贸易结构与就业结构:基于中国工业部门的分析

随着我国经济发展和改革开放,贸易结构不断变动,对就业水平和就业结构都可能产生重要影响。本文系统研究了我国工业制成品贸易结构变动的就业效应:首先建立了一个简明的理论框架,探讨贸易结构变动对就业结构的影响;然后运用投入产出法和偏差分解法对我国1993～2007年工业制成品贸易结构变化的就业效应进行经验分析。结果表明,研究期间内偏向资本技术密集型产品的贸易结构变动不利于就业,并导致我国的就业结构偏向熟练劳动。     

The China effect: Evidence from data at firm level in Thailand

This study investigates how competition with Chinese imports affects firms in Thailand. Using World Bank data on Thailand and United Nations trade data from 2003 to 2006, the empirical results show that there is no significant impact of Chinese import competition on employment, wages, or labor income share. However, further checks show that for firms with lower productivity, the impact on employment and labor income share is more likely to be negative. The impact of Chinese import competition on profit margins is significantly positive. Considering the impact on labor income share and profit margins, we conclude that because of Chinese import competition, income distribution possibly goes in disfavor of labor. Our study shows that the impact of Chinese import competition on the skilled labor ratio is positive and significant. This result suggests that Thai firms are on the path to skill upgrading as a result of Chinese import competition, which is helpful for Thailand’s long-run economic growth. As firms with low productivity are more likely to be negatively affected by Chinese import competition, improving productivity is still an efficient way to counter such competition.     

‘It's more than who you know’– networks and trade unions in the audio‐visual industries

Many commentators have argued that a shift towards post‐industrial modes of production and employment has progressively undermined the conditions for collective labour organisation and regulation. The capacity of trade unions to respond to these changes and represent the interests of contingent workers has become a key issue in many industries in which employment has become increasingly fragmented. This article examines patterns of interest representation pursued by freelance workers in the UK audio‐visual sector. In particular, it examines three critical cases to explore the potential of networks of freelance workers for representing their interests and to consider the implications for trade unions as traditional collective actors. We conclude that networks can provide forums through which interests can be articulated, but their limitations in representing freelance workers offer trade unions a crucial opportunity to extend collective regulation.     

创新空间扩散、集聚租金与经济高质量发展

基于新经济地理学和内生增长理论,构建了一个贸易自由度约束下的局域溢出模型,探究了创新的空间扩散与集聚影响经济高质量发展的作用机制。研究发现：对称均衡是模型的唯一内点均衡;当角点均衡时,存在唯一的贸易自由度支撑区间,此时,如果运输成本变小,则技能劳动力、R&D部门、制造业部门以及创新活动将变得更集聚,同时创新的空间扩散程度变大,外围区域在研发创新方面的劣势减弱;从增长和福利评价的角度看,在技能劳动力存量不变的条件下,创新的空间扩散对整个经济体的经济增长并没有影响,然而,当区域的经济增长源于可流动的技能劳动力集聚时,中心区域的技能劳动力和普通劳动力总是偏好集聚状态,当且仅当创新的空间扩散效应足够大或者集聚租金较小时,外围区域的普通劳动力偏好集聚状态。因此,降低运输成本,提高贸易自由度,有助于增大创新空间扩散效应,减小集聚租金,提高全域劳动力福利水平,从而促进经济的高质量发展。     

就业与居住的空间匹配——基于城市经济学角度的思考

城市发展中就业与居住的空间匹配问题是国际上城市空间结构研究的前沿课题.综述了就业与居住空间关系的城市经济学基本理论,并对国际学术界有关本问题的研究思路和成果进行了系统的归纳总结,从中提炼关键的科学问题,并结合目前我国城市中就业和居住空间分布演变的现状,提出进一步研究的前景和方向.     

The psychological contract in Chinese-African informal labor relations

This qualitative study analyzes Chinese-Ghanaian employment in trade as an example of South-South cross-cultural labor relations. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, employment practices and labor conflicts are discussed with regard to psychological contract and equity. The analysis is guided by a process model of psychological contract that has been adjusted and extended in consideration of the dimensions of foreignness and cross-cultural communication. After briefly introducing the situation in Ghana we elaborate that under conditions of foreignness, employment relations are conflict prone because of contradictory equity expectations of employers and employees. We discuss how Ghanaian employees perceiving their psychological contract as violated attempt to restore equity by means of voice, silence, retreat or destruction and often fail due to lack of mutual cultural understanding between employers and employees. We conclude that exit in contrast to expectations is a viable option for employers rather than employees, but most employment relations, though defective, are perpetuated.     

The effect of the public sector on private jobs: Evidence from the West Bank

This paper estimates the short run effect of creating more public jobs on private employment in the occupied West Bank. Unlike most cited research, the results provide evidence that favors crowd-in effect both at the aggregate employment level and across sectors. A main contribution of the paper is to empirically explore the underlying mechanisms that drive the results. They include positive public employment effect on local demand, lack of public wage premium, as well as no effect on private wages. It turns out that an increase in the local labor force participation is a driving factor for the latter channel. Interestingly, the increase in labor force participation exceeds that of public and private employment, leading to an increase in the number of job seekers.     

