WILL THE “TRUE” LABOR SHARE STAND UP? AN APPLIED SURVEY ON LABOR SHARE MEASURES

Labor's share of income is a key variable in economics. It plays a leading role in analysis of (in)equality, globalization, technical change, growth theories, etc. Notwithstanding this broad application, there are many different definitions of the labor share. Understanding and synthesizing those differences is the purpose of this applied survey. Empirical measures may vary reflecting the allocation of income components that cannot be directly ascribed to capital or labor. We examine the alternative assumptions made in the literature in this regard and quantify and motivate the resulting discrepancies. Focusing (mostly) on US data, we show that different measures can have very distinct properties in terms of the observed stochastic trends, shares of short‐, medium‐, and long‐run variation and volatilities, persistence and mean‐reversion properties, and susceptibility to structural breaks. For instance, while “short‐run” properties of the surveyed labor share measures are relatively consistent across all definitions (and countercyclical), their “medium‐” and “long‐run” trends may diverge substantially (and are procyclical). To substantiate our analysis, we document the implications of discrepancies in the empirical labor share definition for growth accounting, analyzing the effect of technology shocks, and for estimating inflation dynamics.     

Heterogeneity and long-run changes in aggregate hours and the labor wedge

From 1961 to 2007, U.S. aggregate hours worked increased and the labor wedge—measured as the discrepancy between a representative household׳s marginal rate of substitution and the marginal product of labor—declined substantially. The labor wedge is negatively related to hours and is often attributed to labor income taxes. However, U.S. labor income taxes increased since 1961. We examine a model with gender and marital status heterogeneity which accounts for the trends in the U.S. hours and the labor wedge. Apart from taxes, the model׳s labor wedge reflects non-distortionary cross-sectional differences in households׳ hours worked and productivity. We provide evidence that household heterogeneity is important for long-run changes in labor wedges and hours in other OECD economies.     

Labor supply and the optimality of Social Security

Traditional economic theory predicts that an unfunded public pension system can be justified on the basis of its ability to provide intergenerational transfers, and also for its ability to provide partial insurance against mortality and labor income risks. In this paper, I demonstrate that the quantitative importance of these traditional roles depends on how the pension system distorts households' labor supply decisions. Using a general-equilibrium life-cycle consumption model calibrated to the U.S. economy, I show that these distortions can be large enough to erase much of the traditional welfare gains from Social Security. I also find that this fact is robust within the range of labor supply elasticities usually encountered in the macroeconomic literature.     

劳动关系作为法律关系:兼论劳动法学研究的范式转换

劳动关系和劳动法律关系区分的理论更多是法外视角研究劳动关系问题的结果。法律调整社会关系或劳动关系并非是指存在先在的供法律调整的社会关系,而是指法律通过规范人的行为在当事人之间产生法律关系,该法律关系是社会关系的特殊形式;法律关系产生的过程不是寻找社会关系的过程,而是判断法律规范规定的构成要件是否具备的过程。法律调整劳动关系因此是指出现法律规范的构成要件时在当事人之间产生以一方提供依附性劳动、另一方支付报酬为主要义务的权利义务关系,也即法律意义上的劳动关系。从上述劳动关系的逻辑出发,则事实劳动关系概念需要正本清源,集体劳动关系非法律意义的劳动关系,劳动法律关系、社会劳动关系、个别劳动关系等概念无存在必要。劳动法学研究应实现从法外视角向法教义学研究并重的转换。我国劳动法的规则体系和理论体系应围绕劳动关系展开。     

Labor market institutions and inflation volatility in the euro area

Despite having had the same currency for many years, EMU countries still have quite different inflation dynamics. In this paper we explore one possible reason: country specific labor market institutions, giving rise to different inflation volatilities. When unemployment insurance schemes differ, as they do in EMU, reservation wages react differently in each country to area-wide shocks. This implies that real marginal costs and inflation also react differently. We report evidence for EMU countries supporting the existence of a cross-country link over the cycle between labor market structures on the one side and real wages and inflation on the other. We then build a DSGE model that replicates the data evidence. The inflation volatility differentials produced by asymmetric labor markets generate welfare losses at the currency area level of approximately 0.3% of steady state consumption.     

Institutional barriers in labor markets: Examples, impacts, and policies

This paper examines the institutional biases that impede the competitive functioning of labor markets. Two contexts are considered. The first relates to Moroccan labor migrants in The Netherlands, where institutional bias distorts the competitive functioning of the labor market by downgrading the educational returns to migrant workers and acting as a disincentive for further investment in human capital. The second relates to labor markets in Indonesia and Pakistan. Institutional bias in these two countries leads to an exaggeration of labor returns to certified education, and to over-investment in university education. We argue that such biases are fed by misinformed beliefs and group interests, and stand in the way of achieving higher growth and equity.     

