NEGLECTED WOMEN AND OTHER IMPLICATIONS OF COMPARABLE WORTH

Comparable worth proposals presume that the gender wage gap is a result of occupational segregation. The proposals argue that females are channeled into "women's jobs" and that overcrowding depresses women's wages below the "value" of the work performed. Comparable worth legislation proposes replacing the idea of equal pay for equal work with a principle of equal pay for different work of comparable worth determined by job evaluations. Such job evaluations are feasible only for the public sector and large private employers. The analysis in this paper recognizes that comparable worth wage adjustments are to be limited to the large employers. It examines how employers in the covered sector tend to alter their pay packages and hiring standards. Comparable worth legislation also affects wages in the uncovered sector populated by small employers. The rationing of women's jobs and the changes in hiring standards for men's jobs in the covered sector tend to redound to the benefit of smart, energetic women and dull, indolent men.     

COMPARABLE WORTH: SOME ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION

The comparable worth approach is a radical departure from market determination of wages. This paper considers some economic issues pertinent to the comparable worth dialogue and focuses on implications of comparable worth legislation at the state and local levels. We show that current sex differentials in wages could reflect voluntary labor supply choices and/or discrimination. We also discuss the reverberations of comparable worth and note that some women in an occupation targeted with a wage increase could be made worse off as a result of employer cutbacks. We discuss why state or local officials may be hesitant to adopt comparable worth and also offer possible explanations for their being receptive to it. The intent throughout is to provide a balanced discussion that will aid individuals in taking an educated stand on the issue.     

PAY EQUITY AND COMPARABLE WORTH

An important and emerging public policy consideration… generally called equal pay for comparable worth…has received great attention from those who influence or report public policy initiatives. The comparable worth movement is directed at pay equity issues, primarily between men and women. The source of controversy surrounding comparable worth concerns the mechanism for determining wages in the economy…either an unrestricted market process or a subjective valuation process by designated "pay equity experts." Although the pay and allocation mechanisms and their side effects are controversial, other important questions concern the actual method of equity determination to be used in implementing comparable worth. This paper analyzes, from a general public policy perspective, many of the issues and much of the evidence surrounding comparable worth initiatives.     

Separation of Powers and Appointee Ideology

The traditional view of appointments to executive agencies isthat the president has virtual carte blanche in the selectionof personnel for his "team." Yet many formal models of appointmentsuggest that presidents must accommodate the policy preferencesof senators when making nominations. Several empirical studieshave confirmed that legislative preferences are a significantdeterminant of the ideology of appointees, but these studieshave focused on appointments to the federal judiciary; the researchhas not addressed appointments to executive agencies. Appointmentsto executive agencies from 1936 to 1996 are examined, by employinga special sample of appointees to those positions—thosewho have served in Congress at some point in their careers.For these "bridging" individuals, it is possible to analyzestrictly comparable measures of ideology for the appointees,their nominating presidents, and the senators who voted to confirmthem. A linear regression analysis provides significant supportfor the hypothesis that appointee ideology is affected by variationin the ideological tilt in Congress.     

关于制约当代民族研究的若干重要问题反思——迈向实践社会科学的视野

我国民族研究曾深受"阶级分析法"和"民族识别"的影响。这有其历史原因,也有其成效。不过,"阶级分析法"被教条化后,严重制约了民族研究。其后,"文化解释法"被广泛用于民族研究,也不乏成效。但是,民族研究因过于倚重此法,无法全面涵盖当代中国经济、社会、文化与政治转型的实践经验,陷入了新的制约。由此,在新时期,以透视实践经验为导向的社会科学视角,应是民族研究值得探索的方向。     

A gender analysis of U.S. labor market policies for the working poor

Current anti-poverty policy proposals focus on welfare reform to the exclusion of reforming the low-wage labor market. In contrast, we compare two policy proposals aimed at low-wage labor markets: a national comparable worth policy and an increase in the minimum wage. With both policies we pay specific attention to their impact by gender. Our findings suggest that while both would reduce poverty among working women, the impact of a comparable worth policy on female poverty would be greater under most scenarios presented. It is estimated that an increase of 96 cents per hour in the national minimum wage would be necessary to equal the poverty reduction effect for women workers of a comparable worth policy which excludes small employers. Both policies decrease the incidence of povertylevel wages less among men, since roughly 60 percent of minimum wage workers are women. Additionally, not only would a national comparable worth policy improve the economic status of low-waged women workers, it would also narrow the gap between male and female poverty. While an increase in the minimum wage would also reduce this gap, comparable worth would virtually eliminate it.     

COMPARABLE WORTH: CANADA'S EXPERIENCE

This paper discusses the design, implementation and administration of comparable worth legislation in Canada, focusing particular attention on the potential of comparable worth to close the male-female earnings gap. The authors document the Canadian legislative initiatives, provide illustrative evidence on the impact of comparable worth, and identify the main policy lessons to be learned from the experience of Canada, where the comparable worth concept has evolved furthest.     

