The race factor in social security

Conclusion A more complete analysis of the race factor in Social Security would expand from here in the following ways. First, projected earnings would be forecast for both races to compute race-specific benefit-tax ratios. Second, more complete family formation data would permit the projection of dependent-less benefit-producing events, not just spouse-less benefit-producing events. Additional computations would be performed for female workers and two-earner families. A satisfactory weight (or a rationale for the present one) would be assigned to survivor benefits. The end-result would be benefit-tax ratios for both races, not just for set-piece workers.     

幕后英雄

2014国际帆联世界杯帆船赛青岛站比赛经过5天的激烈角逐落下帷幕，当我们回顾这届比赛时，记忆犹新的是精彩的帆船赛事、激烈的海上竞技，当然还有那些忙碌的身影以及温暖的笑容。在热闹非凡的帆船赛场，他们在各自的岗位上完成着繁重的工作，成为奥帆中心里一道靓丽的风景线，他们就是服务于帆船赛事的“幕后英雄”。     

BIG QUESTIONS IN AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY: FROM THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN1

The conventional story of Australian economic history is worth challenging. Rather than just assuming a national economy with conventional turning points such as Federation, economic historians would do well to investigate more complex processes like the interplay between regions, races and development, and the changing patterns of interaction with the outside world. The big question for economic historians is whether in the future they can undertake economic research which informs history and so contributes to the national debate.     

Industrialization and wage inequality in nineteenth-century urban America

What happened to wage inequality during American industrialization? This paper uses old and new data to address this question. The old data are in the form of pay ratios, while the new capture changes in the overall wage distribution, rather than in just the relative pay of workers at the top and bottom. Using payroll information from the Aldrich report for establishments in construction, railroads, and manufacturing, we calculate Theil indices for all production workers. These two data sets provide complementary information but suggest a common conclusion — namely that American wage inequality did not rise perceptibly over the nineteenth century.     

Safety at the Racetrack: Results of Restrictor Plates in Superspeedway Competition

In 1988, in an effort to reduce risks at auto races, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) implemented a provision requiring the installation of carburetor restrictor plates at its higher speed events. Restrictor plates make a car's engine less effective, thereby slowing the field. Many NASCAR drivers and fans alike question whether the reduction in speed has led to increased safety. This article investigates the empirical determinants of racetrack safety, paying particular attention to the results of restrictor-plate racing on driver safety. We conclude that whereas restrictor-plate races are characterized by more cars being wrecked, there is no systematic evidence that they have led to more driver injuries.     

The Demand for Vices in Malaysia: An Ethnic Comparison Using Household Expenditure Data

A trivariate Tobit system is estimated to investigate the demand for vices (tobacco, alcohol, and gambling) in Malaysia. Estimation results, segmented by ethnicity, suggest that years of formal education, occupation type, and household head’s age negatively affect both the likelihood to spend and the overall amounts spent on tobacco by all Malaysians. Additionally, while higher income Malay households are more likely to spend and have higher tobacco expenditures, affluent Chinese and households of other races are more likely to spend and to spend more on smoking, drinking and gambling. Male-headed households of all races are more likely to spend and also spend more on smoking, drinking and gambling than female-led households.     

The implications of South Africa's skills migration policy for country competitiveness

South Africa suffers from a shortage of skills, while at the same time having an excess of unskilled labour. The brain drain and the impact of HIV/Aids are threats to the current skills level in the labour force. Skilled workers generally create jobs for unskilled workers, and the level of skills in the labour force is an attraction for foreign investment. The new international migration policy imposes financial penalties and other restrictions on employers of foreigners with skills. The policy is detrimental to South Africa's competitiveness in the global economy and will deter investors and those needing to utilise skills not available in the South African labour market. A general immigration policy would be more appropriate to attract skilled foreigners to South Africa, where their skills can be absorbed into the labour force by supply and demand forces.     

Inequality,poverty and prospects for redistribution

This paper demonstrates that poverty and inequality trends can diverge. It then discusses inequality trends and shows that, despite measurement issues, there is consensus that inequality is very high and has been rising over much of the post-transition period. Due to rising inequality within all groups, and particularly the black population, and lower inequality between race groups, within-group inequality has become the dominant form of inequality. That does not, however, detract from the fact that inequality between groups is still very large. High income inequality largely stems from inequality in access to wage income, due more to wage inequality than to unemployment. A Gini coefficient for wage income amongst the employed of above 0.60 effectively sets a floor to overall income inequality. The high wage premium to educated workers derives from a combination of a skills shortage at the top end of the educational spectrum, driving up their wages, and a surfeit of poorly-educated workers competing for scarce unskilled jobs dampening unskilled wages; if the unemployed were to find jobs, it would be in this bottom part of the wage distribution, and consequently this would not much reduce wage inequality. A continuation of the historical pattern whereby only a small segment of the population obtained good schooling would leave the structures underlying the large wage premium unaltered. The time frame for substantial inequality reduction is thus necessarily a long one, while poverty reduction efforts should not wait for this to occur.     

