Income Mobility, Temporary and Permanent Poverty

This paper incorporates poverty persistence in a measure of aggreg ate poverty over two-periods by decomposing the Foster et al . (1984) class of poverty measures into those temporarily in poverty and those in poverty in both periods. An additional weight is added to the permanent component in forming an aggregate poverty measure over both periods; this weight reflects the degree of poverty-persistence aversion. The effect on aggregate poverty of mobility between permanent and temporary poverty is found to be unambiguous only in the case of the headcount poverty measure. Simulations are used to investigate the relationship between poverty and mobility. The effects of two different types of mobility (random proportio nal income changes and a systematic regression towards or away from the median) are isolated     

Unionization and distribution of income under variable returns to scale

Variable returns to scale are introduced into the two-sector analysis of unionization and income distribution, and some new results are obtained. Specifically, with increasing returns to scale it is possible for both union and non-union workers to lose (gain) from unionization even when the unionized sector is relatively capital (labor) intensive.     

The Zero-root Property: Permanent vs Temporary Terms-of-trade Shocks

In this contribution, we show that the persistence and the time of occurrence of a terms‐of‐trade shock matter in determining steady‐state changes: (i) a strong persistent (temporary) terms‐of‐trade worsening induces a long‐run decline in the real expenditure greater than after a permanent disturbance; (ii) an adverse permanent shift in the terms of trade raises the real expenditure in the long run if the shock is expected to occur in the distant future. Finally, according to whether a temporary terms‐of‐trade worsening is anticipated or not, the current account displays a monotonic or a nonmonotonic adjustment.     

Unionization and absenteeism

Until recently any labour economist doing empirical work on unionization was concerned almost exclusively with the effect of unionization on wages. But beginning with Freeman's 1976 analysis of the rich institutional structure of unions, economists have been considering the role of unions in, for example, increasing productivity, lowering quit rates, enhancing fringe benefits, reducing income inequality, improving working conditions, and affecting a variety of other attributes at the workplace. ^{1 1}It is not the purpose of this paper to provide an exhaustive bibliography on the ‘new view’ of unionization. Nevertheless, the interested reader may want to see Freeman (1976, 1978, 1980) and Brown and Medoff (1978). To date, however, no study has directly addressed a question that appears ripe for empirical analysis: Does unionization affect absenteeism?

This paper presents results from a study designed to answer that question. The first section presents a simple model of absenteeism. The second section discusses the five mechanisms through which unionization influences absenteeism. The third section describes the data and variable selection. Results from logit regressions are presented in the fourth section and the paper closes with a summary of the arguments and evidence.     

全球化背景下的文化殖民倾向

“全球化”是人类社会在电子信息科技发展成就的基础上,以经济全球化为主导力量和主体内容,对全人类的政治、经济、文化以及人们的生产和生活方式产生影响的过程。它不仅对我们当今经济发展带来了新景观,也为我们的文化发展带来了一种新气象,同时也让我们深深感到必须对文化殖民主义倾向提高警惕。     

Nontraded Goods,Capital Taxes,and Temporary Immigration in a Small Open Economy

This paper extends the standard (one-good, two-factor) model of international capital and labor mobility by incorporating a nontraded good within a small capital-exporting, labor-importing country. It examines, from this country's perspective, the effects of capital taxes and temporary immigration on the nominal wage, and on welfare, and derives the optimal policy toward capital. It demonstrates, among other things, that (i) the optimal policy toward capital may be a tax on its domestic rate of return, depending on the factor intensity of the nontraded good and on the relationship between capital and labor in production, and (ii) the distinction between temporary and permanent immigration is important in evaluating its effects on various economic variables. [F20, F22]     

Unionization and plant closure in Canada

Abstract .  This paper examines for the first time the role of unionization as a determinant of plant closings in Canada. Using the 1999 to 2001 Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey, the paper contributes to the North American evidence by showing that the share of a plant's workers covered by collective bargaining has a robust positive partial correlation with the probability of larger plants closing. For smaller plants, the extent of unionization tends to be much lower and its variation plays no role in plant closure. The study highlights the theoretical and statistical importance of examining closure separately for large and small plants.     

Unionization,international integration,and selection

Abstract We study how unionization affects competitive selection between heterogeneous firms when wage negotiations can occur at the firm or at the profit‐centre level. With productivity specific wages, an increase in union power has: (i) a selection‐softening; (ii) a counter‐competitive; (iii) a wage‐inequality; and (iv) a variety effect. In a two‐country asymmetric setting, stronger unions soften competition for domestic firms and toughen it for exporters. With profit‐centre bargaining, we show how trade liberalization can affect wage inequality among identical workers both across firms (via its effects on competitive selection) and within firms (via wage discrimination across destination markets).     

How Monetary Policy can have Permanent Real Effects with Only Temporary Nominal Rigidity

A macroeconomic model is developed in which the psychological concept of loss aversion is incorporated into workers' preferences. The impact of monetary policy in the presence of loss aversion depends on the specification of the reference wage. The plausible specification that a worker's reference wage is the real wage she was paid in the previous period is considered in detail. Specifying the reference wage in this way, we show that an unanticipated change in monetary policy has a permanent, real effect when short term labour contracts are written in nominal wages.     

