Evidence on the Causes of the Rising Dispersion of Relative Wages

In this paper, a neoclassical model of interindustry wage dispersion is derived and used to examine explicitly the fundamental role of microeconomic variables in determining relative wage movements. The empirical results demonstrate that the variance of labor quality and capital intensities across sectors are the primary determinants of the movement of the dispersion of relative wages within the manufacturing sector in the postwar period. Although the relative wage structure exhibits some response to unemployment, it is not sensitive to changes in inflation. The macro variables were also of limited quantitative importance in explaining changes in the relative wage structure.     

The Capital Market Response to Wage Negotiations in the Airlines

This paper examines the effect of the announcement of various types of airline wage concessions on stock market value. Our results show that capital markets respond positively to wage cuts but not significantly to wage freezes or two-tier settlements. However, a significant intraindustry spillover effect from two-tier agreements was found that suggests that concessions by one carrier decreases the value of the remaining carriers. The results also vary by craft, indicating that labor market and institutional characteristics influence market response.     

Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Institutional Theory of Labor Markets and Wage Determination

Sydney and Beatrice Webb were among the most influential institutional labor economists of the pre‐World War II period yet this portion of their work has fallen out of sight for more than a half‐century. This paper reconstructs the Webbs' theory of labor markets and wage determination and explains how it differs from the rival neoclassical labor theory of Alfred Marshall. Key institutional components of their theory are developed, such as rent theory, institutional pyramid, chain of bargains, inequality of bargaining power, unemployed residuum, and common rule. The Webbs' theory is then used to explain the operation of labor markets and why in the absence of regulation they generate numerous social problems, including widespread poverty wages, excessive work hours and injuries, substantial unemployment, and human capital exploitation. Also described is the set of labor policies the Webbs advocate to solve these problems. Implications for modern labor theory and policy are developed.     

Gender Role Attitudes,Labor Supply,and Human Capital Formation

This study examines the relationship between attitudes toward women's roles in the labor force and human capital acquisition. I analyze both educational attainment and post schooling training spells. Holding more traditional attitudes about gender roles is associated with both lower educational attainment and lower probability of participating in post schooling training episodes. Also, gender role attitudes appear to have significant indirect effects on human capital acquisition, operating through a lower probability of labor market participation.     

Institutional and Market Determinants of Wage Spillovers: Evidence from UAW Pattern Bargaining

Empirical wage spillovers are often observed, but their theoretical explanation is controversial because they are consistent with institutional wage comparisons stemming from fairness or union politics, but also with neoclassical alternative wages or correlated labor demand shocks. The nature of wage spillovers is analyzed using a data set of United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) wage settlements. The results support the hypothesis that institutional wage spillovers augment neoclassical economic forces in determining wages, albeit with some weakening after 1980.     

Horticultural exports,female wage employment and primary school enrolment: Theory and evidence from Senegal

In this paper we analyse the indirect effects of the boom in horticultural exports in Senegal on child schooling. The export boom has caused a dramatic increase in female off-farm wage employment, which led to increased female bargaining power in the household. We investigate the causal effect of female wage income on primary school enrolment. We develop a collective household model with endogenous bargaining power to show that, if women have higher preferences for schooling than men, the impact of female wage income on school enrolment will be the result of a positive income effect, a negative labour substitution effect and a positive empowerment effect. We address the question empirically using original household survey data from Senegal. We use different econometric techniques and show that female off-farm wage income has a positive effect on primary school enrolment for both boys and girls, and that female empowerment is specifically important for the schooling of girls. Our results imply that the horticultural export boom in Senegal has indirectly contributed to the second and third Millennium Development Goals of universal primary education and elimination of gender disparities in primary education.     

Pay Secrecy and the Gender Wage Gap in the United States

Legislators and advocates claim that pay secrecy perpetuates the gender wage gap and that the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) should be amended to outlaw these practices. Using a difference‐in‐differences fixed‐effects human‐capital wage regression, I find that women with higher education levels who live in states that have outlawed pay secrecy have higher earnings, and that the wage gap is consequently reduced. State bans on pay secrecy and federal legislation to amend the FLSA to allow workers to share information about their wages may improve the gender wage gap, especially among women with college or graduate degrees.     

