Offshoring and unemployment: The role of search frictions labor mobility

In a two-sector, general-equilibrium model with labor-market search frictions, we find that the wage increases and sectoral unemployment decreases upon offshoring in the presence of perfect intersectoral labor mobility. If, as a result, labor moves to the sector with the lower (or equal) vacancy costs, there is an unambiguous decrease in economywide unemployment. With imperfect intersectoral labor mobility, unemployment in the offshoring sector can rise, with an unambiguous unemployment reduction in the non-offshoring sector. Imperfect labor mobility can result in a mixed equilibrium in which only some firms offshore, with unemployment in the offshoring sector rising.     

DUAL LABOR MARKETS AND THE IMPACT OF MINIMUM WAGES ON ATYPICAL EMPLOYMENT

We present a growth model that contains minimum wages as one important element of a flexicurity economy where we allow for heterogeneous labor and for real wage rigidities. We show that the wage‐setting process, in its reference to the reservation wage of the first labor market, is crucial as regards stability of the economy and persistent or explosive oscillations may occur, in particular when the influence of the reservation wage on wage formation in the first labor market becomes too strong. Further, minimum wages can alleviate the negative consequences of economic downturns and help stabilize the economy.     

农民工流动行为合理预期模型研究

农民工流动行为的合理预期是家庭增收最大化,家庭收入最大化与劳动力转移的数量、预期转移的区域和职业的工资水平相关。进一步分析表明,劳动力的自身素质在流动过程中起主要作用     

Agglomeration, Relative Wage Costs and Foreign Direct Investment—Evidence from Swedish MNCs 1974–1998

This paper examines the relationship between agglomeration economies and relative wage costs in influencing location of multinational corporations. An inflow of firms to certain regions and industries is likely to increase demand for labor. If mobility of labor is low increased costs can be expected to deter additional inflows of firms, albeit agglomeration economies may compensate for higher wages. Despite its important policy implications this relationship has to our knowledge not been exposed to empirical testing. The empirical analysis finds that foreign direct investment has become increasingly sensitive to differences in wage cost across industrialized countries, but also that agglomeration economies related to knowledge externalities positively influences higher costs. The relative strength of these two forces impacts the spatial distribution of production.

Does globalization weaken labor unions in developing countries?

For a developing economy with a given urban wage rate, globalization in capital markets strengthens labor unions. This result hinges on the fixed urban wage rate, which leads to a constant capital–labor ratio in the urban sector. Globalization via capital inflows not only enhances the employment effect of unionization but also reduces the rent-shifting related loss in production inefficiency to domestic capital, lending a support to labor unions for developing economies. This result is contrary to the common belief that labor unions tend to be weakened during the globalization process observed after 1980s in many developed economies.     

FISCAL POLICY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE IMPERFECT LABOR MARKET

Using a simple overlapping generations model with the growth engine of public capital by incorporating the union wage setting, we examine the effects of fiscal policies on unemployment, economic growth and welfare in the imperfect labor market. We demonstrate that the growth‐maximizing tax in the imperfect labor market is larger than that of the perfect labor market. However, as the allocation ratio of public capital increases, the growth‐maximizing tax in the imperfect labor market approaches that of the perfect labor market, thus reducing the unemployment rate. The policy implications of the intergenerational welfare aspects are also mentioned.     

A quantitative analysis of employment guarantee programmes with an application to rural India

This paper examines the welfare effects of a workfare programme in an economy where agents face exogenous income shocks and are unable to insure themselves through private markets. A dynamic general equilibrium model is calibrated using data from two ICRISAT villages in the Indian state of Maharashtra, which had a functioning Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS), in the period 1979–84. The optimal wage and the welfare gains of the program depend on how productive the EGS is, relative to the private sector. When agents are paid the optimal wage rate, they do not hold the non-interest-bearing asset for precautionary savings and all insurance is provided by the EGS. There are significant welfare gains from paying the optimal wage rate as opposed to simply paying the marginal product of labour in the EGS.     

Economic liberalisation,gender wage inequality and welfare

The article develops a 3-sector general equilibrium model appropriate for economies with female labour oriented export sector to examine the effects of economic liberalisation policies on gender based wage inequality. It is assumed that there exist disparities in efficiencies between male and female labour due to skewed access to education and health, and differences in their spending patterns leading to differential effects of respective wages on their nutrition. The results indicate that tariff cut may reduce gender wage inequality, but may have detrimental effects on welfare; while foreign capital inflow may accentuate the inequality, despite improving the welfare of the economy. However, government policies to increase the provision of education and health have favourable effects on gender wage inequality but may be welfare deteriorating. Thus, the article provides a theoretical explanation to empirical evidences of diverse effects of liberalisation on gender wage inequality and explains the possibility of a trade-off between gender inequality and social welfare.     

