Minimum wage,trade and unemployment in general equilibrium

The path‐breaking work of Card and Krueger, showing that a higher minimum wage can increase employment, turned the age‐old conventional wisdom on its head. This paper demonstrates that this apparently paradoxical result is perfectly plausible in a competitive general equilibrium production structure of a small open economy with a non‐traded good, without recourse to monopsony, spatial heterogeneity, heterogeneity of consumers and so on, the usual theoretical drivers behind the result. Following Jones and Marjit, we build a simple general equilibrium model with production complementarity and we show that a higher minimum wage can raise aggregate employment. Expansion in the non‐traded sector following a wage hike may be consistent with the overall expansion of the export sector in a multi‐good framework, an unlikely outcome in a conventional two‐good model which cannot accommodate with production complementarity.     

薪酬差距、相对剥夺感知及企业绩效研究

文章通过在员工效用函数中加入相对剥夺权重函数以体现薪酬差距主观感受对于效用的影响,并建立反映劳资双方目标利益与最优决策的博弈模型,最终形成用以分析薪酬差距对于员工努力和企业绩效影响的整合模型。通过比较静态分析可知,相对剥夺感知的存在将通过促进员工努力的方式提高企业产出,这表明因预先宣布薪酬差距所导致的员工相对剥夺感受对薪酬差距激励效果存在强化效果。     

The Indexed Minimum Wage and Hotel Compensation Strategies

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the potential economic effects of an indexed state minimum hourly wage upon certain sectors of the hospitality industry. The authors report the findings of a study conducted at a luxury resort that employed action research and organization development (OD) techniques to implement a compensation strategy aimed at mitigating the effect of an indexed minimum wage. The paper concludes with implications for human resource practitioners facing challenges from rising state minimum wage levels.     

Public or Private Sector Wage Leadership? An International Perspective*

Whether a government acts as a wage leader, placing pressure on private‐sector wages (more open to competition), or whether it plays a passive role and merely follows wage negotiations in the private sector, there are important implications for macroeconomic development, particularly in small open economies and/or countries that are members of a monetary union, such as those of the European Monetary Union. With the notable exception of the case of Sweden, opinion on this issue is still divided. In this paper, we look at public‐ and private‐sector wage interactions from an international perspective (18 OECD countries). We focus on the causal two‐way relationship between public and private wage setting, confirming that the private sector, on the whole, appears to have a stronger influence on the public sector, rather than vice versa. However, we also find evidence of feedback effects from public wage setting, which affect private‐sector wages in a number of countries. When the private sector takes the lead on wages, there are few feedback effects from the public sector, while public wage leadership is typically accompanied by private‐sector feedback effects.     

中国式影子银行监管的新思维

"影子银行系统"是一个新鲜的概念,由2007年美国次贷危机诱发的全球金融危机引发了国际社会对影子银行系统的广泛关注。当前关于影子银行系统的认识仍然处于基础阶段,大部分文献探讨的是欧美发达国家的影子银行体系以及如何对其进行监测或监管。本文对欧美发达国家的影子银行体系与中国影子银行体系的不同进行深入地对比分析,认为中国的影子银行体系有其独有的环境和特点,提出对我国影子银行体系的监管应当采取规范引导为主和分类化监管的新思维。     

Explaining the increase in inequality during transition

This paper attempts to explain the increase in inequality that has been observed in all transition economies by constructing a simple model of change in composition of employment during the transition. The change consists of the 'hollowing-out' of the state-sector middle class as it moves into either the 'rich' private sector or the 'poor' unemployed sector. The predictions of the model are contrasted with the empirical evidence from annual household income surveys from six transition economies (Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Russia and Slovenia) over the period 1987-95. We find that the most important factor driving overall inequality upwards was increased inequality of wage distribution. The non-wage private sector contributed strongly to inequality only in Latvia and Russia. Pensions, paradoxically, also pushed inequality up in Central Europe, while non-pension social transfers were too small everywhere and too poorly focussed to make much difference.     

Does raising indigent defender pay rates improve defendant outcomes? Evidence from New York

Beginning 1 January 2004, the rates paid to assigned counsel – private attorneys who defend the indigent in criminal cases when a public defender does not – were raised from a maximum of $40 per hour to $75 per hour in the state of New York. This article examines the extent to which this relatively large pay increase affects case outcomes. Efficiency wage theory would suggest paying workers higher rates can improve their productivity, and the results of this analysis are consistent with this. Using a difference-in-difference approach, I find that after the assigned counsel rate increase, case outcomes significantly improved in counties with higher poverty rates relative to those with lower poverty rates. The likelihood of conviction and the likelihood of pleading guilty both fell by more than two percentage points in high-poverty counties compared to low-poverty counties after the rate increase, and the differences in the likelihood of being convicted are especially pronounced for cases involving violent felonies. The results suggest raising assigned counsel rates can be an effective policy tool to improve indigent defence systems that are in need of reform.     

Internet Job Search and Labor Market Outcome

This study examines the effect of the use of internet job search (IJS) on individual wages. The data utilized in the study are obtained from the Internet and Computer Use Dictionary in the Current Population Survey of September 2001 and October 2003. An Oaxaca Decomposition is used to examine the extent to which wage differences are influenced by IJS. The results show that accessibility to the internet is a crucial factor in the decision of an individual to utilize the internet for job search activities. However, no clear evidence exists that IJS increases individual wages. Additionally, the study also demonstrates that IJS is subject to self-selection bias. Thus, failure to control for self-selection bias results in a very serious bias in estimation.     

Enforcing and re-enforcing trust: Employers,managers and upper-white-collar employees in Finnish manufacturing companies, 1920–1980

In this article employee–employer relations with respect to upper-white-collar employees in Finnish large-scale companies are investigated. The period is from the 1920s to the 1980s. The article shows that the employee–employer relations were during the whole period based on mutual trust. In spite of significant transformations in the labour market practices and in interest formulation and unionisation among these employees, it was in the interests of both parties to maintain these trustful relations. However, the tools with which to maintain such relations changed and adapted. The process was not easy, and was marked by elements of conflict and tension. The elements of trust had to be actively strengthened and rebuilt, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. But as the post-war economic and societal model was marked by a striving for consensus and the smoothing out of conflicts in order to promote industrialisation and growth, the institutional model also supported the maintaining of mutual trust and loyalty between the employees and the employers.