Regional integration,international liberalisation and the dynamics of industrial agglomeration

This paper presents a 3-region footloose-entrepreneur new economic geography model. Two symmetric regions are part of an economically integrated area (the Union), while the third region represents an outside trade partner. We explore how the spatial allocation of industrial production and employment within the Union is affected by changes in two aspects of trade liberalisation, regional integration and globalisation, conditional to the skill endowment and the market size of the outside region. Our main contribution pertains to the analysis of the local and global dynamics of the specified factor mobility process. We show that significant parameter ranges exist for which an asymmetric distribution of economic activities is one of the possible long-run outcomes which may allow a smooth transition to agglomeration (in contrast to the NEG typical catastrophic scenario). In addition, we show that multistability is pervasive and that some attractors are Milnor attractors. Both results reinforce the NEG narrative on the importance of initial conditions for the long-run location of industrial activity.     

工业劳动力流动、技术溢出与经济地理新均衡——新经济地理学基础模型新发展

在原始核心边缘模型基础上发展的新的核心边缘模型假设工业工人的劳动生产率不再是外生变量,而是跟产业集聚的外部性有关。发展的核心边缘模型不仅验证了原始核心边缘模型的基本性质,还得到了一些新的结论：第一,工业企业生产规模报酬递增程度高有利于产业的集聚,但工业企业生产的规模报酬递增程度低也会诱发产业的重新集聚。第二,产业的空间分布受两股相反力量（集聚力和分散力）的支配。一般情况下,本地市场效应和生活成本效应是促进工业企业集聚的力量,市场拥挤效应则是促使工业企业走向分散布局的力量。第三,在加入本地与跨界技术溢出效应后,对称结构稳定的贸易自由度范围缩小了,而核心边缘结构稳定的贸易自由度范围扩大了。     

LOCAL LABOR MARKETS AND NATURAL RESOURCES: A SYNTHESIS OF THE LITERATURE

A primary way that natural resources affect a locality is through the demand for labor, with greater extraction requiring more workers. Shifts in labor demand can be measured through changes in employment and earnings, the main labor market outcomes, or through changes in the population and income, more generally. These changes may spillover into the nonresource economy, leading to greater overall effects or possibly crowd out; be spread unequally across the population, thereby altering the distribution of income and the poverty rate; or influence educational attainment, as people choose between additional schooling and work. In this review, the literature linking natural resources to local labor markets is synthesized by organizing existing studies according to their resource measurement and the outcomes that they consider. This synthesis provides an accessible guide to a literature that has boomed in recent years. It also identifies promising avenues for future research and lays a foundation to further generalize the evidence through an eventual meta‐analysis.     

产业转移背景下河南省发展加工贸易的问题与对策分析

加工贸易的发展可以带动配套产业的发展,推动产业升级,扩大就业,从而促进经济发展。目前,我国东部地区由于成本增加,大批的劳动密集型加工贸易正在寻求转移,河南依据劳动力成本优势、区位优势以及产业优势成为承接转移的核心地带。虽然河南具备很多发展加工贸易的优势,却由于起步晚,外向度低等因素,加工贸易发展非常落后,对经济拉动作用不明显。河南应通过改善投资环境,调整产品结构,引进龙头企业,扩大投资主体,积极承接东部产业转移,加快发展加工贸易。     

Mexican integration into the North American free trade zone

Mexican integration into the North American free trade zone is modeled as removing the tariff on Mexican imports of manufacturing goods. Using a theoretical model, it is shown that this increases welfare through production, consumption and employment gains. The results are derived by nesting the theory of customs unions, and the Harris-Todaro type intersectoral labor migration model into a unified framework.     

Does economic globalization affect the level and volatility of labor demand by skill? New insights from the Tunisian manufacturing industries

The central aim of this paper is to assess the effects of economic globalization on the level and volatility of labor demand for different skill groups in Tunisia. Using a panel dataset covering six manufacturing industries between 1983 and 2009, three main findings are reported. First, exports and imports exert a positive impact only on the semi-skilled and skilled labor demand while foreign direct investment flows increase the demand for semi-skilled and unskilled workers. Second, the regional analysis suggests that exports to the European Union boost the demand for the semi-skilled and skilled labor. Imports from the rest of the world exert similar effects on the demand for these two categories of workers. It emerges also that imports from the European Union lead to a higher demand for skilled labor, which gives support to the validity of the skill-enhancing trade hypothesis in Tunisian industries. Finally, our findings suggest that both exports and imports rise the employment volatility associated with skilled workers. On the other hand, there is a weak evidence of increased employment volatility as a result of foreign direct investment flows.     

