FDI and the labour market: a review of the evidence and policy implications

This paper presents a series of results concerning the labour-marketimpact of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in the UK.The paper demonstrates that one of the crucial impacts of FDIis to increase wage inequality and the use of relatively moreskilled labour in the domestic firms. This result is found tobe a combination of two effects. First, the entry by a multinationalenterprise (MNE) increases the demand for skilled workers inan industry or region, thus increasing wage inequality. Second,technology spillovers occur from foreign to domestic firms.As a result of these spillovers, relative demand for skilledworkers increases in the domestic firms, further contributingto aggregate wage inequality and skill upgrading. The paperalso considers how FDI impacts upon skill shares by productivitydifferentials between foreign and domestic firms. Finally, thepolicy implications of this are discussed, from the perspectiveof regional development, and the likely effectiveness of attractingFDI to reduce structural unemployment.     

New Labour and the labour market

The recent run of good macroeconomic news masks mounting evidencethat worklessness is increasingly concentrated on selected individuals,households, and socio-economic groups and in geographical areas.These distributional aspects have been overlooked or ignoredover the last 20 years, but we believe they now form the mostpressing labour-market and social problems facing this administration.We focus on what we view as the government's selected priorities:the concentration of unemployment on certain individuals, groups,and areas; increasing inactivity, especially marked among lesseducated, older men; low pay, persistence of low wages, andits relationship with job loss; and the distribution of workacross households and child poverty. Many of these problemsleave lasting scars on individuals, so that successful interventionmay beneficially change an individual's life-chances. We examinethe evidence on each of these issues and the current state ofpolicy aimed to reduce their scale or intensity.     

Reinterpreting the convict labour market

The convicts transported to NSW between 1817 and 1840 were young, fit, highly literate and brought occupational skills which were broadly representative of the British and Irish working classes. In the colonial labour market where convicts were coerced, more labour was forthcoming and at a lower wage than in a free labour market. The assignment of convict labour in the colony was efficient; skilled urban and construction tradesmen were employed in the same jobs in NSW as they had held in Britain. Domestic servants and unskilled urban workers whose skills were not suited to the needs of the colony experienced job restructuring. The organization of convict workers into teams and gangs in Australia was similar to the way work was organized in free labour Britain, and a mbc of incentives and rewards characterized the extraction of work from convicts. The human capital of the transportees and the labour system within which they worked help to explain the rapid growth of the colonial economy before 1840.     

The state of the market and the contrarian strategy: evidence from China's stock market

Using the most comprehensive weekly dataset of ‘A’ shares listed on the Chinese stock market, this paper examines short-term contrarian strategies under different market states from 1995–2010. We find statistically significant profits from contrarian strategies, especially during the period after 2007, when China (along with other countries) experienced an economic downturn following the worldwide financial crisis. Our empirical evidence suggests that: (1) no significant profit is generated from either momentum or contrarian strategies in the intermediate horizon; (2) after microstructure effects are adjusted for, contrarian strategies with only four to eight weeks holding periods based on the stocks’ previous four to eight week's performance generate statistically significant profits of around 0.2% per week; (3) the contrarian strategy following a ‘down’ market generates higher profit than those following an ‘up’ market, suggesting that a contrarian strategy could be used as a shelter when the market is in decline. The profits following a ‘down’ market are robust after risk adjustment.     

Education and the labour market in Botswana

Using primary data from a 1993/4 Household Income and Expenditure Survey in Botswana, this article presents empirical results on occupational attainment, its determinants, and the extent of filtering down in Botswana's labour market, given changes in labour market conditions over time. It was found that the Botswana labour market has been characterised by some ‘filtering down’ of educated workers into less skilled jobs as the supply of skilled manpower exceeded demand. Those who entered the labour market earlier, those with more education, those located in the urban areas and male workers are more likely to occupy jobs that are higher up in the hierarchy than to be in an unskilled blue-collar job. Jobs higher up in the hierarchy are also more rewarding financially. The article shows that there is occupational segregation of workers by gender in Botswana's labour market in that female workers are generally confined to a narrow range of occupations. The policy implications are that employment creation has to be pursued vigorously and the issue of gender discrimination investigated further.     

