Skilled–unskilled wage inequality and offshore outsourcing with asymmetric adjustment costs

We present a model that can capture the effects of offshore outsourcing on the wedge between the wages of skilled and unskilled workers when costs of adjustment are asymmetric. We identify conditions under which offshore outsourcing activities widen the skilled–unskilled wage inequality in the presence of asymmetric adjustment costs. We show how a higher cost of adjustment in the import-competing sector can magnify the offshore outsourcing induced gap between the wages of the skilled and unskilled workers. We also demonstrate the sensitivity of the effects of offshore outsourcing, on the skilled–unskilled wage gap, to asymmetries in the costs of adjustment.     

Building the minimum wage: the distributional impact of Germany’s first sectoral minimum wage on wages and hours across different wage bargaining regimes

The first minimum wage in Germany was introduced in 1997 for blue-collar workers in sub-sectors of the construction industry. In the setting of a natural experiment, blue-collar workers in neighboring 4-digit industries and white-collar workers are used as control groups for differences-in-differences-in-differences estimation based on linked employer–employee data. Estimation results reveal a sizable positive impact on mean wages in East Germany, but no significant effect in West Germany. Size and significance of effects are neither homogeneous across wage regimes (individual vs. collective contracts) nor across the distribution. The patterns suggest a compression in the lower part of the wage distribution and spillover effects to wages where the minimum is not binding, even in West Germany, where the bite of the MW was low. No effects on hours of work or substitution between workers of different qualification levels are found.     

Corruption and wage inequality?

Does corruption aggravate wage-inequality? We try to answer this question in terms of a general equilibrium model where both skilled and unskilled workers participate in corruption. Corruption in our model diverts resources from the productive sectors. Factor intensities within the productive sectors and between production and corruption activities determine the wage impact of corruption. Lower degree of corruption may increase wage-inequality although the size of the corruption sector definitely contracts.     

Economic reform and informal wage—a general equilibrium analysis

We attempt to trace the consequences of liberal economic policies on informal wage in a general equilibrium model with formal informal labor markets, wage-differential, vertical linkage and restricted capital movement. In particular, we show that the informal wage, representing income for a vast segment of unskilled labor may actually increase even if more people are employed in the informal segment. This also confirms that a contraction in the formal sector employment and the consequent expansion in the informal segment do not necessarily imply impoverishment of the existing set of informal workers.     

Freight transportation costs and the thickening of the US–Mexico border

Border regulatory requirements and administrative practices changed subsequent to the September 11, 2001 (9/11), terrorist attacks in the United States. Research in this study examines the manners in which transportation cost data for merchandise imports from Mexico behaved before and after 2001. Evidence is obtained that confirms results earlier tabulated for imports from Canada. Empirical results further indicate that, beyond freight cost changes, growth in the value of imports from Mexico was disrupted by events associated with the aftermath of 9/11.     

Price and nominal wage Phillips curves and the dynamics of distribution in Japan†

This study estimates two types of Phillips curves – the price Phillips curve and nominal wage Phillips curve – for the Japanese economy and analyses the institutional structure of the dynamics of effective demand and income distribution in each period from 1977 to 2007. The estimated results allow us to make the following three findings. First, the Japanese economy was a profit-led regime and a counter-cyclical wage share regime. The combination of regimes can make the dynamics of effective demand and income distribution unstable. Second, the dynamics of price and nominal wage do not reflect each other in Japan by labour–management cooperation. Finally, after 1997, the distributive regime in Japan switched from a counter-cyclical wage share to a pro-cyclical wage share regime because Japanese firms quickened their speeds of employment adjustment. As a result, the dynamics of effective demand and income distribution were stabilised.     

Pursuing the wrong options? Adjustment costs and the relationship between uncertainty and capital accumulation

Abel and Eberly (1999) prove that uncertainty has an ambiguous effect on long run capital accumulation in a real options model. We show that, with adjustment costs quadratic in investment, more uncertainty reduces capital and this effect may be large.     

Does the minimum wage help the poor?

Conventional economics frequently employs abstract analysis, including questionable assumptions regarding human behavior, together with highly quantitative methodology. While these techniques do not provide a full picture of economic life, conventional economic analysis has provided important insights and predictive power, at least during certain historical periods. The effects of minimum wage laws have been analyzed extensively by conventional economists over the past quarter century. That analysis, much of it empirical, has produced important insights into the effects of the minimum wage on the poor. In this article, I survey that vast body of research and address whether the poor are better off due to the minimum wage. I conclude the minimum wage does not unambiguously help the poor, and may do more harm than good to this segment of the nation's population.     

Union wage setting and unemployment in the Netherlands (1965–1987)

This paper presents an empirical model of union wage setting and employment. The (Stackelberg) equilibrium unemployment rate is shown to be a function of taxes, the replacement ratio, the gap between consumer and producer prices, productivity effects, and the rate of long-term unemployment. The model is estimated with aggregate data from the private sector in the Netherlands (1965–1987). The results suggest that the equilibrium unemployment rate is pushed upwards by taxes, the replacement ratio and by the gap between consumer and producer prices, and is reduced by productivity effects. Insider-outsider effects appear insignificant.     

Rising trade costs? Agglomeration and trade with endogenous transaction costs

Abstract.  While transport costs have fallen, the empirical evidence also points at rising total trade costs. In a model of industry location with endogenous transaction costs that seeks to replicate features from the machinery industry, we show how and under which conditions a decline in transport costs can lead to an increase in the total cost of trade. The subtle relationship between (endogenous) transport costs and the sensitivity of trade to distance is also explored.     

How important are minimum wage increases in increasing the wages of minimum wage workers?

