INFORMALIZATION OF INDUSTRIAL LABOR IN INDIA: EFFECTS OF LABOR MARKET RIGIDITIES AND IMPORT COMPETITION

Since the 1980s, industrial labor in India has been increasingly informalized, manifested in a rising share of unorganized sector employment and the growing use of temporary and contract workers, and subcontracting in organized manufacturing. Using unit‐level data from the National Sample Survey employment–unemployment survey for 2004–5, the paper investigates econometrically whether labor market rigidities and import competition have been responsible for the informalization of industrial labor in India. The results of econometric models show that labor market reforms tend to increase the creation of regular jobs, while import competition tends to raise casual employment among workers with education levels above primary.     

珠三角"民工荒"的原因与启示

自2004年起,珠三角地区许多企业遇到了招工难问题,由过去的"民工潮"转变为"民工荒". "民工荒"现象的产生最直接的原因就是农民工工资低,生活就业环境差,但深层的原因是我国农民工文化和技能水平低,人力资本不足与珠三角地区产业结构升级矛盾所引起的.因此,化解珠三角"民工荒"的出路在于:一是加强对农民工的人力资本投资,提高民工就业能力;二是加快产业结构升级和转移,实现区域经济协调发展.     

Trade liberalization and wage inequality: Evidence from Korea

This paper investigates the heterogeneous income distribution effects of trade liberalization using Korean survey data from years of 2000–2015. Following the Stolper-Samuelson theorem most of previous research studying the effects of trade liberalization on wage differences focus on workers’ characteristics (e.g., skilled or unskilled) while heterogeneity within the same worker group has not been yet substantially investigated. To fill this gap, this paper provides empirical evidence of wage inequality across firms within the same group of workers caused by trade liberalization, potentially implied in the new-new trade models with firm heterogeneity. Employing a difference-in-differences (DID) specification, we find that the wages of unskilled workers in Korea have increased since its FTAs with more advanced countries, such as members of EU and the US, came into effect, while the effects on the wages of skilled workers are negative but not statistically significant. We also show that wage effects are heterogeneous across firms within unskilled and skilled worker groups, while the positive effects are statistically significant and largest for unskilled workers in medium-large sized firms. These findings are in line with both traditional and new-new trade models.     

The poverty of solidarity: the size and structure of informal income smoothing among worker households in Helsinki, 1928

Abstract

Informal income smoothing by households before the post-Second World War expansion in public welfare has gained attention in the history of poverty and social insurance. Little direct empirical evidence has been available. Finnish household budgets from 1928 with intra-year panel data on informal transactions enable analysis of the use of savings, loans and informal assistance to counter income variation by worker families in Helsinki. Income shares of transfers were small compared with labour-based methods of supplementing the earnings of the surveyed male breadwinner families. Within the year, however, the combined use of assistance, credit, and savings accounts compensated on average 36% of income fluctuations, while means such as added workers or taking in lodgers appeared ineffective on the short run. Informal assistance mattered for the poorest households, but provided inferior coverage compared with that attained through credit and savings by more affluent workers. Income inequality was therefore replicated as risk-management inequality.     

Import competition and the gender gap in labor force participation: Evidence from China

Does import competition explain the gender gap in labor force participation? The distributional consequences of trade liberalization have fascinated decades of economists and policy makers. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that import competition enlarges the gender gap in labor force participation in China during 1990 and 2005. The results are robust to various identification challenges, including contemporaneous confounders, treatment effect heterogeneity, and spatial correlations in standard errors. The magnitude of the gender-differential effects of import competition on labor force participation grows by age, and peaks for people aged 46–50. The household division of labor appears to explain the gender-differential effects. Import competition also leads to a relative contraction of female-intensive industries, and reduces the share of female employees in each industry.     

去工业化对收入不平等的影响:机制分析与实证检验

基于126个国家1991-2017年的面板数据,考察了去工业化对收入不平等的影响。研究发现,去工业化会显著加剧收入不平等程度,这在发展中经济体尤为显著。从传导机制看,去工业化既可以通过劳动力就业转移直接影响收入不平等,也可通过非熟练劳动力就业和服务业部门就业分化间接影响收入不平等。一方面,去工业化导致非熟练劳动力受到更大冲击,致使该部分劳动力失业,加剧收入不平等;另一方面,去工业化导致非熟练劳动力的就业从工业的高薪部门转移至服务业的低薪部门,最终影响收入不平等。进一步研究发现,在可能存在"过早去工业化"的国家去工业化对收入不平等的作用更加明显。因此发展中经济体要着重预防由于去工业化可能带来的收入不平等程度恶化。     

