Impact of Market Concentration on Employment and Wages: a Look at the Insurance Industry

Atlantic Economic Journal - The falling share of labor in national income is a global concern. This study examined the impact of changes in market concentration ratios in the insurance industry on...     

Monopsony in the Labor Market,Minimum Wages and the Time Horizon: Some Unresolved Issues

This article discusses development of optimal solutions for monopsony in the labour market for the long run (when labour and capital are both flexible). It is shown that binding minimum wages up to a certain degree pushes the monopsonists to choose a high capital intensity of production, just as high as or even higher than that chosen when there is no regulation for minimum wages. Thereby, we demonstrate the existence of re-switching effects in the tradition of Piero Sraffa. The second part of the paper recalculates and analyzes earlier results by making use of the rather general constant elasticity of substitution production function. Based on a numerical solution for optimal monopsony under different regimes (no minimum wage, minimum wages of different values, etc.), we formulate a two-period game between the government and the monopsonistic firm (‘minimum wage game’). Finally, we analyze the relationship between the elasticity of substitution on the one hand and likely levels of employment on the other hand, after introduction of minimum wages.     

Labour Market Flexibility,Wages and Incomes in Sub‐Saharan Africa in the 1990s

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of how African labour markets have performed in the 1990s. It is argued that the failure of African labour markets to create good paying jobs has resulted in excess labour supply in the form of either open unemployment or a growing self‐employment sector. One explanation for this outcome is a lack of labour market ‘flexibility’ keeping formal sector wages above their equilibrium level and restricting job creation. We identify three attributes of labour market flexibility. First, whether real wages decline over time; secondly, the tendency for wages to adjust in the face of unemployment; and thirdly, the extent of wage differentials between sectors and/or firms of various size. Recent research shows that real wages in Africa during the 1990s may have been more downwardly flexible than previously thought and have been surprisingly responsive to unemployment rates, yet large wage differentials between formal and informal sector firms remain. This third sense of the term ‘inflexibility’ can explain a common factor across diverse African economies — the high income divide between those working in large firms and those not. Those working in the thriving self‐employment sector in Ghana have something in common with the unemployed in South Africa — both have very low income opportunities relative to those in large firms.     

Australian Labour Market Institutions Through Time: A Perspective from the New Institutional Economics

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Australian economy over most of the past century has been its labour market institutions and organizations. Recently these institutions have changed to become more decentralized. Douglas North has argued that examining and explaining institutional change through time is an important and comparatively unresearched topic facing economic historians. In this paper, changes to Australia's labour market institutions are examined from the perspective of the New Institutional Economics. Following North, it is argued that further research should be directed to identifying the role ideological beliefs have played in shaping Australia's labour market institutions over time.     

Sectoral Wage Rigidities and Labour and Product Market Institutions in the Euro Area

We estimate wage Phillips curve relationships between sectoral wage growth, unemployment and productivity in a country-industry panel of euro area countries. We find that institutional rigidities – such as labour and product market institutions and regulations – limit the adjustment of euro area wages to unemployment, in both upturns and downturns, particularly in manufacturing and, to a lesser extent, in the construction and service sectors. In addition, there are further limitations in the response of wages to changes in unemployment during economic downturns which suggests that euro area wages are also characterised by significant downward wage rigidities, especially in the manufacturing sector. These results are robust to specifications that account for factors that may affect structural unemployment (such as duration-dependent unemployment effects), as well as changes in the skill composition of employment that may affect the evolution of aggregate wages. The results also hold for panels including or excluding the public sector (where wages may be determined differently to the private sector also due to the effects of fiscal consolidation on public sector wages during the crisis). From a policy perspective, reforms in product and labour markets which reduce wage rigidities can facilitate employment growth and enhance the rebalancing process in the euro area.     

“双二元”就业制度中的农村劳动力转移——基于劳动力市场结构的政府作用分析

我国劳动力就业制度不仅呈现出“二元化”特征，而且更是“双二元”特征；劳动力市场供求结构失衡的长期存在是二元化特征形成的市场原因。市场机制不能自行调整，只有通过政府力量介入农村教育资源配置过程，引导私人资本进入农村教育市场，实现农村的人力资本禀赋积累增长，才能够从根本上消除我国劳动力市场配置体制中的“双二元”特征。最后，提出相应的应对措施建议。     

"双二元"就业制度中的农村劳动力转移——基于劳动力市场结构的政府作用分析

我国劳动力就业制度不仅呈现出"二元化"特征,而且更是"双二元"特征;劳动力市场供求结构失衡的长期存在是二元化特征形成的市场原因。市场机制不能自行调整,只有通过政府力量介入农村教育资源配置过程,引导私人资本进入农村教育市场,实现农村的人力资本禀赋积累增长,才能够从根本上消除我国劳动力市场配置体制中的"双二元"特征。最后,提出相应的应对措施建议。     

