Labour Market Policies and Long-term Unemployment in a Flow Model of the Australian Labour Market

This paper develops a general equilibrium job matching model, which is used to assess the impact of active labour market policies, reductions in unemployment benefits and reductions in worker bargaining power on long-term unemployment and other key macro variables. The model is calibrated using Australian data. Simulation experiments are conducted through impulse response analysis. The simulations suggest that active labour market programs (ALMPs) targeted at the long-term unemployed have a small net impact and produce adverse spillover effects on short-term unemployment. Reducing the level of unemployment benefits relative to wages and worker bargaining power have more substantial effects on total and long-term unemployment and none of the spillover effects of ALMPs.     

Undereducation and Overeducation in the Australian Labour Market*

This paper uses data from the 1996 Census of Population and Housing Household Sample File (HSF) to study the incidence of mismatch between workers' educational attainments and the requirements of their jobs, and the earnings consequences of this mismatch. It also examines whether mismatch contributes to the explanation of the gender wage differential in the Australian labour market. It is found that approximately 15.8 per cent of men and 13.6 per cent of women are overeducated, whereas approximately 18.5 per cent of women and 13.7 per cent of men are undereducated. Substantial earnings consequences are found to be associated with this mismatch, with surplus schooling yielding relatively low returns. The results suggest that mismatch does not account for the gender wage gap in the Australian labour market; rather the gender wage differential is entrenched in the fundamentals of pay determination.     

How Women Are Faring in the Australian Labour Market

The Economic and Social Outlook Conference that was held in 2011 carried a separate session on the role of women in the Australian labour market for the first time. Women now make up some 45 per cent of the workforce—in the late 1970s, the proportion stood at one‐third. While women play an increasingly more important role in the labour market, the gap between male and female earnings has shown stubborn persistence, at around 15 per cent. Various explanations include productivity‐related characteristics and the changing age profile of the female workforce. For low‐paid workers, these explanations are convincing; for high‐paid workers, both in the public and private sector, the pay gap remains unexplained.     

Microeconomic Evaluations of Australian Labour Market Programs

This article reviews literature which measures the effects of labour market programs on individual's labour market outcomes.     

人力资本与人力资本投资理论之比较

本文认为，人力资本投资与人力资本理论是不同的两个概念，人力资本投资理论只是人力资本理论的一部分，舒尔茨的理论贡献在于对人力资本投资的研究而不是对人力资本的系统研究，马克思应是系统研究人力资本理论的第一人。尽管马克思没有提出过人力资本的概念，但他在《资本论》中论述的可变资本与舒尔茨所说的人力资本精神是一致的，同时他还对人力资本的范围、特征、及其对经济增长的贡献等问题进行了系统分析。尤其重要的是，他还引进了制度因素指出了当时资本主义社会的人力资本投资或人力资本的生产与再生产中存在的问题，并指出了未来社会在人力资本生产与再生产中应注意的问题，这对我国今天的教育改革仍有借鉴意义。     

Catching-up of East German Labour Productivity in the 1990s

We provide empirical evidence for exogenous and endogenous catching-up of East German labour productivity to West German levels. We argue that labour productivity in East Germany has caught up faster than has happened elsewhere. The sudden formation of the German Monetary Union was followed by large transfers to East Germany, migration of workers to West Germany, reorganization and privatization of East German firms. This has quickly led to a partial closing of the organizational, idea and object gaps that existed between East and West Germany. This paper analyses labour productivity in East and West Germany using both aggregate German data and unbalanced panel analysis of developments in East and West Germany. Factors affecting the organization of production, and especially privatization and 'foreign' firms, are found to be particularly important in this context.     

Sex Discrimination and Occupational Segregation in the Australian Labour Market*

This paper explores the implications of the difference between the occupational distribution for males and females in a joint model determining earnings and occupation. The male/female wage differential is evaluated for a number of broad occupational classifications. This is followed by an evaluation of the role and relative importance of inter-occupational and intra-occupational effects as contributors to the overall male/female wage differential The main conclusion following from the econometric results is that intra-occupational effects dominate Thus, policies which attempt to address the gender wage differential by re-allocation of labour across occupations are unlikely to solve the problem.     

Tax Progression and Human Capital in Imperfect Labour Markets

Recent contributions to the theory of taxation argue that tax progression raises welfare and employment in the presence of labour market imperfections. This literature takes the endowment of workers with human capital as given. The present paper analyses the effects of tax progression in a model with endogenous human capital formation. We show that the effect of tax progression on human capital investment depends on the deductibility of the cost of human capital formation. With full deductibility, tax progression raises employment and welfare. With incomplete deductibility, in contrast, the effect of tax progression on employment and welfare may be negative.     

