Wage Returns to Schooling in Nigeria

Abstract: In the last two decades, primary and secondary school enrollment rates have declined in Nigeria while enrollment rates in post‐secondary school have increased. This paper estimates from the General Household Survey for Nigeria the private returns to schooling associated with levels of educational attainment for wage and self‐employed workers. The estimates for both men and women are small at primary and secondary levels, 2–4 percent, but are substantial at post‐secondary education level, 10–15 percent. These schooling return estimates may account for the recent trends in enrollments. Thus, increasing public investment to encourage increased attendance in basic education is not justifiable on grounds of private efficiency, unless investments to increase school quality have higher private returns. With high private returns to post‐secondary schooling, students at this level should pay tuition, to recoup more of the public costs of schooling, which may be redistributed to poor families through scholarships.     

Wage Determination Differences between Chinese State and Non-State Firms

Market-oriented economic reform has given much greater autonomy to state and collective enterprises' managers to make production, investment and marketing decisions. However, as the assets of these enterprises are still owned by government at different levels, the decision-making and risk-bearing functions of enter-prises may be divorced, firms are more likely to maximize income per employee rather than firm's profits. This hypothesis is tested in this paper by analysing Chinese enterprises' earnings determination behaviour using a data set encompassing state, collective and private sectors. The main findings are that the state and the collective sectors behave more like labour managed firms in that they try to maximize income per worker rather than profit, whereas private-sector firms are profit maximizers. Furthermore, collective-sector firms which bear a higher degree of risk, appear to base their profit sharing decisions more on enterprises' economic and financial performance, than do state-owned enterprises. Hence collective enterprises' bonus payments improve productivity more than do state-sector bonuses.     

Hope against Hope: Strike Activity in Canada, 1920-1939

The received view is that, across countries and time, strike dimensions trace an empirical regularity. The incidence and duration of contract strikes move in opposite directions over the business cycle: incidence is procyclical and duration countercyclical. The Canadian experience in the interwar years was different. Strike incidence was independent of the business cycle and strike durations fell steadily over the period. A distinct pattern emerged. The 1920s saw a decline in strike activity and steady losses for workers; in the 1930s strike activity gained momentum and there were more worker wins. Our interpretation of this extraordinary episode is based on a new data set collected for the period 1920 to 1939. We evaluate strikes in the context of a war-of-attrition model and estimate the probability of strike outcomes (success, failure, or compromise) and capitulation times (for firms and workers) as functions of firm and striker characteristics. We find that workers capitulated first in the 1920s because firms used replacement workers as part of a larger strategy to break the union movement. In the 1930s, it was firms' turn to capitulate first because they had cut back on resources to fight strikes, even as workers became more belligerent.     

员工参与与工资决定——基于企业工资集体协商的实证分析

本文利用在湖北企业职工收入分配调查中所得到的数据,运用对应分析方法研究企业开展工资集体协商对职工工资决定的影响。实证结果显示,尽管在政府推动下我国一些企业工资集体协商工作已开展起来了,并产生了一定的积极效应,但由于多数企业员工参与不够,真正平等意义上的工资集体协商制度还没有形成,因此,目前企业工资并非是由企业与员工双方平等协商共同决定的。本文最后对这一结果产生的原因做了进一步的分析,并提出应大力加强企业民主制度的建设,加大工资集体协商等相关制度的建设,并通过发挥各级劳动关系的协调作用,营造良好的氛围和社会环境,以促进企业职工工资决定机制的形成。     

Role of Individual Social Capital in Wage Determination: Evidence from China

The present study examines the role of individual‐level social capital in workers’ wage determination in a Nash‐bargaining wage model using Chinese micro‐level data. The study finds a significant contribution of individual‐specific social capital to the wage level. In particular, larger individual social networks and workers’ positive attitudes toward social capital significantly increase the wage level. Moreover, the effect of social capital on the wage level is much larger for men than for women. The results indicate that construction of individual social capital could increase workers’ wages. However, efforts are needed to reduce the unequal contributions of social capital between men and women.     

The Wage and Employment Dynamics of Minimum Wage Workers

This study uses panel data to examine the wage and employment dynamics of minimum wage workers. Compared with workers earning above the minimum, minimum wage workers are much more likely to be new entrants or to exit the labor market. Changes in industry, occupation, and access to job training are particularly important to improving the wages of minimum wage workers. Many minimum wage workers earn less than their potential wage temporarily because of nonwork circumstances that make higher-paying jobs less attractive.     

