Capital market distortion,firm entry and wage inequality

Distortions in the capital market are notable in developing economies like China. By building up a dual production structure with oligopolistic competition in urban manufacturing, this paper investigates the distributional and welfare effects of capital market distortions. We find that in the short run, an increase in the capital market distortion in favor of urban firms can lower both the skilled and unskilled wages. However, in the long run, the preferential policy on reducing capital cost to the urban sector attracts new entry of firms, which can worsen the skilled-unskilled wage inequality in the economy. This firm-entry effect of the capital market distortion on wage inequality is empirically confirmed for China.     

我国农民收入增长缓慢的根本制约因素与对策

农村居民家庭人均纯收入按收入来源可划分为三个主要部分:家庭经营农业收入、家庭经营二、三产业收入与工资性收入。本文通过对这三部分收入分别进行讨论,认为制约农民收入增长缓慢的根本因素为:农民人均耕地资源有限,农民劳动生产率低;农村市场虽然巨大但是过于分散;农民人力资本投入低。最后,本文提出了增加农民收入的根本对策及一些短期对策。     

Specialization, outsourcing and wages

This paper studies the impact of outsourcing on individual wages. In contrast to the standard approach in the literature, we focus on domestic outsourcing as well as foreign outsourcing. We argue that if outsourcing is associated with specialization gains arising from an increase in the division of labor, domestic outsourcing tends to increase wages for both unskilled and skilled labor. We use a panel data set of workers in Danish manufacturing industries to show that domestic and foreign outsourcing affect wages as predicted.      

Efficiency wages, trade unions, and employment

This paper integrates union bargaining into an efficiency modelwith imperfect monitoring of worker performance. The model isused to examine the effects of an increase in the benefit replacementratio on wages, employment, and effort. It is shown that, incontrast to both standard shirking and trade union models, theseeffects are all ambiguous. In particular, if unions have somebargaining strength, a higher replacement ratio may reduce wagesand increase employment Whenever employment is increased thelevel of effort falls.     

Famine as agricultural catastrophe: the crisis of 1622-4 in east Lancashire

This article argues that historians have paid insufficient attention to the agrarian roots of early modern English famines. While not dismissing the insights arising from entitlements theory, the article takes issue with recent writings that have explained the famine of 1622–3 in north-west England as an entitlements crisis. It offers new empirical evidence from an estate in east Lancashire to demonstrate the scale of the crisis in the early 1620s, using estate accounts to produce new price data and estimates of productivity. On the basis of oat tithe data, the scale of the shortfall in foodstuffs in the harvest of 1621 is demonstrated as being probably in the region of a third; that of the following year has to be inferred from price data. The evidence shows that the crisis was not limited to the arable economy, but was followed by an extensive restocking of the pastoral economy. The article therefore makes a contribution to the growing interest in weather as an exogenous factor.     

Increasing Wages,Factor Substitution,and Cropping Pattern Changes in China

This article analyzed the influence of increasing wages on cropping patterns from theoretical and empirical perspectives. The results showed that the increasing labor cost provided a significant incentive to adjust the grain cropping pattern, which increased the production of the three major cereal grains but reduced the production of other grain crops. Increasing wages had a significant negative impact on cash crops. More labor-intensive cash crops experienced a larger negative impact in the context of increasing wages. The increase in labor costs also had a negative impact on the proportion of vegetables produced, which was more evident in northern China. A further mechanism test indicated that factor substitution was a significant reason for cropping pattern changes; this illustrated the substitution of labor by machinery not only between grain crops and cash crops but also among different cash crops.     

Appropriation,firm dynamics,and wage inequality

This paper examines the income distribution and welfare effects of appropriation activities in an economy. In the short run, with a given number of firms, appropriation can narrow wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labor when the capital resources accrued by appropriators are not large. However, wage inequality widens when the capital accrued is large. In the long run, with free entry and exit of firms, an increase in appropriation can cause firms to enter when the accrued capital is not large. This gives rise to a win–win outcome by raising the wages of skilled and unskilled labor. However, if accrued capital is large, firms exit and a lose–lose situation may occur in which skilled and unskilled wages are reduced.     

Economic Development in Asian Countries, and the Effectof Trade in Asia on Employment and Wages in Japan

There is a controversy in the USA and several European countries on whether or not an increase in imports in manufacturing goods from low-wage developing countries has major effects on employment and wages in industrialized countries. This paper examines the issue for Japanese imports, paying a particular attention to the effect of manufacturing imports from Asian countries on employment and wages in Japan. It is found that the effect has not been large to date, but that there could be negative effects on employment and, in particular, wages if imports from China and India were to increase substantially.     