Institutional Aspects of Youth Employment and Training Policy in Britain: A Comment

This paper compares the merits of occupational and internal labour markets focusing on the issues of skills shortages, human capital theory, wage efficiency and youth training policy in the UK.     

The Impact of Technological Change on Work and Wages

This review begins with a discussion of how technology affects wage structures. The literature reviewed is divided into two segments—studies of the impact of technological change on wages (and growing inequality), productivity, and employment and studies of the interrelationship of technology, human resource systems, and labor productivity. We conclude with suggestions for future research topics. Overall, we find that technological change accounts for only part of the changing wage structure in the United States, whereas changes in institutional forces that affect the creation of industry rents and the distribution of rents are also an important factor.     

The effect of discrimination and of industry segmentation on Japanese wage differentials in relation to education

The paper investigates Japanese wage differentials based on the concept of industrial division. The labor market is examined for two sectors separately, namely competitive sectors and non-competitive sectors. The effects of female-male difference, of human capital, and of occupation also are examined, and the cost of discrimination is estimated. By applying several quantitative methods, it was found that worker characteristics such as education, length of service and age were treated differently by sector, sex and occupation. Also, wage differentials by sex were mostly rooted in differential treatment of worker characteristics, while wage differentials by sector were explained largely by firm size component. The above general results, however, are greatly modified by workers' occupations and industrial divisions.     

Employer‐Sponsored Training and Longer‐Tenured Workers: Evidence from Australia

I estimate the incidence and intensity of training with particular emphasis on where along the tenure‐training profile formal training occurs. Using data from the Survey of Education and Training gathered by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, I find a different relationship between training and tenure than what is suggested by human capital models. Instead of training being concentrated towards the beginning of the employment relationship, it tends to be evenly distributed along the tenure profile. Such findings are more consistent with theories of wage compression and strategic complementarity than traditional human capital approaches.     

The Effect of Mentorship and Sex-Role Style on Male-Female Earnings

The women in management literature contend that mentorship and sex-role style affect women's career success and ultimately earnings. We use data from the public accounting profession (N = 833) and a human capital wage decomposition model to examine the effect of mentorship and sex-role style on male-female wages and wage differentials. The results suggest that career mentorship modestly increases only women's earnings. However, sex-role style was found to significantly interact with gender to affect earnings and earnings differentials.     

Temporary Help Service Workers: Employment Characteristics and Wage Determination

This paper studies temporary help service (THS) workers, a growing component of the secondary labor market. It analyzes two samples of workers in the same four clerical occupations-bookkeepers, typists, key-punch operators, and clerks. The two samples-one for workers employed via a large THS firm in Israel, the other for full-time, non-THS workers drawn from the 1983 Israeli Census-are compared for demographic and human capital characteristics, wage levels, and wage regressions. The results lead us to conclude that viewing THS workers as a homogeneous group of "secondary" workers is not warranted.     

企业对员工的人力资本投资研究

本文利用最新的调查数据研究了企业提供的培训与员工个人特征、企业特征和员工企业匹配特征之间的关系，以及企业培训实践对工资水平的决定效应。研究发现，企业提供的培训投资呈现了极不平衡的现象：技能水平和职位等级高的员工能获得大量的培训投资，处于企业生产和技术部门的一般员工获得的培训投资显著偏低；国有企业大量投资于员工的一般培训，不注重企业专用培训，而外资企业则刚好相反；技术资本密集或者技术进步较快的企业比传统劳动密集型企业更注重员工培训。研究还发现，企业向员工提供的大部分一般培训显著地影响了员工的工资水平。研究结果有助于理解国有企业员工在劳动力市场中的工作转换模式。     

Use of Joint Consultation Committees by Large Japanese Firms

In Japanese union-employer relations, managers of large firms often make use of the Joint Consultation Committee (JCC) system in order to avoid disputes with labour. This study first describes two such uses of the system, namely information-sharing and pre-Shunto (Spring Offensive) wage discussions. It then examines several economic, institutional and operational correlates of these uses. The results indicate that information-sharing is a function of firms' operational structure, whereas the likelihood of pre-Shunto wage discussions responds to short-term changes in firms' economic performances as well as to institutional and operational factors.     