最低工资提升的劳动供给效应:一个基于自然实验的经验研究

本文以2005年和2006年之间中国各省市最低工资的提升作为一项自然实验,使用就业方程和工作时间方程控制个体异质性,应用“双重差分法”分析了最低工资提升的劳动供给效应.研究结果表明:最低工资提升对女性就业产生了显著的负面影响,对男性周工作时间产生了显著的正面影响;随着最低工资提升幅度的逐渐增大,其对女性就业的负面影响越来越大,对男性工作时间的正面影响也越来越大;当最低工资提升30％以上时,其对男性就业也产生了显著的负面影响.因此,为了保证最低工资在提高低技能劳动力工资水平的同时,不会对其劳动供给产生较大负面影响,最低工资提升应该是一个适度渐进的过程.     

Immigration and African American Wages and Employment: Critically Appraising the Empirical Evidence

This paper critically assesses the empirical evidence on the relationship between immigration and African American employment. Studies using various methodologies and data are reviewed: natural experiments, time series, and cross-sectional studies of local labor markets and intertemporal changes in the national labor market. We find that for African Americans as a whole, immigration may have little effect on mean wages and probability of employment. However, there is some evidence that immigration may have had an adverse impact on the labor market outcomes of African Americans belonging to low education-experience groups. However, even this modest conclusion must be qualified: the literature has many unresolved econometric issues that might easily undermine the received wisdom.     

Risk Aversion and Wages: Evidence from the Baseball Labor Market

We develop a bargaining model to assess how workers and employers might allocate wages inter-temporally in order to cope with risk. We then apply this model to 106 long-term contracts for major league baseball players’ services. Most of these agreements not only smooth employee compensation over time but suggest greater relative risk aversion for teams than players. Compared to the wages they might pay to retain these players on a succession of one-year contracts, teams often pay a premium on longer-term agreements to protect against market volatility and potential inability to replace a key player on the open market.     

近代上海劳动力市场的功能分析

上海是近代中国最大的制造中心和物流中心，拥有大量的工商企业和其他服务行业，产生了对劳动力的巨大需求，渐次形成全国性的劳动力市场，成为吸引各类人才的“高地”和培养人力资本的基地，并通过市场机制的作用，促使劳动力在企业之间、行业之间和地区之间自由流动，由此聚积了近代上海较为丰富的劳动力资源和颇具强度的人才资源竞争力。     

The Labour Market in the New Information Economy

The extension of information and communication technologies(ICT) to economic activity is changing the labour market inimportant ways, This article shows that computerization anduse of the Internet are associated with greater hours workedas well as higher wages; that ICT occupations are rapidly increasingtheir share of employment; that job search and recruitment aremoving rapidly to the Web, with consequences for matching employersand employees; and, possibly most important of all, that tradeunions have begun to use the Internet as a tool for servicingmembers and carrying their messages to the public, raising thepossibility of a major change in the nature of the union movement.     

四位一体:构建农民工进城的基本制度

当前众多有关农民工管理的思路都有意无意将看眼点瞄向城乡户籍制度改革,进而将改革路径导入传统思维框架之中.因此,有必要构建农民工进城的基本体制,以解除"户籍"给农民工造成的困境.本文从就业、教育和培训、医疗保险、社会保障等方面论述了当前农民工进城面临的基本体制问题,并提出了一系列政策建议.     

劳动力成本上升对中国国际竞争比较优势的影响

"民工荒"使得关于我国劳动力成本是否上升,以及其上升是否降低了我国参与国际分工的比较优势这一命题的讨论日益增多。本文提出观点:近年来我国劳动力成本上升显著,但我国国际竞争的比较优势却并不因此下降,原因有如下两点:一是最集中体现我国国际竞争比较优势的行业——制造业工资水平的上升幅度远远小于整体工资水平的上升幅度;二是劳动力工资水平的上升可部分归因于劳动生产率的提高,而这并不会使我国丧失国际竞争的比较优势。本文的实证分析通过梳理劳动力工资水平的变化及其与FD I流入量和出口量变化的关系,印证上述观点。这说明我国国际竞争的比较优势仍然存在,加之我国依然存在大量的农村剩余劳动力,因而不能全盘否定廉价劳动力这一比较优势,技术创新与结构升级的政策不能一刀切,应在充分利用廉价劳动力优势的基础上,使生产率提高的源泉逐步替代人口红利源泉。