Globalisation versus de-coupling: German emigration and the evolution of the Atlantic labour market 1870–1913

The decline of German emigration to the United States after 1895 was precipitate to a degree not matched by other “old immigration” sources. The paper considers possible reasons for this: the effect of land availability, relative growth rates of the US and German economies, and the impact of the so-called “new immigration” from southern and eastern Europe. It concludes that German immigration was unusually affected by competition from newer migrant sources, due to skill similarities and similar patterns of settlement. However, the more rapid growth of the German economy after 1895 and the movement of the land frontier into areas less suited to German agricultural skills also played a part. It shows that the skills possessed by migrants were an important factor in migrant earnings. The arrival in the US of large numbers of immigrants with similar skill endowments and lower reservation wages made emigration to the United States a less attractive option for potential German migrants after 1895.     

Ownership concentration and financial policy of China's listed firms

This study examines the role of ownership concentration, measured by the top-five shareholders' equity ownership, in shaping corporate finance policies in China. Among privately-owned enterprises (POEs), ownership concentration has negative and positive effects on their debt and cash reserves, respectively, consistent with controlling shareholders' incentives to stave off business failures and ride out adverse future circumstances. These effects are more pronounced if POEs have high market-to-book, suggesting that growth opportunities heighten their controlling shareholders' desire to avoid debt and hoard cash. Although ownership concentration has similar effects on debt and cash in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), these effects in SOEs appear to reflect management discretion or conservatism. Our evidence suggests that ownership concentration is a key driver of corporate finance in an emerging market, but private and state ownership concentrations have seemingly similar but qualitatively different consequences.     

Globalisation,poverty and corruption: Retarding progress in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Poverty and corruption can both immiserate a nation. Globalisation through open trade can potentially increase economic growth, providing employment and increased incomes to the poor. Corruption can dampen or even reduce these positive developments. Although globalisation is considered instrumental in development strategies, theoretically, the impact of globalisation on poverty reduction is ambiguous, an ambiguity that is also reflected in the empirical literature. The corruption-poverty literature clearly reveals that empirical findings on such association are at best heterogeneous. This article examines the effects of globalisation and corruption on poverty using time series data for South Africa for the period 1991–2016. Three indicators of poverty and recently developed measures of globalisation and corruption were employed in the logistic regression model used for estimation. The results confirm that globalisation reduces poverty while corruption intensifies it. The globalisation findings are robust across the different measures of poverty while unidirectional results show corruption increases poverty.     

DID Japanese main banks improve the technical efficiencies of their non-financial client firms in the 1980s?

This paper tests the hypothesis that the Japanese main bank system was not effective in enhancing technical efficiency in the non-financial corporate sector in the 1980s. Technical efficiency is defined as the ratio of a firm's actual to its potential output for given input levels and technology. During the eighties, it did not improve consistently and significantly in Japanese manufacturing firms which have close ties to a main bank.     

After the Black Death: labour legislation and attitudes towards labour in late-medieval western Europe

The Black Death spurred monarchies and city-states across much of Western Europe to formulate new wage and price legislation. These legislative acts splintered in a multitude of directions that to date defy any obvious patterns of economic or political rationality. A comparison of labour laws in England, France, Provence, Aragon, Castile, the Low Countries, and the city-states of Italy shows that these laws did not flow logically from new post-plague demographics and economics—the realities of the supply and demand for labour. Instead, the new municipal and royal efforts to control labour and artisans' prices emerged from fears of the greed and supposed new powers of subaltern classes and are better understood in the contexts of anxiety that sprung forth from the Black Death's new horrors of mass mortality and destruction, resulting in social behaviour such as the flagellant movement and the persecution of Jews, Catalans, and beggars.     

The impact of protection and concentration on the labour intensity of U.K. industries

fr]Résumé L’effet de la protection et de la concentration sur l’intensité de main d’oeuvre des industries du Royaume-Uni. — Cette étude teste empiriquement la proposition que la structure du tarif douanier dans les pays industrialisés permet une protection plus haute en faveur des industries relativement fortes à main d’oeuvre. L’étude suggère que non seulement le niveau de protection mais aussi le degré de la concurrence est associé avec les intensités de main d’oeuvre. En utilisant les données pour l’industrie du R. U. les résultats démontrent que l’usage de main d’oeuvre et les co?ts de main d’oeuvre varient positivement avec les taux de protection, nominale ou effective, et négativement avec les rapports de concentration du marché de la production locale.

