Technology Transfer,Welfare, and Wage Inequality

We use a linear two‐country, two‐factor, two‐product, two‐different technologies (2×2×2×2) model to study technology transfer and its effects on each country's welfare and factor prices. We demonstrate that technology transfer could benefit both the recipient and the transferring countries. For the recipient country, technology transfer increases the price of the factor that is more intensively used and decreases the price of the other factor. Our results provide an alternative explanation of a trend observed in the past half century: a rise in real wage inequality between relatively skilled workers and less‐skilled workers because of technological progress in numerous countries.     

Globalization,Worker Mobility and Wage Inequality

In the present paper, I integrate frictional labor markets with on‐the‐job search into an otherwise standard heterogeneous firm model of intra‐industry trade. Most importantly, I show that the returns to workers' inter‐firm mobility are higher in a trade equilibrium than in autarky. Intuitively, by favoring large and productive firms, international trade amplifies the disparities in profitability between small and large firms. Hence, the returns to labor reallocation across firms rise. In view of the empirically observed higher inter‐firm mobility among high‐skill workers, this suggests a skill‐biased impact of trade liberalization.     

Globalization, Financial Volatility and Monetary Policy

Recently it has often been claimed that globalization eases the job of central banks as it helps to tame inflation. This is used to argue that central banks (particularly the ECB, referring to the objectives as laid down in the EU Treaty) could or should reduce their efforts in the fight against inflation in favor of supporting the general economic policies of the governments. This paper takes a critical look at this argument, pointing to the structural changes associated with globalization and to the corresponding increase in uncertainty by which the central banks are affected. As an example of this, the increase in financial volatility is analyzed and explained as the result of optimal portfolio allocation, and its implications for monetary policy are discussed.     

Capital Flows, Vertical Multinationals, Wage Inequality, and Welfare

Wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labor in the US and its trading partners, Mexico and Chile, has increased since 1980, while Taiwan's wage inequality has decreased since the mid‐1980s. The authors provide a new explanation for the latter, involving a rise in capital flows from Taiwan to less‐developed countries (LDCs) in the form of vertical multinationals (MNEs), and a corresponding rise in intermediate‐good exports from the MNEs to subsidiaries in LDCs. Moreover, national income in both countries definitely improves.     

Globalization and Home-Based Workers

Globalization presents threats to and opportunities for women working in the informal sector. The paper, which draws on the work of Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) Global Markets Program and of HomeNet, focuses on women home-based workers and analyzes, within the framework of global value-chains, the impact of globalization on labor relations and other market transactions. The chains reviewed are: manufactured goods (fashion garments); agricultural products (nontraditional exports); and nontimber forest products (shea butter). The paper shows how this form of analysis helps to identify the uneven distribution of power and returns within the chains – between rich and poor and between women and men. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of the work of the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), HomeNet, and StreetNet in organizing home-based workers, both locally and internationally, as well as that of WIEGO in supporting them.     

Capitalism Unleashed: Finance,Globalization, and Welfare

Andrew Glyn, who died from a brain tumour in December 2007, aged 64, had been a key figure in socialist political economy since the 1970s. His seminal book with Bob Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze, published in 1972, inspired a generation of political economists. It offered an arresting empirical analysis of the predicament of British capitalism, and occasioned a fierce and wide-ranging debate among socialist economists over its empirical accuracy, its theoretical approach and its political implications. It was one of the first and most important expressions of Ricardian Marxism in the 1970s, emphasising the importance of distributional struggles for the future economic and political development of capitalism.

He was actively engaged in politics and he was always ready to put his intellectual skills to practical use, as during the British miners' strike in 1984–5, when he provided a detailed critical analysis of the economic case being advanced by the employers and the Government against the union. At the same time he sought to understand the trends that were shaping the development of capitalism, and wrote two very influential books, Capitalism Since World War II: the Making and Breakup of the Great Boom (1984, with Philip Armstrong and John Harrison), and Capital Unleashed (2006), his analysis of the recent neoliberal phase of capitalist development.

He will be remembered for his skills as a teacher, his humane and tolerant approach to intellectual debate, and his lasting contributions to our understanding of contemporary capitalism.     

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]     

Taxation and Wage Bargaining*

The paper analyzes the effects of personal taxes on wage bargaining It concludes that an increase in tax progressivity will normally increase union wage-bargaining pressure and so raise the equilibrium wage This is the opposite result to that recently derived by Creedy and McDonald (1990).     

Minimum Wage,International Migration And Their Effects On Welfare

This paper evaluates migration policies for an open economy in the presence of unemployment resulting from a minimum wage. Migration between countries is triggered by an expected wage differential which depends both on the market wage and the level of unemployment. Workers therefore can move in either direction. The paper shows that labor outflow raises employment and welfare. Distortion-ridden free trade with this out-migration is therefore better than distortion-ridden free trade with no migration. It might also be better than autarky. Under the scenario, free migration is an alternative to restricted trade often recommended to deal with this type of distortion. Labor inflow on the other hand generates unfavorable terms of trade, raises national and global unemployment, and reduces welfare. [F 2]     

Rigid Wage,Factor Immobility and Immiserizing Growth*

In the theory of trade and growth, Bhagwati made an interesting contribution by demonstrating the proposition that growth can be welfare reducing even at constant terms of trade, whenever distortions obtain in an economic system. Batra-Scully strengthened the Bhagwati thesis and derived the conditions for growth to be immiserizing at improved terms of trade in the presence of a wage differential. In the present analysis, we show that economic expansion in a country which is characterized by factor immobility and/or factor price rigidity may not reduce the country's real income at constant or improved terms of trade. Specifically, the Bhagwati theorem, and its stronger version proposed by Batra-Scully, hold for an economy with a rigidity in factor price whether or not accompanied by factor immobility. However, growth will not lower welfare at constant or improved terms of trade if factor immobility is the only imperfection existing in the factor market.     