Wage premia and skill upgrading in Italy: why didn't the hound bark?

This paper presents firm-level evidence on the change of the employment share and the wage premium of non-manual workers in Italian manufacturing during the nineties. We find that the relative stability of the aggregate wage premium and employment share hides offsetting disaggregate forces: technical progress raises the relative demand for skilled labor within firms, whereas demand changes associated with trade reduce the relative demand for skills. Moreover, it is within the class of non-manual workers that most of the action takes place: the wage premium and employment share of executives rise substantially, while those of clerks fall in a similar proportion. Finally, we find that the export status of firms plays a key role in explaining labor market dynamics: exporters account for most of both demand-related and technology-related shifts. Overall, our results for Italy question the conventional view that the labor market is “rigid” due to labor market institutions.     

Socio‐economic distance and spatial patterns in unemployment

This paper examines the spatial patterns of unemployment in Chicago between 1980 and 1990. We study unemployment clustering with respect to different social and economic distance metrics that reflect the structure of agents' social networks. Specifically, we use physical distance, travel time, and differences in ethnic and occupational distribution between locations. Our goal is to determine whether our estimates of spatial dependence are consistent with models in which agents' employment status is affected by information exchanged locally within their social networks. We present non‐parametric estimates of correlation across Census tracts as a function of each distance metric as well as pairs of metrics, both for unemployment rate itself and after conditioning on a set of tract characteristics. Our results indicate that there is a strong positive and statistically significant degree of spatial dependence in the distribution of raw unemployment rates, for all our metrics. However, once we condition on a set of covariates, most of the spatial autocorrelation is eliminated, with the exception of physical and occupational distance. Racial and ethnic composition variables are the single most important factor in explaining the observed correlation patterns. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Institutional constraints on organizations: the case of Spanish car dealerships

We study the effect of organizational choice and institutions on the performance of Spanish car dealerships. Using outlet‐level data from 1994, we find that vertically integrated dealerships showed substantially lower labor productivity, higher labor costs and lower profitability than franchised ones. Despite these gaps in performance, no vertically integrated outlet was separated until 1994, yet the few outlets that were eventually separated systematically improved their performance. We argue that the conversion of integrated outlets into franchised ones involved significant transaction costs, due to an institutional environment favoring permanent, highly unionized employment relations. In line with this argument, we find that the observed separations occurred in distribution networks that underwent marked reductions in worker unionization rates, following the legalization of temporary labor contracts. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

制度变迁与城市规划的组织变革

为降低交易费用、促进分工、推动经济增长,社会发生从计划经济体制向市场经济体制的制度变迁.在制度变迁过程中,城市规划也需要支付必要的市场交易成本.政府要在招商引资中通过城市规划主导城市空间演化方向,在城市经营中加强成本意识、营销意识.为适应制度变迁和公共服务的要求,城市规划的管理和编制都面临组织变革.     

The Spatial Effects of Wage or Property Tax Differentials, and Local Government Choice between Tax Instruments

This paper considers the spatial effects (on wages, employment, and business capital as functions of location) of a localized differential in source-based wage tax rates or business property tax rates between (for example) a central city and the surrounding suburbs. A simple model is used in which business production uses only labor and capital inputs. Consumers have fixed residential locations but may commute to work. Wage and property tax differentials have effects that are similar in some ways but different in other ways. If given a choice, a local government would choose to set its business property tax rate equal to zero and use only a wage tax.     

Local labor market impacts of energy boom-bust-boom in Western Canada

The impacts of energy price boom and bust are analyzed through the differential growth in employment and earnings between local labor markets with and without energy resources in Western Canada. The estimated differentials attributed to the boom-induced labor demand shocks show significant direct and indirect impacts on the earnings and employment within the energy extraction and other non-energy local sectors respectively. The local job multipliers indicate that job creation within the energy extraction sector leads to modest job creation within the non-energy local sectors during boom periods. For every ten energy extraction jobs created during a boom period, approximately three construction jobs, two retail jobs, and four and a half service jobs are created.     

Neighborhood quality and labor market outcomes: Evidence from quasi-random neighborhood assignment of immigrants

Settlement in a socially deprived neighborhood may hamper individual labor market outcomes because of lack of employed or highly skilled contacts. I investigate this hypothesis by exploiting a unique natural experiment that occurred between 1986 and 1998 when refugee immigrants to Denmark were assigned to municipalities quasi-randomly, which successfully addresses the methodological problem of endogenous neighborhood selection. I show that individuals sort into neighborhoods. Taking account of location sorting, living in a socially deprived neighborhood does not affect labor market outcomes of refugee men. Their labor market outcomes are also not affected by the overall employment rate and the overall average skill level in the neighborhood. However, an increase in the average skill level of non-Western immigrant men living in the neighborhood raises their employment probability, while an increase in the employment rate of co-national men living in the neighborhood raises their real annual earnings. This provides quasi-experimental evidence that residence-based job information networks are ethnically stratified.