Labour use efficiency in the Indian and Pakistani commercial banks

The Indian and Pakistani banking industry is said to have an excessive use of labour due to the significant market share of government owned banks. Both countries have undertaken a process of regulatory reform to bring about market discipline in the usage of inputs and to increase the labour use efficiency and productivity. The focus of this paper is the estimation of productivity and efficiency of labour use in the banking sectors of the Indian sub-continent. The results show that the efficiency of labour use across the Indian sub-continent is improving over time and that foreign banks are more efficient compared to domestically owned banks in their usage of labour.     

Changes in the Finnish Wage Structure: Will Demand and Supply Do?

This study addresses changes in the wage structure in Finland between 1977 and 1995, and provides a simple explanation based on the demand for and supply of skills. The single index model of Card and Lemieux (1996) is augmented by incorporating changes in the supply of skills. The augmented model adequately accounts for the changes in relative wages between groups of different education and experience, but does not capture the changes in the within-group distribution.
JEL classification : J 31     

Trade liberalisation,market competition and wage inequality in China's manufacturing sector

Economic reforms of the late 1980s have contributed to rapid economic growth in China. While the overall standard of living has improved, economic growth has also resulted in an increase in income inequality. Rising income inequality can increase social tensions that can impede further economic growth. By making use of firm level panel data, this paper focuses on the impact of increased market competition and trade liberalisation on skilled–unskilled wage inequality in China's manufacturing sector. A theoretical model is used to argue that trade liberalisation and market competition can affect skilled–unskilled wage inequality. Based on this result, an econometric model is specified. The empirical analysis presented in this paper shows that increased trade liberalisation has contributed to an increase in skilled–unskilled wage inequality in China's manufacturing sector. However, increase in market competition has the opposite effect.     

Performance pay and changes in U.S. labor market dynamics

A shift in the design of labor compensation occurred at around the mid-1980s in the U.S. and deals with an increased role of performance pay in driving the cyclical movements of wages. Using a DSGE model we show that this structural change accounts at least qualitatively for many observed changes in the U.S. labor market dynamics. It generates the disappearance of the procyclical response of labor productivity to non-technology shocks and the reduction of the contractionary effects of technology shocks on hours. Moreover, it is conducive to a drop in the volatility of output, a parallel increase in the volatility of wages and to changes in unconditional correlations consistent with what documented in the U.S. between the pre- and post-1984 periods.     

One step ahead: Thornton versus Longe

This Paper addresses the intriguing issue of whether William Thomas Thornton plagiarized Francis Longe's (1866) pamphlet denouncing the classical wage fund doctrine. In doing so, the paper comprehensively reviews all of the corroborative evidence surrounding the plagiarism allegation laid against Thornton, drawing particular attention to a little known letter to The Times written by Thornton, in an effort to clear his good name of any impropriety. It is the conclusion of this paper that Thornton has no case to answer; the evidence not only from Thornton's own early work on wages and trade unions, together with additional corroborative evidence suggests that far from having plagiarized Longe's (1866) work, Thornton apticipated many of his ideas.     

城市人力资本如何影响工资水平?

文章基于CHIP2013微观数据,运用分层线性等模型考察了经济集聚情况下城市人力资本对工资影响的四种微观机制,结果发现:地区人力资本深度对个体工资有显著促进作用,信息技术服务业专业化也有一定正影响,产业多样化虽与工资存在负相关,但在控制内生性后影响不显著,就业密度则有微弱促进作用。异质性分析表明:人力资本深度对女性、受教育程度高者工资的边际效应更强,且对东部的作用远远超过对中西部地区的影响。同时其效果随着收入分位数的提高而递减,减少了不同群体的收入差距,但收入阶层间差异并不显著;信息技术专业化程度同样对于女性和受教育程度高者边际作用更强,且其对最高收入分位点人群的促进作用最大;多样化程度对工资的抑制作用不稳健,对东部人群的工资消极影响更加显著,对中下等收入及以上的群体工资抑制随收入层次上升而递减。     

Search efficiency,wage dynamics and welfare

Advances in information technology have improved the job-search process in the labor market. We analyze the effects of this improvement by constructing a search-and-matching model with two sectors: a risky sector with firm-specific productivity shocks and a risk-free sector. The risky sector is characterized by a low level of commitment between employers and workers – either party can end the employment relationship. We show that a better job-search process generates more job matches in the risky sector, and this benefits workers by improving their outside options. The effect on employers is subtle: while it is easier to fill vacancies, workers become more expensive. At the same time, the ease of finding new workers makes it harder for employers to keep their wage promises to workers and increases wage volatility. Our paper contributes to the literature by offering a novel explanation for the observed rise in wage volatility.     

When a Door Closes,a Window Opens? Long‐Term Labor Market Effects of Involuntary Separations

This study estimates the earning losses of workers experiencing an involuntary job separation. We employ, for the first time in the earning losses literature, a Poisson pseudo‐maximum‐likelihood estimator with fixed effects that has several advantages with respect to conventional fixed effects models. The Poisson estimator allows considering the full set of involuntary separations, including those with zero labor market earnings because of unemployment. By including individuals with zero earnings and by using our new method, the loss in the year of separation becomes larger than in previous studies. The loss starts with roughly 30% and, although it quickly shrinks, it remains at around 15% in the following years. In addition, we find that compared to other reasons for separation, the earning loss pattern is unique for involuntary separations, because no other type of separation implies such permanent scarring. This latter finding makes us confident that the self‐reported involuntariness of a separation is a reliable source of information.     

Human–capital investment and the wage gap

Summary. According to empirical studies, the wage differential by skills evolved non–monotonically in the past decades although the relative supply of skilled labor steadily increased. The present paper provides a theoretical explanation for this finding. In our setting, technological change intertemporally alters the human–capital investment incentives of heterogeneous individuals. As a consequence of changing incentives, the time path of the relative wage is U–shaped while there is a rise in the share of skilled workers. Received: November 28, 2000; revised version: January 30, 2001     

Wage inequality and between-firm wage dispersion in the 1990s: A comparison of rural and urban enterprises in China

Using a worker–firm matched sample, this paper compares the changes of wage structures of urban and rural enterprises following public sector restructuring in China's manufacturing sector. While the wage responses of rural firms with respect to firm characteristics are found to have declined steadily, compensation of urban workers has become increasingly linked to their firms' ability to pay. Our analysis reveals that industrial restructuring has weakened the influence of institutional factors, such as market power, soft budget constraints, and insider influence, on the wage determination of rural firms but it has enhanced their impact on urban firms. Journal of Comparative Economics 33 (4) (2005) 664–687.