Embodying Embodiment in a Structural,Macroeconomic Input-Output Model

In this paper, I develop a regression-based system of labour productivity equations that account for capital-embodied technological change and I incorporate this system into IDLIFT, a structural, macroeconomic input-output model of the US economy. Builders of regression-based forecasting models have long had difficulty finding labour productivity equations that exhibit the "Solowian' property that movements in investment should cause accompanying movements in labour productivity. The production theory developed by Solow and others dictates that this causation is driven by the effect of traditional capital deepening as well as technological change embodied in capital. Lack of measurement of the latter has hampered the ability of researchers to estimate properly the productivity-investment relationship. Recent research by Wilson (2001) has alleviated this difficulty by estimating industry-level embodied technological change. In this paper, I utilize those estimates to construct capital stocks adjusted for technological change and then use these adjusted stocks to estimate Solow-type labour productivity equations. It is shown that replacing IDLIFT's former productivity equations, based on changes in output and time trends, with the new equations, results in a convergence between the dynamic behaviour of the model and that predicted by traditional (Solowian) production theory.     

The impact of changes to the human resources function in Australia

With the rapid development of information technology (IT) in the late twentieth century, a 'real-time' global economy is now taking shape. The social costs of being networked in the global economy vary across nations and regions. Some report job losses and fragmented working conditions, and in general social structure is endangered. The idea of maintaining a nation's social safety net and the traditional concept of the welfare state is now challenged. In this article, we deal with three issues. First, we point out that new social risks are formed by the structural change in the labour market. Second, the interaction of the nation-state and global economy is addressed; in facing new social risks, we argue, the role of nation-state is still important. However, the traditional paradigm of the welfare state needs to be re-conceptualized. Third, with the expanding view of the welfare state, this paper examines the developments of constructive welfare policies and discusses the social transformation processes in Singapore, especially in the face of the new social risks caused by globalization.     

Occupational Labour Demand and the Sources of Non‐neutral Technical Change*

This article introduces a two‐step empirical approach for examining both the nature and sources of non‐neutral technical change across multiple occupations. First, conventional labour‐demand parameter estimates and unbiased tests for neutrality are obtained in the context of a flexible cost system. The resulting input‐specific indices of technical change, unconstrained with respect to time path, facilitate subsequent evaluation of proposed sources. In our application to employment decisions of airline firms, we find labour‐saving technical change that is non‐neutral across occupations. We also document occupation‐specific responses to aircraft technology adoption, route system developments and an unprecedented range of technical change elements.

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The myths and realities of structural change in the UK labour market

Recent discussion of developments within the UK labour market has highlighted the growth of more 'flexible' types of employment: part-time work, temporary jobs, and self-employment. The structure of employment has also been shifting – away from manufacturing and manual employment and towards the service sector and non-manual employment. In this article, Peter Robinson argues that these are not new developments and in some respects the pace of structural change in the labour market has slowed down. Together with evidence that the labour market is now adapting successfully to earlier structural changes, this bodes well for the prospect of further gradual reductions in unemployment.     

The State in employment: the case of Malaysian electronics

In some discourse concerning the employment system it is often implied that there has been a shift within the power relations between the main actors - State, capital and labour. Capital is now taken as omni-powerful and proactive, while the State and labour have declined and are reactive. Yet this picture is too universalistic, deterministic, static and simplistic. It ignores the shifting positions and divisions within and between these actors and the crucial role of factors such as ethnicity. This paper redresses the balance in this area by detailing an example - Malaysian electronics - where these interactions, at both macro- and micro-levels, can be seen in action.     

Connecting Time and Space: The Significance of Transformations in Women's Work in the City

Growing numbers of women with children living in western cities are entering the labour market, raising new questions about changes in the allocation of the tasks of social reproduction between household members and others and about the effects of the increasing time women now spend in the workplace. As Manuel Castells noted over 25 years ago, women's unpaid labour has long been essential, not only in the domestic arena, but also in patching together facilities separated in space. The spatial layout of cities, with its specialized and segregated land‐uses, only works, he argued, if women's unpaid labour is available to connect urban locations. But many women now spend many more hours in the labour market, replacing their former domestic labour with a range of commodified goods and services as well as by help from a range of related or unrelated others, sometimes but not always remunerated and/or by state‐provided or supported services. This article examines the consequences of the growth of women's employment in Britain and the concomitant decline of the old breadwinner family, the growth of workfare policies that assume all individuals are available for waged work and the rise of commodified caring. The arguments are illustrated by empirical examples from interviews undertaken with middle‐class mothers in waged work in London and Manchester in the UK.     

