Immigration and Informal Labor

We develop state‐level proxies for informal employment using differences between measures of self‐reported employment and officially sanctioned employment. In construction and landscaping, industries associated with under‐the‐table labor, we develop proxies for informal work based on productivity per officially sanctioned worker. We relate each set of proxies for informal employment to changes in immigrant population and composition. We find some evidence that immigration is associated with informal employment generally and in the construction industry when prevailing wages are low. States with high concentrations of low‐skilled male immigrants have higher levels of informal employment in the landscaping industry.     

Asset-Specific Investment and Unionized Labor

This article investigates the bargaining problem that exists when firms make asset-specific investments and then are subject to excessive union wage demands. In this context, the combination of both large asset specific investment and high union density is important in determining the magnitude of the bargaining problem. Using firm-specific union-density rates and various asset-specificity proxies, evidence is found that the bargaining problem results in substantially lower firm profitability, investment, and employment.     

Immigration, Race, and Labor: Unionization and Wages in the Canadian Labor Market

In Canada, most racial minorities have lower rates of unionization than do members of the majority workforce. Data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics ( N = 32,634) show that racial minority immigrants assimilate into unionization over time. However, unionization reduces net minority wage disadvantages only slightly. Union race relations policies should place more emphasis on collective bargaining as well as on unionization.     

LDC Labor Markets: Applications of Internal Labor Market Theory

This article does not attempt, nor has it delivered, a complete theory for the labor market in Egypt, let alone for LDC labor markets in general. The macro-model developed here serves mainly to demonstrate the diaculties involved in formulating macro-theories for LDC labor markets that, while necessarily simple, can still claim realism when confronted with certain fundamental “stylized h t s. Our considerations have, moreover, been limited to LDCs with mixed economies, using Egypt as the example. Hence, large-scale modern industry was assumed to belong to the public sector which then emerges as the country dominant, nonagricultural employer. Agriculture is the second large and relatively homogeneous sector, in Egypt dominated by small holdings. In-between we find the private, nonagricultural sector, overwhelmingly dominated by small-scale enterprises with large numbers of the self-employed, and with trade as the most important single activity. Labor is (in Egypt) generally unorganized or enrolled in government-controlled unions, active mainly in the public sector and without much real say in matters of wages and salaries. It is in this specific institutional setting that I have tried to discuss the application of internal labor market theory. This theory has, to the best of my understanding, nothing to offer by way of explaining public sector behavior (which is of crucial importance for wage and employment formation in a mixed economy). However, adapted to the circumstances, internal labor market theory goes a long way toward explaining wages and employment in agriculture and the “informal” small-scale sector. Our considerations, tentative though they are, do not point to any single, dominant labor market mechanism that could form the basis for a simple macro-theory. Wage flexibility differs greatly between sectors, overstaEng may be a more important phenomenon than unemployment in some activities, and unemployment may be of both the voluntary and involuntary variety, with withdrawals from the labor market related to well-defined reserve wages, and open unemployment related to internal labor market behavior. These considerations are based more on loose impressions than on solid facts. Further theorizing may be needed, but the development of labor market theory for LDCs has undoubtedly reached a point where progress depends critically upon painstaking empirical studies of basic labor market institutions such as employment and wage forms and responses, bargaining procedures, and conditions of both labor and output markets for small private enterprises in particular countries. Considerable work has been done in India but even here much remains for investigation. Studies of specific countries may, even for LDCs in rapid, turbulent transformation, disclose ongoing changes in institutions that for a full understanding of the labor market may be more important than the institutions themselves. Existing wage theory has little to offer for the analysis of such institutional change, but something may be learned from the American institutional school in labor economics whose leading exponent we are paying homage to with these papers.     

Labor Market Analysis and Concerted Behavior

In the first part of this paper, the importance of concerted behavior by workers emerges from examination of some prominent theories which set out to explain wage rigidity in the face of declining demand or excess supply without abandoning key elements of competitive theory. In the second part, the imoportance of certain Keynesian and satificing behavioral postulates in motivating concerted worker behavior is suggested by the shortcomings of some contemporary econmic models of the trade union which assume expected utility maximization and accurate knowledge of market conditions under ordinary circumstances.     

"用工难":产业转型的征兆

在一个拥有13亿人口的发展中国家,近年竟然出现了一种不和谐的产业声音:"用工难".它给企业当前的运作带来巨大的苦恼,成为这段时期鼎沸的盛世危言. 然而,就如一种祸福相依的两面镜,从另一面观之,"用工难",是与时代共振的产业音符.从长远看来,它或许将是我们产业的一个历史转折点,意味着产业转型的某种征兆!     

Hispanic Immigration and Labor Market Segmentation

This paper investigates the wage and employment effects of Hispanic immigration on native-born, low-skilled urban workers. The study develops a multiquation model to counter simultaneity bias, isolates the impact of recent illegal aliens from that of settled immigrants and of native interstate movers, calculates separate estimates for female and male employees, subdivided by race and Spanish origin, and tests both conventional and dual labor market theories. The results indicate that recent immigration has not had substantial adverse wage or employment effects.     

Internal Labor Markets and Worker Quits

This article uses establishment-level data to explore the impact of internal labor markets on worker quits. Quits are lower where job ladders are long, pay growth from the bottom to the top of job ladders is high, and seniority is used as a criterion for promotion. Using a system of internal promotion without a commitment to seniority is associated with higher worker quits. These results hold true even when controlling for the specific human capital skills of workers, suggesting that personnel factors other than specific training are responsible both for the existence of internal labor markets and for the impact of internal labor markets on worker quits.     

Industrialization, Female Labor Force Participation, and the Modern Division of Labor by Sex

We examine the effect of industrialization on female labor force participation for 62 countries. Two hypotheses are tested: the emancipation hypothesis and the U-shaped hypothesis. Our results support the U-shaped hypothesis insofar as shifts in the distribution of occupations in early industrialization decrease female labor force participation by removing women from agriculture while excluding them from occupations in manufacturing and management. We further suggest that different paths to industrialization may have different effects on female labor force participation.     

Occupational and Internal Labor Markets in Japan

The distinction between internal and occupational labor markets requires the development of informative indicators that go beyond standard measures such as firm size, which are too vague. This article develops an alternative measure, based on the comparison between firm-specific and occupation-specific tenure, and applies it to Japanese occupational data. We believe that the proposed measure is useful not only in classifying different occupations according to the degree of labor market internalization but also in documenting changes over time in job definition, "reengineering" of the corporation, and the like.     

A Strategy for Labor

Labor's decline is advanced, disastrous for democracy, and unlikely to be relieved by labor law reform at the national level. Unions need a strategy for revival that does not premise such relief, and that takes account of the deeper changes in social and economic organization that have undermined their strength. Such a strategy is available, but it requires a sharp break with the uncoordinated, firm-centered, and politically non-independent “service model” unionism, exclusively preoccupied with units where majority status has been achieved, still generally practiced today.