技能溢价与工资不平等理论研究进展

尽管技能偏向性技术进步假说为理解技能溢价和工资不平等提供了一个较好的分析框架,但依然存在不一致的研究结果.争议主要集中在资本与技能之间的互补关系、劳动力市场制度变迁以及技术和贸易哪一个是造成收入差距拉大的主要原因等几个方面.未来的研究将会建立一个统一的理论框架,分析各因素在解释工资不均衡程度增加时的相互作用.     

Social Preferences,Sorting, and Competition*

In this paper, I investigate how an increase in competition for workers influences the impact of social preferences on labor‐market outcomes. By sorting themselves into firms with homogeneous work forces, workers can ensure that they suffer less from social comparisons. Competition promotes choice and thus facilitates sorting. However, competition also boosts rent differences in the labor market, because firms cannot curb internal inequity among its employees without losing workers to competitors. To reduce their exposure to social comparisons, workers might engage in inefficient sorting into unemployment. Consequently, social preferences can have strong effects (i.e., unemployment) in a competitive labor market, whereas they only have a slight impact on labor‐market outcomes in a monopsony.     

Trade,Skill Biased Technical Change and Wage Inequality in South Africa

Trade openness influences the wage structure via technology adoption in middle income countries. Given the econometric challenges of handling endogenous trade and technology interaction, we offer an alternative quantification based on calibration of a general equilibrium model. We expand the standard open economy Ramsey model to include comparative advantage, technology adoption and skill bias influenced by investment decisions. The calibration constructs a reference path for South Africa and allows counterfactual analysis of trade openness. The quantitative results imply that trade effects via technology adoption and skill bias can be an important determinant of wage inequality in middle income countries.     

Work and Wage Dynamics around Childbirth

In this paper, we investigate how the wage processes of women who are well established in the labour market are affected by having children. We estimate a flexible fixed‐effects wage regression model extended by post‐childbirth fixed effects. We use register data on West Germany, and we exploit the expansionary family policy during the late 1980s and 1990s for identification. On their return to work after childbirth, the wages of mothers drop by 3–5.7 per cent per year of leave. We find negative selection back to full‐time work after childbirth. We discuss the policy implications regarding statistical discrimination and the results concerning the family gap.     

Gender Wage Differentials and Occupational Segregation in Hong Kong, 1981–1996

This paper analyses gender wage differentials and the role of occupational segregation in Hong Kong. It is found that the female–male earnings ratio increased substantially from 0.710 in 1981 to 0.839 in 1996. A decomposition which takes into account occupational differences shows that the gender pay gap is mostly within occupations and most of the intra‐occupation wage gap is unexplained. The gender pay differential due to occupational differences is small; in fact, the overall occupational segregation favours females in Hong Kong.     

Social Preferences and Price Cap Regulation

This paper analyzes the allocative properties of price cap regulation under very general hypotheses on the nature of society's preferences. We propose a generalized price cap that ensures the convergence to optimal (second best) prices in the long-run equilibrium for virtually any form of the welfare function. Hence, the result of the convergence to Ramsey prices of Laspeyres-type price cap regulation is a particular instance of our more general result. We also provide an explicit and relatively easy to calculate and implement generalized price cap formula for distributionally weighted utilitarian welfare functions, as suggested by Feldstein (1972a).     

社会功能工资模型的构建

马克思经济学的劳动力价值工资理论、新古典经济学的边际生产力工资理论和利润分享工资理论等,在解释私有制经济中的劳动者报酬方面,都具有一定的优势,同时又都有一定的局限性。以劳动者报酬社会功能工资理论为标准,以马克思经济学的劳动力价值工资理论为起点,综合新古典经济学的边际生产力工资理论和利润分享工资理论,构建劳动者报酬社会功能工资模型,能为提高我国私有制经济中的劳动者报酬提供理论基础。     

Skill Loss, Ranking of Job Applicants and the Dynamics of Unemployment

Abstract. This paper investigates the consequences of skill loss as a result of unemployment in an efficiency wage model with turnover costs and on-the-job search. Firms are unable to differentiate wages and therefore prefer to hire employed searchers or unemployed workers who have not lost human capital. It is shown that if some fundamental factor in the economy changes, this will result in a lengthy adjustment process with substantial long-run unemployment effects. Moreover, the model is capable of generating persistence, but the amount depends on the duration of the shock itself.     

Social Dynamics

Lutz Leisering and Robert Walker (eds.), Review of The Dynamics of Modern Society
Steven Durlauf and H. Peyton Young (eds.), Social Dynamics     

Preference Evolution,Two-Speed Dynamics,and Rapid Social Change

We present a dynamic analysis of the evolution of preferences in a strategic environment. In our model, each player's behavior depends on both the game's payoffs and his idiosyncratic biases, but only the game's payoffs determine his evolutionary success. Dynamics run at two speeds at once; while natural selection slowly reshapes the distribution of preferences, players quickly learn to behave as their preferences dictate. We establish the existence and uniqueness of the paired trajectories of society's preferences and behavior. While aggregate behavior adjusts smoothly in equilibration games, in coordination games aggregate behavior can jump discretely in an instant of evolutionary time. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C72, C73.     

Inequality, Growth, and the Dynamics of Social Segmentation

In this paper, we investigate the link between the dynamics of society segmentation into communities and the growth process, based on a simple human capital growth model. Using coalition theory, we study the socioeconomic dynamics of an economy over time, characterize it and prove that the economy converges to a steady state partition that may be segmented. Eventually the whole economy tends to a balanced growth path, exhibiting persistent inequality in the case of segmentation. We then provide sufficient conditions on initial inequality and the technology parameters generating local and global externalities for obtaining a segmented society in the long run. On the whole, the relationship between inequality and growth cannot be assessed without taking into consideration the stratification phenomena at work in society over time.     