MODELING ON THE BASIS OF MODELS

A large part of official economic data sets is produced with the help of assumed functional relations between variables. Constructing economic models on the basis of such model-generated data results in a "modeling on the basis of the results of modeling." This common procedure can lead to consequences that seriously endanger the quality of empirical analyses. After discussing some of these dangerous consequences the authors explore the reasons behind this development. To avoid some of the most severe difficulties a "Charter for Compilation and Correct Handling of Economic Data" is proposed.     

ADJUSTING NET WORTH FOR PRICE CHANGES WITH REFERENCE TO THE CANADIAN SYSTEM OF NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

This paper develops a rationale for a comprehensive measure of income and provides illustrative calculations within the Canadian System of National Accounts for making adjustments to net worth for price changes.
The paper notes that the System of National Accounts is designed to provide a number of individual aggregates measuring total production, income, savings and net worth. There is no single overall comprehensive measure which reflects the combined effect of changes in income and wealth. Such a measure is of particular importance in periods of rapid or extensive price changes which affect not only purchasing power of income but also the value of assets held and liabilities outstanding with consequences on net worth positions. This paper explores these issues and develops techniques for measuring the effects of specific and overall price changes with respect to net worth of the various sectors in the economy, illustrated with data from the integrated Canadian System of National Accounts.     

Product differentiation and competitive pressure

This paper compares the commonly used linear demand model introduced by Bowley (The mathematical groundwork of economics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1924) with the specification of Shapley and Shubik (Kyklos 22:30?C44, 1969). The latter has the advantage that aggregate demand does not depend on a parameter that measures the degree of product differentiation. This allows to interpret variations in the degree of product differentiation as changes in competitive pressure because these changes can influence aggregate demand only through changes in equilibrium prices and quantities. The consequences of the alternative specifications are made explicit with two applications. In both cases the different specifications yield substantial changes in important results in industrial economics.     

中小企业融资的国际经验与中小企业融资新思维

资金匮乏是世界各国中小企业发展所面临的突出问题之一,许多发达国家采取各种金融支持政策和手段来帮助中小企业解决融资难问题,收到了良好的效果,其中一些成功的经验值得我们学习和借鉴.借鉴发达国家解决中小企业融资难问题的一些成功经验,指出中国需要建立符合中小企业特点的融资机制,发展服务于中小企业的权益市场,发展服务于中小企业的债务性融资市场体系,完善中小企业信用担保体系,正确发挥政府的作用等金融创新.     

“省管县”体制对不同等级行政区域经济发展的影响研究——以浙江省为例

＂省管县＂作为一种行政管理体制改革措施以及经济和社会政策,对社会经济的发展具有重要的影响,评估其经济效应对深化和推广省管县体制具有重要的参考意义。然而由于在省管县体制的实施中,不同区域主体的受益或受损并不相同,还需要差别化评价。基于此,从县、设区市、省三个层面重点考察＂省管县＂体制对经济升级和区域协调发展的影响。结果表明,＂省管县＂体制的推行有效提升了区际统筹发展能力和财政利用针对性,客观上刺激了县级城市经济发展活力,并带动了区域经济发展;但是＂省管县＂体制在经济增长质量、中心城市功能强化、区际协调等方面也带来了一些弊端。为了更好地贯彻省管县体制,还需要进一步完善配套政策,因地制宜地对不同政府层级、不同城市实施针对性举措。     

THE SIZE AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE POVERTY GAP IN CANADA: A MICRO ANALYSIS OF VARIATIONS AMONG DEMOGRAPHIC GROUPS

Poverty is a much used term by politicians, economists, sociologists, the media and interest groups. Although there is some common consensus that the word poverty means some type of deprivation, there is a lack of comprehensive measures to quantify this term. Although deprivation can relate to a number of areas such as health and education, the focus in policy development has been aimed at economic deprivation or more specifically, income adequacy. Even in this perspective, the availability of comprehensive measures are limited. The United States is the only major industrial nation that has an official poverty line. Several unofficial poverty lines have been developed in Canada, but the poverty measures have not gone beyond head counts of people who fall below these lines. In an environment where the goal is to further progressive social development constrained by inadequate public resources, the emphasis has been on first directing scarce resources to those "most in need". To get a better perception of economic need, this paper provides a micro analysis of the size and distribution of the poverty gap so that meaningful comparisons can be made between demographic groups. The results of this analysis yield some interesting findings. For example, there are virtually no poor elderly couples and although there are a large number of poor single elderly, their income shortfalls are relatively small and are highly concentrated near the poverty line; the poverty rate among families with children is quite low but their incomes on average fall well below the poverty line and are widely dispersed; and single parents fare badly on all measures.     