农户受益、福利水平与农村公共产品供给的关联度

分析不同成本分担方式下农村公共产品供给对农户受益程度和福利水平的影响,基于成本分担的视角探讨农户福利内涵,结果表明:农户收入、农户满意度和农户间收入差距是解释农户福利的三个维度,且不同融资渠道下农户承担成本差异将通过三个维度指标来影响农户福利;农村公共产品效果评估研究的思路应拓展到提高广大农户福利水平方面。     

欠发达农区村域农业结构转型动力机制探析——以中牟县特色农业专业村为例

经过30多年改革和发展,我国进入一个崭新发展阶段。面对农村经济新的形势,我国农业生产结构性矛盾日益突出,欲实现农业的进一步发展以及强化其对农民收入的贡献能力,必须改变传统的农业结构,建立起以市场为导向、以质量和效益为中心的新型农业结构。而要实现农业结构转型,就必须有促进转型的动力因素支持。本文以中牟县特色农业专业村为例分析了欠发达农区村域农业结构转型的动力机制,指出要有效地发挥结构转型对增加农民收入和促进村域经济发展的作用,关键任务在于完善结构转型所需要的一系列动力机制。     

Product market competition, job security, and aggregate employment

Standard economic wisdom generally stresses the benefits ofincreased competition on the product market. This paper proposesa model of monopolistic competition with an endogenous determinationof workers flows in and out of unemployment, where wages aredetermined according to an efficiency wage mechanism. We showthat an increase in product market competition boosts the hiringrate as well as the separation rate thus reducing job security.Hence, the efficiency wage schedule compatible with more competitionshifts upward. An adverse effect on workers' incentive is atwork which pushes real wages up to the point that increasedcompetition may indeed generate employment losses rather thangains.     

Flood Fatalities in the United States: The Roles of Socioeconomic Factors and the National Flood Insurance Program

Flooding is the most frequent disaster type among all severe weather events in the United States. Over the 20‐year period from 1996 to 2015, a total of 107,743 floods resulted in 1563 fatalities and over $167 billion in damages. Climate models suggest that the risk of major flooding will increase in the coming years. In this article, we provide new analysis of the life‐saving role of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) using county‐level data for the United States over the years 1996–2015. The integrated view of the physical, social, economic, and political elements of disaster vulnerability guides the empirical analysis. Our analysis indicates that people most affected by floods are those who have weaker economic and social bases; lower education levels and poor housing quality increase flood vulnerability. We also find that local government spending on public safety and welfare significantly reduces overall flood vulnerability. Importantly, our estimates present new evidence that ex ante floodplain management and mitigation efforts required for participation in the NFIP have played a vital role in reducing flood‐related fatalities.     

马铃薯种植及流通的成本收益比较分析——以定西市为例

文章在实地调查的基础上,运用投入产出分析法对定西马铃薯种植及流通的成本收益进行了统计核算,并对农民和流通商的利益分配进行了比较分析。研究结果显示流通商获得了近70％的利润,影响了农民种植马铃薯的积极性和收入的提高。通过研究分析,提出了建立新的信息化平台、引导形成更多的中间商、规范市场行为和建立储藏库等增加农民收入的具体建议。     

Domestic service,gender, and wages in rural England,c.1700–18601

Domestic service was a vital occupational sector in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—particularly for women. This article uses a new series of wage observations from across England, focusing on rural areas. Analysis of the dataset shows that wages paid to servants in rural England slightly increased over the period considered, but at uneven rates dependent on region and precise occupation of servant. The majority of servants, particularly maids, did not experience any significant increase in the wages they were paid. This article also shows a widening wage gap between male and female servants. When differences between regions were analysed, it was shown that the wages paid to servants did not match the model of the north becoming the high wage zone of England by the mid‐nineteenth century, although rates of growth there were the highest. For servants the south generally remained an area of higher wages even in the mid‐nineteenth century. Geography was probably not the key variable in determining wage levels. The type of household in which a servant was employed was more important than where it was located. The most important variables were the servants' gender, and their occupations in the household.     

