Would a North-South Free Trade Agreement Hurt Unskilled Labor in the North?

I present a simple model to examine the impact of international outsourcing on the welfare of skilled and unskilled labor. In this model, specialized business services are to facilitate manufacturing production, creating additional welfare gains in the presence of positive production externalities. Policies that favor the business service sector contribute to the development of a larger bundle of specialized business services, generating more welfare gains to not only skilled but also unskilled labor. Thus, a country’s unskilled labor is not necessarily worse off with open trade if the country is prosperous in business service provisions.     

工会覆盖效应与工会会员效应下的工资分布研究——来自2012年雇员雇主匹配数据的经验

文章采用2012年雇员雇主匹配数据,运用无条件分位数回归的方法研究了中国工会对工资分布的影响问题。研究结果表明：工会覆盖效应下工会企业劳动者与非工会企业劳动者的工资差距呈现“粘地板效应”;工会身份效应下工会会员和非工会会员的工资差距呈现“粘地板效应”;工会覆盖效应和工会身份效应下特征差异作用明显不同;工会企业更有利于减缓中等收入的性别工资歧视;最后根据研究结论提出了两点政策建议。     

Shadow Money in the 19th Century: Is Marx Relevant for Understanding Contemporary Shadow Money?

ABSTRACT

The growth of shadow money, since the 1980s, has implications for both central bank policy and the theorization of money. However, modern shadow money has a historical analogue in the private bill market of 19th century England This article explores the relevance of Marx’s logical and historical analysis of the evolution of the forms and functions of money in capitalist economies, and his concrete analysis of the bill market in order to understand shadow money today.     

Stakeholders’ relationships and product market competition

In this article, we study the relationships between main stakeholders (shareholders, consumers and employees) when firms are consumer oriented (CO) in the sense of caring about consumers’ interests in the objective function. We let these firms first bargain with labour union over their employees’ wages and then compete either in the quantity space (Cournot competition) or in the price space (Bertrand competition). Our model shows that taking care of the consumers’ interests when determining product market strategies may reverse the traditional ranking between Cournot and Bertrand equilibria. This implies that if shareholders in a CO firm can choose either a quantity or a price strategy, they will surprisingly choose the latter. Moreover, we show that the conflicting interests between main stakeholders are attenuated under Bertrand competition compared to Cournot competition.     

A benchmark for wage growth through the lens of the Beveridge curve

Using an estimated Beveridge curve, we trace out the vacancy–unemployment ratio in the steady state. This steady-state measure for labour market tightness is embedded in a VAR framework to obtain a benchmark for wage growth reflecting a labour market equilibrium.     

Influence Factors on Gender Wage Gap: Evidences from Chinese Household Income Project Survey

By constructing a gender wage gap evolution model, this paper examines the source and evolutionary process of gender wage inequality from a theoretical perspective. The purpose of this study is thoroughly investigating the factors affecting the gender wage inequality from the perspective of gender discrimination and variations in non-gender endowments. Based on the Chinese Household Income Project Survey Data, this study indicates that: (1) since companies continue to re-evaluate the gender endowment value of gender, the gender wage inequality exhibits an endogenous sustainability and self-reinforcing effect. (2) The gender wage gap of urban residents is derived mainly from the top tier of wages, while the gender wage gap of the migrant people is mainly determined from the bottom rung of wages. (3) Female age has a ‘U-curve’ impact on gender wage inequality from the standpoint of non-gender endowment differences, and the female age has an ‘inverted U-curve’ impact on gender wage inequality as a result of discrimination. (4) Female appearance and actual work hours are insufficient to affect the changing trend of gender wage inequality; however, h-register location and marital status are still considered to be very important.     

Gender Discrimination and Worker Selectivity: A Comparison of the Self-employed and Wage Earners

This study compares the size and nature of the gender earnings differentials for the self-employed and wage earners in Korea, taking into account the workers’ self-selection of each employment type. The two-stage estimates of the earnings equation, corrected for worker selectivity, are used to decompose the gender earnings differentials into productivity-related and discriminatory factors. Our results suggest that the size of the gender earnings gap is larger in the wage sector than in the self-employment sector, but not by large margin, and so is the discrimination effect when not controlled for worker selectivity. With worker selectivity controlled, the discrimination effect is greatly intensified in the wage sector, while it becomes not significant in the self-employment sector. These findings imply that the observed gender earnings gap in the wage sector is largely ascribed to discrimination against women, while the gender earnings gap in the self-employment sector is mostly due to productivity difference that, in part, is caused by worker selectivity.     

Occupational Segregation and Gender Wage Differentials: Evidence from Malaysia

In Malaysia, the participation of women in the labor market has increased over time. However, occupational segregation and wage differentials continue to be prevalent between men and women in the labor market. The present paper investigates gender‐related occupational segregation and wage differentials based on data collected from 7135 working households in Peninsular Malaysia in 2011. The wage decomposition model introduced by Brown et al. (1980) is used to examine the determinants of gender‐related wage differentials. The results suggest that differences within occupations account for the largest portion of the wage gap between men and women. The results also indicate that wage discrimination within occupations plays an important role in the gender wage gap, while sample selection bias plays an important role in the examination of gender wage gaps.     

上海市人均GDP对职工平均工资的影响实证研究

基于2000至2016年的上海市职工平均工资、人均GDP的数据以及2006年至2015年的上海市各行业职工平均工资的数据,采用协整分析及误差修正模型、格兰杰因果检验等得到平均工资和人均GDP之间有着正相关的关系,整体上存在长期稳定的协整关系,二者的动态调整机制可自动实现长期均衡。并对职工所在不同行业进行聚类分析,对于缩小不同行业的工资差距提出几点建议。     

Inter-Industry Wage Differentials in Greece: Evidence from Quantile Regression Analysis

Using a consistent estimator of the covariance matrix of the asymptotic distribution of the quantile regression estimator with intra-cluster correlation of the error terms, the paper investigates whether and to what extent inter-industry wage differentials derive from worker heterogeneity in the form of unobserved quality. To conduct this study, we pioneer in utilizing a unique data set, the European Union Structure of Earnings Survey for Greece, which follows a two-stage random sampling approach of employees clustered within firms. Data refer to 2010 when the first elements of the economic adjustment programme to deal with the chronic deficiencies of the Greek economy and restore sustainable public finances, competitiveness and set the foundation for long-term growth, gained visibility. Results point to high wage dispersion across industries at the mean of the conditional wage distribution, even after controlling for personal and workplace characteristics. However, evidence for the unobserved heterogeneity hypothesis is rather scant. Therefore, there is room for efficiency wage or rent-sharing theories in accounting for a large part of inter-industry wage differentials tentatively implying that firm heterogeneity in the ability to pay matters more than employee unobservable attributes in the wage determination process.