国有企业工作经历、企业家才能与企业成长

人力资本的高效配置和企业家才能的充分发挥关系到经济的可持续发展,制度建设如果能促进资源合理流向具有企业家才能的企业家,就能创造更多就业和社会财富。基于全国1997—2016年的私营企业调查数据,本文考察企业家的国有企业工作经历对企业成长的影响。研究结果显示,企业家的国有企业工作经历使得企业在市场扩张和盈利能力等方面表现更好,带来了更高水平的企业成长。机制讨论表明,企业家行为带有明显的烙印效应,国有企业工作经历为企业家带来了更多的社会资本和更高的公司治理水平,从而促进了企业成长。为了缓解由于选择性偏误等带来的内生性,本文采用倾向得分匹配、处理效应模型、代理变量、双差分模型等方法进行处理,结论仍然稳健。中国经济要向资源配置效率改善型模式转变,企业家才能的发挥至关重要,国有企业改革不仅应注重产权等方面的改革,同时也要充分重视国有企业改革带来的人力资本溢出效应。在不断深化国有企业改革的大背景下,本文从企业家才能培育和人力资本配置效应的角度考察国有企业改革问题,倡导国有企业改革进程中进一步营造企业家才能发挥的空间和制度安排,提高人力资本配置效应,从而促进中国经济健康可持续发展。     

Unions,Wage Gaps,and Wage Dispersion: New Evidence from the Americas

Using a common methodology, the effects of unions on wage levels and wage dispersion are estimated for two neighboring countries, Bolivia and Chile, and for the United States. The analysis shows that unions have broadly similar effects on the wage distribution within these three economies. The findings suggest that the political economy of unions, coupled with market constraints on labor costs, produce commonality in union wage effects that transcend other economic and institutional differences.     

转型背景下中国企业基于社会资本的知识管理研究

本文研究和分析了企业外部社会资本和内部社会资本在知识管理中所发挥的作用,论述了处于不完善的制度环境和组织制度下的中国企业如何突破制度限制以应对全球化竞争和知识经济挑战等问题。在此基础上,提出了概念模型和理论假设。并利用607家中国企业的有效数据对假设进行了检验,实证结果表明:内外部社会资本的构建有利于我国企业在制度环境不完善背景下的知识管理,有利于企业通过外部知识的获取和知识整合来构建自身的竞争优势。     

Broadband adoption,jobs and wages in the US telecommunications industry

This article evaluates the impact of broadband adoption on wage and employment levels among the local exchange companies in the US telecommunications industry for the period between 1988 and 2001. Broadband is a general purpose technology and its adoption and diffusion is expected positively to impact wages because of the need for higher level skill in its deployment and usage, but can also lead to less human capital usage because of a scale effect. Using the extent of fiber adoption among the local exchange firms as a measure of broadband deployment, it was found that broadband diffusion within and between the firms over time has had a positive and significant impact on wage levels but its impact on employment has been negative. As broadband diffusion increases, with substantial scope available to do so given the low levels of deployment both among the local exchange firms studied and within the United States as a whole, the impact of such diffusion on enhancing wage levels in the sector can be profound.     

Inertia and Discrimination in the California State Civil Service

Analysis of the California State Civil Service indicates that its occupational wage structure is very stable. Salaries established in 1931 continue to influence current wages, over 60 years later, even while controlling for market wages. This results from the California Civil Service's policy of maintaining the relative wage structure that was established initially in 1931 despite conflicting market wages. Because the California Civil Service explicitly lowered salaries for female-dominated jobs when it established its initial salary structure, these jobs remained underpaid by $1.6 billion from 1973 to 1993. These findings support notions of wage rigidity and fairness in efficiency wage and institutional labor market theories.