PARTICIPATION IN WORKPLACE EMPLOYER‐SPONSORED TRAINING IN CANADA: ROLE OF FIRM CHARACTERISTICS AND WORKER ATTRIBUTES

In this work, we study the role of firm characteristics and worker attributes in determining participation in workplace employer‐sponsored training in Canada using the Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) of Statistics Canada. We attempt to answer the following questions using the rich information of firms that are available in WES data: Does firms' provision of workplace training encourage workers' participation in Canada? How do changes in market competition, organizational changes, and technological innovation affect workers' participation in workplace training in Canada? We find that firms' training provision significantly affects workers' participation in Canada. We also find that increased international competition, organizational changes, and technological innovation are significantly correlated with workers' training participation at workplaces. We note that workers in some sectors and in smaller firms have lower workplace training incidence and older, part‐time, production and marketing/sales workers and workers with preschool children participate less in workplace training. (JEL J080, J240, J290)     

Product market competition,incentives and fraudulent behavior

The present paper studies incentive provision in a model where a manager can affect the firm's stock price by exerting unobservable effort and through costly, deceptive signalling and investigates the role product market competition plays in shaping shareholders' trade-off between inducing effort and fraud.     

International trade,job training,and labor reallocation

A large literature studies the impact of increased import competition on workers' outcomes, however, relatively few studies examine which policies can aid workers displaced by trade. In this article, we evaluate the impact of an industrial job training program in Brazil on workers displaced from manufacturing sectors. We find that industrial training increases the probability of re-entry into the formal labor market 1 year after displacement by about 17 percentage points and is even more effective for workers displaced from sectors exposed to high import competition. This effect is mainly associated with workers switching sectors and occupations after training.     

Career concerns and firm – sponsored general training

This article studies the provision of firm-sponsored general training in the presence of workers' career concerns. The model builds on the argument that the provision of general training reduces the employer's monopsony power. In this context, it is shown that the worker's implicit incentives to provide effort increase with the level of acquired general skills. The employer takes this reciprocal effect into account and becomes more willing to invest in general human capital. When the positive effect of training on worker's effort incentives is strong enough, the equilibrium outcome may involve overinvestment relative to the first-best. It is also shown that a sharper increase in worker's power associated with additional training may either strengthen or weaken the employer's investment incentives and can have either beneficial or detrimental effects on welfare.     

Jean Tirole,Nobel Prize Winner

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for 2014 to Jean Tirole, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), Toulouse, France ‘for his analysis of market power and regulation’. What commonly characterizes Jean Tirole's work is a combination of rigorous scientific analysis of markets and provision of useful scientific insights and policy guidance for regulation and competition policy in such markets. This paper focuses on two of Tirole's papers, both co-written with Jean-Charles Rochet, which probably best exemplify his policy-oriented research. It summarizes and then explains how the theory that these papers develop led to the implementation of a new policy regulating the payment card industry in the European Union.     

Training and worker effort: a signalling perspective

Abstract This paper analyzes the interaction between firms’ investment in general skills training and workers’ incentives. It shows that when a firm has an informational advantage over its workers, its provision of free general skills training can serve as a signal that there will be a long‐term relationship between the firm and its workers. This signal induces the workers to exert more effort in learning firm‐specific skills, which enhances the firm's profits. In contrast with most of the existing literature, the model implies that firms may provide free general skills training even if there is no labour market friction.     

我国政府供给偏好决定的一个经济学解释--政治均衡与经济效率

政府供给偏好包括政府供给的规模偏好与结构偏好,它们是社会各方政治影响力相互冲突和竞争的结果。我们通过构建“执政能力函数”,从最简单的消费者集团与纳税人集团政治影响力制衡模型,到多集团、多政府供给项目下的政府供给结构决定模型,再到官僚控制下的政府供给偏好决定模型,逐步阐释了政治均衡决定资源配置的低效率属性,进而说明,相对于市场,政府供给规模和范围边界的收敛趋势会促进社会资源配置效率的改进。在我国当前社会经济转型过程中,政府供给偏好的形成具有更多的动态特征,从提高整个社会资源配置效率和建设和谐社会的目标来看,公共决策的民主化虽然能够在一定程度上缓解政治均衡的低效率,但无法从根本上消除政治均衡决定资源配置的低效率属性,因此我国当前政府职能转型的核心重点不在于公共决策的完全民主化,而在于协调政府供给范围调整与市场经济深化的进程和路径。公平竞争、自发扩展的市场经济秩序是市场“内生型”政府供给偏好形成的基础。     