社交能力与农民工工资性收入

如何进一步提高农民工工资性收入一直是社会各界广泛关注的话题,在探索过程中,教育、职业培训、户籍制度等因素的影响已经得到了充分的探讨,而较少有研究关注社交能力对农民工工资性收入的影响及作用机制.文章基于2010和2014年中国家庭追踪调查数据(CFPS),从语言表达和人际关系处理两个维度构建了社交能力综合指标,重点探讨了社交能力对农民工工资性收入的影响.研究结果表明:社交能力对农民工工资性收入存在显著的正向影响,并且在两个子维度指标的影响上存在明显的性别和代际差异.其次,社交能力对农民工工资性收入的影响存在显著的"迁移效应",迁移距离越远,社交能力的影响则越弱.此外,随着工资收入的增加,社交能力对工资性收入的影响则越显著.在影响机制方面,社交能力主要通过社会资本效应、职业发展效应、劳动合同效应和信息优势效应四个渠道影响农民工的工资性收入.文章聚焦于社交能力,为进一步提升农民工工资性收入提供了新的思路.同时,研究提出并检验了社交能力回报的迁移效应、劳动合同效应以及信息优势效应,对相关领域的研究进行了一定程度的补充与拓展.     

Cities, Workers, and Wages: A Structural Analysis of the Urban Wage Premium

Workers earn higher wages in cities vs. rural areas. This gap could arise because cities make workers more productive, or it could be the result of a non-random selection of workers into cities based on their ability and their endogenous history of career choices. To untangle these issues, this paper estimates a dynamic programming model, which embeds the choice of residing in a city or rural area within a model of career choices over time. After controlling for all the sources of selection and endogeneity, the estimates indicate that a given worker does earn more in the city for white-collar work, but not for blue-collar work. In addition, city work experience is found to be worth more than rural work experience in the rural area for white-collar work, but not for blue-collar work. These results support the interpretation that cities make white-collar workers more productive and suggest that workers may consider moving to the city not only in terms of locational choice, but also as a form of human capital investment.     

农民工工资拖欠的现状、根源与治理

农民工工资拖欠不仅对农民工本人带来了伤害,也对行业、社会、经济等方面带来了负面影响,究其原因,主要在于层层转包的用工制度。因此,要解决这个问题,首先应在取消这种用工制度的基础上,将农民工纳入企业统一的人事管理,实行按月发放的工资制度,进而逐渐规范诸如劳动合同制度等其它方面的管理。     

Wage Inertia and Comparison Effects in Australian Award Wage Determination, 1964-74*

This paper attempts to explain the determination of average award wage changes without assuming that the outcome of certain strategic wage settlements is known. Models which allow for habit-inertia and comparison effects are constructed. It is argued that the main impact of these factors is on the specification and interpretation of lagged adjustment of wages to changes in its determinants. These models are empirically tested using the pre-indexation quarterly data. An analysis of 1973-74 wage experience is also provided.     

Trade,Wage Gaps,and Specific Human Capital Accumulation*

We develop a new framework for the analysis of the impact of trade liberalization on the wage structure and on welfare. Our model focuses on the decision of workers to accumulate firm‐specific skills, by “on‐the‐job” training, knowing that this means their future wages will have to be negotiated, and that the outcome of negotiation will depend on the profitability prospect of firms operating in a new trading environment. We show that trade liberalization may reduce the welfare of a developing country because of its adverse effect on skill accumulation. We also explore the effects of trade liberalization on the wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers.     

Gender Roles,Occupational Choice and Gender Wage Differential*

This paper addresses the impact of occupational choice and the perception of gender roles on the gender wage differential. We examine the effect of occupational choice upon the level of wages and investigate the determinants of occupational choice. The evidence supports earlier findings that the wage differential is caused by demand discrimination within occupations. We also conclude that if females had a less traditional attitude towards their role in the labour market they would generate an occupational distribution that would produce a higher wage     

Prices,Productivity and Wage Bargaining in Open Economies*

According to the standard union bargaining model, unemployment benefits should have big effects on wages, but product‐market prices and productivity should play no role in the wage bargain. We formulate an alternative strategic bargaining model, where labour and product‐market conditions together determine wages. A wage equation is derived and estimated on aggregate data for four Nordic countries. Wages are found to depend not only on unemployment and the replacement ratio, but also on productivity, international prices and exchange rates. There is evidence of considerable nominal wage rigidity. Exchange rate changes have large and persistent effects on competitiveness.     

Exchange Rate Volatility and Output Volatility: A Theoretical Approach*

This paper makes an attempt to determine the factors influencing exchange rate and exchange rate uncertainty, as well as output and output variability. In the context of a small open economy under flexible exchange rates regime it is found that the level both of exchange rate and output is affected by monetary and inflationary shocks, as well as shocks in government spending, output, and trade balance. Further, the uncertainty of exchange rate and output is associated positively with the uncertainty of all shocks while the contemporaneous occurrence of selected shocks imposes either a positive or negative impact on exchange rate and output volatility. Finally, it is shown that the effect of the determinants either of exchange rate volatility or output volatility is very sensitive to the parameter values.