Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Institutional Theory of Labor Markets and Wage Determination

Sydney and Beatrice Webb were among the most influential institutional labor economists of the pre‐World War II period yet this portion of their work has fallen out of sight for more than a half‐century. This paper reconstructs the Webbs' theory of labor markets and wage determination and explains how it differs from the rival neoclassical labor theory of Alfred Marshall. Key institutional components of their theory are developed, such as rent theory, institutional pyramid, chain of bargains, inequality of bargaining power, unemployed residuum, and common rule. The Webbs' theory is then used to explain the operation of labor markets and why in the absence of regulation they generate numerous social problems, including widespread poverty wages, excessive work hours and injuries, substantial unemployment, and human capital exploitation. Also described is the set of labor policies the Webbs advocate to solve these problems. Implications for modern labor theory and policy are developed.     

效率工资理论中的监督成本问题

在梳理效率工资理论相关理论文献基础上,本文研究效率工资理论中的监督成本问题.与现有效率工资理论不同的是,本文认为,失业并不是由雇主支付高于市场均衡工资所致,而是雇员的过度劳动引发的,在竞争劳动市场条件下,雇员劳动边际产出价值支付雇主的监督成本和雇员自身的劳动薪酬,作为回报,雇主给予雇员持续的、认可的工作条件和环境.在这交换中,雇员将出现超过一般强度的过度劳动.     

Public–Private Sector Wage Gap in Australia: Variation along the Distribution

Previous research on public–private wage differentials in Australia has focused on the mean of the conditional wage distribution. Using six waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, this study employs quantile regressions to examine whether the sectoral wage effect varies along the wage distribution. For females, public sector wage premiums are relatively stable for almost the entire distribution. For males, they decrease monotonically and are negative for the top half of the distribution. The decomposition results show that the observed differences in individuals and job characteristics explain a substantial proportion of the sectoral wage gap.     

Mortgage Markets and Inter-Regional Differences in Conventional Mortgage Terms

One of the purposes of the secondary mortgage market is to move funds from areas of capital surplus to areas of capital shortage. If mortgage funds move freely throughout the economy then the price of mortgage funds (the terms of the mortgage) should be the same everywhere. Thus, if the secondary mortgage market is efficient, mortgage terms should show less geographic variation after the secondary market began in 1970 than they showed before. In this paper, the efficiency of the market is tested in two stages. In the first, the average terms of mortgage loans in 1968 and 1978 are examined to determine whether they became more homogeneous after the secondary market was begun. In the second stage, the terms are modeled as a function of region, year by region interaction variables, foreclosure rates, the usury ceiling and the average cost of funds. This model is estimated and analyzed using a multivariate multiple regression technique.     

区域间产业转移定量测度研究——基于区域间投入产出表分析

有关产业转移的研究主要集中在从定性的角度探讨产业转移的类型、动因、模式、效应等,而对产业转移的定量测算却少有研究。本文在严格界定产业转移概念与内涵的基础上,利用区域间投入产出模型建立了定量测算区域间产业转移的方法,并结合中国区域间投入产出表,测算了中国1997—2007年区域间产业转移。结果发现,中国产业转移具有明显北上特征,产业向中西部地区转移的趋势并不明显。受消费品生产主要集中在东部地区的影响,消费带动下的产业转移表现为从中西部地区向东部地区转移的趋势。而在出口带动下,东部地区对中西部地区的能源资源需求增加,导致了中西部地区承接了大量资源型产业转移,但机械电子等技术密集型产业还在进一步向东部地区集中。因此,加快东部地区产业向中西部地区转移的步伐仍是中国区域均衡发展的重要任务之一。     

Menu Costs, Nominal Wage Revisions, and Intracontract Wage Behavior

We use data from indexed and nonindexed Canadian wage agreements to study the intracontract profile of nominal and real wages. Allowing for endogenous switching between the two indexation categories, we conclude that the number of nominal wage revisions depends on contract duration, expected inflation, and the cost of adjusting wages. Our results have implications for the menu cost, overlapping contracts, dynamic monopoly union, and efficient bargain literatures.     

Successful Wage Concertation: The Economic Effects of Wage Pacts and Their Alternatives

Recent debates on pacts have focused on the prerequisites for their emergence, whereas questions of their efficacy have receded into the background. In particular, systematic analyses of the effectiveness of pacts in terms of their capacity to enhance economic performance are missing. The aim of this article is therefore to assess the economic impact of pacts. As the majority of pacts concern wages, the assessment will concentrate on a comparison of the performance of pacts with alternative governance mechanisms for wage policies, that is, alternative pay‐setting modes. The findings show that when wage pacts are endowed with the ability to govern lower‐level pay determination, they are better at enhancing economic performance than other forms of coordination.     