试论我国房屋拆迁补偿制度的完善

城市房屋拆迁中矛盾突出,甚至连续发生"悲剧性"事件,已经成为构建"和谐社会"的明显的不和谐因素。如何使我国的房屋拆迁制度更加完善,如何使被拆迁人得到公正、合理的补偿,是本文要探讨的主要问题。基于此,本文通过分析我国城市房屋拆迁补偿制度存在的问题,提出了完善我国城市房屋拆迁行政补偿需落实的几个重要制度。     

GRADUATE UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE FACE OF SKILLS SHORTAGES: A LABOUR MARKET PARADOX1

Analysts agree that South Africa's unemployment is structural in the sense that the unemployed generally possess lower skills than what is required by the economy. In the context of increasing demand for skilled workers due to technological changes and the need to become globally more competitive, graduates would be expected to find employment without difficulty. However, against expectations unemployment has been increasing among young people with tertiary qualifications since 1995. This paper investigates the nature of this phenomenon. Evidence suggests that learners are inadequately prepared for both tertiary studies and entry into the labour market. Lack of, or inadequate career guidance means that they do not choose fields of study and types of qualifications with good employment prospects. In addition, lack of soft skills and workplace experience mean that employers are reluctant to employ graduates, preferring more experienced people instead.     

全球愤怒:金融危机的政治后遗症

金融危机对收入分配和社会变动的影响已经开始逐渐显露。本文讨论了金融危机之后带来的三条断裂线:不同年龄的人口之间的矛盾和冲突,超级富豪和社会大众之间的矛盾和冲突,不同种族和宗教之间的矛盾和冲突。这三种潜在的社会冲突,再加上遭遇债务压力的各国将采取更加严厉的财政紧缩政策、城市化的发展、全球化的推动以及互联网和社交网络软件的出现等因素的催化,未来的国际经济中将会出现更多的贸易战、货币战和就业战。     

Unravelling supply and demand factors in work-related training

This paper attempts to unravel supply and demand factors ofwork-related training by exploiting information from workerswho wanted to receive such training but did not get it Workers'willingness to receive training varies with their level of education,background characteristics, and job characteristics. Firms'gains from training vary across industries, and with workers'gender and age. Half of the untrained workers are not trainedbecause the net returns to the worker would be negative, whilethe net returns to the firm would be positive. For another thirdof the untrained workers exactly the opposite is the case.     

Alternative Work Arrangements and Job Satisfaction

The pressures of traditional jobs on working families, along with an aging population facing financial need, have contributed to heightened interest in the percentage of workers participating in alternative work arrangements. These include working as an independent contractor or self-employed, and those employed by others on-call, through temp agency, or as contractors. Examining job satisfaction across work arrangements by occupation and gender is one way to investigate a potential increase in the supply of such workers. Higher job satisfaction may indicate that more workers will select into these work arrangements and away from traditional jobs in the future. If this is particularly true for women, it has important implications for firms that would like to retain more women. Moreover, changes in how individuals earn a living may impact the social safety nets of such workers and their families given the nature of how such benefits are provided in the U.S. economy. This study utilizes recent waves of the General Social Survey to explore job satisfaction for workers in disaggregated alternative work arrangements, while controlling for both occupation and gender. The study finds that female workers who are independent contractors and self-employed are more satisfied with their jobs than those in regular salaried jobs, even those in nonprofessional occupations. Job satisfaction for those who work in temp agencies, do on-call work or work for contractors is no different than for those in regular jobs, regardless of occupation and gender.

     

Migrants and urban wage: Evidence from China's internal migration

Using China's 2005 1% population survey, this paper examines the wage impact on urban workers of rural to urban migration. We find that, on average, migrants increase the wages of urban workers, with the effect being magnified for more skilled urban workers. This suggests that migrants with skills similar to those of urban workers may complement them. We explore the possible channels of these effects. From the supply perspective, we find that migration inflows accelerate the occupational upgrading of urban workers, especially for low- and medium-skilled workers. From a demand perspective, as the share of migrants in the urban labor force increases, the number and output of industrial firms also increase, and firms become more reliant on low-skilled workers. The more migrants in a city, the greater the available employees for industrial firms, particularly for low-skilled employees. However, the effects on high-skilled firms are much smaller or insignificant. In addition, we find that migrants have little impact on firms' capital-labor and capital-output ratios. This suggests that firms can expand through capital adjustments to absorb inexpensive migrants, which alleviates the possible negative impact of migrants on the urban labor market.     

Inducing political action by workers

A firm aiming to influence a governmental policy may benefit from political action by its stakeholders, such as workers. This article studies the behavior of such a firm, showing that workers will have a greater incentive to engage in costly political activity against the governmental policy the greater their number and the higher the wage. The firm may, therefore, profit from paying above‐market wages and from hiring what might appear to be an inefficiently large number of workers. And because unions may overcome free‐rider problems of uncoordinated political effort, a firm may favor unionization, or be less opposed to unionization than it would otherwise be. The results of this article can also explain why firms may little reduce wages in a recession, and why the higher wages paid by unionized firms do not reduce survival rates of these firms.     