Endorse or Not to Endorse: Understanding the Determinants of Newspapers’ Likelihood of Making Political Recommendations

This article investigates the determinants of newspapers’ provision for political opinion. I empirically examine the role of newspapers’ political preferences and market competition on newspapers’ decision to make endorsements. Regression results suggest that market competition turns newspapers more likely to make endorsements. Results from a simple model show that newspapers’ ideology determine their endorsements, making partisan papers more likely to make political recommendations and endorse challengers than non‐partisan newspapers.     

EXCESSIVE COMPETITION ON HEADLINE PRICES

In a variety of purchasing situations, consumers may focus primarily on headline prices, disregarding the full costs associated with acquiring and maintaining a product or service contract. Even when this is the case, the literature has delineated various circumstances where intense competition can protect consumers through the so-called “waterbed effect.” In this article, we however show that when consumers have context-dependent preferences, competition may rather exacerbate their and society's harm by distorting product choice and provision. Then, consumer protection policy must sufficiently constrain hidden fees so that competition, along with high-quality firms' incentives to educate consumers, can restore efficiency.     

Trade liberalisation,market competition and wage inequality in China's manufacturing sector

Economic reforms of the late 1980s have contributed to rapid economic growth in China. While the overall standard of living has improved, economic growth has also resulted in an increase in income inequality. Rising income inequality can increase social tensions that can impede further economic growth. By making use of firm level panel data, this paper focuses on the impact of increased market competition and trade liberalisation on skilled–unskilled wage inequality in China's manufacturing sector. A theoretical model is used to argue that trade liberalisation and market competition can affect skilled–unskilled wage inequality. Based on this result, an econometric model is specified. The empirical analysis presented in this paper shows that increased trade liberalisation has contributed to an increase in skilled–unskilled wage inequality in China's manufacturing sector. However, increase in market competition has the opposite effect.     

BANK COMPETITION AND FINANCIAL STABILITY: LIQUIDITY RISK PERSPECTIVE

We study whether competition affects banks' liquidity risk‐taking, which was at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis. We find that banks with greater market power take more liquidity risk, implying that decreased competition leads to financial fragility. During a financial crisis, however, the effect of market power on liquidity risk varies across bank size. Small banks with greater market power reduce liquidity risk while large banks with greater market power do not change their liquidity risk‐taking behavior. This suggests that enhanced charter values due to reduced competition lowers small banks' risk‐shifting incentives when their default risk significantly increases during a crisis. (JEL G21, G28)     

Controlling monopoly power in a double-auction market experiment

There is robust evidence in the experimental economics literature showing that monopoly power is affected by trading institutions. In this paper, we study whether trading institutions themselves can shape agents' market behavior through the formation of anchors. We recreate experimentally five different double-auction market structures (perfect competition, perfect competition with quotas, cartel on price, cartel on price with quotas, and monopoly) in a within-subject design, varying the order of markets implementation. We investigate whether monopoly power endures the formation of price anchors emerged in previously implemented market structures. Results from our classroom experiments suggest that double-auction trading institutions succeed in preventing monopolists from exploiting their market power. Furthermore, the formation of price anchors in previously implemented markets negatively impacts on monopolists' power in later market structures.     

General training and oligopsony

I consider a duopsony model of a general skilled labour market. The source of the market power of the firms is the mobility cost of the workers. In the model general training is inefficient and the firms bear a share of the general training cost. If capital market imperfections prevent workers from investing in human capital, the imperfect competition in the skilled labour market compared with the perfect competition promotes general training. In order to remove the inefficiency of personnel training it is necessary to link together a minimum wage for skilled workers and loans to apprentices.     

Sick pay provision in experimental labor markets

Sick pay is a common provision in most labor contracts. This paper employs an experimental gift exchange environment to explore two related questions using both managers and undergraduates as subjects. First, do workers reciprocate generous sick pay with higher effort? Second, do firms benefit from offering sick pay? Our main finding is that workers do reciprocate generous sick pay with higher effort. However, firms benefit from offering sick pay in terms of profits only if there is competition among firms for workers. Consequently, competition leads to a higher voluntary provision of sick pay relative to a monopsonistic labor market.     