全球化背景下新型产业分工与城市经济发展研究——兼论长三角区域城市产业发展

全球化与可持续发展是当代城市经济发展面临的两大趋势,全球城市选择高度专业化的生产者服务人微言轻其指挥、控制世界经济的产业基础.中国正在快速进行的城市化就特别注意城市化过程中的产业基础问题,因为其关系着城市化能否健康持续发展.城市产业的选择应根据国际产业分工的新规律来加以抉择,特别是在经济发达的长三角区域,城市经济的发展应根据各地的优势备件,以产业链分工为基础构建新型产业分工体系,这会提高长三角区域资源配置效率,促进该区域城市经济快速高效发展.     

商品贸易结构变动对劳动收入份额的影响

本文从贸易结构变动出发为研究我国劳动收入份额变动的原因提供一种新的视角。近年来我国商品贸易结构发生了重要变动。理论分析表明,对外贸易不仅通过国际分工和专业化对劳动收入份额产生直接影响,还通过要素密集度变化和技术进步偏向等机制产生间接影响;实证研究发现,出口发展对我国劳动收入份额具有显著的负向作用,进口发展则具有正向作用。进出口贸易对不同要素密集度行业的影响程度与方向存在差异。     

Training trends: Macro,micro, and policy issues

The scope of the training enterprise is vast, the field is dynamic, and multi-level issues confront training researchers. After identifying three “mega trends” – globalization, technology, and demographic changes - this paper reviews training trends at the macro level, the micro level, and emerging policy issues and links each one to the mega trends. The macro-level trends - increasing demands for personal and professional development by job seekers and employees, the effects of digital technology on work, structural changes in labor markets, increasing training opportunities for non-standard workers, and training as an important aspect of an employer's brand - reflect broad trends in the economy. Micro-level trends - better understanding of requirements for effective learning; use of short, digital lessons; and options for optimizing learning and preventing skill and knowledge decay - each focus on improving the quality of training. Policy issues - training needs in small and medium-sized enterprises, the need for “middle skills”, and vocational education - raise vexing issues for all stakeholders. Together, macro, micro, and policy issues reflect ongoing challenges for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers everywhere.     

Can progressive taxation account for cross-country variation in labor supply?

The difference between average hours worked in the US and average hours worked in Continental European countries has been increasing since the early 1970s. To explain this phenomenon, this paper develops an endogenous growth model with two key properties: agents are heterogeneous in their rates of time preference and labor skills, and the model incorporates progressive income taxes. The model is calibrated to US and German data for the periods 1971-1974 and 1986-1989. Our findings suggest that the degree of progressivity is a major factor in explaining the patterns of the US and German labor supply over time. Predictions of the model also match the distributional trends in both countries during this time period.     

The role of startups for local labor markets

There are substantial differences in startup activity across US local labor markets. We study the causes and consequences of these differences. Startup productivity shocks are found to drive much of these cross-city differences in startup activity. Examples of such shocks include breakthroughs in biotech that spurred startup formation in San Diego and Philadelphia. Overall, these shocks explain half of the forecast error variance of startup job creation, accounting for 40% of population growth and long-run changes in employment. Shocks to barriers to firm entry have economy-wide effects similar to those of startup productivity shocks but operate largely through the number of startups, rather than their size. We use a novel spatial panel vector autoregression, identifying shocks using shift–share external instruments.     

THE IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION ON THE LABOR MARKET

The literature on the impact of immigration on the labor market is highly controversial. The aim of this paper is to review the existing literature and draw some general conclusions on how wages and employment respond to immigration. Economic studies indicate that the impact of immigration on the average wage and employment of native workers is null or slightly positive. However, because adjustments take time, the immediate labor market effects of unexpected (as opposed to expected) migration episodes can be detrimental. Immigration also can have distributional consequences. In particular, the skill composition of immigrants matters in determining their impact on native labor market outcomes. An inflow of immigrants will tend to reduce the wages of competing native workers (with skills similar to those of the migrants), and increase those of complementary workers (with skills that complement those of immigrants). By affecting the skill composition of the workforce, immigration can create winners and losers among native workers via changes in the wage structure.     

再论无效劳动合同的解除:从劳动合同解除的社会实益视角出发

《劳动合同法》上规定的无效劳动合同解除制度因其违反合同效力的一般原理而饱受非议。但"双重法律效果"理论的发展,已经使无效劳动合同之解除不再是"概念上不可能的事"。无效劳动合同的解除,在效果上可以达到"有效——解除"路径的效果,同时可以达到私法上合同无效以及合同解除理论所无法给予的社会实益。劳动合同无效制度置于社会法的视角下,体现的是国家对劳动市场秩序的积极干预和构建的理念,具体是通过直接否定合同效力、固有利益剥夺以及激励合同守约方运用解除制度确保"合同惩罚"实施来实现的。     

The role of asset testing in public health insurance reform

Starting slowly with the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and culminating in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, means-tested public health insurance eligibility expanded to include adults in low-income families regardless of their asset holdings. This paper quantifies the effects of these eligibility expansions within the context of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. I construct a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with indivisible labor supply expanded to include an endogenous household choice of health insurance coverage and calibrate it to U.S. data. I establish that changes in the distribution of labor and welfare associated with removal of asset testing are driven by exit of high productivity and high wealth households from the labor market. I then expand my analysis to the 2010 Affordable Care Act to demonstrate that removal of asset testing is critical to the obtained results even when combined with other provisions of the Act. Finally, I find that a simple asset test for eligibility of health insurance transfers undoes the distortion to the household labor supply decision among high productivity types. These results are robust to the introduction of employer premium contributions, an independent health insurance market, and idiosyncratic shocks to eligibility for employment-based health insurance.     

