“Moving” land across borders: spatial shifts in land demand and immiserizing effects

The rush for land acquisition has attracted considerable attention from the scientific community, although actual research on the topic remains thin. This paper attempts to break new ground by studying the potential effects of land deals in the context of a small open economy subject to exogenous shocks. In particular, it makes three main arguments: first, an increase in world prices of the agro-business sector causes skewed effects in the subsistence sector; second, an attractive premium offered by hosts to lure investors may have immiserizing effects; and third, technological efforts will have favorable effects if host countries adopt policies to revitalize agriculture.     

Real Minimum Wage and Growth Theory: Simulations and Some Policy Results

Abstract

A Solow type two‐sector growth model is used to examine several issues related to growth and unemployment in a minimum wage economy. By simulating the model, we demonstrate that given the same percentage increase in wage rate, an economy with a higher capital–labor ratio is more likely to decay. More importantly, a tariff policy reduces the unemployment periods by 92% provided that the current capital–labor ratio is one‐sixth of that of the steady state capital–labor ratio. We assume that the first best policy of uniform wage subsidy is not politically feasible.     

The Spatial Determinants Of Wage Inequality: Evidence From Recent Latina Immigrants In Southern California

Abstract

Recent Latina immigrants to the United States earn lower hourly wages than any other broad demographic group. This paper investigates the role space and scale play in shaping the employment opportunities and wages this group receives in Southern California relative to others there. Results suggest that, although individual factors such as education, experience, and ability to speak English are important, spatial forces also influence wages. Access to jobs, particularly low-skilled jobs and those held by Latinos, as well as ethnic neighborhood networks, explain a large share of the variation in hourly wages. The paper provides evidence that labor-market scales differ across groups within US metropolitan areas, with recent Latina immigrants being more geographically constrained and hence more dependent on local opportunities and resources than other workers, with the exception of black women.     

Deunionization and job polarization – a macroeconomic model analysis for a small open economy

Declining unionization rates and job polarization are two important labor market developments of recent decades. A large body of literature has analyzed these phenomena separately, but little has been done to see whether there is a link between them. We employ a macroeconomic model for a small open economy with a large input–output core to analyze how deunionization may cause job polarization. Our analysis shows that medium-skilled workers are negatively affected by deunionization, mainly as a result of the heterogeneity of the elasticities of substitution between different types of labor. While the elasticities of substitution between high- and medium-skilled labor are relatively low, the elasticities of substitution between medium- and low-skilled are relatively high. As a result, when deunionization leads to increased wage dispersion, we find that demand for low-skilled increases at the expense of medium-skilled labor, thus yielding a more polarized labor market.     

Skidelsky's Keynes: a review essay

Abstract

The paper examines the pro-work doctrines of four writers who were connected with the ‘utopian’ and ‘romantic’ critique of classical economics in the nineteenth century. These authors are Charles Fourier, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and William Morris. All four argued that the problem of work aversion stemmed from the existing institutions of capitalist society, and could be overcome by the creation of an alternative system of production. Their aim was to create a future society in which work could be experienced as a positive activity. The paper argues that the views of the aforementioned authors provided an important counterchallenge to the classical economists' conception of work as a disutility.     

Main Currents of Marxism

We present a three-fold test for sustainability on policies addressing environmental and natural resource management. The first — ecological holism — requires that management of natural systems not only ensure the long term viability of ecosystem functions and enhanced diversity of wildlife within that ecosystem, but also facilitate the provision of renewable energy and material resources. The second — community centeredness — is an assessment of the improvement (or reduction) in economic wellbeing of local populations measured by employment and income and in quality of life for the larger community resulting from that policy. The third — institutional legitimacy — evaluates the level of justice that a policy and its outcome(s) bring to the entire community (here, just policies will satisfy Rawls's "veil of ignorance" test). Three policies for National Forest management on Washington's Olympic Peninsula are examined and results are compared: the Northwest Forest Plan, the Wild Olympics Wilderness and Scenic Rivers Act of 2012 (Wild Olympics), and The Third Way (an alternative forest management option). Each policy satisfies the first test of ecological holism, but not in equal measures. Success in this regard can be differentially ranked because the relative impacts are not neutral. Both the Northwest Forest Plan and Wild Olympics fail the test of community centeredness. In contrast, The Third Way promotes community centeredness and ecological holism. We assert that, as a result, it would satisfy John Rawls's test for justice, and it is institutionally legitimate.     

Denmark’s Agricultural Institutions: An Instrumental Evaluation

This paper begins with a tax and a specially organized commission proposed by John R. Commons. Commons made his proposal because high tariffs were not benefiting workers. The paper contends that his proposal also applies to a current problem - the failure of trade agreements to improve working conditions. The paper bases its argument on data, standard economic reasoning, and Commons’ approach in “constructive research” to wage transactions, public purpose, limiting factors, and power imbalances.

The paper argues that Commons’ proposal could improve the evolution of American labor law and that it could ameliorate power imbalances created by laws that give corporations and trade associations a bargaining advantage over nations and organizations such as the International Labor Organization (ILO). It concludes that economic discourse could benefit from consideration of the belief behind Commons’ proposal - that costs of production passed on to consumers should include the cost of good working conditions.     

Natural resources,technological progress,and economic modernization

The present inquiry focuses on the modernization perspectives of the commodity‐exporting countries through the lens of development economics. To this end, the study adopts the Kaldorian framework to address the modernization effects, epitomized in the absorption of surplus labor. To trace the process of economic modernization, the study augments Lewis’s dualistic economy model by the extractive sector. Three different scenarios for the management of resource revenues are scrutinized. An altruistic mode, which implies a pure redistribution of the revenues among the poor swaths of the population, protracts the process of economic modernization, requires a greater amount of capital stock, and harbors a greater risk of a poverty trap. This effect is less pronounced if the modern sector is more capital‐intensive. A productive mode, which elicits full reinvestment of the commodity revenues, in contrast, accelerates the pace of economic modernization. Further, predicated on the scrutiny of a more realistic scenario, a bargaining mode, the study derives the condition for a net positive (or negative) modernization effect. The study identifies technical progress alongside capital accumulation as a further important source of economic modernization.     

道德风险存在下董事责任保险市场的保费水平分析

本文通过对董事责任保险市场的介绍,指出在董事责任保险市场中存在着严重的道德风险问题,通过对市场中保险双方行为的博弈分析,得到在道德风险存在下的保费变动范围,并指出防止或减轻董事责任保险市场中道德风险的方法.     

The Living Wage,Economic Efficiency,and Socio-Economic Wellbeing in a Competitive Market Economy

Conventional economic wisdom views a Living Wage as costly in term of economic efficiency and competitiveness. I argue, based on x-efficiency theory, that higher wages need not cause any economic harm and can, on the contrary, generate higher levels of material wellbeing. Higher wages can be expected to induce x-efficiency and technological change cost offsets. In this context, an effective living wage, one that is above some subsistence minimum, can have a net efficiency effect on the economy. Therefore, a living wage greater than the wage rate generated by the free market cannot be predicted to generate economic harm. With the institutional parameters in place to realize a living wage, the economic pie can be expected to grow to accommodate the living wage.