When trade hurts: Consumption indivisibilities and labor market distortions

We present a simple model where complementarities between wages and demand due to factor market distortions can make a transition economy worse off from trade. Prior to trade, a virtuous circle prevails: high wages in industry support a high demand for indivisible industrial goods, which in turn supports high wages. However, factor market distortions in the transition economy create a comparative disadvantage in industry. Opening up to trade results in the import of indivisibles and a fall in manufacturing wages, breaking this virtuous circle. Consequently, trade liberalization without structural reform can have serious adverse effects in a transition economy.     

论就业机会产品失灵问题的政府治理

中国劳动力市场的典型特征是就业机会与劳动力资源之间的信息分布不对称,而就业机会实质上是一种公共产品。根据市场失灵理论,解决公共品市场失灵问题时政府与市场两条思路均可采用。文章沿袭自古典经济学家庇古以来的传统,认为应该引入政府的干预来解决就业机会的市场失灵问题,并在此基础上提出相应的建议。     

Gender Effect in Explaining Mobility Patterns in the Labor Market: A Case Study of Turkey

This paper examines the importance of gender for different job mobility patterns using an extensive household survey data from İzmir, the third largest city in Turkey. The determinants of job‐to‐job and job‐to‐nonemployment transitions are analyzed with the help of a multinomial logit estimation method. The results indicate that there is a distinction regarding the probability of job mobility patterns based on gender. It is more likely for women to be engaged in job‐to‐nonemployment transition, whereas men tend to change jobs more often. Although gender plays a significant role in job mobility patterns, traditionally imposed social constraints associated with childcare and household duties provide us with mixed results considering the behavior of women in the job market. On the other hand, having highly paid and secure jobs decreases the probability of both patterns of job mobility.     

我国资本、劳动力与经济增长关系的分析——基于ARMA理论下的生产函数研究

柯布-道格拉斯生产函数用于反映经济领域中产出和各个要素投入之间的关系.本文在1978-2008年我国劳动力、资本存量和经济总产出的数据基础上,运用时间序列ARMA和回归相结合的计量模型,分析测量了柯布-道格拉斯生产函数中各个参数的数值,并对模型的拟合优良程度和其参数的数理意义进行了相关的统计检验.最后根据计量分析和经济意义分析所得出的结论为,劳动力的投入在我国的经济增长过程中起着主要的作用,当期劳动力增加1％,平均来说经济增长为0.47％.     

劳动力流动与中国农村居民消费结构——基于LAIDS模型的实证研究

使用1992~2011年的时间序列数据,采用线性几乎理想需求系统模型(LAIDS),重点检验了劳动力流动对农村居民消费结构的影响。研究发现,劳动力流动会使衣着、文教娱乐及服务、医疗消费有所增加,会减少食品、居住消费,对家用几乎没有影响。为此,应增加工资性收入,完善劳动力流动政策和供给结构。     

The Future European Labor Supply: The Critical Role of the Family

The European employment strategy initiated in 1997 is critically dependent upon the further integration of women into the labor market. The European Union has set a specific target employment rate for women of 60 percent by 2010 and is also committed to providing more and better child care facilities. This gender focus is reinforced by the requirement for gender mainstreaming in all aspects of European employment policy. There is an implied Europe-wide, universal policy of encouraging female labor-market participation and reducing the care work performed by domestic labor. However, the European Commission continues to have limited competence in areas of family, social, and welfare policy. As a result, these common employment objectives for women are thus being pursued against a background of quite different systems of social, family, welfare, and indeed labor-market organization. These systems have different economic and employment implications, such that the outcomes of the common European employment strategy will also be highly variable.     

Firms’ demand for work hours: Evidence from matched firm-worker data in Japan

Using information on Japanese males’ work hours and the matched firms’ characteristics, this paper investigates whether the number of hours worked is determined by demand-side factors and tries to offer a possible explanation of why Japanese males tend to work longer on average, than their counterparts in other countries. Based on an empirical framework in which each firm sets a minimum boundary of work hours and where workers hired by the firm are required to put in at least the minimum hours, we found that the minimum requirement depends on each firm’s fixed costs of labor. Specifically, firms that tend to hoard labor during recessions, presumably because of higher fixed costs, require incumbent workers to work longer hours during normal times. Since Japanese firms have long been considered as incurring high fixed costs to train workers, we interpret the long work hour requirement as a rational strategy for Japanese firms in protecting high-skill-accumulated workers from dismissal. In other words, the long work hours of Japanese males reflect firms’ long-term employment practices, a typical feature of the Japanese labor market.     

Re-examination of wage, employment, and hours adjustments: what is crucial for differences in the adjustments?

Manufacturing wage, employment, and hours adjustments are significantly different among developed countries, typically between Japan and the US. The problem of explaining the differences is closely related to that of what effect the extent of wage flexibility has on labor market adjustments. However, prevailing theories are invalid or incomplete for explaining the differences. The differences in the adjustments cannot be unrelated with institutional features of the labor market. Indeed, the extent of wage flexibility depends on the differences in the institutional features. Using a new model with such an idea, this paper theoretically re-examines the cause of the differences in the adjustments. The crucial causes are the characteristics of wage flexibility as well as the differences of the institutional features. The characteristics are that wage adjustment is discontinuous, infrequent, and has a lower limit in comparison with changes in demand.     

Fiscal stimulus and labor market dynamics in Japan

The paper studies the effects of fiscal expansion on the Japanese labor market. First, using a structural VAR model, we find that the unemployment rate falls and employment rises following an increase in government spending. We also find that fiscal expansion affects flows in and out of unemployment. While an increase in government spending increases the job-finding rate, it reduces the separation rate. We then incorporate search and matching frictions into a standard dynamic general equilibrium model, and study whether the model can explain what we observed in data. While the model fails to predict the exact size of the impact of government spending shocks on the Japanese labor market variables, it can consistently capture the empirical pattern of responses of labor market variables to shocks.     

农业部门劳动力再配置、农村非农化与中国农村经济增长

文章通过在二元经济增长模型中引入内生经济增长思想的基础上,构建了一个能够较好地对中国农村经济增长进行模拟和解释的理论模型.整个模型将中国农村经济增长划分为传统农业阶段、非农产业发展阶段与"反哺"阶段三个时间段,并着重分析了农业剩余的出现与非农产业的发展,这也是中国农村经济改革之所以成功最为重要的一段时期.文章最终认为,农村经济发展的最终目的应该是促进农业与非农产业的协调发展,以推进社会主义新农村建设、构建社会主义和谐社会.