Productivity and energy price differentials

In taking account of the interrelationship between energy and other primary resources, labour and capital, this paper presents a methodology for quantifying regional efficiency differentials using Taylor series approximations to profit functions representing regional economies. The resulting formulation makes it possible to decompose labour productivity into its contributing factors which now include energy price differentials in addition to such traditional variables as differentials involving capital-employee ratios and the quality of labour. This approach is applied to Canadian regional data from 1962 to 1978. On average, between 5.2% and 9.2% of Canadian regional productivity differentials can be attributed to regional energy price differentials.     

Services for Freer Trade

Politicians from all parties made much during the electlon campaign of the 'erosion of the industrial base'. Kate Phylaktis examines the figures and discovers a fundamental change in the structure of the UK economy. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution Britain is importing manufactures; these are paid for by the surplus earned by the export of services, which now employ more than 60% of UK labour.     

Understanding Ageing Public Sector Workforces: Demographic challenge or a consequence of public employment policy design?

In all OECD countries, populations and workforces are ageing, with public services generally being older than broader labour markets. Governments are concerned at the looming capacity crisis and identifying policy responses. However, they have generally identified the problem as a simple change in demographics. This article adds a new perspective to this policy debate. Using a study of an Australian state public service, it identifies an association between changes in public employment policies and changes in the workforce age profile. It suggests that current employment policies, which replaced the traditional focus on youth recruitment with a more open public sector labour market, have made it inevitable that public workforces would age and be older than the general labour market. Policy responses to the older public workforce need to go beyond demographic explanations, to accept the older public workforce as the new norm, and align public employment policies accordingly.     

COMPETITIVENESS WITHIN THE EURO AREA: THE PROBLEM THAT STILL NEEDS TO BE SOLVED

Unsustainable public debt, low competitiveness and high current account deficits are major problems for the so‐called PIIGS countries. These countries experienced consumer price and wage inflation above the euro area average in the first decade of the euro, basically fuelled by buoyant capital inflows. The resulting real appreciation against low‐inflation countries led to a deterioration in their competitiveness, but rigid labour markets now prevent a quick market‐based readjustment of real wages to the changed situation. Thus, both public expenditure cuts and structural labour market reforms are urgent to reduce the likelihood of a euro area break‐up.     

Productivity, convergence and policy: a study of OECD countries and industries

This paper analyses trends in labour productivity and its underlying determinants in a panel of OECD countries from 1979 to 2002. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to estimate a Malmquist measure of multifactor productivity (MFP) change. We decompose the growth in labour productivity into (i) net technological change (ii) input biased technical change (IBTC) (iii) efficiency change and (iv) capital accumulation. We analyse the effect of each of these factors in the transition towards the equilibrium growth paths of both labour productivity and per capita GDP for the OECD countries, controlling for the effects of different policies and institutions. The results indicate that on average gaps in productivity or income levels are narrowing down although there is no evidence to suggest that the entire OECD area comprises a single convergence “club”. Using kernel estimation methods we find that that labour productivity and per capita GDP are settling toward a twin peak (bimodal) distribution. Panel unit root tests over an extended (1960–2001) period provide general support for the convergence hypothesis. Analysis of the contributions of productivity growth within industries and sectoral composition changes show that aggregate productivity change is predominantly driven by ‘net’ within sector effects with very little contribution emerging from sectoral shifts (the ‘in-between’ static or dynamic effects resulting from higher or above average productivity industries gaining employment shares or low productivity industries losing shares).     

The evolution of post-Soviet labour processes: a case study of the hollowing out of paternalism in Moldova

During the Soviet era, directors and workers derived mutual benefits from concealing true capacity, hoarding labour and just fulfilling an enterprise's plan. In an environment of labour shortages and guaranteed markets, managers used informal mechanisms to reward and retain good workers given the absence of unemployment and meaningful wage differentials as mechanisms to discipline workers. This cultivated a paternalistic set of relations between enterprise managers and workers, which, it is argued, are being hollowed out in the post-communist era. This is explored in a case study of evolving labour relations in Moldova. Casualization of the workforce has been used as a buffer against greater instability in both the supply of raw materials and demand. Such a strategy has become feasible as enterprises, such as the case-study firm, now have a large pool of external surplus labour on which they can draw. However, paternalism has not been hollowed out completely but rather a split-level realignment is identified.     

Masculine identities and low‐paid work: young men in urban labour markets

This article brings together debates about labour market change, work‐based identities, growing concerns about the problem of working‐class, low‐achieving boys and the identification of a contemporary crisis of masculinity. It draws on a longitudinal study of young men in Sheffield and Cambridge — contrasting local labour markets in England — examining the initial workplace experiences of white working‐class male school‐leavers. Two individual cases are explored in depth, looking at initial working pathways in order to assess the attitudes and actions of young school leavers and their responses to the structural changes in the labour market that have transformed their opportunities compared with both their fathers' generation and their female peers. The implications for theoretical debates about working lives and the trasformation of gender divisions are assessed.     

