Unemployment,Wage Inequality and International Factor Movement in the Presence of Agricultural Dualism

This paper investigates how the international factor movements affect the unemployment and skilled–unskilled wage inequality with the existence of a modern agricultural sector. Our research has the new feature that we not only consider that the rural labor migrates to the urban sector but also to the modern agricultural sector. The main conclusions are that the unskilled labor outflow certainly decreases the wage inequality and unemployment rate and the influences that skilled labor movement and capital inflow have on wage inequality and unemployment rate are dependent on the factor intensity between the urban and modern agricultural sectors.     

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.

     

Product Market Integration,Rents and Wage Inequality

Globalization in the form of product market integration affects labor markets and produces winners and losers. While there are aggregate gains, it is in general ambiguous how inequality is affected. We explore this issue in a Ricardian model and show that it depends on the balance between “protection” and “specialization” rents. In particular, wage inequality among similar workers (residual wage inequality) may be U ‐shaped, at first decreasing and then increasing in the process of product market integration. Consequently, there may be gains in both the efficiency and the equity dimension until integration reaches a certain level at which a trade‐off arises.     

Sequencing of Economic Reforms in the Presence of Political Constraints

This paper presents a model portraying a country in a political deadlock about economic reform proposals in which certain measures hurt strongly-organized interests. We show that when governments are unable to precommit and interest groups have veto power, only far-reaching reforms (even if quite costly) have hope of success. The model intends to explain why in recent years several Latin American countries have opted for radical reform.     

Wage Inequality and Wage Mobility in Europe

Using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, this paper investigates wage inequality and wage mobility in Europe. Decomposing inequality into within‐ and between‐group inequality, we analyze to what extent wage inequality and mobility can be explained by observable characteristics. Furthermore, we investigate which individual and household characteristics determine transitions within the wage distribution. We find that overall, mobility reduces wage inequality. While a large part of wage inequality is due to unobservable characteristics, the equalizing effect of mobility mainly occurs within groups. Furthermore, both personal and household characteristics play an important role for wage transitions. Finally, our findings reveal large cross‐country differences across Europe.     

贸易结构调整、要素市场扭曲与要素收入分配

笔者把哈里斯-托达罗模型引入H-O模型,分析贸易结构调整、劳动力有限流动、劳动节约型技术进步对收入变动的作用机制.结果发现:要素收入分配与贸易商品要素密集度转变存在密切联系,劳动所有者收入下降是贸易商品结构调整的结果;资本深化和劳动节约型技术进步不利于劳动所有者;作为一个劳动力相对丰裕的国家,贸易商品结构从劳动密集型转向资本密集型,出现和要素密集度背离的现象,原因是要素市场的资源配置扭曲和产品内贸易的发展.     

Optimal Differentiation of International Environmental Taxes in the Presence of National Labor Market Distortions

We explore the implication of the `doubledividend' debate for international environmentaltaxes. In our scenario, small open economies withdifferent labor market distortions follow a commonenvironmental policy and use national environmentaltax revenues to finance labor tax cuts. Since thedouble dividend hypothesis does not hold, a high labortax implies a low environmental tax relative to othercountries. The optimal differentiation ofinternational environmental taxes is proven to be afunction of the national labor tax rates and theuncompensated elasticities of labor supply.     

Can International Factor Mobility Reduce Wage Inequality in a Dual Economy?*

This paper analyzes the consequences of international factor movements on the skilled–unskilled wage inequality in a dual‐economy set‐up that includes unemployment and three intersectorally mobile factors of production—unskilled labor, skilled labor, and capital. Thus far, theoretical literature on this subject has adopted the full‐employment framework and hence ignored the problem of unemployment. The analysis in this paper reveals that the results crucially depend on the difference in the intersectoral factor intensities between skilled labor and capital. In particular, it demonstrates the existence of a possibility of deterioration in wage inequality following foreign unskilled‐labor inflow.     

Occupational Mobility and Wage Inequality

In this article we argue that wage inequality and occupational mobility are intimately related. We are motivated by our empirical findings that human capital is occupation specific and that the fraction of workers switching occupations in the U.S. was as high as 16% a year in the early 1970's and had increased to 21% by the mid-1990's. We develop a general equilibrium model with occupation-specific human capital and heterogeneous experience levels within occupations. We find that the model, calibrated to match the level of occupational mobility in the 1970's, accounts quite well for the level of (within-group) wage inequality in that period. Next, we find that the model, calibrated to match the increase in occupational mobility, accounts for over 90% of the increase in wage inequality between the 1970's and the 1990's. The theory is also quantitatively consistent with the level and increase in the short-term variability of earnings.     

Foreign Competition and Wage Inequality

The author argues that increased foreign competition can affect technical choice and skill differentials even when actual imports do not rise significantly. A model is presented of general oligopolistic equilibrium (GOLE) in which a reduction in import barriers (whether technological or policy–imposed) encourages more strategic investment by incumbent firms. The predictions accord with many of the stylized facts: higher skill premia; higher ratios of skilled to unskilled workers employed in all sectors and throughout the economy; little change in import volumes or prices; and rapid technological progress with rather little change in total factor productivity.     