Tax enforcement policies,tax evasion and time allocation

Several studies examine the effect of tax rates on households’ labor supply decisions in attempts to account for observed differences in work hours across countries. Interestingly, these studies fail to consider a fundamental action associated with taxation: tax evasion. This paper introduces, into a general equilibrium model of household labor supply, the possibility that households can evade labor income taxes. We show that the relationship between tax-enforcement policies, the elasticity of substitution between consumption and leisure and the elasticity of substitution between formal and informal work is key to explain formal labor supply in major OECD countries. In a model without informal work, there is a positive relationship between the elasticity of substitution and the tax rate on formal income and people tend to work more. This is the case for the United States, Greece, Finland and the United Kingdom. This relationship becomes negative once informal activities are introduced and the model can explain formal labor supply better in countries where agents work relative less, i.e., in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, Norway and Sweden. We also obtain estimates of hours worked in the informal sector for these countries.     

Social security and the labor supply of older married couples

This paper provides estimates of the impact of social security benefits on the labor force behavior of older married couples in the United States, with the ‘spouse benefit’ provision receiving particular attention. The empirical results using data from the Retirement History Survey show that the spouse benefit provision has a moderately small negative impact on labor force participation by older married women and a small positive impact on the labor force participation of older married men. The results are used to evaluate the potential labor supply impact of a proposal to eliminate spouse benefits and replace them with earnings sharing.     

试论现行劳动争议解决机制的不足与完善

我国劳动争议呈逐年上升态势,但现行劳动争议处理体制存在诸如浪费资源、闲置劳动者诉权、违反公平原则等各种理论和实务问题,因此本文主张借鉴国外机制,建立适应中国的仲裁和诉讼的双轨制模式.     

Outsourcing, labor market pooling, and labor contracts

This paper considers the interaction between input sharing and labor market pooling in urban areas. In particular, it examines the impact of the size of a city and business risks on the organizational structures of firms located in urban agglomerations, and it also discusses the impact of organizational structure on incentives to insure workers against income risks. It is shown that manufacturing firms suffer from a coordination game in their decision to outsource production. The existence of idiosyncratic risks causes manufacturers to refrain from outsourcing. The incentives to offer wage and employment protection to workers are more pronounced when manufacturers outsource the production of their inputs to a local market, which mitigates the impact of labor market pooling.     

Disentangling Treatment Effects of Active Labor Market Policies: The Role of Labor Force Status Sequences

This paper estimates treatment effects of two active labor market policies – a training program and a wage subsidy scheme – on participants' employment probabilities. The analysis is based on unique data from the 18th wave of the Polish Labor Force Survey containing detailed and extensive individual labor force status histories. We discuss two variants of an exact covariate matching procedure adapted to the specific nature of the data. Our study confirms and reinforces a point raised in recent research [Heckman, J.J., Smith, J.A. The Pre-programme Earnings Dip and the Determinants of Participation in a Social Programme: Implications for Simple Programme Evaluation Strategies. The Economic Journal 1999; 109; 313-348., Heckman, J.J., Smith, J.A. The Determinants of Participation in a Social Program: Evidence from a Prototypical Job Training Program. Journal of Labor Economics 2004; 22; 243-298.], that pre-treatment labor force status dynamics play a decisive role in determining program participation. We implement a conditional difference-in-differences estimator of treatment effects based on these individual trinomial sequences of pre-treatment labor market status. The estimator employs a “moving window” technique that nicely controls for changes in the macroeconomic environment over time. Our findings suggest that training raises individual employment probability, while wage subsidies display negative treatment effects for participants in the Polish case.     

劳动力市场灵活性对FDI区位分布的影响——基于中国31省市数据的实证经验

本文系统地分析了劳动力市场灵活性因素对中国1999～2009年间31个省市地区FDI流入和分布的影响。模型提出了劳动力市场灵活性通过生产率渠道和成本渠道影响地区FDI流入的假设。其次,通过固定效应回归方法和GMM方法估计劳动力市场灵活性、国际贸易等因素对地区FDI流入和分布的影响。结果表明,劳动力市场灵活性总体上提高了地区FDI流入,并且劳动力市场灵活性通过提高生产率和降低成本促进了FDI流入。此外,劳动力市场灵活性以递减的速率提高地区FDI流入。