Popular discussion presumes minimum wage increases primarily drive wage gains for minimum wage workers. We investigate this presumption using the Current Population Survey to assess the fraction of minimum wage workers receiving raises after 12 months. This fraction is moderately higher following state minimum wage increases, and positively correlated with several measures of labor market tightness. Finally, wage gains frequently follow industry and/or occupation switches, highlighting the importance of career progression for earnings growth among entry-level workers. Career progression and increases in labor demand rather than minimum wage increases appear to drive most wage gains for minimum wage workers.     

Elastic demand, sunk costs and the Kreps–Scheinkman extension of the Cournot model

Summary. The paper shows that, with any rationing mechanism between the efficient and proportional extremes, the Kreps-Scheinkman two-stage quantity-price game reduces to the Cournot model if demand is uniformly elastic and if all costs are sunk at the first stage, thus providing positive results to set against existing negative statements. Received: May 24, 1995; revised version: March 6, 1997     

Institutional quality and skilled–unskilled wage inequality

This paper establishes two-sector general equilibrium models in the presence of unproductive activities to investigate how an improvement of the institutional quality influences the skilled–unskilled wage inequality. We find that an improvement of the institutional quality will affect the interest rate, and then the interest rate combining with the capital intensity will generate an impact on the skilled–unskilled wage inequality. Specifically, both the interest rate and comparisons of the capital–labor relative distributive shares between two sectors play an important role in determining the skilled–unskilled wage gap in an economy featured with unproductive activities. The above results are robust even when we extend the basic theoretical model in several different ways.     

Are children driving the gender wage gap?

We examine how much children and the responsibilities related to them contribute to the divergence of men's and women's wages, and consequently, to the formation of the gender wage gap. To derive the relative contribution of gender‐specific parent gaps to the overall gender wage gap, we provide a modification of the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition and include simultaneous corrections for selection into employment and parenthood. The results show that the fatherhood wage premium contributes most significantly to the gender wage gap, especially in Poland. The motherhood penalty is also significant, while the role of the gender gap among childless individuals is small.     

Mandate-based welfare policies and the effect on real wage – The case of Taiwan

This study estimates the relationship between statutory welfare programs and workers’ compensation. Employing monthly macroeconomic data from 1982 to 2016 and wage rates in several private industrial sectors in Taiwan, the relationships between pay variations and policy interventions are explored after controlling for the economic growth rate, labor productivity, and time fixed effects. The seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) and multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) were adopted in the panel analyses. The findings of this study suggest that social welfare policies have negative effects on employees’ wage rates. The magnitudes of the effects are directly linked to the burden borne by the employers. National Health Insurance has the greatest negative effects on workers’ pay in all selected industrial sectors. The statutory welfare benefits explain approximately 23% of the pay deviation from the trend predicted by the models. A non-payroll-based financing method could be considered in the future to alleviate this impact.     

An evaluation of the relationship between minimum wage and unemployment: does the local cost-of-living matter?

This article examines the relationship between federal, state and municipal minimum wage laws, local cost-of-living (COL) and the unemployment rate. It finds a strong statistically significant positive relationship between minimum wages and unemployment once COL is taken into account. Our results suggest that federal minimum wage policy is likely to have more harmful effects in rural/low cost areas.     

Social comparison and performance: Experimental evidence on the fair wage–effort hypothesis

We investigate the impact of wage comparisons for worker productivity. We present three studies which all use three-person gift-exchange experiments. Consistent with Akerlof and Yellen's (1990) fair wage–effort hypothesis we find that disadvantageous wage discrimination leads to lower efforts while advantageous wage discrimination does not increase efforts on average. Two studies allow us to measure wage comparison effects at the individual level. We observe strongly heterogeneous wage comparison effects. We also find that reactions to wage discrimination can be attributed to the underlying intentions of discrimination rather than to payoff consequences.     

Detecting policy effects with wage rigidity and instability – evidence on the Taiwan labour market

With stagnant wages and growing productivity, a widening gap is becoming prevalent in global labour markets. The relationship between wages and productivity has become indeterminate, especially after the 2008 financial crisis. This article presents the phenomenon for why salary rarely follows up with productivity after an economy recovers. By using the GMM method, this study shows the interaction among wage, productivity and tightness, in which we illustrate the Taiwan labour market as an example to show how hiring system changes press wages away from an efficient allocation, causing instability and market failure. Surveying 35 labour markets for different industries, we reveal that the situation in the labour markets has drastically changed since 2008. We find that this resulted in a severe problem when the Taiwan firms got used to policies like ‘22K’, ‘fix-term contract’ and ‘unpaid leave’ programmes. These plans negatively impacted the economy and raised market failure with instability.     

When does transition increase the gender wage gap?

In the context of underlying stability in female participation rates, the gender wagegap, measured by the log of monthly wages, more than doubled in Belarus from 1996 to 2006. In this respect, the country has experienced a variant of the transition which occurred in the former Soviet Union where relative female wages fell by more than female participation. We have used the Machado and Mata (2005) analysis of the gender gap distribution. This reveals that the effect of coefficients on observed characteristics in widening the gap was increasing over time, especially in the lower and middle deciles of the wage distribution. At the same time, the effect of the characteristics themselves in reducing the gap was shrinking. The decomposition of changes in the gap over time, based on Juhn et al. (1991) , confirms that the contraction of women’s relative wages has been caused both by a deterioration in the observed characteristics of female workers and by the associated remuneration. Changes in the residual wage distribution tend to slightly reduce the gap rather than, as is the case elsewhere, to increase it. The analysis carried out in line with Neuman and Oaxaca (2004) suggests that the increased gap was not caused by sample selection. Instead, two observed factors are found to be mainly responsible for the results: hours of work have increased for men more than for women and women have experienced segregation in low‐wage industries.