Multinational enterprises and wage costs: vertical FDI revisited

This study explores how wage costs for high-skilled and less-skilled labor in host countries affect the level of affiliate activities conducted by foreign MNEs. We find support for vertical FDI, in the sense that more FDI is conducted in countries where less-skilled labor is relatively cheap. In addition, we find that skilled-wage cost premia also affect FDI activities previously associated with horizontal FDI, i.e. local affiliate sales. Consequently, the potential effects of relative wage costs on MNE activities are large. Rough calculations suggest that more than 20 percent of US affiliate sales in 1998 can be attributed to skilled-wage cost premia.     

Time to Close the Opportunity Gap

Our economy suffers from a large and widening “Growth Gap” between the current recovery, which started in June 2009, and an average post-1960 recovery. In this context, President Obama raised the issues of economic inequality and mobility. In the United States over the last few decades, income inequality increased modestly, but economic mobility remained stable. First, this address presents five areas in which the federal government can help to ameliorate economic inequality and enhance economic mobility. They concern the federal tax system, the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate, federal unfunded liabilities, and regulatory reform. Second, Congress has a role to play in education reform and reducing the burden of college debt. Third, increasing economic mobility requires Congress to address the “poverty traps” for low-income individuals that are imposed by the interaction between taxes and the eligibility for social welfare benefits. Fourth, as a society, we must encourage the young to get their first job, a problem made worse by the proposed increase in the federal minimum wage. Fifth, we must open new markets for exports.     

Trade‐related Job Loss,Wage Insurance and Externalities: An Ex Ante Efficiency Rationale for Wage Insurance

The extension of adjustment assistance to those who have suffered trade‐related job displacement is widely supported on both sides of the economics of globalisation debate. The form that such assistance should take, namely wage insurance, is also the subject of wide agreement. Nevertheless, the formal economic rationales offered for such a policy are varied, including political economy arguments, equity arguments and market failure/ex post efficiency arguments. This note proposes an ex ante efficiency‐based rationale for the provision of adjustment assistance in the specific form of wage insurance. Job displacement imposes pecuniary externalities on displaced workers, which, in a complete markets setting, induce only shifts along the ex ante Pareto‐efficient frontier. However, when markets are incomplete, pecuniary externalities become welfare‐relevant. Without the possibility of diversifying or hedging the risk of pecuniary external diseconomies of job displacement using contingent claims, welfare is reduced ex ante. Wage insurance – whether publicly underwritten, privately underwritten (as in Shiller's (2003 ) ‘livelihood insurance’), or supplied on a mixed public/private basis – completes the market for contingent claims, allowing workers to diversify or hedge the risk of trade‐related pecuniary external diseconomies. By facilitating risk sharing, wage insurance removes an impediment to ex ante Pareto efficiency. Moreover, wage insurance affects not only post‐displacement behaviour by increasing the incentive to reacquire employment quickly, but it also affects pre‐displacement consumption and investment behaviour, in particular, lowering the threshold at which workers will be willing to undertake irreversible investment in industry‐specific skills.     

Macroeconomic stability in a flexible labor market

This paper examines the relationship between labor market flexibility and macroeconomic stability from a post‐Keynesian perspective. Considering two aspects of labor market flexibility, employment flexibility and real wage flexibility, I adopt the flex–output model to discuss employment flexibility and extend it by incorporating real wage dynamics induced from a wage–price Phillips curve to discuss real wage flexibility. Simulation of the model suggests that employment flexibility possibly increases instability of an economy whereas real wage flexibility reduces it.     

Long‐term Effects of the Efficiency Wage Hypothesis in Goodwin‐type Economies

The existence of an efficiency wage mechanism in Goodwin‐type models may lead to the unexpected appearance of an economically meaningful equilibrium with zero labour share, which is globally stable for some parameter constellation and allows the system to attain its ‘maximal growth'. A subsequent ‘normative’ comparison between the possible long‐term regimes of the economy shows that (1) the zero labour share equilibrium can be the ‘preferred’ equilibrium in terms of welfare; (2) in all the long‐term regimes the welfare is higher than in the original Goodwin model; (3) a point of maximal welfare exists. Moreover, the effects of rational behaviour of firms are compared with the ‘traditional’ situation in which rationality is not explicitly assumed. A striking result appears: myopic rationality can have deleterious effects on the profit of firms and on the overall welfare of the economy.     