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Zusammenfassung Der Einflu\ von Protektion und Konzentration auf die Arbeitsintensit?t britischer Industrien. — Diese Studie testet empirisch die Hypothese, da\ die Zolltarifstruktur in Industriel?ndern den relativ arbeitsintensiven Industrien einen gr?\eren Zollschutz gew?hrt. Sie weist darauf hin, da\ nicht nur zwischen dem Protektionsniveau und der Arbeitsintensit?t, sondern auch zwischen dem Wettbewerbsgrad und der Arbeitsintensit?t ein Zusammenhang besteht. Unter Verwendung von Daten aus der britischen Industrie zeigen die Ergebnisse, da\ Arbeitseinsatz und Arbeitskosten mit den (nominalen oder effektiven) Protektionsraten positiv und mit den Konzentrationsgraden auf dem heimischen Markt negativ korreliert sind.

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Resumen El impacto de protecci?n y concentratión sobre la intensidad de mano de obra en las industrias del Reino Unido. — Este estudio examina empiricamente la propositión que la estructura tarifaria de los países industriales brinda una protección mayor a las industrias relativamente más intensivas en mano de obra. El estudio sugiere que no solamente el nivel de la protección sino que también el grado de competencia se asocia con las intensidades de mano de obra. Utilizando datos de la industria del Reino Unido los resultados demuestran, que el uso de mano de obra y el costo varian positivamente con las tasas de protección, nominal o efectiva, y negativamente con las relaciones de concentración del mercado de productión doméstico.

     

Institutional wage-setting,labour demand and labour supply: Causal estimates from a South African pseudo-panel

Unemployment in South Africa has multiple causes. This article uses a district pseudo-panel to estimate the elasticity of labour demand, labour supply and unemployment with respect to wages. We assess whether hiring decisions are more sensitive to increases in wages of low-paid workers than high-paid workers, and whether wage growth prompts entry into the labour market. These channels combine to result in the positive causal effect of wage growth on unemployment. The research investigates whether these effects are dominated by districts in which unionisation rates are high and employment is concentrated in large firms. Wage growth of middle-paid to highly paid workers – as opposed to low-paid workers – reduces local labour demand and raises local unemployment. Bargaining arrangements correspond closely to the spatial wage distribution; in turn, a large part of the impact that wage growth has on labour market outcomes is determined by these wage-setting institutions.     

Globalisation,multinationals and productivity in Japan’s lost decade

This paper studies the process of plant exit and productivity growth in Japan during the ‘lost decade’. A productivity decomposition shows the low rate of productivity growth at the aggregate level to be due to slow within plant productivity growth and a small contribution from the entry and exit components. We find the causes of plant exit to be similar to results in other country contexts except we find no effect from import competition. Our results suggest that the low productivity growth is attributable to high entry barriers and little to the shutting of productive plants by MNEs.     

Lynchings,labour, and cotton in the US south: A reappraisal of Tolnay and Beck

I examine lynchings of African Americans in the US South from 1882 to 1930, more than twenty years after Tolnay and Beck’s (1995) seminal work. The authors claim that lynchings were due to economic competition between African American and white cotton workers. I confirm much of their original hypothesis with new data and techniques, and expand upon it, finding that another explanation, Williamson’s (1997) psychosexual one, might complement the economic one. I also discover that, in line with an economic competition framework, lynchings predict more black out-migration from 1920 to 1930, and higher state-level wages.     

H股、沪深B股运行特征及投资价值比较

H股和沪深B股市场3个子市场的涨涨跌跌既具有其独特的特点，也具有相当紧密的联系。对其之间的关系的研究对于跨市场投资、研判大势的变化具有重要意义。     

Down on the farm and barefoot in the kitchen: farm labour and domestic labour as forms of servitude

This article evaluates the claim that working conditions for farm workers and domestic workers in South Africa can be analysed in terms of the constitutional prohibition against servitude. Recent research and statistics suggest that for most of these workers the conditions fit the accepted definition of servitude. Although a finding that the constitutional right to be free from servitude has been violated is not a straightforward matter, the existing research provides the empirical and legal predicates for such a finding. The appropriate remedy for violations of the 1996 Constitution's prohibition against servitude is the creation, by the state, of a comprehensive and coordinated programme designed to realise the manumission of these workers. The use of law as a tool for social transformation has inherent limits. At a minimum, however, a legal finding of such a constitutional infraction obliges the state to employ all available means at its disposal to restore the dignity of these workers.

No one may be subjected to slavery, servitude or forced labour. (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Section 13)     

Agricultural labour and the incidence of surplus labour: experience from China during reform

This paper contributes to the pool of studies of rural underemployment and revisits a number of estimates of surplus agricultural labour in China. The study is devoted to the conceptualization, identification and measurement of surplus at regional, provincial and national levels by a stochastic frontier functional specification. The analysis indicates that the existing size of agricultural surplus labour is still significantly large with the continued practice of the household registration system and China's WTO membership.