Advertising as special service provision under non-price vertical restraints: exclusive territories in beer distribution

This article presents statistical evidence which supports Lester Telser's 1960 hypothesis, that when vertical restraints are made illegal, intrabrand competition results which diminishes the provision of point-of-sale, special services. This results because of the public goods problem exhibited by the special services. Increased special service provision by the national manufacturer must then substitute for the special service provision left unfilled by the wholesaler. Evidence relating to the efficacy of such substitution is also presented.     

Public capital and imperfect competition

In this paper we consider a macroeconomic model in which public capital is a productive input and there is monopolistic competition in the product market. We analyze the effects of a permanent variation in public capital investment both in the short and in the long run. Finally, we show that the optimal provision of public capital under imperfect competition is higher than that associated with the first-best policy.     

Hospital competition,spillovers and provision of uncompensated care

Using data for California from 2005 until 2010, we investigate to what extent market competition and the presence of non-profits in the area may play a role in equilibrium uncompensated care (UC) levels, allowing those effects to differ according to the hospital’s ownership type. Previous studies have not explored the potential spillover effects from non-profit hospitals into the hospital decision of UC provision. We find evidence that regions with more non-profits experienced larger increases in UC levels, and even more in less concentrated markets. Our results also indicate that UC provision by for-profit hospitals decreases the larger the presence of non-profits in the region, and this effect is magnified when competition is more intense. We, therefore, find no positive spillover effects of non-profits into the hospital decision of UC provision, which may help us to understand the recent trends in UC levels.     

Sidgwick and Edgeworth on indeterminacy in the labour market

Commentators have underlined Sidgwick's influence on Edgeworth's thinking and more particularly on New and Old Methods of Ethics (1877). But have failed to notice that Sidgwick remained a major reference in Mathematical Psychics (1881). Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to show that, in this book, Edgeworth wanted to refine upon the problem of wages addressed by Sidgwick in 1879. The thesis of the paper is that Sidgwick and Edgeworth's disagreement as to the role of open competition in the resolution of indeterminacy in the labour market stems from two different notions of competition. This latter can be seen as a differentiation process, as in Sidgwick's, or as a replication mechanism, as in Edgeworth's.     

Competition and Industrial Organisation in Transition Markets: What Can We Derive from Empirical Studies?

Competition is the basic concept for both industrial organisation theory and institutional economics. Transition economies, including Russia, are natural laboratories allowing us to trace the emergence of competition, the influence of competition on the conduct of market participants, the relationship between competition and market structure and the institutional foundation of competition. This article provides a summary of the results of empirical studies in the above area. We try to explain some puzzles concerning the influence of competition on the conduct of Russian market participants and interpret the results in the framework of institutional and industrial economics. Overall, the results of empirical studies can be generalised as follows. Competition in Russian markets has been gaining momentum over the last 15 years. The results of empirical studies have confirmed the assumption that competition is an incentive for active restructuring of privatised enterprises. Many of the data collected are evidence in favour of the endogenous market structure approach. From the institutional viewpoint, the history of the evolution of Russia's transition economy shows interdependence between private property and competition: better protection of property rights is a precondition for the development of competition. At the same time, the model of corporate governance that allows the property rights of private owners to be protected in the Russian institutional environment restricts organisational diversity and therefore competition in Russian markets.     

Welfare effects of competition for FDI between technologically asymmetric countries with varying trade costs

Given the traditional argument that host countries' excessive competition for FDI (foreign direct investment) deteriorates the host countries' welfare, this paper examines the impact of policy competition for FDI on social welfare considering varying trade costs. Based on a model where two technologically asymmetric countries compete for FDI, we determine an equilibrium where a multinational firm relocates to a less efficient country. Moreover, we demonstrate that the policy competition for FDI between less integrated economies might improve social welfare when the multinational firm relocates to a country with a lower technology and a less competitive market. Nonetheless, we show that the traditional argument can be true when the policy competition for FDI between highly integrated economies deteriorates host countries' welfare, as supported by the empirical evidences of moderated competition for FDI within EU member countries.