Ambiguous effects of tax progressivity — theory and Danish evidence

Recent tax reforms in the OECD area have aimed at reducing the progressivity of labour income taxation by reducing marginal taxes for given average taxes. Theory has shown that this reduces employment/production when workers and firms determine wages through bargaining. This paper shows that an opposite effect arises when both wages and working hours are subject to bargaining. This may reverse the traditional result and this is especially likely if the bargaining power of workers is low and if labour supply is relatively elastic. In conclusion, the overall effect of a reduction in progressivity is ambiguous. The empirical estimates for Denmark indicate that the overall effect is negative for blue-collar workers and neutral for white-collar workers.     

Did working families' tax credit work? The impact of in-work support on labour supply in Great Britain

In-work benefits are promoted as a way to make low-income families better off without introducing adverse work incentives. In 1999, the structure of in-work benefits in the UK changed, and their generosity almost doubled, through the introduction of Working Families' Tax Credit (WFTC). With micro-data from before and after its introduction, a structural model of labour supply and programme participation estimates that, by 2002, WFTC had increased labour supply of lone mothers by around 5.1 percentage points, slightly reduced labour supply of mothers in couples by 0.6 percentage points, and increased the labour supply of fathers in couples by 0.8 percentage points, compared with the programme that preceded it. Other tax and benefit reforms contemporaneous with WFTC acted to reduce the labour supply of parents, though. Without any form of in-work benefit in the UK, labour force participation by lone mothers would be around 45 percent, rather than the 55 per cent we now observe. Participating in family credit, the UK's in-work programme before October 1999, conferred a utility loss as well as a utility gain from the extra income, but this utility cost of participation was lower in the final year of WFTC than under previous programmes for lone mothers, and no different for individuals in couples: this in itself induced more lone mothers to work.     

Part-time employment and industrial relations developments in the EEC*

Voluntary part-time work is now an established feature of EEC labour markets. In this article the author discusses the issues surrounding the Council's directive on voluntary part-time work and argues that it represents an acknowledgement by governments, employers and trade unions that part-time workers do not constitute a part of the marginal labour force.     

Trade,Technology and the Labour Market: The Case of South Africa*

This study advances previous work on the effects of trade and technological change on labour markets within the framework of Heckscher–Ohlin trade theory. We provide evidence for an unskilled labour abundant developing country by employing dynamic heterogeneous panel estimation techniques. For South African manufacturing, trade‐mandated increases in earnings are positive for labour and negative for capital whilst technology‐mandated increases are negative for both factors. We also find it important to take account of endogeneity issues in analysing the impact of technology and price changes on factor returns and in isolating factor‐ and sector‐bias of technological changes.     

The responsiveness of wages to labour market conditions in the UK

If wages are more flexible in the sense that pay is more responsive to labour market conditions, this has important implications for the workings of the aggregate economy. First, the real fluctuations generated by both demand and supply shocks are smaller, and second, the economy can operate at a higher level of activity relative to potential without adverse inflationary consequences (i.e., the NAIRU is lower). Our empirical analysis of wage flexibility suggests that UK wages have become more responsive to labour market conditions since the mid-1980s, at least relative to the previous decade. Furthermore, this has happened within certain industrial sectors. Finally, a part of this move towards greater responsiveness has been due to the decline in national pay bargaining over the relevant period. However, the majority of this change is due to some other factors.     

Understanding Labour Turnover in a Labour Intensive Industry: Evidence from the British Clothing Industry*

ABSTRACT The clothing industry is both a quintessential global industry and one that is inescapably labour intensive. Despite more and more production shifting to low wage economies in the past decades, there remains a significant amount of clothing manufacturing in high wage economies. This study examines the drivers of change that are forcing restructuring in one such country and the outcomes of such changes for the organization of production. Because the changes have involved treating workers as a resource to be developed rather than a cost, preventing labour turnover has become a crucial component of this strategic repositioning. In presenting the results of a national survey of UK clothing manufacturers we find that high labour turnover rates persist. We discuss the historical background to this phenomenon and current trends, and then explore the principal variables that might explain these trends. We conclude with a discussion of the outcomes facing firms in this industry and comment on why managers resist comprehensive changes in organizational routines and the effort bargain.     

Changes in labour supply and their impacts on human resource management: the case of Japan ∗

The paper examines some important developments that are taking place on the supply side of the Japanese labour market. The major themes addressed include the impact of ageing on the structure of employment and the increasing participation of women in the labour force. The paper considers in some detail the various policy responses taken, by government through legal intervention and by firms employing specific human resource management strategies, to address these issues. It also observes that supply side needs will have a significant future impact on what might be termed traditional personnel practices in Japan.