Task-Based Segmentation of Rural Labour Contracts: Theory and Evidence

The paper examines the theoretical and empirical validity of task-based segmentation of rural labour contracts in seasonal agriculture. Regular labour is hired to perform tasks that are difficult to supervise for which casual labour is not incentive-compatible, and a regular wage above the reservation wage ensures no shirking in these tasks. It is argued that there is a hoarding cost of regular labour which is the cost when productivity is low during the slack season. This implies that minimization of supervision costs necessitates the employment of regular labour in certain tasks, but enhances hoarding cost. Results from the ICRISAT villages in India suggests that daily regular wages are lower than daily casual wages, adjusted by the probability of unemployment. Estimates of a tobit selection model suggest that (a) task characteristics are not significant even among the farms hiring regular labour, (b) larger employment-intensive farms tend to hire more regular labour irrespective of the choice of crop, and (c) there is a significant substitutability between regular and family labour. These results seem to question the very basis of task-based segmentation and strengthen the hoarding cost argument: farms hiring regular labour use it indiscriminately in both non-monitorable and monitorable tasks and, if possible, they may substitute family labour for regular labour with a view to minimizing hoarding cost.     

UK Output Variability and Growth: Some Further Evidence

This paper re-examines the empirical evidence concerning the relationship between UK output variability and growth using GARCH-M models applied to post-war monthly industrial production data, estimated under quasi-maximum-likelihood with the consistent variance–covariance estimator of Bollerslev and Wooldridge (1992). In contrast to previous results suggesting a significant positive relationship between UK output variability and growth, we find no significant relationship. Rather than suggesting a connection between risk and return in the attitudes of investors, our findings may be interpreted as more supportive of macroeconomic models which dichotomize the determination of output growth and variability.     

Self-Enforcing Labour Contracts and Macroeconomic Dynamics

To properly account for the dynamics of the key macroeconomic variables, researchers incorporate various internal propagation mechanisms in their models. In general, these mechanisms implicitly rely on the assumption of a perfect equality between the real wage and the marginal product of labour. This paper features a micro-founded model of a limited-commitment firm, and derive endogenous dynamic labour contracts that produce a different linkage between the real wage and the marginal product of labour. The risk-sharing between the entrepreneur and the worker, both faced with enforcement problems, provides a different type of propagation mechanism. I investigate the dynamic properties of this endogenous rigidity in relation to the initial bargaining power of each agent.      

基于劳动力市场分割的劳动力流动模型的构建

国内外学者对于劳动力流动进行了大量深入的研究,成果颇丰.然而,由于历史的原因,我国在劳动力流动方面呈现出与其他国家不同的特性,目前,我国的劳动力市场尚未发展成熟,劳动力流动存在很严重的不合理现象.因此,结合我国的现实情况对其进行研究意义更加重大.本文试图结合以往学者的研究成果,构建基于劳动力市场分割的劳动力流动模型,对其进行深入的探讨,为实现劳动力的合理流动提供帮助.     

Do Workplace Contracts Harm Labour Productivity Growth? A Reconsideration of the Macroeconomic Evidence from New Zealand

This article reconsiders the argument advanced or endorsed by a large number of leading Australian academics and others that labour productivity growth in New Zealand fell markedly during the period in which New Zealand's Employment Contracts Act 1991 (ECA) was operative—that is, for most of the 1990s. On the one hand, based on total economy estimates developed by The Conference Board and the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, labour productivity growth was unexceptional though a little higher than the New Zealand average of the last three decades or so. On the other hand, based on newly released official estimates of New Zealand's ‘measured sector’ (which accounts for about two‐thirds of the total economy), labour productivity growth was almost identical to that of Australia during the EC A period. This in turn suggests that New Zealand's labour productivity growth rose markedly for the measured sector during the EC A years. All in all, the evidence presented in this article is inconsistent with claims that the period of the EC A was associated with relatively weak New Zealand productivity growth. Selected issues arising from these findings are briefly canvassed.     

Testing For Efficient Contracts In Unionized Labour Markets

This paper addresses the design of empirical tests to distinguish between two competing explanations of wage and employment determination in unionized labour markets, the labour-demand and efficient-contract models. We argue that most of the tests employed are restrictive, propose an alternative non-nested approach, a central feature of which is the variation in the set of instrumental variables across the models, and provide an illustration of how it might be implemented, using data from the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (WIRS) 1984 Panel File. The results demonstrate how the traditional approach can lead to inappropriate conclusions, and thereby emphasize the empirical importance of the specification of the instrumental variables.     

Strategic Innovation with Complete and Incomplete Labour Market Contracts

In a model of strategic R&D competition between two firms that negotiate with independent unions we show that: (i) incomplete labour market contracts may Pareto-dominate complete labour market contracts (ii) even when complete contracts Pareto-dominate incomplete contracts, economies can get stuck in the incomplete contract equilibrium. These conclusions provide additional strategic reasons why complete labour market contracts may not be used—even if they were feasible. We propose two testable predictions to discriminate between complete and incomplete contracts: (i) the variance of wages is lower with complete contracts; (ii) the variance of employment is higher under complete contracts.     