Export Activity,Firm Size and Wage Structure: Evidence from Taiwanese Manufacturing Firms*

This study adopts a semiparametric smooth coefficient model to evaluate the export–wage premiums, firm size–wage premiums, and the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor. Particular focus is placed upon widespread evidence indicating that pay levels in ‘large’ and ‘export‐oriented’ firms are higher than in their ‘small’ and ‘domestic‐oriented’ counterparts. Applying the firm‐level data for Taiwanese manufacturing firms, we find a positive export–wage premium for skilled workers and a negative export–wage premium for unskilled workers. The hypothesis of a constant export premium across firm size is rejected. While most of the export–wage premiums for skilled labor can be attributed to the small and medium firms, the large exporting firms have a significant adverse effect on wages for unskilled labor. Moreover, our results suggest that the firm size–wage premiums for skilled workers are larger than those for unskilled workers. The wage gap between the two skill groups is also sensitive to size categories.     

中国不同所有制部门的工资决定与教育回报:分位回归的证据

文中利用分位回归估计了不同所有制部门的工资方程.对于国有部门而言,1991、1993年的结果表明,低分位回归中的教育回报率比较高(1997年的结果没有明显的规律)。而对于私营经济而言,1993、1997年的结果表明,高分位回归中的教育回报率高于低分位回归。这种规律在城市和农村地区都是成立的。国有部门中处在收入条件分布低端的样本工资增长快于处在条件分布高端的样本,民营部门则没有这样的规律,甚至与之相反。     

Wage Reform in Singapore

Singapore attained self-government in 1959. Her policy of relying on the MNCs to achieve industrialization has proven to be very successful. The Singapore model shows that economic strategy must be flexible to meet the changing needs of the Singapore economy. One such economic strategy is the wage system.
During the period 1959–1990, the wage system in Singapore changed twice, once in 1968, and again in 1985. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we examine the need for wage reform, and secondly to discuss various patterns of flexible wage models in Singapore. The main conclusion is that Singapore's flexible wage models can benefit both the worker and the employer.     

The Industrial Tribunals and Wage Determination in the Australian Iron and Steel Industry, 1921–38

It is believed in some quarters that the system of federal and state industrial tribunals in Australia has exercised a considerable impact on the determination of wages in Australia, making the average level of nominal wages more inflexible and wage differentials more equal in the interwar period. The purpose of this paper is to identify, through cross-country comparisons, the impact that the industrial tribunals had on the iron and steel industry labour market, an industry that played a crucial role in Australia's industrial development during the 1920s and 1930s.     

Wage inequality and establishment heterogeneity

We analyze wage dispersion within and across establishments in Korea between 2007 and 2013. We find that foreign owned establishments and those operating in global markets have higher within-establishment wage dispersion. The effect is over and above the establishment size effect. Furthermore, wages are higher in larger establishments and internationally oriented ones. Our findings are consistent with theories explaining management pay and the scope of control. Our results also provide evidence that can explain the rise in wage inequality due to the emergence of ‘super star’ firms and global supply chains.     

Wage Gaps Large and Small

The law of one wage does not strictly hold, nor should it be expected to hold, in contemporary labor markets. The law of one wage, however, provides a surprisingly good first approximation of the structure of U.S. wages. This generalization is drawn from research on a diverse set of topics: the Mincerian wage equation and earnings imputation, union wage differentials, product market regulation and the labor market, wages in male and female jobs, the wage effects of military service, and interarea wages and cost of living.     

Unions and Interindustry Wage Differentials

We investigate the importance of trade unions in collective bargaining in the context of a developing country manufacturing labor market. The methodology we adopt to estimate wage differentials follows the method proposed by Haisken-DeNew, J. P. and Schmidt, C. M. (1997) Review of Economics and Statistics 79, 516–521, since it improves on the standard procedure popularized by Krueger, A. B. and Summers, L. H. (1988) Econometrica 56, 193–259. Our findings indicate that wage dispersion is far greater in the unionized sector of Brazilian manufacturing, in contrast to evidence from other countries.     

Age,Wage and Productivity in Dutch Manufacturing

Previous empirical studies on the effect of age on productivity and wages find contradicting results. Some studies find that if workers grow older there is an increasing gap between productivity and wages, i.e. wages increase with age while productivity does not or does not increase at the same pace. However, other studies find no evidence of such an age related pay-productivity gap. We perform an analysis of the relationship between age, wage and productivity using a matched worker-firm panel dataset from Dutch manufacturing covering the period 2000–2005. We find little evidence of an age related pay-productivity gap.     

Taxes and Benefits in a Non-linear Wage Equation

This paper estimates a structural non-linear wage bargaining model for the Netherlands. The estimation results show a significant positive long-term impact of the average tax rate on wages. The marginal tax rate exerts a small negative impact on wages. The impact of benefits rises with the unemployment rate.