我国劳动者持续低工资形成机制分析

我国已经经历了工业化的起飞阶段,经济持续高增长了30年,但近十几年我国劳动者报酬占GDP的比重呈现出持续下降的趋势,从1993年的55.6%下降到2007年的39.74%.压低劳动者报酬占GDP比重的主要目的是保障资本优先积累,长期维持劳动力低成本的国际竞争优势,实现经济赶超式发展战略.政府通过几乎完全开放的农产品贸易将农产品价格压制在较低水平,以及对农业的投入和保护不足,制约了农民的收入增长,降低了农村劳动力转移造成的劳动力成本上升的幅度.长期的劳动力低成本使得低素质劳动密集型行业过度发展,抑制了我国产业升级和技术进步,降低了对知识型和技术型劳动力的需求,阻碍了劳动生产率和收入提高的步伐,也导致第三产业发展缓慢,形成全社会低工资的状况.     

Globalization,Skill Accumulation and the Skill Premium

We analyze the impact of globalization upon the skill premium (inequality) in advanced countries from a two‐goods North–South model with skill accumulation. Globalization consists of an increase in the size of the South. Its impact on inequality depends on its intensity and on the pre‐globalization proportion of skilled workers. The post‐globalization inequality is a non‐monotonic function of the pre‐globalization proportion of skilled workers and of the globalization intensity. The impact is different for the generation in work and for the following generations. There is a threshold value of the skill endowment under (above) which inequality is lower (higher) after than before globalization.     

消费习惯、异质偏好与动态资产定价:纯交换经济情形

本文用Chan和Kogan、Bask和Cuoco等的方法考虑纯交换经济下的定价问题,我们引进了两个投资者:一个具有外在性消费习惯;一个不具有消费习惯。我们重点考察消费习惯对投资者的最优消费规则的影响以及对资产价格的确定。此外,我们还考虑了对数效用函数下,消费习惯以差的形式出现的情形下的消费规则和定价问题。我们发现当两个投资者中一个具有消费习惯而另一个不具有该习惯时,消费习惯同时改变两个投资者的最优消费规则、消费动态和财富动态。此时的动态资产定价受外在性消费习惯的影响,即时Sharpe比为常数,并等于同质量经济下的即时Sharpe比。同时,如果考虑对数效用函数下消费习惯以差的形式出现,则即时Sharpe比是时变的,反周期的。     

Social Security and Old Age Unemployment Risk with Efficient Wage Bargaining

I analyze a life‐cycle economy with old age productivity risk where wages, employment, and severance payments are set through efficient bargaining between risk averse unions and risk neutral firms. Allocations with limited union membership are second‐best inefficient as they generate too little labor supply in young age, too much consumption before retirement, too little employment of older workers (early retirement), and too little insurance against old age unemployment. Providing public transfers to early retirees (disability benefits or early pensions) might help to increase the degree of risk sharing at the cost of lower old age employment. Depending on whether absolute risk aversion is increasing or decreasing in consumption, these policies might or might not produce efficiency gains at equilibrium.     

Wage Setting, Wage Curve and Phillips Curve: The Italian evidence

The purpose of this paper is to investigate some issues of wage setting in order to assess if nominal inertia and wage flexibility characterise the Italian supply side, using multivariate cointegration models. Our estimates indicate that an explicit distinction between stationary and non-stationary variables and a joint analysis of long-run and short-run structure is crucial for achieving clearer results. To this end, we use quarterly time series data for industry sector 1976:1–1993:4. Interesting results have been found concerning the empirical evidence of a long-run wage curve and the existence of a Phillips curve, through adopting alternative order reduction of the I(2) wage and price variables. Moreover, some insights on regional (North-South) unemployment effects are pointed out and discussed.     

Wage indexation,migration, and unemployment

This article sets up a two-goods model with wage indexation and migrants. A dual labor market is introduced where the domestic workers receive an indexed wage while migrants receive a market-determined wage. The traded sector may be assumed to be unionized while the non-traded goods sector is non-unionized giving rise to flexible wages. This provides an example of segmentation and wage indexation. The wage indexation creates unemployment in the traded sector and the segmentation allows this unemployment to persist. The main results obtained are: sector-specific migration of labor may raise domestic welfare, while with capital accumulation such migration necessarily raises the relative price of the non-traded goods, leading to structural adjustment.     

Wage Rigidity,Inflation, and Institutions

We study the possible existence of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) at wage growth rates different from zero in aggregate data. Even if DNWR prevails at zero for individual workers, compositional effects might lead to falling aggregate wages, while changes in relative wages combined with DNWR might lead to positive aggregate wage growth. We explore industry data for 19 OECD countries, over the 1971–2006 period. We find evidence for a floor on nominal wage growth at 6 percent in the 1970s and 1980s, at 1 percent in the 1990s, and at 0.5 percent in the 2000s. Furthermore, we find that DNWR is stronger in country‐years with strict employment protection legislation, high union density, centralized wage setting, and high inflation.     

The Roles of Job and Worker Restructuring in Aggregate Wage Growth Dynamics1

We propose an approach for measuring and analyzing the dynamics of the standard aggregate wage growth of macro statistics with micro data. Our method decomposes the aggregate wage growth into the wage growth of job stayers and into various terms related to job and worker restructuring. This method produces explicit expressions with clear interpretations for the various restructuring components. Using comprehensive longitudinal employer–employee data, we study how job and worker restructuring influence the aggregate wage growth and its cyclicality. The results highlight the importance of drawing a sharp distinction between job and worker restructuring in the analysis of aggregate wage growth dynamics.