Immigrant Unemployment in the First Year of Australian Labour Market Activity*

Analysis of data from a 1983 Manpower Programs Survey shows that the relatively high unemployment rates experienced by overseas-born labour market entrants are reasonably widespread across immigrant groups. One exception is refugees, who are more likely to be unemployed than non-refugees. Consistent with prior research, additional years of education are associated with only modest reductions in the unemployment rates of immigrants. However, immigrants are able to reduce their predicted unemployment rates considerably by obtaining information on Australian job opportunities prior to migrating.     

我国人力资本市场的建立和人力资本个体评价的研究

深受信用缺失之苦的中国 ,信用的重建应从高流动性、高收益、自身有加盟愿望的人力资本开始。国有银行和政府其他部门应在中央政府的领导下整理、提供个人和企业的信用数据 ,形成公用数据库 ,避免诸侯割据 ,最后以市场化的方法与私营信用部门一道成立全国性的信用公司。中介组给和用人单位应重视对人力资本的评价方法与技术的开发 ,强化绩效管理系统 ,从产权制度上建立对人力资本的激励兼容机制 ,失去中国以人力资本为内核的经济增长。     

Labour Market Programs and the Australian Beveridge Curve: 1978 to 1997

Labour market programs are often advocated on the basis that by re-introducing unemployed people to the culture of the workplace, they will re-skill and motivate them enough to make them suitable employees to prospective employers. Accordingly, total employment should rise and vacancy rates fall. If programs work in this manner, we should be able to detect a systematic relationship between labour market program expenditure and the distance of the Beveridge curve from the origin ceteris paribus. There are few studies in the world that have directly tried to assess the impact of labour market program expenditure on the Beveridge curve. Our estimates for Australia over the last 19 years give limited support to the view that most labour market programs nave moved the Beveridge curve inwards.     

Labour Markets and Flexibility in the 1990s: The Europe-USA opposition revisited

Economists' contest on labour market flexibility has quickly pivoted around the stylised trade off between more flexibility and growth on the one hand and increased inequality of income on the other, the welfare implications of this trade off being too often assumed rather than verified. This article uses the essays collected in the Special Issue on Labour Markets and Flexibility in the 1990s of the International Review of Applied Economics to challenge the terms of this trade off as well as the related welfare assumptions. Some of the most popular tenets in the literature are assessed in the light of the evidence and the arguments put forward by the authors contributing to the Special Issue, in particular, the notion that the European labour market is rigid, the contention that more flexibility is imposed by international competition, or that labour market regulation weakens both employment and output growth, the belief that the main welfare cost of flexibility is increased inequality of earnings or the fear that flexibility may be primarily 'female'.     

论人力资本产权交易

本文研究人力资本产权交易的特点、费用、价格及市场等几个基本理论问题 ,进一步完善和发展了人力资本产权交易理论 ,为人力资本产权投资和交易提供了理论依据 ,从理论上支持了人力资本参与企业剩余分配     

The Australian Labour Market and the Early Impact of COVID-19: An Assessment

From March to June 2020 was the most dramatic four months in the history of the Australian labour market. Never before has a such a substantial decrease in labour demand (and partial reversal) occurred so quickly. In this article, we present an overview of the early impact of COVID-19: the main drivers it brought into play and the consequent labour market developments. Aggregate effects and how impacts differed by type of job and worker are described. We conclude with a brief review of the main government response to COVID-19, the JobKeeper program.     

Labour Market Policy Developments in Japan: Following an Australian Lead?

In recent times, Japan has experienced a rapid expansion in its service sector, increases in casual and part‐time employment and record unemployment. In addition, there has been an associated rise of freeters and NEETs—predominantly young workers with tenuous labour market attachment. While somewhat slow in initiating policy responses, the Japanese government responded to these structural changes by reforming its existing employment policies. In this article we argue that recent changes in the nature of Japan's labour market policies appear to have been driven by some of the same factors which led to the radical overhaul of Australia's own labour market policies.     

Transatlantic Differences in Labour Markets: Changes in Wage and Non-Employment Structures in the 1980s and the 1990s

Abstract. Rising wage inequality in the United States and Britain and rising continental European unemployment have led to a popular view in the economics profession that these two phenomena are related to negative relative demand shocks against the unskilled, combined with flexible wages in the Anglo-Saxon countries, but wage rigidities in continental Europe ('Krugman hypothesis'). This paper tests this hypothesis based on seven large person-level data sets for the 1980s and the 1990s. I use a more sophisticated categorization of low-skilled workers than previous studies, which exhibits differences between German workers with and without apprenticeship training, particularly in the 1980s. I find evidence for the Krugman hypothesis when Germany is compared with the United States. However, supply changes differ considerably between countries, with Britain experiencing enormous increases in skill supply explaining the relatively constant British skill premium in the 1990s.