Some arguments for (moderately) capital-intensive development,even in labour-abundant nations

This essay suggests that there may be good reasons why some labour-abundant developing nations prefer capital-intensive economic activities. In developing nations where large amounts of time and investment would be required to achieve full employment of their labour, policy-makers may do better to seek a capital-intensive development programme that increases labour productivity, inspires technological change, and, through rapidly increasing national income, increases the demand for labour in the long run by more than a labour-intensive approach would. A diagrammatic representation is presented. The suggestion is offered that a ‘moderate’ capital-intensive strategy, in which factor prices are maintained ‘just’ — rather than ‘much’ — different from their scarcity values, should encourage labour-augmenting technological change.     

Employment and Earnings: A Case Study of Urban Detroit

This paper investigates the roles of manufacturing employment, neighborhood poverty, and family structure in determining wages among Detroit, MI workers, just prior to the current economic crisis. Employment in manufacturing has been crucial for blacks and whites: 39% of black and of white men in the Detroit metropolitan area worked in manufacturing in 2000. Regression analysis in this paper estimates employment in manufacturing raised wages 15.8% for all workers in the metropolitan area, 24.4% for blacks and 13.8% for whites. It finds a higher wage penalty (4.7%) for blacks in non-manufacturing industries than is found when manufacturing sector jobs are included (2.6%). Wage returns to education were greater in the non-manufacturing employment sector, especially for blacks. Residence in the poorest central city neighborhoods reduced wages significantly for white manufacturing and non-manufacturing workers. Its coefficient was insignificant for black workers. Gender and marital status effects on wages differed between blacks and whites in magnitude: White women suffered a larger penalty for their sex than black women (22.6 versus 9.6%) yet black men enjoyed a greater return to marriage than white men (27.5 versus 25.0%). Controlling for manufacturing reduced the gender wage gap and the returns to marriage for men. These findings suggest greater accessibility for women; and lower returns to marriage in non-manufacturing sectors. Among employed blacks access to manufacturing jobs has been their main source of decent wages. The adverse effects of the industry??s job loss in the 1980s and 1990s impacted all Detroit residents. Other high wage industries have employed relatively few blacks, have not paid them well; and have suffered job loss and slow growth over the period. Education could have raised wages for non-manufacturing workers, but not as much as access to manufacturing jobs. Today as in 2000, Detroit??s residents desperately need job creation or relocation to the central city; and job training and anti-discrimination policy enforcement throughout the metro-area. All of these would be necessary to offset job loss and reduce inequality and poverty in Detroit. The extent to which blacks will benefit from 2010?C11 improvements in manufacturing employment in Detroit depends upon whether private companies and the state provide equal access to the jobs and the training new technologies require.     

知识经济时代企业人性化管理研究

我国很多企业的管理制度从根本上讲是一种机械化的管理,给员工的感受如同挂在办公室、车间门口冷冰僵硬的玻璃镜片。而在当今知识经济时代,人才已成为企业创新、抢占市场制高点、实现企业核心价值目标最重要的资源。鉴于人才在现代企业中的重要作用,企业管理将面临新的挑战,以前那种把人视为机器、以安排、约束、控制、指令为主的企业管理方式已不适合知识经济时代的企业,能凝聚员工智慧与力量、展现企业核心精神与价值文化的人性化管理方式必将成为引领当今企业向前高效发展的最佳法宝。     

Becker’s utility approach to discrimination: A review of the issues

Conclusion In general, most studies have been unable to confirm the predictions of the Becker utility approach to discrimination by employers and employees. This lack of verification would seem to indicate that the observed wage differentials are generated by a different or more complex process. However, such a strong statement is premature in view of the measurement problem that has been present in most studies. Becker’s model is a characterization of how individual employers and employees behave in the market. Empirical testing of Becker’s model requires detailed information about the degree and level of contact between the races, the wage rates paid to each race, skills of each worker, and the manner of employment and placement of each race. Invariably the lack of such detailed firm data, particularly wage rates, forces researchers to use aggregative data of income or earnings averages and occupation of workers employed within a state or broadly defined industry in order to generalize how firms behave in the market. The necessity of using such data, however, results in a dichotomy between the original parameters in Becker’s model and the data utilized. Clearly the lack of a significant association between the data utilized and the parameters specified in Becker’s model undermines the credibility of such empirical testing. The empirical analysis on the implications of Becker’s theory of discrimination has left a wide variety of unsettled questions and much remains to be done.     

心理学在国内运动训练中的应用、困境与对策

目前心理学在国内运动训练中的应用面临着诸多问题。其解决的对策是：运用＂多元化＂思维迎接＂本土化＂挑战;在提高服务质量的前提下拓展服务领域;强化运动心理学自身建设;设立心理工作者专门岗位;实现心理工作的专业性与专一性。