促进就业根本在于转变经济增长方式

20世纪80年代以来中国经济的高速增长与巨大的失业压力同时并存,中国的经济高增长没有带来高就业,研究中国经济高速增长过程中的劳动就业问题,对实现中国经济可持续发展、促进社会充分就业和丰富经济增长与劳动就业理论都有重大的理论和现实意义。     

Dollarization, economic growth, and employment

Dollarization brought price stability and higher economic growth to Ecuador. Nevertheless, unemployment remained stubbornly high. Two opposing forces explain this result: sustained growth led to higher labor demand but price stabilization triggered substitution effects by cheaper intermediate goods and capital.     

An exploratory study of organizational flexibility in Malaysia: a research note

This note reports on an exploratory study examining the relationships between rules on employee behaviour and on management discretion and other aspects of organizations in Malaysia. Using the data from thirty-five Malaysian organizations, the authors highlight the differences between the implications of the rules for the two groups and their relationships with company performance.     

IMPORTATION AND INNOVATION

Importation of drugs into the US may soon become legal. Since prices of drugs are lower in most other countries than they are in the US, importation would result in a decline in US drug prices. The purpose of this paper is to assess the consequences of importation for new drug development. First, the author presents a simple theoretical model of drug development which suggests that the elasticity of innovation with respect to the expected price of drugs should be at least as great as the elasticity of innovation with respect to expected market size (disease incidence). Then, the cross-sectional relationship between pharmaceutical innovation and market size among a set of diseases (different types of cancer) exhibiting substantial exogenous variation in expected market size is examined. Two different measures of pharmaceutical innovation are analysed: the number of distinct chemotherapy regimens for treating a cancer site and the number of articles published in scientific journals pertaining to drug therapy for that cancer site. Both analyses indicate that the amount of pharmaceutical innovation increases with disease incidence. The elasticity of the number of chemotherapy regimens with respect to the number of cases is 0.53. The elasticity of MEDLINE drug cites with respect to cancer incidence throughout the world is 0.60. In the long run, a 10% decline in drug prices would therefore be likely to cause at least a 5–6% decline in pharmaceutical innovation. Evidence suggests that pharmaceutical industry employment would also decline (by at least 3.5–4%) in response to an exogenous 10% decline in drug prices.     

How the object of knowledge constrains knowledge of the object. An epistemological analysis of a social research investigation

A theoretical social epistemology, arguing for a 'relationalrealism', is developed as part of the internal work of the researchprocess in a social science investigation. It is suggested thattheorising the nature of knowledge interactions is fruitfulboth in developing an epistemology of the discipline and inenhancing theoretical analysis of empirical research. The paperargues that five different aspects of object constraints emergefrom the case study: structural characteristics (the 'maze');relations of force internal to the object; boundaries betweenknowledge systems; relations of scale; and 'interference' generatedby knowledge instruments.     

平衡就业结构以发挥我国的比较优势

改革开放20多年来,我国经济保持了持续快速增长。但近年来,我国的就业结构却出现了明显的不平衡。这种不平衡突出地表现在两个方面:一是大学生就业压力增大;二是部分地区出现“民工荒”现象。本文拟从这两个方面分别进行分析,并探讨如何平衡就业结构以进一步发挥我国的比较优势。     

国际贸易与劳动力市场:研究述评

近三十年来,国际贸易迅速发展,同时各国劳动力市场保持着一种动态变化,国际贸易对劳动力市场的影响不断加深.在这一背景下,国际经济学和劳动经济学领域的学者对国际贸易与劳动力市场的关系进行了大量的理论与经验研究,相关研究主要集中在三个方面:国际贸易对各国工资的影响、国际贸易对各国就业的效应以及国际贸易对劳动力需求弹性的影响.本文将从上述三个方面对相关研究进行回顾.     

构建和谐社会与实现充分就业

社会主义和谐社会实际上是指以人为主体的社会和谐发展状态，包含着人与自然之间、人与人之间、不同社会阶层之间、管理者与被管理者之间等各种不同关系的和谐发展。实现充分就业与构建和谐社会，具有共同的价值认同，它们之间存在着相互需要、相互促进的密切关系。在实现充分就业的实践中应当科学把握构建和谐社会与就业水平、就业质量和就业结构之间的关系，从构建和谐社会的目标出发，科学地研究制定好促进就业的相关措施。     

Labour adjustment costs: Estimation of a dynamic discrete choice model using panel data for Greek manufacturing firms

In this paper we estimate a dynamic structural model of employment at firm level. Our dataset consists of a balanced panel of 2790 Greek manufacturing firms. The empirical evidence of this dataset stresses three important stylized facts: (a) there are periods in which firms decide not to change their labour input, (b) there are periods of large employment changes (lumpy nature of labour adjustment) and (c) the commonality is employment spikes to be followed by smooth and low employment growth periods. Following Cooper and Haltiwanger [Cooper, R.W. and Haltiwanger, J. “On the Nature of Capital Adjustment Costs”, Review of Economic Studies, 2006; 73(3); 611–633], we consider a dynamic discrete choice model of a general specification of adjustment costs including convex, non-convex and “disruption of production” components. We use a method of simulated moments procedure to estimate the structural parameters. Our results indicate considerable fixed costs in the Greek employment adjustment.     

The labor market effects of foreign owned firms

Foreign firms have a more educated workforce and pay higher wages than domestic firms even after controlling for worker quality, at a given moment in time. This does not imply that foreign ownership improves the labor market outcomes of the workers since foreign investment may be guided by unobservable firm and worker characteristics correlated with schooling or wages. This paper asks whether foreign investors acquire firms with high human capital or wages, or whether foreign acquisition improves these outcomes. Using a matched employer-employee data set, I find that foreign acquisitions of domestic firms have small effects on the human capital and on average wages of the acquired firms. Instead, foreign investors “cherry pick” those domestic firms that are already very similar to the group of existing foreign firms.