Compensating Wage Differentials with Unemployment: Evidence from China

We estimate the economic value of mortality risk in China using the compensating-wage-differential method. We find a positive and statistically significant correlation between wages and occupational fatality risk. The estimated effect is largest for unskilled workers. Unemployment reduces compensation for risk, which suggests that some of the assumptions under which compensating wage differentials can be interpreted as measures of workers’ preferences for risk and income are invalid when unemployment is high. Workers may be unwilling to quit high-risk jobs when alternative employment is difficult to obtain, violating the assumption of perfect mobility, or some workers (e.g., new migrants) may be poorly informed about between-job differences in risk, violating the assumption of perfect information. These factors suggest our estimates of the value per statistical life (VSL) in China, which range from approximately US$30,000 to US$100,000, may be biased downward. Alternative estimates adjust for heterogeneity of risk within industry by assuming that risk is concentrated among low-skill workers. These estimates, which are likely to be biased downward, range from US$7,000 to US$20,000.      

Strategische Kommunikationsspiele

The main question of this paper is how actors in strategic communication constellations deal with seemingly hopeless situations. The thesis presented here is that actors in such situations make a strategic communication play. Basically, this facilitates the continuation of communication. The concept of strategic communication plays is developed theoretically in this paper. It is shown that strategic communication plays come across in direct interpersonal communication as well as in mass medial mediated communication. In the communication-sociological approach, it is used as the theoretical basis of a difference theory and paradoxical term of play based on Bateson (1956, 1985), embedded in the frame analysis of Goffmann (1980). On this basis, two functions of strategic communication plays are worked out. On the one hand, it is an extension of freedom of action and on the other hand increases the probability of sympathy and credibility attributions through self-thematization.