Wage determination and sex discrimination in Japan

In spite of a significant contribution by female workers to the post-war economic expansion of Japan, the average female wage remains no more than half the average male wage. In his study, Nanshi Matsuura found that workers' wages are mostly determined by non-job-performance-related factors, some of which are based on discriminatory social elements.     

Wage determination in the union and nonunion sectors.

This study contains estimates of wage equations for white male union and nonunion employees. The authors find that nonunion wages are generally more responsive than union wages to individuals' education and experience and to regional price-level variation. Despite those differences, however, estimates of union-nonunion wage differentials based on these separate equations do not differ greatly from a differential obtained from a union dummy variable in an equation based on combined union and nonunion observations. Union-nonunion differentials vary widely across occupational groups and are generally larger in the lower skilled and more highly unionized occupations. The results for manufacturing, for which additional industry data are available, indicate a negative impact of high concentration ratios on the wages of all workers and a greater impact of establishment size on nonunion than on union wages. Data were drawn from the May 1973 Current Population Survey.     

Wage determination in late socialism: The case of Poland

Does economic transition necessitate a profound change in the inter-industry wage structure? This paper argues that principles of wage determination in centrally planned economies were not basically different from those prevailing in market economies. Even if the center became involved in wage setting, reward for human capital and the compensating differential had to be taken into consideration. Moreover, market power led to rent-sharing via wage bargaining and efficiency wages. Hence, this paper claims that wages in socialist economies were determined by similar factors to those in market economies. This is supported by comparison of inter-industry wage structures between socialist and capitalist countries and by results of the estimation of the wage equation for Poland. There is a noticeable degree of similarity in wage structures generated by both systems.I started this paper when I was a research visitor at the Centre of Economic Performance, London School of Economics and completed it when I was a visiting fellow at Princeton University. While at Princeton University I was financed as a Fulbright Fellow.I am grateful to David Card, Hartmut Lehmann, Marcus Rubin, Mark Schaffer and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments and suggestions. I also wish to thank the participants of the seminars at the Industrial Relations Section of Princeton University and at the University of Maryland for useful discussion. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Pay determination in small firms in the UK: the case of the response to the National Minimum Wage

Pay determination in small firms is widely expected to follow the dictates of the market. Research on 81 firms in three competitive sectors finds, instead, loosely defined and variable pay structures. This variability is explained in terms of the interplay between labour and product markets, firms’ own choices, and ‘shocks’ such as the National Minimum Wage. This analysis thus contributes to developing institutional theories of labour markets and pay systems.     

Wage and hour violations in urban labour markets: a comparison of Los Angeles,New York and Chicago

This article compares violations of minimum wage laws and other labour standards in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. Los Angeles has the highest violation rates, due to such factors as its industrial composition and disproportionately large number of small establishments, as well as its vast unauthorised immigrant population. In addition, Los Angeles’ higher rates reflect the stricter legal standards in California. We conclude that, although stronger workplace laws and regulations are crucial, in the absence of effective enforcement, they may fail to prevent workplace violations.     

转型期城市家庭性别秩序调查

近年来,城市中未就业的女性数量呈现上升趋势。针对这一现象,在对石家庄市39位全职太太访谈的基础上,分析了全职太太产生的社会结构背景及这一群体对家庭角色的认知。通过对家庭中夫妻互动过程的考察,在微观层次上分析了全职太太家庭的性别秩序。     

效率工资、效率工资增长模型

本文首先介绍了效率工资的经典模型——夏皮罗一斯蒂格里兹模型,探讨了效率工资的形成以及非自愿失业出现的原因,及失业的“威胁”作用。另外,本文在符合效率工资模型的基本假定条件下,融合代理理论和强制性储蓄假说,构建了效率工资增长模型,提出了效率工资增长模型的关键等式,且由等式隐含地决定了效率工资的最优增长率。此外,还分别分析了效率工资的最优增长率与贴现率、厂商生产技术和工人偏好之间的关系。最后,探讨了最优就业路径和调整成本问题等等。     