Firm‐Size Wage Gaps along the Formal‐Informal Divide: Theory and Evidence

Observationally equivalent workers are paid higher wages in larger firms. This fact is often called the “firm‐size wage gap” and is regarded as a key empirical puzzle. Using microlevel data from Turkey, we document a new stylized fact: The firm‐size wage gap is more pronounced for informal (unregistered) jobs than for formal (registered) jobs. To explain this fact, we develop a two‐stage wage‐posting game with market imperfections and segmented markets, the solution to which produces wages as a function of firm size in a well‐defined subgame‐perfect equilibrium. The model proposes two explanations. First, taxes on formal employment generate a wedge between formal and informal size wage gaps. Thus, government policy can potentially affect the magnitude of the firm‐size wage gaps. The second explanation features a market‐based framework with strategic interactions. Relative to small firms, large firms typically post higher wages for both formal and informal jobs. A high‐wage formal job attracts a larger pool of applicants than a high‐wage informal job. The larger pool of applicants for the formal job, in turn, allows the firm to somewhat lower the initial wage offer, while this second‐round effect is negligible for informal jobs. As a result, size differentials are lower in formal jobs than informal jobs. We argue that the observed patterns in the use of social connections in job search and heterogeneity in job preferences can be used to justify the validity of this second mechanism.     

泛珠三角地区产业转移趋势与动向识别研究

用综合区位商对泛珠三角地区的区际产业转移进行初步识别.对初步识别中发现的具有转移倾向的产业,进一步用产品生命周期理论进行筛选,找出符合区际产业转移特征的产业及具有承接趋势的省份.最后利用计量经济中因果关系检验,对存在区际产业转移关系的省份进行综合区位商变量的因果关系检验.研究结果表明,泛珠三角地区内传统的外向型制造产业已呈现明显的转移趋势和动向;新兴制造业的转移趋势初显,但转移动向尚不明确;同时部分技术型制造业具有跨区转移的可能性.     

Unions,Wage Gaps,and Wage Dispersion: New Evidence from the Americas

Using a common methodology, the effects of unions on wage levels and wage dispersion are estimated for two neighboring countries, Bolivia and Chile, and for the United States. The analysis shows that unions have broadly similar effects on the wage distribution within these three economies. The findings suggest that the political economy of unions, coupled with market constraints on labor costs, produce commonality in union wage effects that transcend other economic and institutional differences.     

Industry Wage Differentials and Wait Unemployment

This analysis uses individual-level data to test the industry wage differential-wait unemployment hypothesis. Using the 1988 Bureau of Labor Statistics Displaced Worker Survey, it examines the role of predisplacement industry in determining the length of jobless spells and finds some evidence consistent with wait unemployment. The analysis also considers the incidence of joblessness separately from duration and finds that factors positively related to the occurrence of a spell are not necessarily positively related to its ultimate length.     

Job Attributes and Federal Wage Differentials

As part of the debate on how to treat attributes of a job (as opposed to a worker) when measuring federal differentials, the focus has been on the proper treatment of employer size. Using employer size, we highlight the two extremes in the literature of either holding job attributes constant or of assuming attributes do not transfer between sectors. A third alternative-estimating the extent to which the attribute will transfer-is much closer in value to that generated by holding employer size constant.     

Employment Contacts and Minority-White Wage Differences

We study effects of job contacts on wages in inner-city Boston in 1989 and in the 1982 NLSY. Race/Hispanicity differences in wages are not explained by an absence of contacts among minority youths. Rather, in the Boston data, lower wages of black youths are explained by lower "returns" to their contacts. In the NLSY there is little evidence of lower return to black youths' contacts, but there is evidence of lower returns to Hispanic youths' contacts.     

Internal Wage Structures and Organizational Performance

This paper considers whether a hierarchical or compressed wage structure is positively associated with relatively high levels of organizational performance. To date, there has been little empirical research in this area (especially in the UK). Thus we present an operational measure of a compressed/hierarchical wage structure, using UK manufacturing micro–data in five industrial sectors, and examine its relationship with labour productivity. We find that the wage compression argument holds in one sector but not for the majority of sectors and that taking into account other, intra–industry characteristics, namely size and ownership differences, further weakens the relationship.