Protectionism, Export Requirements, and Joint Ventures

Economic distortions often accompany the attempt by lower-income countries to develop. This paper examines the consequences of two such distortions: an export-share requirement whereby foreign capital producing in a local enclave is allowed to sell only a fraction of its output in the local protected market, and some local capital must be allowed into a joint venture in the enclave, even if it must be paid a higher return there than foreign capital earns in its country of origin. The welfare effect of such measures is investigated as well as the effect on local wages of measures that drive out some foreign investment. Such a loss of foreign capital may serve to raise the wage rate.     

The Fiscal Consequences of Privatisation: Australian evidence on privatisation by public share float

Privatisation has become a common government policy in many countries. This paper summarises the salient features of privatisations by public share float in Australia during the period 1989 to 1997. The costs associated with these privatisations are examined, including both direct costs and the opportunity cost of Australian governments selling assets cheaply. Furthermore, the impact that such sales have on the net worth of the public sector is estimated. The results suggest that there is a cost of underpricing. There is also some evidence that the effect on the public sector net worth may be negative. However, in some cases where the enterprise sold is inefficient the government may realise a gain.     

Can good projects succeed in bad communities?

The lack of “social capital” is frequently given as an explanation for why communities perform poorly. Yet to what extent can project design compensate for these community-specific constraints? I address this question by examining determinants of collective success in a costly problem for developing economies — the upkeep of local public goods. It is often difficult to obtain reliable outcome measures for comparable collective tasks across well-defined communities. In order to address this I conducted detailed surveys of community-maintained infrastructure projects in Northern Pakistan. The findings show that while community-specific constraints do matter, their impact can be mitigated by better project design. Inequality, social fragmentation, and lack of leadership in the community do have adverse consequences but these can be overcome by changes in project complexity, community participation, and return distribution. Moreover, the evidence suggests that better design matters even more for communities with poorer attributes. The use of community fixed effects and instrumental variables offers a significant improvement in empirical identification over previous studies. These results provide evidence that appropriate design can enable projects to succeed even in “bad” communities.     

STOCK FLOW CONSISTENT INCOME FOR INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL COMPANIES

Although industrial and commercial companies (ICCs) are primarily concerned with the production of goods and services which yield a trading profit there is evidence that they have become increasingly concerned with their portfolios of tangible and financial assets and liabilities. As relative prices, interest rates and exchange rates alter, there are implied changes to the realisable net worth of ICCs. That these changes can be substantial is particularly illustrated by reference to the U.K. experience between 1980 and 1982 and in 1985. However, conventional transactions based income measures are purposely not designed to capture these changes. Measuring income on a stock-flow consistent basis provides a complementary view of the performance of ICCs which is intended to capture these portfolio effects.     

Investment under Uncertainty in Dynamic Conflicts

This paper analyses a model in which two groups repeatedly compete with each other for a prize in every time period. We assume that there is a status quo bias: if there is a fight today, yesterday's winner is in a stronger position than the other group. Hence, a change of the status quo has long-term consequences that groups need to take into account. Important applications of this model include lobbying for legislation and political transitions through revolutions. We analyse the strategic timing of attacks on the status quo, which is similar to investment decisions under uncertainty. We find that the attack threshold is considerably lower than in a comparable one-period game, and that the expenditure level necessary to change the status quo is low in comparison to the prize; this provides a possible solution to Tullock's "rent-seeking paradox" in lobbying.     

A SOCIAL WELFARE VIEW OF THE MEASUREMENT OF INCOME EQUALITY

Economists' use of the term "equality" in reference to a distribution of incomes has historically been in the sense of a consensus for some statistical characteristic(s) of the distribution rather than a firm concept of equality. Of course such a concept rests on appropriate welfare assumptions about income and its distribution, assumptions which, for the most part, have been left implicit (and unknown) in discussions of income equality in the literature.
Our purpose in this paper is dual: first, we wish to discover an unambiguous, welfare-related equality measure. This we accomplish through suitable assumptions on a social welfare function. What is produced is an "index" of equality which describes the performance of a given distribution relative to the maximum welfare derivable from the total income it represents. The measure thus depends functionally on the welfare attributes of income, something which in reality we know little about.
This impasse leads us to inquire into the sensitivity of the index over specifications of the welfare function, which is done by comparing equality ranks for the states of the United States for 1960 under various functional forms and among curves within a given form. As an interesting secondary issue, the performance of traditional equality measures is tested relative to the welfare-oriented index to discover implications about their welfare content.
It is found that the equality index is, in certain ranges for the welfare function, insensitive to its specification. The findings lead directly to conclusions concerning traditional equality measures, their usefulness in correctly accounting for equality differences among alternative income distributions and, concomitantly, their implicit welfare inputs.