Interest Rates and Wage Indexation

The growth effects of European economic and monetary intergration and the progress of

regional convergence across Europe depend on whether economic in Europe is consistent with a neoclassical or an endogenous growth model. Using annual data from the 1950-1992 period for each of 20 European economies, the paper finds that steady-state real growth rates are generally unaffected by changes in the investment rate, population growth, and government consumption, evidence consistent with neoclassical growth theories. This Strengthens the likelihood of regional (perhaps conditional) convergence, and suggests that the effects of greater monetary and economic unification will be in terms of higher incomes per capita, but not in terms of permanently higher growth rates.[O40,F43]     

Wage Indexation, Employment and Inflation

Price versus productivity-indexing is considered in a model of monetary policy with incomplete information and wage bargaining. In a perfectly price-indexed economy, the inflationary bias due to lack of credibility is eliminated. However, productivity-indexing is more appropriate to dampen macroeconomic fluctuations that are caused by real disturbances. We show that productivity-indexing alone guarantees both price and employment stability, provided the government's reputation is good enough and the union's bargaining power is not too strong. This reduces the degree of price indexation as the union becomes weaker and the government's reputation improves. Productivity-indexing is desirable with volatile productivity processes and weak unions.
JEL classification : E 24; E 52     

Marginal Tax Rate Uncertainty and Wage Indexation

Frequent changes in American tax laws over the last 30 years have led to uncertainty regarding the marginal tax rate on labour income. Using a multisector framework, this paper considers the implications of the tax rate uncertainty for wage flexibility. The Fiscal Authority sets the marginal wage tax rate, and is assumed to be the leader in a Stackelberg game. Wage setters in this game determine the degree of optimal indexation and are assumed to be followers. Increases in tax rate uncertainty lead to greater nominal wage flexibility, and a decrease in optimal progressivity. Additionally, indexation to nominal shocks is complete even if the product market is monopolistically competitive.     

Monetary Policy Delegation and Optimal Wage Indexation

This note shows that delegation of policy to a central banker who puts more weight on inflation stabilization than does the rest of society could reduce the alleged social inefficiency of private wage indexation decisions that arises in models of discretionary monetary policy.     

How High is the Private Gain from Wage Indexation?

The effects of firm‐specific shocks on the gain from writing state‐contingent wage contracts are examine in an extension of the model in Gottfries (1992) . It is shown that the introduction of firm‐specific uncertainty increases the gain from indexation to prices only moderately. Moreover, nominal wage contracts should be more prevalent when unemployment benefits are high or unemployment spells are short.     

Wage Indexation: The Treatment of Public Sector Taxes and Goods*

This paper considers the problem of constructing an index, in the presence of a large public sector, which will tell us whether any adjustment to wages or other payments to households in one situation will leave the households better or worse off than in some previous situation with a different set of prices. This index is an extension of the true price index. The paper also proposes an index of the affordable wages with which the first index should be compared.     

Nominal Wage Flexibility and Economic Performance: Evidence and Implications Across Industrial Countries

By considering the theoretical connection between labour and product markets, the paper evaluates the economic relationship of these markets within the contractual wage rigidity New Keynesian explanation of business cycles. The empirical analysis focuses on the short‐run cyclical behaviour of real output, prices and wages for 19 industrial countries. Time‐series and cross‐sectional regressions are estimated. Cross‐sectional cyclical correlations in the labour and goods markets are also evaluated across countries. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, aggregate uncertainty is an important factor in increasing the flexibility of the nominal wage in response to aggregate demand shocks. Wage flexibility accelerates price inflation and moderates the response of real output growth to aggregate demand shocks. Wage flexibility does not appear to be an important factor in differentiating the real and inflationary effects of energy price shocks across countries. Finally, aggregate uncertainty increases the responsiveness of output and price to productivity shocks.     

Macroeconomic Policy and the Current Account in an Open Economy with Partial Wage Indexation*

In Australia the practice of partially indexing wages has become an art form. While open economy macroeconomics has been extended by various authors to the indexed wage case, none highlights the distinctive effects of partial indexation. This paper examines short-and long-run consequences of partial indexation. The standard conclusions that partial indexation is conducive to growth and that fiscal policy with partial indexation is expansionary are seriously questioned     

Wage Determination and Economic Policy

This article is a revised version of the Giblln Memorial Lecture presented on 1 September 1977 by Dr. J. E. Isaac, Deputy President of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. It is published by permission of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science and the text of the lecture is to appear in Search , Volume 8, No 11/12.     

Implications of Endogenous Group Formation for Efficient Risk-Sharing

The existing literature on sub-game perfect risk-sharing suffers from a basic inconsistency. While a group of size n is able to coordinate on a risk-sharing outcome, it is assumed that deviating subgroups cannot. I relax this assumption and characterise the optimal contract among all coalition-proof history-dependent contracts. This alters the predictions of the standard dynamic limited commitment model. I show that the consumption of constrained agents depends on both the history of shocks and its interaction with the current income of other constrained agents. From this, I derive a formal test for the presence of endogenous group formation under limited commitment.     

