Industrial de-licensing, trade liberalization, and skill upgrading in India

We investigate the relationship between industrial de-licensing, trade liberalization, and skill upgrading during the 1980s and 1990s among manufacturing plants in India. We use a unique dataset on India's industrial licensing regime to test whether industrial de-licensing during the 1980s and 1990s played a role in skill upgrading, as measured by the employment and wagebill shares of white-collar workers. In addition, we assess the relative contribution of industrial de-licensing and trade liberalization to skill upgrading. We identify two main channels through which industrial de-licensing affects skill upgrading: capital- and output-skill complementarities. Using both difference-in-differences as well as regression discontinuity techniques, we find two important results. First, after controlling for the size-based exemption rule that determined whether or not a plant faced licensing restrictions, industrial de-licensing during the 1980s appears to have increased the relative demand for skilled workers via capital- and output-skill complementarities. Capital- and output-skill complementarities exist for plants in both licensed and de-licensed industries but were stronger in de-licensed industries during the 1980s, prior to India's massive trade liberalization reforms in 1991. Second, regardless of de-licensing, capital- and output-skill complementarities are generally weaker after trade was liberalized during the early 1990s. Together, capital- and output-skill complementarities contributed 75% (57%) and 31% (29%), respectively, of the growth in the employment and wagebill shares of white-collar workers in de-licensed (licensed) industries before trade was liberalized. After trade liberalization, these contributions were smaller. This suggests that trade liberalization may not have played a major role in raising the relative demand for skilled labor during the early 1990s.     

SHORT-TERM CONTRACTS REGULATIONS AND DYNAMIC LABOUR DEMAND: THEORY AND EVIDENCE

We present a dynamic labour demand model where we evaluate the impact of employment regulations on permanent and temporary employment. We consider three different kinds of regulations, namely firing costs, hiring costs and a constraint on temporary contracts. These regulations differently affect the size and composition of employment. The theoretical results are interpreted and questioned on the basis of empirical evidence on the employment effects of the regulation reforms that occurred in the major European countries in the period 1983–1999. The empirical analysis is based on a new set of time‐varying indicators on permanent employment protection, fixed‐term contracts and temporary agency work regulations. We find evidence in support of the hypothesis that fixed‐term contracts have been effective stepping‐stones to permanent jobs during the period under observation. On the contrary, flexible temporary agency work regulations seem to induce a substitution of permanent with temporary contracts.     

Skill upgrading and exports

This paper analyzes the effects of international trade on the relative demand for skilled workers in Italian local labor markets. We find that exports cause a sizable skill upgrading in the labor force by increasing the average level of education of the workforce and the share of white-collars workers.     

OUTWARD INVESTMENT TO CHINA AND LOCAL INNOVATION OF TAIWANESE MANUFACTURING FIRMS

Does outward investment induce more domestic innovation or simply move local innovative efforts to foreign plants? This question is topical and relevant to Taiwan in view of its large share of outward investment concentrated in China and the special political relationship between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of outward investment in China on domestic innovative activity in Taiwan. Overall, this study finds that a positive relationship exists between outward investment and innovation in terms of R&D intensity and patents, implying that investing in China is part of a global resource allocation strategy of Taiwanese multinational enterprises to allocate production in China and pay more attention to innovative activity in their domestic plants. Moreover, the deregulation of the policy regarding investing in China in 2001 has induced an upsurge in investment in China, although it does not seem to have brought about an outflow of technologies.     

The effect of working time and labor force participation on unemployment: A new argument in an old debate

This paper introduces a new argument into the theoretical literature on labor market effects of changes in working hours and labor force participation. We advance a general equilibrium model in which increased labor supply reduces unskilled unemployment via consumer demand: longer work hours and higher labor force participation imply higher incomes and less (leisure) time. In consequence, home production is reduced in favor of outsourcing domestic tasks to the market, shifting consumer demand toward unskill-intensive goods. Relative demand for unskilled labor rises and unemployment falls.     

Endogenous phase switch in Baumol's service paradox model

This paper develops a two-sector model that considers Baumol's service paradox. The paper simultaneously incorporates two ideas about technological progress in the model: (1) the consumption of services contributes to human capital accumulation and (2) the production of manufacturing leads to technological progress due to learning-by-doing. Accordingly, productivity growth in both services and manufacturing is endogenously determined. We show that initially, a shift in the employment share toward the services sector decreases the per capita real GDP growth rate, but at some point in time, the shift begins to increase the growth rate. Therefore, we observe an endogenous phase switch from a phase where the employment shift toward services depresses the economy to another where the employment shift promotes the economy.     