Social inequalities in famine mortality in the manorial system of the tsarist Russian province of Livland in the mid-1840s

By relying on longitudinal data on two rural parishes in the Russian Baltic province of Livland, the article analyses two questions concerning famine's short-run effects on mortality in a manorial system: (1) whether there is evidence of a social gradient in mortality during the famine of 1844–6 and (2) whether the manors could protect the peasants against the hardships. The analysis reveals that neither the status of a farmer peasant nor the landlord saved the local inhabitants from an increased risk of dying during the famine of 1844–6. The conventional assumptions about the protective effect of the higher socio-economic status or type of manor against subsistence crisis found very little support in the study.     

Spinning their wheels: a reply to Jane Humphries and Benjamin Schneider

Jane Humphries and Benjamin Schneider have assembled several large databases of spinners’ production and wages that they believe disprove my view that high wages led to mechanization in eighteenth-century England. This reply examines their data and shows that they have little value for understanding the incentives to mechanize. In addition, I present new evidence that substantiates my earlier estimates of productivity and earnings. The high wage hypothesis is unimpaired by the critique of Humphries and Schneider.     

Taxation,fiscal capacity,and credible commitment in eighteenth-century China: the effects of the formalization and centralization of informal surtaxes†

This article explores a tax reform in eighteenth-century China that formalized county-level informal surtaxes and centralized control over them in the hands of provincial governors, in an effort to strengthen provincial fiscal capacity. The findings show that this reform increased the frequency of famine relief in cases of exceptional disaster relative to other weather conditions. The study shows that the effects were driven by the new fiscal revenues—public funds—at the governors’ discretion, not by the central government's relief actions, bureaucratic control over lower officials, or other concurrent fiscal reforms. Moreover, the reform facilitated intertemporal smoothing and inter-regional risk sharing. However, the effects declined as soon as the central government broke its promise and began to appropriate provincial fiscal revenues. These findings not only provide evidence that fiscal centralization could enhance the provision of public goods in a premodern context, but also highlight that it was the lack of a credible commitment by the central government to the provincial governments that accounted for the short-lived effects of the reform.     

Labor productivity, wages, nationality, and foreign ownership shares in Thai manufacturing, 1996–2000

This paper compares labor productivity and wages among nationality and ownership groups of foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) and local plants in Thai manufacturing for 1996, 1998, and 2000. Disaggregating foreign MNCs by nationality or foreign ownership share revealed a few significant differences in both labor productivity and wages that were not present in more aggregate specifications. In these cases, there was a weak tendency for MNCs from Europe, Japan, and the United States to have relatively high labor productivity and wages, for wholly-foreign MNCs to have relatively high labor productivity, and for majority- and wholly-foreign MNCs to pay relatively high wages. However, these results suggest that the relationships among labor productivity or wages, on the one hand, and nationality or foreign ownership shares, on the other hand, were generally weak in Thai manufacturing. These results are also consistent with those of previous studies in suggesting that the relationship between labor productivity and foreign ownership in general was also rather weak, though the relationship between wages and foreign ownership was somewhat stronger.     

中国新型城镇化过程中失地农民权益保障问题研究

土地是人类赖以生存和发展的最基本的物质基础,也是农民的生产资料和生计源泉。在城镇化建设和发展的过程中,失地农民是由中国城乡二元体制的客观因素造成的。征地制度、户籍制度的缺陷和农村社会保障率低下等因素使失地农民的生存权和发展权受到极大的挑战。文章认为,增强失地农民权益保障重点是要把握好"公共利益"的维度,完善征地补偿机制;建立城乡一体化社会保障体系,实现城乡统一发展;完善农村土地"双置换"。     

Labour Market Flexibility,Wages and Incomes in Sub‐Saharan Africa in the 1990s

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of how African labour markets have performed in the 1990s. It is argued that the failure of African labour markets to create good paying jobs has resulted in excess labour supply in the form of either open unemployment or a growing self‐employment sector. One explanation for this outcome is a lack of labour market ‘flexibility’ keeping formal sector wages above their equilibrium level and restricting job creation. We identify three attributes of labour market flexibility. First, whether real wages decline over time; secondly, the tendency for wages to adjust in the face of unemployment; and thirdly, the extent of wage differentials between sectors and/or firms of various size. Recent research shows that real wages in Africa during the 1990s may have been more downwardly flexible than previously thought and have been surprisingly responsive to unemployment rates, yet large wage differentials between formal and informal sector firms remain. This third sense of the term ‘inflexibility’ can explain a common factor across diverse African economies — the high income divide between those working in large firms and those not. Those working in the thriving self‐employment sector in Ghana have something in common with the unemployed in South Africa — both have very low income opportunities relative to those in large firms.