Exploring the relationship between educational mismatch,earnings and job satisfaction in the tourism industry

This article analyses the interrelationship between educational mismatch, wages and job satisfaction in the Spanish tourism sector in the first years of the global economic crisis. It is shown that there is a much higher incidence of over-education among workers in the Spanish tourism sector than in the rest of the economy despite this sector recording lower educational levels. This study estimates two models to analyse the influence of the educational mismatch on wages and job satisfaction for workers in the tourism industry and for the Spanish economy as a whole. The first model shows that in the tourism sector, the wage penalty associated with over-education is approximately 10%. The second reveals that in the tourism sector the levels of satisfaction of over-educated workers are considerably lower than those corresponding to workers well assigned. With respect to the differences between tourism and the overall economy in both aspects, the wage penalty is substantially lower in the case of tourism industries and the effect of over-education on job satisfaction is very similar to that of the economy as a whole in a context where both wages and the private returns to education are considerably lower in the tourism sector.     

China's Financial Development

At the China Development Forum in Beijing, March 2002, I was asked to be discussant to Governor Dai Xianlong, but his paper, as in most cases, was not made available beforehand, so my own comments had to be made independently. Following that event, I can now remark on the Forum as well as reproducing my discussant paper. In this latter, I emphasize the importance of developing professional skills, greater competition and the application, through regulation, of appropriate incentives for the continued improvement of China's financial system.     

企业经营行为短期化的"桎梏"审视

现代企业的一个显著特征是所有权与经营权的分离,这种私有产权的分离和让渡使公司从指导对生产活动和技能的大规模专门化中获取了收益,但收益增加的同时也产生了一种特殊成本--代理成本。代理成本是由一系列代理问题所引起的企业实际收益与预期的偏差,因而代理问题成为公司治理的主要问题。本文讨论的经营行为短期化是代理问题的重要表现,直接影响到企业的长远发展,也被认为是公司制企业发展最为完善的美国各大企业近年来竞争力减弱的重要原因之一。     

REFRIGERATION AND DISTRIBUTION: NEW ZEALAND LAND PRICES AND REAL WAGES 1873–1939

The responses in New Zealand to the opportunities of refrigeration transformed farming in the Dominion during the half-century from 1890. Closer settlement and the extension of the cultivated area combined with more intensive farming methods to increase land productivity and real gross domestic product capita to the extent that living standards in New Zealand measured by the Human Development Index ranked first in the world by 1913. In contrast, real wages in the Dominion stagnated. The refrigeration-related trade boom had powerful income distribution effects that increased sharply the land rental–wage ratio during the years to 1920. Widely diffuse land ownership in New Zealand tempered the rise in income inequality, to set the Dominion apart from other land-abundant economies of the periphery.     

Wages in a growing Russia

The robust Russian economic recovery after the 1998 financial crisis raised the economic standing of the population, especially for lowly paid workers, most of whom are women. In this paper I use the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey from 1996 through 2002 to ask whether this helped to reduce the gender wage gap. I first focus on those whose wages are paid in full. Next, I ask about the gender composition of wage arrears as the overall extent of wage arrears dropped from 60 to 20 per cent after the 1998 crisis. I show that a temporary widening of the overall gender wage gap in 2000 is due to low‐wage women becoming more likely to receive their wages in full than low‐wage men. Except for this effect, the male–female pay difference in Russia exhibits a stable pattern.     

End the minimum wage debate: Revise the concept itself

The debate over raising the minimum wage focuses on the wrong point. We should be trying to change the concept of minimum wage to one that reflects what it really is—an entry wage. The real issue in the minimum wage debate needs to be one of clarifying the underlying human/social purpose of the minimum wage concept.     

Inflation, Deflation and Normal Price Adjustment

This paper thinks that the price of a commodity depends on both the value of the commodity and that of the currency. The change in either value will cause the change of the price of the commodity. Only the price rising caused by the decreasing of the currency value can be called inflation, and the price rising led by the increasing of the value of the merchandise can not be called inflation. Therefore, it is not proper, as defined by the modem economics, to think that any price increasing should be in general called inflation.     

Profit sharing as a worker discipline device

A synthesis of profit-sharing and efficiency wage models is constructed to provide a preliminary account of how a firm determines its pay parameters, and why it chooses to be a profit-sharing or a fixed-wage firm. We find that the properties of the worker's effort function crucially influence the firm's choices between different compensation systems, and that the adoption of a profit-sharing scheme cannot guarantee the attainment of full employment. Other findings of the paper also seem to be very different from those of Weitzman's share model.     

Fiscal stimulus and the role of wage rigidity

In this paper we study the impact of an expansion in public spending in an economy characterized by limited asset market participation and sticky wages. The flexible wage version of the model implies strong expansionary effects on output and consumption but also a counterfactual increase in real wages. The introduction of sticky wages, besides being a realistic addition, solves this problem and preserves the expansionary effects on output and consumption. Moreover, once we introduce segmentation in the labor market, sticky wages are even essential to obtain expansionary effects.     

Relative wage concern: the missing piece in the contract multiplier?

Recent research has cast serious doubts on the explanatory power of staggered wage/price setting to account for both output and inflation persistence following money shocks. This paper extends a dynamic general equilibrium model with wage staggering by incorporating relative wage concern on the part of workers. In sharp contrast to previous analyses, in this model both output and inflation dynamics exhibit substantial persistence. Moreover, persistence results hold for a wide range of parameterisations. Our results suggest that relative wage concern may be the missing piece in the money shock persistence puzzle.