Evidence of the Existence of an Internal Labour Market in the Great Eastern Railway Company, 1875–1905

Evidence from promotion ladders and the wage payment system of the GER is evaluated to see if it supports existing claims, primarily based on welfare and pension provision, that by 1900 the railway companies had become the first important adherents in the country to a system of internal labour markets. It is suggested that promotion was internalised and that it was based on merit and seniority, that some form of seniority wage payments system did evolve, and that wage increases were sharpest in the first ten years of employment and were associated with spatial mobility     

Profit Sharing, Risk Sharing, and Firm Size: Implications of Efficiency Wages

By taking account of output fluctuations, this paper constructs a synthesis of profit-sharing and efficiency-wage models to highlight the role of the risk attitudes of the firm and its employees. We show, contrary to the traditional efficiency wage theory, that in a profit-sharing economy unemployment is no longer a necessary device to induce work effort and, consequently, the labor market equilibrium may be characterized by full employment. Such a result is more likely to be true when the economy is characterized by small-sized firms. In addition, we also provide a preliminary sketch of the situations in which the firm chooses a profit-sharing program or a fixed-wage one, and discuss how a firm determines its pay parameters and employment in response to output fluctuations.     

Land rents and the demand for protection

Some stylized facts of protection can be addressed by a regional trade model in which the existence of extra markets constitutes a barrier to labor relocation and motivates demands for protection. A regional Ricardo-Viner model is used, in which markets for residential land create increasing endogenous relocation costs, so that under neutral assumptions an improvement in the terms of trade leads to an absolute fall in welfare for labor in a declining region, while labor is mobile, giving a new resolution of the “neoclassical ambiguity”     

Minimum wage,unemployment and international migration

"The link between immigration and unemployment among the native workers of the host country is examined within a model which distinguishes individuals in terms of their ability to perform services in the labor market. An inflow of foreign workers is found to have an ambiguous effect on the level of income received by the native factors of production. This is in sharp contrast to the findings that immigration improves welfare in a fully employed host country and that it unambiguously lowers welfare in a minimum-wage economy with homogeneous labor."     

我国以FDI形式承接国际服务产业转移的福利效应测度研究

外商直接投资已逐渐成为服务业国际转移的主要方式。本文在Feenstra and Hanson(1997)的外购理论基础上,借鉴R.Posner(1961)以及Fisher and Samuelson(1980)的模型框架,修正了一个服务业转移模型分析其福利效应,并基于我国1989-2005年间的服务业外商直接投资对劳动生产率影响的测度说明:在服务业承接FDI国际转移的初期,东道国的福利效应集中体现为吸收大量非技术性劳动就业,但对人均劳动生产率的影响并不显著;随着FDI的大量涌入,带动国内对于服务业技术性劳动需求及其工资水平增加,激励了非技术性劳动向技术性劳动转变,最终实现了服务业整体人均劳动生产率的显著提高,由此促进了产业结构优化升级,提高了一国整体的福利水平。最后,提出了为更好地实现服务产业的国际接轨,必须逐步放开资本流动管制、营造技术密集型服务业承接软环境等政策建议。     

INVESTMENT,EMPLOYMENT AND WAGES: A BARGAINING APPROACH

This paper analyzes a three stage game between a firm and its unionized workers. In the first period the firm decides the level of its capital stock. In the second period union and firm bargain over how many workers to hire and the wage rate, then production takes place. In the third stage new production occurs after union and firm have bargained over possible changes in the employment level and wage rate. The hiring of workers is associated with sunk training costs. The main result is that distortions in the use of labor due to sunk training costs induce distortions in the use of capital, even in the absence of sunk investment costs. Because of the strategic impact of investment on later stages of the game, the firm will not equate marginal revenue product and rental cost of capital. Underinvestment or overinvestment will result depending on whether the marginal revenue product of labor is an increasing or decreasing function of capital.     

An Explanation of the International Variation in the Prevalence of Child Labour

It is hypothesized that the institutional acceptability of child labor will be more prevalent when the other members of a society gain from its use. Therefore, the cross‐country variation in the prevalence of child labor depends on the degree to which child labor affects the welfare of the remaining members of a society. It is demonstrated theoretically that the non‐child‐labor factors gain from child labor when the economy is closed. As an economy becomes more open to international trade, those gains diminish and even turn negative as the size of the economy increases. Child labor will not exist in capital abundant countries since, in them, child labor makes the non‐child‐labor factors worse off. It is shown empirically that the cross‐country prevalence of child labor falls with increases in a nation's per capita income, its openness to trade, and its economic size. It is argued that trade sanctions, as a remedy for child labor, may be counter‐productive since an open economy reduces the benefits of child labor to the other members of a society, and thereby reduces the society's incentive to allow child labor. The model also demonstrates that the economic changes brought on by democracy undermine the practice of child labor.