Empirical Effects of Performance Contracts: Evidence From China

Performance contracts (PCs)—contracts signed between thegovernment and state enterprise managers—have been usedwidely in developing countries. China's experience with suchcontracts was one of the largest experiments with contractingin the public sector, affecting hundreds of thousands of statefirms, and offered a rare opportunity to explore how PCs work.On average, PCs did not improve performance and may have madeit worse. But China's PCs were not uniformly bad; in fact, PCsimproved productivity in slightly more than half of the participants.PC effects were on average negative because of the large lossesassociated with poorly designed PCs. Successful PCs were thosethat featured sensible targets, stronger incentives, longerterms, managerial bonds, and were in more competitive industries.Selecting managers through bidding was not associated with performanceimprovement. Good PC features were more often observed in state-ownedenterprises (SOEs) under the oversight of local governments,that faced more competition, that were smaller in size, andthat had better previous performance.     

An Index of Segmentation in Local Labour Markets

This study tests for the existence of labour market segmentation by exploiting the variation in industrial structure across 59 labour market areas, as defined by MSAs. By creating an index of the relative explanatory power of standard and segmented earnings function models for each area, empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that segmentation exists and that the index reflects the degree of segmentation in local labour market areas.     

Chronic Labour Hoarding: Direct Evidence from Japan

This paper presents direct evidence on the characteristics of labour hoarding in Japan, using long-run, subjective survey data. A labour hoarding judgement index was constructed, and showed a seasonal pattern that did not reflect the external labour market condition. It consists of a stationary unanticipated part and a nonstationary antici pated one. The former part, unlike the latter, has no long-run relationship with sales, wage rate and working hours, the latter part has it. Furthermore, Granger causality is from labour hoarding to working hours.
JEL Classification Numbers: E24, J23     

对“劳动”问题的几点思考

科技革命引起产业革命,进而引起劳动者与劳动工具、劳动者与劳动对象、劳动者(人)与劳动者(人)之间关系的深刻变革,使劳动形式发生了巨大变化。通过对什么是劳动?现代劳动的实质(科学劳动)和劳动目的(创造财富)的分析,提出了一些有待进一步研究的问题。     

Labour Market Adjustment: Evidence on Interstate LabourMobility

In this paper, we investigate the behaviour of the Australian state labour markets, focusing on the role of geographic labour mobility. We find that interstate migration does play an important role in reducing differences in labour market conditions between states, although permanent (or very persistent) differences between state unemployment rates remain. We also find that out-migration from a state resulting from a relative downturn in its labour market occurs slowly and steadily. Most of the migration takes place, on average, within four years, and the process of adjustment is complete after seven years.     

Share Ownership and Employee Attitudes: Some Evidence from China''s Postprivatization Rural Industry

In this paper, we report the impacts of share ownership on employee attitudes in China's privatized rural industries based on a survey administered in the Provinces of Jiangsu and Shandong. Our results indicate that, in general, employee shareholders have higher levels of job satisfaction, perceive greater degrees of participation in enterprise decision-making, display stronger organizational commitment, and have more positive attitudes towards the privatization process than nonshareholders in privatized firms. J. Comp. Econ., June 2002 30(4), pp. 812–835. Department of Economics, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; Economics Program, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, British Columbia, Canada; and Department of Economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. © 2002 Association for Comparative Economic Studies. Published by Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: P3, P2, J5.     

On Contracting Out: Some Labour Market Considerations

Fashion is the great governor of this world; it presides not only in matters of dress and amusement, but in law, physic, politics, religion, and all other things of the gravest kind.     

Wage-Tenure Contracts in a Frictional Labour Market: Firms' Strategies for Recruitment and Retention

A common assumption in equilibrium search and matching models of the labour market is that each firm posts a wage, to be paid to any worker hired. This paper considers the implications of firms posting contracts , in a random matching model with on-the-job search. More complex contracts enable firms to address both recruitment and retention problems by, for example, increasing the wage with tenure. The effect on the labour market is to reduce turnover, below the level required for efficient matching of workers to firms.     

消除劳动力歧视,推进农村剩余劳动力资源顺利转移

劳动力合理流动是劳动力资源充分利用、市场经济正常运转、农村剩余劳动力顺利转移的重要条件。当前 ,由于各种因素的影响 ,全国统一、开放、竞争、有序的劳动力市场还没有形成 ,劳动力歧视妨碍了农村剩余劳动力的转移和劳动力资源的合理利用。消除劳动力歧视 ,有利于促进劳动力合理流动和市场经济正常运行及二元经济结构转换     

不同期限类型劳动合同的工资决定机制及差异——基于中国家庭住户收入调查数据的经验研究

文章利用2002年住户收入调查(CHIP)数据对我国不同期限类型劳动合同的工资决定机制及工资差异进行了经验研究。结果发现,长期劳动合同与短期劳动合同的工资差异符合补偿性工资差别理论,企业对没有签订劳动合同的员工存在工资歧视。排除特征因素和选择性因素,长期劳动合同工的工资比短期劳动合同工低42.84%,比无劳动合同员工高29.6%。文章研究表明:短期劳动合同没有对生产率表现出显著的负面影响,提升劳动合同签订率是比限制短期劳动合同使用更为合适的劳动政策。