从经济地理学看市场营销

经济地理学是一门研究人类经济活动空间规律的学科,它的学科内涵体现在两个方面:一方面人类的各种经济活动离不开具体的地理空间。随着科学技术的发展,人们对地理环境的依赖性越来越小(尤其是距离对人类的影响),但是任何具体的经济活动必须依托一定的场所才能展开,而地理的影响     

Local politics and the local authority labour market

The 1979 election heralded a new approach to public sector finance and employment. For local government, this has involved a new regulatory framework, which attempts to reproduce private sector financial and labour market structures. This article examines the effect of this new regulatory framework on the labour markets of three case study local authorities and the manner in which those effects have been mediated by local politics over the period 1979-1984     

Eastern European trade and the Austrian labour market

Eastern European Trade and the Austrian Labour Market. — Recent years have seen a major break in trade relations between Western and Eastern European countries. Austria experienced a large bilateral trade creation with these countries. In this paper, the authors take a closer look at the impact this trade growth had on the Austrian labour market. To differentiate as far as possible between different segments of the labour market, they concentrate on unemployment experience and wage growth for a panel of individual workers in Austrian industry. The results show rather small employment effects, the impact on wage growth is more pronounced with interesting modifications for mobile and immobile workers.     

Fiscal policy and economic growth: some evidence from China

Review of World Economics - China has experienced profound economic and social changes in recent decades. During this period, China’s fiscal policy framework has been substantially reformed....     

Union relevance in the Malaysian labour market

The study estimates the effect of union membership on workers' wages using individual‐level data from a survey conducted among employees in various sectors in Malaysia in 2012. Initial results show that union membership has a positive effect on wages. However, after controlling for endogeneity, union membership or the presence of a labour union within a firm is not statistically significant for individual wage levels. Because there is no trade union wage premium, the study suggests that the revival of labour union membership is not going to be an easy task.     

Active labour market policies and job tenure

In this paper, we study the effect of subsidised on-the-jobtraining, training for the unemployed and pure wage subsidieson job tenure. Correcting for selection biases, we find thateach of the labour market policies increases the length of jobtenure. Despite the sensitivity of the estimates to the parametricassumptions with respect to the unobservables, the effect ofsubsidised on-the-job training schemes is always found to besignificantly positive. Training programs for the unemployedand pure wage subsidies always have a positive, but statisticallynon-significant effect Our results provide some support forhuman capital theories as opposed to matching theories.     

Migration and the urban labour market: The case of San Salvador

This article analyzes the employment and incomes of migrants in the city of San Salvador. The study finds that, both rural-urban and urban-urban migrants experience income gains and are increasingly employed in the formal sector. However, the upward mobility of urban-urban migrants is much larger. Compared with urban natives, these migrants have higher income levels and employment rates after five years of urban residence, while rural-urban migrants earn much less and tend to remain in the informal sector more frequently. This evidence is contrary to findings obtained in other studies, for example Brazil, which showed that urban natives and migrants have comparable levels of income and employment. The authors suggest that the experience of rural-urban migrants is a result of the functioning of the urban labour market. Within this market a mechanism exists whereby access to the high-wage sector is limited by discriminating among workers. As a result, rural-urban migrants, often recognizable by their racial characteristics, are denied access to high-wage jobs.     

Labor market deregulation and globalization: empirical evidence from OECD countries

This paper empirically investigates the influence of globalization on various aspects of labor market deregulation. I employ the data set by Bassanini and Duval (2006) on labor market institutions in OECD countries and the KOF index of globalization. The data set covers 20 OECD countries in the 1982–2003 period. The results suggest that globalization did neither influence the unemployment replacement rate, the unemployment benefit length, public expenditures on ALMP, the tax wedge, union density nor overall employment protection. In contrast, protection of regular employment contracts was diminished when globalization was proceeding rapidly. In fact, domestic aspects, such as unemployment and government ideology are more important determinants of labor market institutions and deregulation processes in OECD countries than globalization. For this reason, working conditions of unskilled workers are not likely to deteriorate and the jobs of unskilled workers are not likely to disappear in the course of globalization. All this is, of course, not to insinuate that globalization has any benign influence on labor market institutions.     

Institutions and the rise of taxes on labour in the OECD

Institutions and the Rise of Taxes on Labour in the OECD. —The aim of this paper is to explain differences among OECD countries in the evolution of taxes on labour during the last two decades. Its main message is that these taxes are to an important extent structurally and institutionally determined. Tax rates on labour are shown to have risen more strongly in countries where: (i) government has been controlled mainly by leftist parties; (ii) taxes (in general) are decided and collected mainly by central government (fiscal centralization); (iii) coalition and minority governments are frequent; (iv) the partisan composition (political colour) of these coalitions is unstable; (v) the labour market is neither centralized nor decentralized.     

Correction to: Fiscal policy and economic growth: some evidence from China

Review of World Economics - In the original publication of the article, the email addresses and affiliations of the second, third and fourth authors, Mengxi Wang, Donghyun Park and Cynthia...