Rural‐urban migration and gender division of labor in transitional China

Over the last two decades, social and economic changes in transitional economies have produced many new outcomes. In this article, I examine some of the ways in which China's transition has produced gendered outcomes and highlight evidence of these outcomes. I argue that during transition the state has shifted its goals to economic ones, but unlike capitalist economies it still has at its disposal instruments of social control. Peasants are made more vulnerable and must rely on migrant work for survival, but their low institutional status relegates them to outsider status in urban areas. These circumstances, together with socio‐cultural traditions that constrain women's mobility and endorse stratifications, have enabled the development of a labor regime that fosters segmentation and division of labor. Peasant migrants' reliance on social network further reinforces segregation in the urban labor market. Using multiple sources of macro‐level and field surveys, I examine both quantitative and qualitative evidence of gender segregation and division of labor. The findings show that a high degree of gender segregation among rural‐urban migrants exists in the urban labor market, that peasant women's urban work opportunities are short‐lived, and that upon marriage women migrants are relegated back to the village and to the ‘inside’, in part to sustain gender division of labor as a household strategy. Au cours des deux dernières décennies, les gouvernements de transition ont connu des évolutions économiques et sociales aux conséquences nouvelles et variées. Cet article examine comment la transition chinoise a produit des effets différenciés selon le sexe, et en détaille la réalité. Durant la phase transitoire, l'É tat a transposé ses objectifs sur le terrain économique mais, contrairement aux pays capitalistes, il dispose encore d'instruments de régulation sociale. Rendue plus vulnérable, la population rurale doit compter sur les travailleurs migrants pour sa survie; cependant, une fois en ville, leur faible statut institutionnel en fait des travailleurs ‘en marge’. Alliée aux traditions socio‐culturelles qui limitent la mobilité des femmes et nourrissent les stratifications, cette situation a permis la création d'un système d'emploi tendant à la segmentation et la division du travail. La dépendance des migrants ruraux par rapport au réseau social vient renforcer la ségrégation sur le marché du travail urbain. A partir d'études de terrain et de niveau global, l'article explore les éléments quantitatifs et qualitatifs de ségrégation sexuelle et division du travail. D'après les résultats, il existe un degré important de ségrégation selon le sexe parmi les migrants sur le marché de l'emploi urbain, les possibilités de travail en ville sont de courte durée pour les paysannes et, quant au mariage, les migrantes sont ramenées à leur village et à‘l'intérieur’, en partie pour soutenir une stratégie domestique de division sexuée du travail.     

Wage delegation in the field

By conducting a natural field experiment, we analyze the managerial policy of delegating the wage choice to employees. We find that this policy enhances performance significantly, which is remarkable since allocated wage premiums of the same size have no effect at all. Observed self‐imposed wage restraints and absence of negative peer effects speak in favor of wage delegation, although the chosen wage premium levels severely dampen its net value. Additional experimental and survey data provide important insights into employees' underlying motivations.     

Wage Determination: Reconciling Theory and Practice

Abstract . The marginal productivity theory of wages and employment has proved, over the years, to be a useful basis for analyzing wage and employment relationships. But in the real world wage rates and the size of the work force appear to be set by other considerations. The article reviews efforts by economists to take these into account. Evidence of the ability of management to manipulate wages is presented. An attempt is made to reconcile practice and theory by taking into account sociological and psychological variables and harmonizing them with the economic variables.     

Wage trends and policies in China: dynamics and contradictions

This article considers the central dilemmas of wage policies in state socialist economies. It reviews the pre-1978 Chinese low-wage and high employment policy and details the development of Chinese wage policies during the 1980s. The dynamics and contradictions which have resulted in inflation, declining labour productivity, falling real wages and social tensions are analysed.     

Specification of wage determination mechanisms in urban labor markets

Research into wage determination and inflation at the level of the urban labor market has generally followed a Phillips curve adaptive expectations framework. This paper explores the accuracy of such specifications when national and intermarket linkages are ignored, and extends such specifications to incorporate these linkages. The present research also addresses the impact of serial correlation problems and time series aggregation bias on the ability to identify the local wage determination and inflation mechanism. The estimation results for both annual and quarterly specifications indicate that there is virtually no support for a Phillips curve adaptive expectations hypothesis when external linkages are included in the equations. It is demonstrated that specification errors and serial correlation problems are probably responsible for many of the contradictory and inconclusive results obtained in previous studies.     