International trade and within-sector wage inequality: The case of South Korea

This paper studies which factors contributed to the changes in wage inequality in Korean manufacturing over the last three decades. By adopting Akerman et al. (2013)’s decomposition method, we examine the relative importance of within-sector and between-sector wage variations in Korean manufacturing over the period of 1980–2012. Our analytic results confirm that within-sector wage variation explains the lion’s share of overall wage inequality. Taking this finding into account, we estimate the impacts of international trade, skilled-biased technological change and labor market conditions on within-sector wage inequality in Korea. Our estimation results suggest that there was a structural change in determinants of wage inequality before and after the mid-1990s. The influence of international trade mainly through heightened import competition on wage dispersion became relatively more conspicuous over the last two decades.     

人力资本、劳动收入份额与共同富裕

共同富裕目标的核心是增加居民收入和缩小居民收入差距,人力资本水平的提升能增加劳动者的收入。劳动收入份额作为收入分配的一项重要指标,有利于改善初次分配不平等,缩小收入差距,进而促进共同富裕目标的实现。利用2011—2021年中国30个省份的数据,运用固定效应、中介效应模型,实证分析人力资本对共同富裕的影响以及劳动收入份额在两者之间发挥的作用。研究发现,人力资本水平的提升能够促进共同富裕,且该结论在进行一系列稳健性检验后仍然成立;中介效应分析表明,劳动收入份额在人力资本对共同富裕的影响之间起到中介的作用;异质性分析表明,在东部和经济规模大的地区,人力资本对共同富裕的促进作用更为明显。     

关于中国劳动力工资、产业结构和收入差距的实证研究

本文基于GTAP模型,模拟了中国劳动力工资水平的外生上涨对社会贫富差距以及劳动密集型产业转移的影响。通过研究发现：非熟练劳动力密集型产业的普通工人工资的外生上涨无助于解决中国的收入差距问题,反而非熟练劳动力密集型产业在国际间的转移,会使中国有了更高的失业率,甚至有可能使收入差距扩大。     

工资收入权的保障制度

我国出现较为严重的拖欠工资问题是与工资收入权缺乏有效的制度保障相关。对工资性质的不同认识导致对拖欠工资合理与否产生歧议,这使得工资收入权保障制度建设陷于停滞。工资是劳动力的价格,当保障制度不完善时,劳动者与厂商之间的利益博弈会使双方背弃劳动力交易关系,转而构建劳动交易关系,结果必然导致厂商以经营状况或第三方责任为由拖欠工资。要保障工人的工资收入权,应当实行合同工资与风险共担、收益分享相结合的分配制度。     

Land Endowment,Intersectoral Labor Mobility,and Economic Geography

The distribution of industries is studied in a general equilibrium model in which firms producing manufactured products engage in oligopolistic competition. The agricultural product is produced by land and labor and there is intersectoral labor mobility between the agricultural sector and the manufacturing sector. Results are derived analytically. When worker units are divisible, concentration of all workers in one region is not stable. The role of land in the production of the agricultural product is important in affecting the distribution of industries.     

Towards a better measure of income inequality in Indonesia

Indonesia has experienced significant economic growth in recent years (on average, 5% in 2000–08), but many people are still living in poverty. Income inequality, as measured by the official Gini coefficient, has also increased. This paper evaluates household income and income inequality in Indonesia, assessing both market and non-market income to reach a more accurate measure of how actual income affects living standards. We find that if household income considers non-market income, income distribution is significantly more balanced, the coefficient of income inequality falls from 0.41 to 0.21 and the income share of the population's poorest deciles increases more than fivefold. The results suggest that market income alone is a misleading measure of income distribution in Indonesia.     

垂直专业化、贸易增长和收入分配不平等

文章从国际垂直分工引起贸易增长的视角研究中国收入分配不平等问题。文章认为,垂直专业化使得贸易扩张和收入在不同部门之间的分配产生差异,最后导致收入不平等的扩大。     

Racial inequality and white employment: An interpretation and test of the bargaining power hypothesis

This article disputes the argument and the evidence used to conclude that white workers are hurt by discrimination against blacks. Racism may increase the bargaining power of white workers if it unifies white ethnics, and may benefit them if it reduces job competition. The distributional consequences of discrimination will vary with the intensity of aggregate unemployment and the degree of racial segmentation in the labor market. The impact of racial inequality on the probability of employment is evaluated with a cross-sectional model using census summary data on SMSAs. Results show that racial inequality improves white male and female employment prospects in 1980, and suggest the same for 1970.     

