The Postmodern Road to Socialism,After Hayek

The Australian policy of reconciliation between indigenous people and non-indigenous settlers is seen as a precursor to recent American efforts to solve its race relations problems via a policy of racial reconciliation. The empirical context of the problem of racial inequality in Australia is presented and the theoretical context of the Australian reconciliation process is discussed. Described is the concept of white privilege and explained is a context that views American policies on race relations as largely lacking new ideas and viable strategies for remedying racial and ethnic economic inequality. Qualitative findings are discussed based on interviews of Aboriginal and white intellectuals inside and outside Australian universities supporting an optimistic assessment of the likely success of racial reconciliation as a policy instrument in Australia. Less optimism is expressed for the success of that policy in the United States.     

Globalization,technical change and the skill premium: magnification effects from human – capital investments

This paper shows that endogenous adjustments in the composition of labour supplies magnify the effects of changes in commodity prices on the measured skill premium under quite plausible conditions. These composition effects arise from decisions of individuals with heterogeneous inherent abilities about acquiring human capital. They reinforce the well-known Stolper?–?Samuelson effect on the measured skill premium in countries with a sufficiently high relative supply of skilled labour, but compensate them otherwise. As a result, the model can account for the observation of a worldwide increase in the skill premium during the last two decades.     

Emigration and wages: The EU enlargement experiment

The enlargement of the European Union provides a unique opportunity to study the impact of the lifting of migration restrictions on the migrant sending countries. With EU enlargement in 2004, 1.2 million workers from Eastern Europe emigrated to the UK and Ireland. I use this emigration wave to show that emigration significantly changed the wage distribution in the sending country, in particular between young and old workers. Using a novel dataset from Lithuania, the UK and Ireland for the calibration of a structural model of labor demand, I find that over the period of five years emigration increased the wages of young workers by 6%, while it had no effect on the wages of old workers. Contrary to the immigration literature, there is no significant effect of emigration on the wage distribution between high-skilled and low-skilled workers.     

Tariffs,trade and unemployment in a disequilibrium model: issues and policies

This paper studies the disequilibrium transition process engaged by increased openness to trade, and the effect of institutions, market behaviors and economic policies on that transition. The issue is analyzed with a simple two country (north and south), two goods model, amended in order to take into account the time dimension of both the production and the decision processes. Investigating the consequences of a tariff decrease by means of numerical simulations, we show to what extent wage and price setting, and the degree of tightness of monetary policy affect the outcome of the disequilibrium process. The main result is that capturing the gains associated with international trade requires market behaviors and economic policies, which are rather different from what is usually prescribed.

中国地区间对外贸易的差异性:1978～2007年

本文利用1978～2007年期间的统计数据,基于区域经济学和空间经济学的视角,借鉴并融合不同学科的经典研究方法对中国30个省市间、3大区域间的对外贸易差异性进行实证研究.研究结果表明:中国30省市间对外贸易的绝对差异越来越大,但自从1992年以来,相对差异整体表现为下降的趋势;自从1992年以来,东部地区的内部差异日益加剧,两极化趋势日益明显;地区间对外贸易差异主要表现为外部差异;对外贸易对中国经济的整体促进作用存在"边际效应递减"的趋势,外贸发展领先地区都是东部沿海省市,广东、北京和上海3个省市的增长极效应日益明显,上海代替广东成为中国贸易发展最为领先的地区;中国省市间对外贸易的差异程度日益严重.因此,为了缩小地区间对外贸易的差异性,中央政府有必要在中西部省市培育新的经济圈和增长极,加快东部产业向中西部省市的转移,并加大对中西部省市的投资力度.     

企业高管与一般雇员工资差距对企业绩效的影响——基于对A股上市公司的实证分析

本文以我国A股上市公司为例,实证检验了企业内部工资分配差距与企业绩效之间的关系。研究结果表明,二者之间具有显著的正向关系——较大的工资差距有利于提高企业绩效,该结果支持了竞赛理论。本文的研究结果具有明确的政策含义:放松对国有企业的工资管制有利于改善企业绩效。     

Gender wage gap studies: consistency and decomposition

This paper reviews the empirical literature on the gender wage gap, with particular attention given to the identification of the key parameters in human capital wage regression models. This is of great importance in the literature for two main reasons. First, the main explanatory variables in the wage model, i.e., measures of work experience and time-out-of-work, are endogenous. As a result, applying traditional estimators may lead to inconsistent parameter estimates. Second, empirical evidence on the gender wage gap hinges on estimates of the parameters of interest. Accordingly, their economic meaning may be limited by restrictive assumptions included in wage models. This challenges both researchers and policymakers who require precise measures of the gender wage gap in order to create and enforce efficient equality policies. This paper is a substantially revised version of the first chapter of my thesis. I am grateful to Christian Dustmann and Wendy Carlin for their great support and comments. I also thank Bernd Fitzenberger, colleagues at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration and IZA, and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions.     

The effect of reporting errors on the cross-country relationship between inequality and crime

This paper analyzes reporting errors in crime data to see how they impact econometric estimates, particularly of the key relationship between inequality and crime. Criminal victimization surveys of 140,000 respondents in 37 industrial, transition and developing countries are used. Comparing the crimes experienced by these respondents with those reported to the police, non-random and mean-reverting errors are apparent. Time-varying factors affect the propensity of victims to report crimes to the police, undermining the use of country-specific fixed effects as a means of dealing with measurement error in official crime data. These errors substantially attenuate both cross-sectional and panel estimates of the partial correlation between inequality and crime.     

基尼系数组群分解新方法研究:从城乡二亚组到多亚组

本文尝试在程永宏(2006)的基尼系数城乡分解方法基础上,论证一种适合多亚组的基尼系数组群分解新方法。主要内容是:第一,分析了现有分解方法不完善的原因;第二,推导出不含交叠项的多亚组情形下的分解方法,摆脱了交叠项的困扰;第三,提出一个组间不平等新指标并论证其理论依据;第四,明确解释了分解式和组间不平等新指标的社会福利含义。