What Caused Rising Earnings Inequality in Britain? Evidence from Time Series, 1970–1993

The paper reviews some of the competing explanations for the rising levels of earnings inequality in Britain, such as skill shortages, rising unemployment, globalization, demographic factors and inflation. These explanations are rejected in favour of the idea that it was the major changes in the institutional pay-setting arrangements that were largely responsible for rising inequality. Union density figures and strike data are explored in support of this thesis.     

Inflation Protection from Homeownership: Long‐Run Evidence, 1814–2008

This article examines the inflation hedging capacity of the private home. We employ unique long‐term data for inflation, house price dynamics and rents for Amsterdam dating back to 1814, allowing us to study total housing returns in different inflation regimes and for varying investment horizons. Our Amsterdam data show that homeownership's protection against actual and expected inflation increases with the investment horizon. This increase is especially strong for horizons up to 10 years. Inflation protection from housing is stronger when inflation is persistent, and the hedging capacities of housing regarding unexpected inflation are weak.     

Economic Incentives,Business Cycles,and Long‐Term Sickness Absence

We investigate long‐term absenteeism in Norway, on the basis of register data covering 8 years and more than two million absence spells. Key findings are that: (1) a tighter labor market yields lower work resumption rates for persons who are absent, and higher relapse rates for persons who have already resumed work; and (2) the work resumption rates increase when sickness benefits are exhausted, but work resumptions at this stage tend to be short‐lived.     

Globalization and Uncertainty: Earnings Volatility in Sweden, 1985–2003

Earnings volatility has been linked to economic integration only through contradictory conjectures. We assess globalization’s role by examining volatility trends in manufacturing, private services, and public services. If trade increases uncertainty, volatility trends should differ markedly across industries since manufacturing, in contrast to especially public services, is exposed to international competition. We analyze earnings trajectories in Sweden 1985–2003, a country and period evincing accelerating trade, finding no indications of greater volatility increases in manufacturing.     

Long‐Term Growth in Housing Prices and Stock Returns

A firm's long‐term stock returns are negatively related to past growth in housing prices in the state where the firm is located. The housing price effect is persistent and robust to controlling for the long‐term stock return reversal effect, changes in mortgage interest rates across the states, cyclicality in housing prices and overall local economic conditions. There is no evidence that extant asset pricing models can adequately explain the effect. The study discusses potential explanations for, and the implications of, the cross‐regional housing price effect.     

The continuing validity of the strategy‐structure nexus: new findings, 1993–2003

This study analyzes whether a diversification strategy facilitates subsequent divisionalization (and hence that ‘structure follows strategy’), and/or whether the multidivisional structure leads to a diversification strategy (and hence that ‘strategy follows structure’). In theoretical terms, this study is original in that it institutes a debate between the Chandler thesis and other perspectives that challenge the generalizability of the strategy‐structure nexus. Interestingly, this new study with contemporaneous data for the period 1993–2003 sheds light on this contested issue and postulates that despite the criticism of Chandler's contribution, it still works. Our results show that strategic diversification affects structural divisionalization, and in turn, structural divisionalization affects strategic diversification. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tipped Wage Effects on Earnings and Employment in Full‐Service Restaurants

We exploit more than 20 years of changes in state‐level tipped wage policy and estimate earnings and employment effects of the tipped wage using county‐level panel data on full‐service restaurants (FSR). We extend earlier work by Dube, Lester, and Reich ( 2010 ) and compare outcomes between contiguous counties that straddle a state border. We find a 10‐percent increase in the tipped wage increases earnings in FSRs about 0.4 percent. Employment elasticities are sensitive to the inclusion of controls for unobserved spatial heterogeneity. In our preferred models, we find small, insignificant effects of the tipped wage on FSR employment.     

Task Polarization in the Japanese Labor Market: Evidence of a Long‐Term Trend

By quantifying the various skills required for different occupations, we examine the long‐term trend in labor‐market polarization in Japan in terms of tasks from 1960 to 2005. We find that the input share of nonroutine tasks has consistently and gradually increased, while that of routine tasks has decreased. With regard to nonroutine tasks, we observe an increase in the input shares of both high‐skilled analytical and interactive tasks and low‐skilled manual tasks. While we also find that the polarization depends on the introduction of technology, the progress of polarization is slower and smaller in Japan than in other countries.     

Informal Work and Protest: Undocumented Immigrant Activism in France, 1996–2000

Nominally, the wave of protests by undocumented immigrants that swept through France in the late 1990s successfully challenged the restrictive Pasqua immigration laws. However, despite appearances, the mass movement was at base a labour protest: undocumented workers demonstrated against immigration laws that undermined the way they navigated informal labour markets and, in particular, truncated their opportunities for skill development. Furthermore, it is proposed in this article that examining social movements for their labour content can reveal erosions of working conditions and worker power in informal sector employment. A case study of the Paris garment district is presented to demonstrate how the spread of ‘hybrid‐informality’ made legal work permits a prerequisite for working informally and relegated undocumented immigrants to lower quality jobs outside the cluster.     

Temporary Help Work: Earnings,Wages, and Multiple Job Holding*

Temporary help services (THS) employment has been growing in size, particularly among disadvantaged workers. An extended policy debate focuses on the low earnings, limited benefits, and insecurity that such jobs appear to provide. We investigate the earnings and wage differentials observed between THS and other jobs in a sample of disadvantaged workers. We find lower quarterly earnings at THS jobs but a $1 per hour wage premium. We reconcile these findings in terms of the shorter duration and lower hours worked at THS jobs. We interpret the premium as a compensating wage differential.     

Competitive pressure and economic integration: an illustration for Spain, 1983–1996

This paper estimates sectoral mark-ups in the Spanish economy during the period 1983–1996. The data consists of a large firm level data set that encompasses all sectors of economic activity apart from financial institutions. The time period considered is well suited to assess the pro-competitive effect of economic integration, as Spain’s economy became fully integrated in the EU, which was itself embarking on a massive liberalisation exercise. I find that sectors most exposed to international competition witnessed a significant drop in margins, while those more sheltered from competitive pressures did not. Finally, comparing estimated mark-ups to accounting margins indicates that the latter are a reasonable proxy for margins obtained econometrically.     

The Setback in Political Entrepreneurship and Employment Dualization in Japan, 1998–2012

Scholars are mainly concerned about how policy makers in advanced countries have succeeded in dualizing labour market regulations in a way to realize their vision or to represent powerful industrial interests. However, Japan's recent experiences suggest the possibility that this dualization is not such a straightforward outcome. This study argues that as Japan's political entrepreneurs have undergone setbacks in their reform attempt to overcome the tradition of employment dualism, they have improvised to close the reform process by institutionalizing this tradition. This study corroborates the argument by investigating state‐industry conflicts over the revisions of the Worker Dispatch Law in 1999, 2003 and 2012.