; as a result, we expect that such reforms will not generate systematic market reactions. Our analyses, based on daily data from 37 countries from 2004 to 2012, indeed reveal little evidence of a systematic bond market reaction to the 47 most significant reforms to corporate taxation and labor market regulation. These results call into question the notion that “bond market vigilantes” play a central role in compelling governments to enact specific microeconomic policy changes.     

A longitudinal assessment on the economic effects of hosting major sporting events

Hosting major sporting events (MSEs) has become a globalized strategy for many countries. This paper is to incorporate event study and dynamic panel data analysis with annual secondary data to examine and clarify the long-term economic effects of host countries that had hosted the Asian Games and the Olympic Games from 1950 to 2014. The results indicate that hosting MSEs to create positive economic effects like the real economic growth rate, investment, employment and international trade may be a myth even for developing countries. The evidences can provide the sport management or authority with longitudinal and comprehensive elaboration for biding or hosting MSEs in the future.     

A generalized Okun's Law: Uncovering the myth of China's labor market resilience

A stable labor market is a policy priority for most countries, especially after the burst of the global financial crisis. Unlike most countries, the labor market in China appears to be holding up well, despite sharp slowdown in economic growth. This paper argues that there are underlying fundamental mechanisms that help explain the resilience of China's labor market. The key to understanding labor market dynamics in China is that rural‐to‐urban migrant flows are more sensitive to growth than urban workers in the process of fast urbanization, which serves as a main shock absorber to buffer employment against adverse shocks. Therefore, we propose a generalized Okun's Law (GOL) that incorporates migrant flows with unemployment rates to capture the relation between labor market dynamics and economic cycles. The original Okun's Law can be regarded as a special case of the GOL for developed countries that have already completed urbanization. Conducting empirical analysis with both China's national‐ and city‐level data and cross‐country panel data, we find strong evidence supporting the GOL theory. Findings in the paper have implications for a deeper understanding of the wisdom of Okun's Law and its application in labor market policies.     

Economic growth, labor market and demographic patterns

This study addresses the dynamic interaction between income growth, patterns of demographic variables, and characteristics of the labor market. We attempt to provide an endogenous explanation for the origin and nature of long-run sustained oscillations in the population and in economic variables. First, we develop an economic growth model containing unemployment. The resulting dynamics reveal that the emergence of irregular sustained oscillations is related to the lack of sensitivity in wage growth to changes in the employment rate. Next, labor force growth is endogenized in the basic model through micro-founded fertility choices of individuals. By introducing the endogenous fertility rate into the basic model, we generate a demographic transition. Next, consistent with Malthusian cycle literature, the inevitable time lag between individual reproductive decisions and subsequent market needs, in conjunction with a highly specialized labor force, appear to be the primary source of such long-run oscillations. Finally, the model predicts that raising the age of entry into the labor force increases economic growth.     

Opening a stock exchange

A large body of theoretical and empirical literature has established a positive relationship between levels of stock market development and economic growth. However, previous empirical work has been based on samples of approximately 40 countries with the most highly developed financial systems. Since 1950, over 70 countries have opened their first national stock exchanges. Can such exchanges increase economic growth? I present a data set of my construction that describes the exchange openings that occurred between 1960 and 1998, and find that these exchanges have generated increases in growth during their first 5 years of existence, although the longer-term results are ambiguous.     

The Relative Price of Services

Prices of GDP relative to the exchange rate increase with income per capita, which is known as the Penn‐effect. This is generally attributed to services being cheaper relative to goods in poorer countries. In this paper we re‐examine the Penn‐effect based on a new set of PPPs for industry output. These are estimated in an augmented Geary–Khamis approach using prices for final goods, exports, and imports. The resulting multilateral PPPs cover 35 industries in 42 countries for the year 2005. We find large variation in relative prices of various services industries. In particular the Penn‐effect appears to be mostly due to the rapidly rising output prices of non‐market services. This seems related mainly to the high labor intensity of that sector.     

Social Preferences,Sorting, and Competition*

In this paper, I investigate how an increase in competition for workers influences the impact of social preferences on labor‐market outcomes. By sorting themselves into firms with homogeneous work forces, workers can ensure that they suffer less from social comparisons. Competition promotes choice and thus facilitates sorting. However, competition also boosts rent differences in the labor market, because firms cannot curb internal inequity among its employees without losing workers to competitors. To reduce their exposure to social comparisons, workers might engage in inefficient sorting into unemployment. Consequently, social preferences can have strong effects (i.e., unemployment) in a competitive labor market, whereas they only have a slight impact on labor‐market outcomes in a monopsony.     

北京奥运旅游的机遇、资源优势与发展对策

2008奥运将近,北京如何利用奥运大力发展旅游值得世人关注。本文在回顾奥运旅游对历届举办城市经济影响的基础上,阐述了奥运旅游是北京绝好的发展机会,进而提出北京奥运旅游的发展对策。     

A welfare economic analysis of labor market policies in the Harris–Todaro model

This paper presents a welfare economic analysis of the benefits of various labor market policies in the Harris–Todaro labor market model. The policies considered are a policy of modern sector job creation, which I call modern sector enlargement (MSENL); a policy of rural development, which I call traditional sector enrichment (TSENR); and a policy of wage limitation in the urban economy, which I call modern sector wage restraint (MSWR). First, I analyze the inequality effects of these policies. I then perform two welfare economic analyses, the first based on summary measures of labor market conditions (total labor earnings, unemployment, inequality of labor incomes, and poverty rates) and the second based on dominance analysis in the labor market, in both cases assuming that the costs are borne elsewhere. The results of the welfare analyses are compared, and it is shown that TSENR unambiguously increases welfare in the labor market using both approaches, the other policies yield ambiguous results, and no policy is unambiguously welfare-decreasing.