The effect of immigration quotas on the average quality of migrating labor and income distribution

In this paper, the authors develop "a simple two-country, single-period model to study the effect of quota restrictions on the composition of migrating labor. [They] have divided the migrant population in two general categories called high skilled and low skilled and have shown that free migration of any category of labor occurs if and only if the country's share of world resources is different from its share of the world labor endowment in that category." Two possible outcomes, given differing labor endowments and income differentials, are considered. The potential effect of illegal immigration is also noted. The authors conclude that their model "is applicable not only to 'brain drain' problems, but also to guest worker programs and/or the mass migration of low skilled workers from poor countries to rich countries."     

What is Behind Increasing Wage Inequality in Mexico?

We evaluate the impact of the educational expansion and changes in labor market institutions on wage inequality among Mexican workers using a simulation technique proposed by Knight and Sabot [The American Economic Review 73(5) (1983) 1132–1136]. We conclude that while increases in the relative rate of return of higher education would have induced an increase in wage inequality, changes in the composition of the educational distribution would have led to a stronger decline in wage inequality. Instead, increased wage inequality is largely explained by changes in Mexican labor market institutions; namely, unionization rate and minimum wages.     

Will China's WTO accession worsen farm household incomes?

Many fear China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) will impoverish its farmers via greater import competition in its agricultural markets. We explore that possibility bearing in mind that, even if producer prices of some (land-intensive) farm products fall, prices of other (labor-intensive) farm and nonfarm products could rise. New estimates, from the global, economy-wide numerical simulation model known as Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), of the likely changes in agricultural and other product prices as a result of WTO accession, are drawn on to examine empirically the real income implications of China's WTO accession. The results suggest farm–nonfarm income inequality may well rise within China but rural–urban income inequality need not. The article concludes with some policy suggestions for alleviating any pockets of farm household poverty that may emerge as a result of WTO accession.     

Rank, income and income inequality in urban China

While some workers in China attain senior professional level and senior cadre level status (Chuzhang and above), others attain middle rank including middle rank of professional and cadre (Kezhang). This aspect of the Chinese labour force has attracted surprisingly little attention in the literature, a fact which this paper aims to rectify. We define various segments of the urban population in work-active ages and use data from the Chinese Income Project (CHIP) covering eastern, central and western China for 1995 and 2002. For 2002, persons of high rank make up 3% and persons of middle rank make up 14% of persons in work-active ages.Factors that affect a person's likelihood of having high or middle rank are investigated by estimating a multinomial probit model. We find that education, age and gender strongly affect the probability of being employed as a worker of high rank. There is relatively little income inequality among workers of high rank as well as among workers of middle rank. Mean income and household wealth per capita of highly-ranked workers developed more favorably than for other segments of the population studied, and personal income is more polarized by segment in 2002 than in 1995. Workers of high rank, and to a lesser degree, workers of middle rank, are among the winners in economic terms while the increasingly large category of non-workers is the losers. Rates of return to education have increased but income function analysis indicates that this provides only a partial explanation for the increased favorable income situation for workers of high and middle ranks.     

Effects of Patent Policy on Income and Consumption Inequality in a R&D Growth Model

To analyze the effects of patent policy on growth and inequality, this article develops a quality‐ladder model with wealth heterogeneity and elastic labor supply. The model predicts that strengthening patent protection increases (a) economic growth by stimulating spending on research and development and (b) income inequality by raising the return on assets. Elastic labor supply creates an additional effect on income inequality. As for consumption inequality, the effect is ambiguous and depends on the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. Calibrating the model to the U.S. data shows that strengthening patent protection increases income inequality by more than consumption inequality, and this pattern is consistent with the data.     

中国加工贸易的工资分配效应研究

国际外包的蓬勃发展:一方面,改变了国际贸易格局;另一方面,催生新的贸易方式—中间产品贸易,这种新型的贸易方式会影响一国不同类型劳动者的工资收入。本文以中国加工贸易作为中间产品贸易的衡量,选取1996～2008年数据作为样本进行时间序列回归,结果表明,加工贸易规模与制造业技能工人的相对工资成反方向变动。最后本文结合实证分析结果认为:我国应该积极参与中间产品贸易,扩大加工贸易规模,以增强其对缓解就业、缩小工资差距的作用。