新古典工资理论的发展及其启示

“效率工资”理论是新古典工资理论发展的一个重要方面。效率工资额在纳什均衡条件下与劳动要素的边际贡献存在着较大的差异，在“多要素生产”理论尚且如此，在“一个要素的价值理论”如劳动价值理论中，“价值”来源更应与“价值”分配作适当分离，否则在探讨分配问题时就很可能否定“一个要素的价值理论”。把价值来源与价值分配作适当的分离，有助于说明“单一要素”价值理论在市场经济条件下所面临的分配问题中的诸多矛盾。     

Gender Wage Inequality and Economic Recession

The Paper develops a two sector full employment general-equilibrium model for a small open developing economy, with both male and female labor. One sector produces low-skilled export commodity while other sector produces high skilled import competing commodity. The effects of world-wide economic recession on gender wage inequality have been examined in such an economy. The analysis concludes that low demand for high skilled commodity and/or low volume of foreign direct investment due to recession may aggravate the average gender wage inequality in the economy.

     

多层次直销薪酬制度及其经济学分析

笔者从经济学的视角阐释了多层次直销制度,通过理论和模型分析,揭示了直销的本质:直销薪酬制度的激励效应只会促使直销人员专注于推荐新人,同时直销人员在直销过程中承担了直销公司转嫁的高风险与高成本.     

Economic Competition,Policy Interdependence,and Labour Rights

Extant scholarship treats national policies concerning labour rights as a function of economic factors and yet neglects influences of policies among economically competing states. Relying on the policy interdependence theory, this study argues that labour rights policy in a state is dependent on its economic competitors’ labour policy decisions. It specifically maintains that the intensifying competition for foreign direct investment and exports as well as against imports channels negative externalities of deteriorating labour protection in competing states which drives expansive downward policy mimicking and leads to a global decline in labour rights – a race to the bottom. Utilising spatial econometric technique to analyse a new data on labour rights for the period 1994–2009, it finds that labour rights practices are interdependent among economic competitors and experience global deteriorations; whereas labour rights laws remain largely independent due to high policy and reputational costs of lowering them and show more fluctuations.     

Indra-Industry Trade,Endogenous Technical Change,Wage Inequality and Welfare

By using alternative intra-industry trade models (1. New goods cannot be introduced into the economy; 2. The possibility for a set of capital goods available in the economy to vary; the models consider the existence of intersectoral linkages), I show by means of Applied General Equilibrium (AGE) analysis that trade rises wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers; but the impact on wage inequality is far larger, when countries are assumed to exchange differentiated capital goods. The latter result has been obtained by using an imperfect competitive model, which embodies a sector bias technological change that arises from trade. In addition, the gains from trade, insignificant under the standard trade hypotheses, are extraordinarily large when endogenous technological change is taken into account. The main policy conclusion is that if policy makers of flexible wage economies introduce trade barriers to reduce wage inequality, these protective measures, by affecting the diffusion of technology, would cause a large welfare loss. [D58, f12, F43, J3, O3]     

利他偏好的内生模型及其经济学解释

利他行为对自利人性假设的挑战,要求经济学必须把偏好进行内生化处理。笔者首先构建了一个利他偏好内生模型,使得人类行为统一于效用最大化模式并具有了内在一致的规律性和可预测性;然后对利他偏好内生模型的合理性进行了解释。笔者认为,与利己行为不同,行为主体不是从利他行为后果而是从利他行为本身获得效用;通过整体间的生存适应性补偿机制,利他者不仅可以战胜利己者得以存在和持续,而且利他惩罚行为还为人类走出囚徒困境提供了有力的保证。     

On the Policy Implications of Endogenous Technological Progress

One of the most well-known empirical regularities in the R&D-productivity literature is the existence of substantial under-investment in R&D. This strongly suggests that government should actively promote research activities. However, the so-called 'quality-ladders' models of endogenous technological progress are inconsistent with this observation. In an extreme case, Grossman and Helpman (1991, Ch.4) suggest that R&D should always be taxed irrespective of the size of quality improvement. This paper attempts to reconcile these empirical and theoretical findings by showing that the normative results of Grossman and Helpman are not robust.     

Flexible and Committed Profit Sharing with Wage Bargaining: Implications for Equilibrium Unemployment

We analyze the relationship between profit sharing, employee effort, wage formation and unemployment under different relative timings of the wage and profit sharing decisions. The optimal profit share under commitment exceeds that under flexibility, because through a profit share commitment the firm can induce wage moderation. The negotiated profit sharing depends positively on the bargaining power of trade union and it has both effort-enhancing and wage-moderating effects. Higher profit sharing is shown to reduce equilibrium unemployment under ``sufficiently rigid' labor market institutions, but it can harm employment when labor market ``rigidities' are ``small enough'.     

税收、财政支出与内生经济增长

构建了基于财政支出、税收的内生经济增长模型,并推导出在给定税收、财政支出政策的变化路径时,经济会达到"竞争性分散均衡",税率与经济增长存在"倒-U"型关系,政府投资性支出与经济增长之间正相关。利用中国省际面板数据进行实证检验显示,在我国经济运行中,总产出、消费、投资、政府投资性支出、税率、利息率、工资水平之间存在长期均衡关系。我国宏观税率为28.63%时达到最优值,政府投资性支出对经济增长率存在正向影响,但不同区域间存在较大差异性。