Occupational job creation: patterns and implications

This paper empirically investigates the matching process ofjob seekers and job vacancies, on different occupational labormarkets, and reveals the relative importance of supply and demandfactors, and frictions in the job creation process. Using datafrom German administrative records, we estimate matching functionsboth on the aggregate level, and for different occupationaland educational groups. The data allow to avoid some of theusual problems in empirical matching studies; extensive robustnessand stationarity tests are carried out. The results indicatesubstantial heterogeneity in the matching processes at disaggregatelevels. This information can be useful for policymakers, sincepolicy interventions that are effective in creating employmenton some occupational labor markets might lead to unsatisfactoryresults for other occupations.     

Property-led regeneration and job creation: The Belfast case

This paper presents the results of a recent evaluation of the Urban Development Grant in Belfast. In contrast to cities in Great Britain, the Urban Development Grant in Belfast has been available not just to property speculators, but also to owner-occupiers of commercial premises. The grant is to facilitate employment growth in assisted businesses by removing constraints on trade and production imposed by unsuitable premises or location. An analysis of employment change in UDG-assisted and non-assisted businesses is undertaken to ascertain whether grant assistance was associated with employment growth.     

Rural entrepreneurship and job creation: the hybrid identity of village-cadre-entrepreneurs

Poverty alleviation has been one of the most important issues in human society, especially in rural areas. As a critical solution to settle rural poverty, entrepreneurship increases rural entrepreneurs' income and creates job opportunities in rural communities. However, why rural entrepreneurs have different employment choices remains underexplored. This research focuses on village cadres' entrepreneurship in China, exploring how the hybrid identity of village-cadre-entrepreneurs interacts and further influences their motivation to create more jobs. Furthermore, we theorize how contextual factors, such as village isolation, lineage group, and regional collective mobilization, shape the logic of the employment strategy resulting from this hybrid identity. Based on a nationwide representative sample comprising 4346 rural entrepreneurs and their enterprises, our findings indicate that village-cadre-entrepreneurs are motivated to provide more work opportunities within the system of village self-governance. With job creation, village-cadre-entrepreneurs preserve and strengthen the “patron” image of village-cadre identity and mitigate the “businessman” image of entrepreneur identity. Further to this, the positive effect of village-cadre-entrepreneurs offering more work opportunities via entrepreneurial activities is more prominent when villages i) are more isolated from the external environment, ii) have more lineage groups, or iii) are in areas with more collective mobilization. This study highlights the impact of rural governance logic in rural entrepreneurial activities and the significance of village-cadre-entrepreneurs' role in job creation and rural poverty alleviation.     

Analysing job creation effects of scaling up infrastructure spending in South Africa

In a first for South Africa, this article draws on literature on infrastructure productivity to model dynamic economy-wide employment impacts of infrastructure investment funded with different fiscal tools. Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model, the South African investment plan is modelled, given the infrastructure externality. Alternative fiscal scenarios to finance the policy are modelled in the article. In the long run, unemployment decreases for all types of workers under one of the scenarios. In the short run, only elementary occupation workers benefit from a decrease in unemployment; for the rest, unemployment rises.     

Policy evaluation and meta-evaluation: The case of rural co-operatives

Many presentations of debates about co-operatives and rural development, and some of these debates themselves, are simplistic, or self-asserting, or self-defeating. Evaluation theory has not been given the attention it merits. Positions in meta-evaluation have been un-, or misidentified. Philosophical problems of values at the levels of policy and programme analysis have been neglected or glossed over. This paper addresses itself to some of these issues, in respect of the structuring of the evaluative argument and counter-argument. The case of rural co-operative evaluation is analysed by a method which could also be used for study and appraisal of other public policies for development.     

Agricultural planning,pricing policy and co-operatives in Vietnam

In the competition between national government and local co-operatives, a central contradiction in socialist rural development, the price system, market control and terms of trade are crucially related to the relative power and capacity of the central government to control ratios of accumulation and consumption. In Vietnam there is a dynamic interaction between government and agricultural producers over pricing policy and paradoxically, it is the co-operative, primarily viewed by the state as a means of providing cheap food, which has strengthened the collective bargaining position of agricultural producers. The government has had to introduce material incentives to expand agricultural production beyond subsistence levels and bow to pressure to alter the previous accumulation/consumption ratios in favour of consumption.     

