代际再分配与我国养老保险模式的选择

代际再分配是指收入在不同代之间进行的又一次分配,在代际交叠模型中,经济是由不同代的年轻人和老年人组成的。在竞争市场均衡的代际交叠模型中,现收现付制与完全基金制两种保险模式对资本存量以及不同人福利有着不同的影响。人口年龄结构的变化,将对养老保险中的代际再分配产生怎样的影响,是一个颇具新意而且具有现实意义的问题。     

The role of the wage-productivity gap in economic activity

This paper argues that wages lagging behind productivity is a long-run structural phenomenon due to the interplay of wage dynamics and productivity growth. We call this interplay frictional growth, a term that can only be nullified in the utopian case of zero growth and/or no dynamics. In that vein, we challenge the prevailing view of the neutrality of the labour income share and investigate its impact on the evolution of employment. We thus estimate wage setting and labour demand equation systems – for France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the UK, and the US over the 1960–2008 period – and find that the labour share is negatively associated with employment even when the conventional assumption of a unitary long-run elasticity of wages with respect to productivity holds. Acknowledging the presence of the wage-productivity gap in both the short and long run, this work stands as the building block for assessing the effect of the falling labour share on economic activity. As recent work has shown that the widening wage gap is also an important factor prompting inequality, it can be argued that by supporting employment the falling labour share ‘sweetens’ the impact of rising income inequality, and, as such, deserves the attention of policy makers.     

MGNREGA in Tamil Nadu: A Story of Success and Transformation?

Social protection has emerged as a key driver of development policy at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. It is widely considered a ‘good thing’ that has the potential not only to alleviate poverty and vulnerability, but also to generate more transformative outcomes in terms of empowerment and social justice. Based on an ethnographic study of the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), India's flagship social protection policy, this paper takes a critical look at what this policy's ‘success’ consists of. The study was carried out in Tamil Nadu, a state widely presented as a ‘success’ in terms of MGNREGA's implementation, and describes who participates in the scheme and how success is understood and expressed at different social and bureaucratic levels. In terms of MGNREGA's outcomes, we conclude that the scheme is benefitting the poorest households – and Dalits and women in particular – especially in terms of providing a safety net and as a tool for poverty alleviation. But the scheme does more than that. It has also produced significant transformative outcomes for rural labourers, such as pushing up rural wage levels, enhancing low‐caste workers' bargaining power in the labour market and reducing their dependency on high‐caste employers. These benefits are not only substantial but also transformative in that they affect rural relations of production and contribute to the empowerment of the rural labouring poor. However, in terms of creating durable assets and promoting grassroots democracy, the scheme's outcomes are much less encouraging.     

Women’s investment in career and the household division of labour

This paper examines how partners in a couple share domestic work according to the woman’s investment in career. Investment is measured relatively to other women or to the partner. While previous studies mainly focused on the influence of wages and earnings, we extend them by considering more dimensions describing the intensity of the woman’s attachment to the labour market. We use the 2010 French Time Use survey to estimate a model of household division of labour in dual earner couples. We find that the more women are invested in career, the less domestic work they perform during weekdays, which is partly substituted by their partners but only on weekend days. The sharing of tasks is thus less unequal in those couples. However, women still spend more time than their partners on average performing domestic work, even when the woman outperforms him in career, implying no role reversal in the division of labour.     

以求真务实创新的精神统领工会工作

从态度、手法及作风等三方面探究如何以求真务实创新的精神指导工会工作。     

The Choice of the Working Secto in Transition: Income and non-income determinants of sector participation in Kazakhstan

This study compares the individual, household and location characteristics of private employees, the self-employed, the unemployed and the economically inactive in Kazakhstan making use of a 1996 World Bank Living Standards Measurement Survey. The purpose is to understand whether the process of transition has determined a selection of workers exiting the state sector and entering the three relatively new 'pools' of private employees, self-employed and unemployed. An 'occupational choice' model is used to explore the determinants of sector participation. It is found that income opportunities are similar between the private and self-employment sectors, that the private sector is not necessarily the workers' first choice and that non-income determinants including local economic and labour market conditions and household related factors explain better than income the choice of the working sector. Self-employment seems to be a key sector in understanding the mechanisms of sector choice and the reallocation of labour. Unemployment appears as a choice of last resort and made by truly 'rationed' individuals.     

马克思剩余价值理论视角下信息商品增值研究

信息劳动创造价值,如何在马克思剩余价值理论视角下研究信息商品增值是一个新的研究课题。信息劳动是复杂劳动,创建期投入巨大,一些信息商品具有独特形式。将信息生产的不同时期的区分引入复杂的劳动过程和价值增殖的研究：信息商品创建期和扩大生产期都属于生产过程,在生产中获得价值增殖的潜力,而通过流通过程,创造出巨大数量的消费受众,从而实现了剩余价值的获得。巨大的规模投资、极高的技术门槛和政府政策保护使信息企业获得超额剩余价值。     

Consumer workers as immaterial labour in the converging media markets: three value‐creation practices

This paper takes a practice‐based approach to consumer studies and focuses on the strategic and productive roles that consumers play as immaterial labour or consumer workers in the converging media markets. Based on a case study of a print media organization and its customers, the aim is to discuss the collaborative practices through which value is created in the market. By means of a textual analysis of online and interview data, three value‐creation practices are abstracted and illustrated: constructing a sense of belonging and collective identity, mutual helping and peer support, and building pride and self‐respect. Overall, the paper suggests that in global media environments, consumer‐customers are playing increasingly significant strategic roles in the practices and processes through which value is co‐created in the market. It is therefore concluded that the idea of consumers, and media audiences in particular, as recipients of communication and targets of marketing activities needs to be problematized and the dynamic strategic roles that consumers currently play in the market need to be acknowledged and actively incorporated into the business praxis of media corporations.     

Books and publications received

ABSTRACT

Economic theory predicts that regional wages will converge as transport and communication technologies bring labour markets together. An exploration of this transition from labour market segmentation to unification requires long-term evidence of nominal wages and cost of living by region. This paper presents new evidence of wages for male manufacturing workers and cost-of-living indices across 24 Swedish counties between 1860 and 2009. Our findings indicate that the Swedish regional wage differentials were a great deal larger in the 1860s than in the 2000s. Most of the compression took place between the 1860s and World War I, as well as in the 1930s and during World War II. Differences in expenditures on housing impact on our assessment of convergence in the post-World War II decades: the nominal measure declines, while the real one stays constant. Our concluding discussion engages with the assumption that before World War I, regional wage convergence was associated with labour mobility, spurred by improved communication and transportation technologies as well as by the implementation of modern employment contracts. In the 1930s and 1940s, in contrast, regional wage convergence can be traced to high unionisation and centralised collective bargaining in the labour market, two distinguishing features of the Swedish Model.