外资并购的工资效应——来自中国制造业微观层面的证据

本文利用我国制造业企业数据检验了外资并购的工资效应。本文采用匹配的研究方法,发现外资并购的工资效应显著为正;对不同要素密集度、不同并购资本来源地、不同区域的子样本回归,结果均高度稳健;我们还发现外资并购更利于资本密集型及中西部企业的工资提升,工业化国家的并购资本有更大的工资效应。     

解决农民工工资拖欠问题的思考

本文认为,近年来我国农民工工资拖欠问题日益严重,已成为影响劳动关系和谐发展乃至社会稳定的重要因素。当前解决农民工工资拖欠问题的模式主要有两大类,即行政机关采取行政手段的讨薪模式和劳动仲裁委员会及司法机关采取劳动仲裁和法律诉讼手段的讨薪模式,这些模式都存在一定的缺陷。考虑到工会在解决农民工工资拖欠问题方面的优势,应完成工会从行政化向市场化的转型,创新工会工作方式,赋予工会运用有利于开展工作的法律手段的权力,通过工会加强和提高农民工自身力量,从而形成解决农民工工资拖欠问题的长效机制。     

效率工资利与弊

效率工资理论是新凯恩斯主义劳动市场理论中的一个重要的理论 ,是宏观经济学在最近 2 0年取得的进展之一。进入 2 1世纪 ,有关效率工资的文献仍层出不穷 ,而企业在实行效率工资时仍然会出现一些问题。鉴于此 ,根据效率工资的基本模型 ,分析实行效率工资的利弊 ,并给出建议     

Fiscal Institutions and Wage Bargaining in the Local Public Sector

In a theoretical analysis of the properties of different wage setting and financing systems in the local public sector, two financing systems are considered. A benchmark model with local financing through local taxes is compared with a system of centralized financing through grants, where taxes are decided at the national level. It is shown that the wage outcomes under centralized financing depend heavily on the order of moves in the budgetary game between the central and local levels.
JEL Classification : H 23; J 45     

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.     

Revisiting Real Wage Rigidity

In this paper, we provide empirical evidence that real wage rigidity is not a major cause of unemployment volatility. We argue that there is a disconnect between the theoretical and empirical literatures on this topic. While theoretical studies define real wage rigidity as the response of wages to changes in unemployment following productivity shocks, the empirical literature measures real wage rigidity as the estimated semi-elasticity of wages with respect to unemployment, averaged over all shocks. We show that averaging over shocks gives a biased measure of real wage rigidity, as the impact of other shocks confounds the response to productivity shocks. Our results indicate that the estimated semi-elasticity with respect to productivity shocks is twice as large as the estimated semi-elasticity averaged over all shocks. This implies that one cannot attribute unemployment volatility to real wage rigidity.     

Capital–Skill Complementarity and Inequality in Sweden

Income inequality increased in Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s, as did the returns to higher education. The main conclusion of this study is that increased income inequality between high‐ and low‐skilled workers is demand driven and is due to the presence of capital–skill complementarity in production. Increased investments in new, more efficient capital equipment, along with a slowdown in the growth rate of skilled labor, have raised the ratio of effective capital inputs per skilled worker, which, in turn, has increased the relative demand (and market return) for skilled labor through the capital–skill complementarity mechanism.     

Gender pay differentials during the transition in Poland*

This paper assesses the relative economic welfare of women during the transition in Poland. After providing an account of gender differences in several labour market outcomes we analyse the male‐female wage differential over the period 1993–97. We find that there is almost no change in the wage gap, that most of the explained portion of the wage gap may be attributed to industrial and occupational segregation, and that a substantial portion of the wage gap remains unexplained. We briefly discuss possible socio‐economic explanations for our findings.