General Purpose Technology and Wage Inequality

The recent changes in the US wage structure are often linked to the new wave of capital-embodied information technologies. The existing literature has emphasized either the accelerated pace or the skill-bias of embodied technical progress as the driving force behind the rise in wage inequality. A key, neglected, aspect is the general purpose nature of the new information technologies. This paper formalizes the idea of generality of technology in two ways, one related to human capital (skill transferability) and one to physical capital (vintage compatibility) and studies the impact of an increase in these two dimensions of technological generality on equilibrium wage inequality.     

市场潜力、经济集聚与地区间工资差异

基于劳动力、产业在地区间分布的不平衡性以及地区间工资差异的事实,本文构建了一个市场潜力与工资的新经济地理学(NEG)理论模型。理论分析表明:市场潜力对工资产生正面影响。市场潜力对工资产生正面影响来自两种渠道:一是市场潜力引发了经济集聚效应;二是市场潜力产生了逆经济集聚。相比之下,市场潜力引发了经济集聚效应更能提高和扩大地区工资水平与差异,因为经济集聚需要更低的贸易成本、较大的市场规模以及较高的经济发展水平。     

Gender-Based Occupational Choices and Family Responsibilities: The Gender Wage Gap in Italy

This paper explores the relationship between the gender division of labor, occupational choices, and the gender wage gap in Italy. In Italy, cultural factors and low availability of formal childcare services define gender roles that are generally based on the male breadwinner model, in which childcare is almost completely entrusted to women. The analysis is carried out through an extension of the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition and is based on data from the 2007 Italian National Institute for Workers’ Professional Development (ISFOL). The results are consistent with gender discrimination on wages and suggest that women’s occupational paths are often an outcome of limited choices, and that women’s unpaid domestic work negatively interferes with the energy women can put into paid work. These findings support the need to ensure gender equality in and out of the labor market, especially through deep changes in Italian social norms and through the development of formal childcare.     

Trade Liberalization and Gender Wage Inequality in Mexico

Abstract

After twenty years of trade liberalization in Mexico, the relationship between gender wage inequality and trade remains insufficiently studied, in spite of evidence of increasing numbers of women in industrial employment. This study aims to analyze the effects of export orientation and other characteristics that represent the industrial underpinnings of restructuring on gender wage inequality for 2001–5. There is consistent evidence of the negative impact of export orientation on men's and women's wages and the gender wage ratio, signifying that women lose in both absolute and relative terms. This result holds after controlling for women's share of employment and the skills of both genders, contrary to the expected effect from trade on equality. There is also a negative relation between a rise in the proportion of unskilled workers and the gender wage ratio, which suggests that the trade-induced skill hypothesis cannot be considered an adequate explanation for gender inequality.     

市场潜力与地区工资差异——来自中国地级面板数据的实证分析

笔者借鉴了新经济地理学的分析框架,使用我国176个地级城市的面板数据检验地区工资与市场潜力之间的联系,检验结果证实地区工资与市场潜力是正相关的。地区工资对市场潜力的弹性系数在0.75～0.77之间。人力资本、外商直接投资和自然地理条件对地区工资亦有影响。同时发现临近高市场潜力的地区,工资水平会随着时间推移而提高,但这种影响在地理范围上比较有限。     

Growth and Wage Inequality in a Dual Economy

Who benefits from economic growth? This paper analyses the distributional impact of different types of growth within a two‐sector model. The paper first presents necessary and sufficient conditions for unambiguous changes in wage inequality in a dual economy, based on analysis of the entire Lorenz curve. These conditions are then applied to the Harris–Todaro model with an urban non‐agricultural sector and rural agriculture. It is shown that capital accumulation or technical progress in agriculture can shift the Lorenz curve inwards and reduce wage inequality, while the effects of development in non‐agriculture are typically ambiguous.     

Trade, Technology and UK Wage Inequality

This paper examines the impact of international trade and technical change on changes in the UK skill premium. We first measure trade as changes in product prices and technical change as TFP growth. Then we relate price and TFP changes to a set of underlying forces. Among our results are (a) changes in prices, not TFP, were the major force behind the rise in inequality in the 1980s; (b) changes in OECD prices and UK tariffs significantly raised 1980s skill premia through their effects on prices, and that industry concentration significantly raised 1980s skill premia through its effect on TFP.     

Trade and Labor Approaches to Wage Inequality

The paper compares the trade and labor approaches to wage inequality. It first looks at the theoretical differences, stressing the different roles ascribed to sector and factor bias, labor supply and the theory of technical change in trade models with endogenous prices. It then briefly reviews some of the evidence on the sector bias of prices and technology.     

技能溢价与工资不平等理论研究进展

尽管技能偏向性技术进步假说为理解技能溢价和工资不平等提供了一个较好的分析框架,但依然存在不一致的研究结果.争议主要集中在资本与技能之间的互补关系、劳动力市场制度变迁以及技术和贸易哪一个是造成收入差距拉大的主要原因等几个方面.未来的研究将会建立一个统一的理论框架,分析各因素在解释工资不均衡程度增加时的相互作用.