Efficiency Wages and the Economic Effects of the Minimum Wage: Evidence from a Low‐Wage Labour Market*

This article exploits a natural experiment provided by the 1999 introduction of the UK National Minimum Wage (NMW) to test for efficiency wage considerations in a low‐wage sector, the UK residential care homes industry. The empirical results provide support to the wage‐supervision trade‐off prediction of the shirking model and suggest that the NMW may have operated as an efficiency wage in the care homes sector, leading to a reduction in supervision costs. These findings can explain earlier evidence suggesting that although the NMW introduction increased wages dramatically in the care homes sector, it generated only moderate negative employment effects.     

Russia: Collapse and Recovery

The financial collapse in Russia in the summer of 1998 was a profound shock to the efforts to reform the Russian economy. It was also thought that it would seriously worsen the short- and medium-term outlook for growth and inflation. In this article, Brian Henry and Evgeny Gavrilenkov argue that the most recent data show that the more pessimistic of these views were probably misplaced; modest but significant growth has been evident since the collapse without substantial increases in inflation. The real improvements, in so far as they are simply the results of devaluation and the beneficial effects of the increase in the world oil price, could prove to be temporary, although there are more hopeful indicators with the recent increases in investment. But to ensure sustainable recovery, fundamental improvements in the structure of the economy, especially in the areas of industrial and financial restructuring, are needed. Meanwhile, they argue that it would be very beneficial for medium-term prospects if progress is made on the twin problems of external debt reduction and tax reform.     

Reconciling the Wage Curve and the Phillips Curve

Abstract.  The wage curve is the negative relationship that links wage levels to the unemployment rate. It fits accurately with modern non-competitive labour-market models, but goes against a Phillips-curve modelling, because the latter ties wage growth to the unemployment rate. In this article, we present a comprehensive review of these non-competitive models, highlighting recent contributions that try to eliminate the possible 'gap' that exists between the concepts of the wage curve, on the one hand, and the Phillips curve, on the other.     

Political devolution and employment relations in Great Britain: the case of the Living Wage

This article examines the role of the devolved governments of Scotland and Wales in promoting the voluntary Living Wage. It shows that active promotion of the Living Wage standard has emerged in both countries from a broader commitment to an economic policy of ‘inclusive growth’. Employment law is not a devolved matter, and the article identifies a broad range of economic incentives and soft forms of regulation that have been used by the devolved governments to promote the Living Wage in the absence of hard power to legislate. Non-legislative forms of state intervention are often regarded sceptically, but the article shows that the attempts of devolved governments to spread the Living Wage have been impactful, particularly in Scotland.     

The Harvard Living Wage Campaign: Origins and Strategy

A member of the Harvard living wage campaign explains its internal development. Begun in 1998, the campaign drew inspiration from the global justice movement, organized labor’s reawakening, and the flowering of college anti-sweatshop groups. Locally, it responded to a decade of attacks on Harvard workers’ livelihoods and unions, as well as the enactment of a living wage ordinance by the city of Cambridge. The article recounts the campaign’s organizing strategy and tactics, its oppositional relationship to the Harvard administration, and the university’s response. Finally, it discusses the campaign’s limited victory on wages and contracting policies, as well as its significance for campus unions, students who participated, and student-labor mobilization beyond Harvard.     

Wage and Price Inflation in Poland in the Period of Transition: The Cointegration Analysis

The paper focuses on the long run relationships between wages, prices and labour productivity in the Polish economy by applying recent developments in the field of multivariate cointegration analysis. We followed modeling strategy which is suggested by Greenslade et al. (1999) and present all stages of the analysis which leads to the fully economically identified system of equations representing long run relationships. The investigation is based on the quarterly data from 1992.1 to 1999.2 which covers the period of transition of the Polish economy from the centrally planned system towards the market one. Basing on the empirical results we can argue that wages (costs) were one of the main forces driving inflation in Poland during that period. Also labor productivity proved to be stimulated by the increase of the real wages. On the other hand the hypothesis concerning the relationship between wages and unemployment was rejected by the data.