Wage and employment effects of a wage norm

Most transition countries used tax‐supported wage norms in the early 1990s, as a part of their market liberalization programmes. This article analyses how a firm‐level tax (or subsidy) on deviations from a pre‐set wage norm may promote employment by rotating the labour demand curve perceived by the workers’ union around the value of the norm. We derive the conditions under which it yields a positive employment effect. We test the effect of the norm on the wages on a sample of Polish firms in 1990 and 1991. The data support the role of the wage norm on the position of the perceived labour demand curve and the role of the tax rate on its slope.     

Cross‐Country Evidence on Labor Market Institutions and Young Adult Employment through the Financial Crisis

I develop and analyze a set of cross‐country facts regarding employment and wage setting institutions over the decade surrounding the 2008 financial crisis. Among long‐industrialized countries, young adult employment declined more than prime age employment over this time period. I show that differences in countries' wage setting institutions strongly predict variations in the magnitude of declines in young adult employment. Both unconditionally and conditional on changes in macroeconomic conditions, young adult employment declined 5 percentage points less in countries where wage setting is driven by collective bargaining arrangements than in countries with statutory wage floors. Evidence on the evolution of legislated minimum wage rates and of an asymmetry in the relationship between growth and young adult employment suggest an important role for a standard “wage rigidity” mechanism.     

Reasonable and Risk‐Based? Replacing NFIP Generally Subsidized Rates with a Means‐Tested Subsidy

The National Flood Insurance Program was created to seek two often conflicting goals: (i) shifting risks from federal taxpayers to those who choose to live in flood plains and (ii) ensuring flood insurance is available to everyone at “reasonable” rates. Efforts to accomplish the second goal currently take the form of subsidies based on location and the date a home was constructed. The resulting revenue from subsidized insurance premiums is not sufficient to cover the true cost of flood insurance, and federal taxpayers have paid the difference: $30 billion to date. Based on a detailed survey of households in the high‐risk flood zones of New York City (NYC), we find that replacing existing premium subsidies with risk‐based prices and a subsidy for low‐income housing‐burdened households could better meet both goals by ensuring low‐income individuals have access to affordable flood insurance while still saving the federal taxpayer up to $183 million per year in NYC alone.     

Settling for efficiency – A framework for the European securities transaction industry

Despite a lot of restructuring and many innovations in recent years, the securities transaction industry in the European Union is still a highly inefficient and inconsistently configured system for cross-border transactions. This paper analyzes the functions performed, the institutions involved and the parameters concerned that shape market and ownership structure in the industry. Of particular interest are microeconomic incentives of the main players that can be in contradiction to social welfare. We develop a framework and analyze three consistent systems for the securities transaction industry in the EU that offer superior efficiency than the current, inefficient arrangement. Some policy advice is given to select the ‘best’ system for the Single European Financial Market.     

人民币实际汇率变动对我国进出口贸易影响:1997-2006

本文选取1997-2006年的月度数据,运用VAR方法,考虑了FDI存量和我国加工贸易特征的影响后,对贸易收支与人民币实际汇率变动关系进行了动态分析,并得出如下结论:人民币实际有效汇率的变动显著影响了我国贸易收支;短期内J曲线效应存在,时滞约为5个月;汇率变动对进出口贸易影响的同向性明显;我国贸易收支的收入效应大于价格效应等.     

Why do parents make their children work? A test of the poverty hypothesis in rural areas of Burkina Faso

It is often argued that child labour is caused by poverty. However,much child labour takes place in rural areas characterized bysubstantial labour market imperfections. A model of rural householdlabour supply is developed that provides testable implicationsfor two versions of the poverty hypothesis: that child labouris due to a binding subsistence constraint and that child leisureis a luxury good. We find that in rural Burkina Faso childrendo not provide labour to meet households' subsistence needsand that child leisure is a normal good. The evidence suggeststhat labour market imperfections are a main reason for usingchild labour.     

INTER‐TEMPORAL LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION AMONG MARRIED WOMEN IN JAPAN*

This paper investigates the components that affect inter‐temporal labour force participation among married women in Japan. We estimate linear probability models and simple, dynamic probit models with a variety of specifications. We find that serially correlated transitory errors have a significant effect on the participation behaviour of married women, while the first‐order lagged dependent variable has no significant effect. The result that serially correlated transitory errors influence married women's inter‐temporal labour force participation suggests that exogenous rather than endogenous causes have a significant effect on long‐term economic disparity among married women.     

Do German Welfare‐to‐Work Programmes Reduce Welfare Dependency and Increase Employment?

Abstract. During the last decade, many Western economies reformed their welfare systems with the aim of activating welfare recipients by increasing welfare‐to‐work programmes (WTWP) and job‐search enforcement. We evaluate the short‐term effects of three important German WTWP implemented after a major reform in January 2005 (‘Hartz IV’), namely short training, further training with a planned duration of up to three months and public workfare programmes (‘One‐Euro‐Jobs’). Our analysis is based on a combination of a large‐scale survey and administrative data that is rich with respect to individual, household, agency level and regional information. We use this richness of the data to base the econometric evaluation on a selection‐on‐observables approach. We find that short‐term training programmes, on average, increase their participants' employment perspectives. There is also considerable effect heterogeneity across different subgroups of participants that could be exploited to improve the allocation of welfare recipients to the specific programmes and thus increase overall programme effectiveness.     

移动电子商务发展研究综述

移动商务是建立在先进的移动终端、完善的无线通信协议以及丰富的Internet信息上的一种新型商务交易方式,移动终端对Internet的介入使得用户随时随地获取所需信息,极大地增加了交易的灵活性,带来了更多的商机,促进了商务活动的发展。研究根据最新数据分析了国内外电子商务发展现状,总结了移动环境下的WAP和J2ME关键技术,并展望了未来电子商务的发展趋势。     

基于J2EE的社保系统框架关键技术的研究应用

文章通过研究基于J2EE架构的社保系统框架,并结合本框架在实际软件项目开发中的运用实例进行实证分析,结果表明:通过运用可重用框架,系统开发人员不仅能极大地提高软件的开发效率和代码的复用度,而且还能增强系统的灵活性和可扩展性,更加有助于系统的维护和升级,从而在很大程度上减轻了系统开发及维护人员的工作负担。