Democracy and Durability: Empirical Analysis and a Causality Test

The current literature has failed to differentiate between the collapse of democratic and authoritarian rules or whether democratic regimes collapse for the same reasons as do authoritarian regimes. Therefore, the current literature is silent on whether democracies are more fragile or less susceptible to economic and political breakdowns. Using a multitude of political instability variables, this paper explores empirically, whether political freedom and civil liberty (a proxy for democracy) has any effect on the stability of the political order. The empirical results of the paper confirm the hypothesis that democracy is conducive to political stability; the higher the level of political freedom and civil liberty, the more stable countries are. The paper also presented a Granger-causality test of political instability and the level of political freedom and civil liberty. The test results indicate that the level of political freedom and civil liberty Granger-cause the level of political instability, while the level of political instability does not Granger-cause the level of political freedom and civil liberty. The test results indicate that Granger-causality runs one-way from political freedom and civil liberty to political instability and not the other way. A further comprehensive research is needed on the multi-layered and the complex relationship among democracy and the resilience of the political order.I would like to thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments that improved the quality of the paper. I would also like to thank the Research Council of Niagara University for their financial support.     

Working hours and job satisfaction in China: A threshold analysis

This study utilizes a threshold model to examine the nonlinear relationship between working hours and job satisfaction, using the open-access data of the 2018 China Family Panel Studies. We address the endogeneity of working hours utilizing an instrumental variable-based two-stage residual inclusion approach. The threshold model shows that the effects are indeed different. Working more than 9 h reduces workers' job satisfaction, and these reductions are even greater among those working more than 12 h. Heterogeneous analysis reveals that working long hours reduces the job satisfaction of female employees more than that of their male counterparts; the job satisfaction of unmarried individuals is unaffected by how long they work, whereas that of married workers declines when they work longer hours. Also, although the job satisfaction of wage-employed workers falls with an increase in the number of hours worked regardless of how long they work, that of self-employed workers falls only when they work more than 12 h. Poor physical health mediates the adverse effects of long working hours on job satisfaction. Finally, working long hours reduces individuals' short-run hedonic well-being but does not affect their perceptions and feelings towards various facets of life in the long run.     

Social networks,job satisfaction and job searching behavior in the Chinese labor market

This study first investigates determinants of job searching strategies and then examines if social networks are connected with better job outcomes. Unlike previous studies that focus solely on income, this paper pays more heed to job satisfaction. Based on data drawn from China General Social Survey, we find that disadvantaged job seekers rely primarily on informal channels; whereas experienced and better-educated job seekers tend to search for jobs through formal channels. However, those reaping the largest benefit from using networks are the job seekers who are able to use formal and informal channels jointly. By disaggregating the whole sample, we further find that the promoting effect of network use is contingent on factors such as gender and types of jobs. Network use brings about larger benefits to female and job seekers target to prestigious occupations. Finally, it appears that whether a job seeker can receive influential help depends primarily on the social status of the contacts rather than their tie strength. The results of our paper thus urge us to examine the combination of different searching strategies rather than studying them separately.     

20世纪50年代的职工储蓄动员与现代国家建设

伴随着现代国家建设,政府对民众日常生活的介入与塑造愈益加深。1949年以后,为了早日向工业国转变,国家选择了高投入、高积累的工业化发展战略,并通过计划经济体制调整国民收入中积累和消费部分的比重,个体消费者的经济活动也因此被纳入国家计划的范畴。储蓄作为一种延期消费,具有调节货币流通、推迟社会购买力、增加生产建设资金的作用。为此,国家加大了对城市居民特别是职工储蓄的推广力度。对银行储蓄的大力提倡和动员,成为国家调整积累与消费关系的重要手段,同时它也在无形中改造了民众传统的经济生活方式和消费习惯。根植于传统“熟人社会”的民间借贷具有强大的生命力,成为现代国家推广银行储蓄的一大阻力。在这种情况下,互助储金会等新型的互助.互济组织应运而生,承担着将职工从民间信贷导向银行储蓄的历史功能。     

Indonesian Politics in 2014: Democracy’s Close Call

Indonesian democracy experienced a near miss in 2014, when Jakarta governor Joko Widodo (Jokowi) defeated former general Prabowo Subianto by a margin of 6.3% in the presidential election. Both candidates were populists who rose to prominence in the context of public disillusionment with incumbent president Yudhoyono; Prabowo, however, condemned Indonesia's democratic system and promised to take Indonesia in a more authoritarian direction. We trace democracy's close call through five phases: the dying months of Yudhoyono's presidency, the rise of populist alternatives, the parliamentary elections of April 2014, the July presidential campaign, and the aftermath. We attribute the strength of Prabowo's campaign to superior organisational and financial support, while Jokowi's victory rested upon strong identification with him among poor and rural voters. Also determining the outcome was the fact that public satisfaction with democracy remained strong, undermining the effectiveness of Prabowo's authoritarian-populist message. Nevertheless, democracy's future remains uncertain, given that Prabowo and his supporters now control a sufficiently large number of parliamentary seats to continue promoting a rollback of democratic reforms.