China’s value-added tax reform,firm behavior and performance

China reformed value-added tax (VAT) by removing investment from the tax base in northeastern provinces in 2004, which is a “natural experiment” of its tax system. Using difference-in-differences method, this paper for the first time investigates the impact of VAT reform on China firms’ fixed asset investment, employment behavior, innovative activities, and productivity, and furthermore discusses the impact of firm behavior on industrial structural upgrade and employment with a firm-level panel data of large and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in China. We find that VAT reform significantly promotes firms’ fixed asset investment, and increases firms’ capital-labor ratio and productivity; while enhancement of firms’ productivity is mainly achieved by means of substituting labor with capital, rather than independent technology innovation; meanwhile, VAT reform distinctly decreases employment. Our findings have essential policy implications on the extension of VAT reform in the entire China.     

基于模块化分工的中国产业升级研究

全球化背景下,模块化分工通过产业转移的形式可推动后起国家或地区的产业升级。当前中国正面临国内产业升级的较大压力,同时也处于国际有利形势中。借鉴国际成功经验,促进中国产业升级可通过产业核心资源的整合、品牌模块企业的创建、高级生产性服务业的加快发展以及自主创新能力的培养等措施来实现。     

自我生产政体：“代耕农”及其“近阈限式耕作”

以往利用劳动过程理论分析中国新工人阶级的学者,将分析的经验对象聚焦于工场下的劳动者,却无意中搁置了那些没有明确劳资关系,却同样是为资本主义生产体系服务并被隐性剥削的劳工群体。本文通过展示“代耕农”群体,揭示了“世界工厂”中的另外一种生产形态：自我生产政体。同时,通过引进人类学的“阈限”概念,一面展现这种微型政体的基本特征,一面试图揭示这个现象中所附体的霸权,在没有硝烟的劳动现场里管中窥豹。     

快速城镇化对山东省粮食生产的挑战

随着经济的快速发展,中国城镇化水平不断提高。在快速城镇化发展过程中,大量耕地资源被城市建设占用,大批农村劳动力进入城市,农业水资源紧张态势日趋严峻,农业产业结构调整使粮食作物种植面积不断减少,这些都对粮食生产和粮食安全产生了不利影响。因此,要协调好城镇化发展和粮食生产的关系,合理规划城镇用地,以保障粮食生产及安全。     

人口老龄化对中国劳动力供给的影响

本文描述了我国劳动力供给的总体数量以及变化趋势,并从劳动参与率、城乡结构、人力资本三方面进行考察,探讨人口老龄化对于劳动力供给的影响。我国劳动参与率还存在较大增长空间,将会是未来劳动力供给的重要增长点;农村剩余劳动力存量仍看似充足,但其老龄化情况较严重,难以维持当前农民工向城市转移的速度;另外我国年轻劳动力的教育程度和人力资本已有显著提升。因此虽然人口老龄化已经对我国劳动力供给产生了一定负面影响,但由于人口和劳动力的变化是一个长期过程,并不会给经济发展带来突发的、灾难性的冲击。     

Reciprocity in Caring Labor: Nurses’ Work in Residential Aged Care in Australia

Feminist economists identify reciprocity as a motivation for both paid and unpaid caring work. In general, reciprocity describes people responding to each other in similar ways, either benevolently or harmfully. The quality of care is potentially increased when care relationships are motivated by positive and generalized forms of reciprocity and decreased with negative forms of reciprocity. This study draws on nursing literature and two qualitative studies in Australian residential aged care facilities, conducted in 2002–3 and 2009, to identify a new form called “professional reciprocity.” This form of reciprocity involves deliberate and skilled relational work by nurses to facilitate mutual and interdependent exchanges with care recipients that are beneficial to both care recipients and nurses. This study argues that professional reciprocity, as a skill that can be taught, is important for achieving quality care and workers’ job satisfaction.     

Firm Performance and Women on the Board: Evidence from Spanish Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

ABSTRACT

This study examines gender diversity on boards of directors in a sample of nonfinancial Spanish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for 2003–8, finding that the probability of women on the board increases with firm performance, defined as return on assets, and family ownership, but diminishes with corporate ownership and firm risk. It also finds, when examining the full sample, a positive effect of the presence of women board members on firm performance. The study also obtains a similar positive effect in most subsamples, including in firms with corporate ownership, where family connections play less role in the election of board members, and in firms in the secondary and tertiary sectors, which are characterized by having greater proximity to final consumers than those in the primary sector.     

Gender Employment Disparities,Financialization, and Profitability Dynamics on the Eve of Italy's Post-2008 Crisis

This study explores aggregate profitability in Italy from 1994 to 2008 in its connection with structural change and gender employment disparities. Using decomposition analysis, the study finds that aggregate profit rate declined, but the profit share did not. Male variables – such as earnings, output, employment, and working hours – tended to have more weight than female ones in explaining aggregate outcomes. Structural change also played a major role, as the economy specialized in sectors with falling real wages and wage shares, especially the financial sector and construction. Further falls in the wage share and widening wage gaps may not guarantee a rise in profitability. This result entails that “neo-mercantilist” approaches to solve the crisis might only prepare the next crisis, while a coordinated expansion of demand could be more successful. Moreover, gender issues should not be neglected in terms of favoring women's employment and entrepreneurship.     

Post-Earthquake Land Appropriations and the Dispossession of Rural Women in Haiti

ABSTRACT

This study examines the trajectory of rural women’s labor in the wake of post-earthquake land appropriations in Haiti. Drawing on ethnographic field research conducted between 2010 and 2013, it explores gendered access to land in Haiti in both historical and contemporary contexts, paying attention to the nature of rural gender relations and how they influence women’s access to land and their roles in petty commerce. The study describes the stratification of rural market women, their lived experience, and how losing land access will affect their traditional roles as market women. Ultimately it argues that without access to land, and a paucity of available wage work, recent dispossession will intensify existing vulnerabilities for rural women and narrow their means of household production by forcing them to depend on informal market activity in their roles as machann (market women).