Housing price and entrepreneurship in China

Housing price has increased dramatically in China during the past decade. The appreciation of house value could relax credit constraint and thus encourage entrepreneurship. However, a house serves as both an important investment channel and a prerequisite for marriage in China. The continuous high return of investment in housing and intensified marriage market competition make house purchase a priority for young people and their parents, which would crowd out entrepreneurial activities. Using two large datasets, we find that high housing price in general discourages entrepreneurial activities for urban adults. For house owners, while house value appreciation has a positive wealth effect, the ratio of mortgage over income has a negative effect. For non-owners, a higher ratio of housing price over income corresponds to a lower probability of entrepreneurship. This study highlights the negative consequences of surging housing price on entrepreneurship in developing countries.     

Firm performance and labour turnover: Evidence from the 2004 workplace employee relations survey

We explore the impact of labour turnover on firm performance by analysing the predictions of an extension of the efficiency wage model of [Salop, S., (1979) ‘A Model of the Natural Rate of Unemployment’, American Economic Review, 69, 117–125.] developed by [Garino, G. and Martin, C., (2008) ‘The Impact of Labour Turnover: Theory and Evidence from UK Micro Data’, Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis in the Social Sciences, 1(3), 81–104.], which separates incumbent and newly hired workers in the production function. Within this theoretical framework, an exogenous increase in the turnover rate can increase profits if firms do not choose wages unilaterally. We test the theoretical predictions of the model using UK cross-section establishment-level data, the 2004 Workplace and Employee Relations Survey. In accordance with our theoretical priors, the empirical results support the standard inverse relationship between the quit rate and firm performance where firms unilaterally choose the wage and generally support a positive relationship between firm performance and the quit rate where trade unions influence wage setting.     

Is migration a good substitute for education subsidies?

Assuming a given educational policy, the recent brain drain literature reveals that skilled migration can boost the average level of schooling in developing countries. In this paper, we introduce educational subsidies determined by governments concerned by the number of skilled workers remaining in the country. Our theoretical analysis shows that developing countries can benefit from skilled emigration when educational subsidies entail high fiscal distortions. However when taxes are not too distortionary, it is desirable to impede emigration and subsidize education. We then investigate the empirical relationship between educational subsidies and migration prospects, obtaining a negative relationship for 105 countries. Based on this result, we revisit the country specific effects of skilled migration upon human capital. We show that the endogeneity of public subsidies reduces the number of winners and increases the magnitude of the losses.     

Informal self-employment and macroeconomic fluctuations

Informal self-employment is a major source of employment in developing countries. Its cyclical behavior is important to our understanding of the functioning of LDC labor markets, but turns out to be surprisingly complex. We develop a flexible model with two sectors: a formal salaried (tradable) sector that may be affected by wage rigidities, and an informal (non tradable) self-employment sector faced with liquidity constraints to entry. This labor market is then embedded in a standard small economy macro model. We show that different types of shocks interact with different institutional contexts to produce distinct patterns of comovement between key variables of the model: relative salaried/self-employed incomes, relative salaried/self-employed sector sizes and the real exchange rate. Model predictions are then tested empirically for Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. We confirm episodes where the expansion of informal self-employment is consistent with the traditional segmentation views of informality. However, we also identify episodes where informal self-employment behaves “pro-cyclically”; here, informality is driven by relative demand or productivity shocks to the non tradable sector.     

Learning-by-exporting versus self-selection: New evidence for 19 sub-Saharan African countries

We examine learning-by-exporting effects of manufacturing and services firms in 19 sub-Saharan African countries. Comparing several outlier-robust estimators, our results provide evidence for positive effects in the manufacturing sector when using the MM estimator, but not in the services sector.     

North–South technology transfer in unionised multinationals

We study how incentives for North–South technology transfers in multinational enterprises are affected by labour market institutions. If workers are collectively organised, incentives for technology transfers are partly governed by firms' desire to curb trade union power. Higher union bargaining power in the North leads to more technology transfer along two different dimensions – skill upgrading of Southern workers and quality upgrading of products produced in the South – possibly to the extent that the utility of Northern workers decline. Policies to raise the wage levels of Southern workers might spur technology transfer if wages are initially very low, but have a dampening effect on North–South technology transfer once the Southern wage level has surpassed a certain threshold level. These conclusions are reached in a setting where a unionised multinational multiproduct firm produces vertically differentiated products in Northern and Southern subsidiaries.