Foreign Direct Investment and the Unionization Rate

Technological innovations improve the welfare of a country facing fixed terms of trade, but may lead to immiserization when the terms of terms of trade are adversely affected. This paper establishes that transport innovation can be immiserizing for a small country when the transport sector exhibits variable returns to scale. The release of resources from the transport sector triggers Rybczynski-like effects, and the resulting expansion (contraction) in the volume of trade and in the demand for transport services raises unit costs of these services, and may reduce welfare in the presence of decreasing (increasing) returns to scale. [411]     

Temporary Protection and Technology Choice under the Learning Curve*

This paper examines the effects of temporary protection in a model of Cournot competition under the learning curve. We show that when the protected firm can choose among multiple technologies subject to different scopes for learning, protection may hurt the long‐run competitiveness of the firm by inducing it to choose a technology with little scope for learning.     

Unionization and International Market Share Rivalry: A Paradox

Two exporting firms (domestic and foreign) are considered which are symmetric in all respects except that one is unionized while the other faces a competitive labor market. Under free trade the unionized firm has the lower market share. Paradoxically, in the policy equilibrium, the unionized firm has the larger market share. Consequently, the nation hosting the unionized firm has the higher welfare level.     

Domestic Unionization and the Political Economy of Strategic Export Policy

This paper examines the effect of lobbying by a labor union and its parent firm on the argument for strategic export policy in a third market-unionized duopoly. The lobbying-induced export policy frequently deteriorates domestic welfare as compared with free trade. It is true that the politically-determined export policy can improve domestic welfare if the union's bargaining power is strong and the domestic government's responsiveness to political contributions is weak. However, even if the conditions are met, implementing the lobbying-induced export policy will not enhance domestic welfare more than improving labor–management relations. Moreover, the improvement of their relations will be hampered by the opportunity of their lobbying. These results indicate that strategic export policy toward a unionized duopoly should be restrained in light of political economy.     

Immigration and welfare magnets

"This paper investigates if the location choices made by immigrants when they arrive in the United States are influenced by the interstate dispersion in welfare benefits. Income-maximizing behavior implies that foreign-born welfare recipients unlike their native-born counterparts, may be clustered in the states that offer the highest benefits. The empirical analysis indicates that immigrant welfare recipients are indeed more heavily clustered in high-benefit states than the immigrants who do not receive welfare, or than natives. As a result, the welfare participation rate of immigrants is much more sensitive to changes in welfare benefits than that of natives."     

Immigration and Unemployment*

The wisdom of maintaining high levels of immigration into Australia has been questioned, particularly on the grounds that migration contributes to aggregate unemployment. This paper uses both statistical causality techniques and conventional structural models to investigate the relationship between immigration and unemployment in the post-war period in Australia. The tests find no evidence of any association from migration to unemployment, though there is strong evidence of a significant effect of Australian unemployment on migration. The results indicate that immigration policy should not be dictated by unfounded fears of immigration causing unemployment, at least over the range of previous Australian experience.     

Unionization in Australia: Evidence from the AWIRS*

This article uses workplace level data from the recent Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey to test a simple demand and supply model explaining the level of union membership within Australia The findings suggest that previous research using individual-level data has understated the importance of the supply-side in influencing union membership. In particular, unionization levels were found to be highly sensitive to firm size, to the number of unions represented in the workplace and to management attitudes     

Congestion and Optimal Immigration Policy

This paper presents a model to explain the stylized fact that many countries have a low ratio of migrants in their population while some countries have a high ratio of migrants. Immigration improves the income of the domestic residents, but migrants also increase the congestion of public services. If migrants are unskilled and therefore pay low taxes, and the government does not limit access to these services, then the welfare of the domestic residents decreases with the number of migrants. Visa auctions can lower the cost of immigration control and substitute legal migrants for illegal migrants. If the government decides to limit the access of migrants to public services, immigration control becomes unnecessary and the optimal number of migrants can be very large.     

Immigration, Unemployment and Pensions

This paper examines the impact of immigration on a host country with welfare state arrangements that support both the unemployed and the elderly. It is shown that low‐skilled immigration increases the unemployment rate. Furthermore, it harms the low‐skilled native population and benefits the high‐skilled natives and pensioners. Nevertheless, as under competitive labor markets, immigration generates an unambiguous gain for the native population as a whole. However, in contrast to the findings under full employment, this gain can be dampened by an expansion of the pension system.     

Welfare Leakage and Immigration Policy

This paper analyzes the interaction between the welfare stateand immigration policy. We establish a negative relationshipbetween the number of dependents and the extent of the welfarestate due to the leakage of benefits. We also explain the determinationof immigration policy as the outcome of a lobbying game betweendomestic interest groups and the government. Our results indicatethat there is evidence for welfare leakage and for lobbyingas a determinant of immigration policy. In our baseline specification,a 10 percentage points increase in the share of dependents leadsto a 7–10 percentage point decrease in the labor tax rate.Furthermore, an increase by 10 percentage points in union densityleads to a decrease of one percentage point in the share ofimmigrants in the population. In the context of EU enlargementand the ensuing migration flows, our model predicts a reductionin the size of the welfare state in the old member countries.(JEL H5, J1, J61)     

俄罗斯人口与移民状况

20世纪末21世纪初,俄罗斯爆发了第四次人口危机,这次人口危机发生在和平年代,人口出生率小于人口死亡率,俄罗斯每年减少近100万人口。由于＂缺人＂,许多村庄荒芜,大量工作无人干,西伯利亚和远东的开发也是纸上谈兵。俄罗斯政府若再不考虑从国外移民,国家将面临＂无人为继＂的尴尬局面。从＂外来移民计划＂、＂优秀人才向外移民严重＂、＂外国劳工人数下降＂和＂中国威胁论＂四个方面论述了俄罗斯人口与移民状况,说明必须增加外来高素质移民来抵消人口危机给俄罗斯的经济社会发展带来的负面影响。