From economic decline to the current crisis in Italy

The objective of this paper is to show that the current global economic crisis, into which Italy also fell in 2008, represents just the last step of a long declining path for the Italian economy which began in the 1990s, or to be more precise in 1992 and 1993. It is argued that the reasons that explain the long Italian decline, and partly also the deeper recession today, as well as the lack of recovery from the current crisis, can be found in the past reforms of the labour market. In particular, the labour flexibility introduced in the last 15 years had, along with other policies introduced in parallel, cumulative negative consequences on the inequality, on the consumption, on the aggregate demand, on the labour productivity and on the GDP dynamics.     

Falling Wage Shares in Europe and the United States: How Important is Aggregation Bias?

This paper sheds light on the importance of aggregation bias in the analysis of wage shares developments over time and across countries. We focus on five European countries and the United States and show that the trend decline in the aggregate wage share observed in these countries over much of the 1980s and 1990s partly reflects changes in the sectoral composition of the economy. The application of a fixed-weight aggregation method changes the profile of the observed wage share in a significant way: in particular there is no longer sign of an overshooting of the wage share levels of the early-1970s. Error-correction wage equations based on the adjusted wage shares generally have a better regression fit and show long-run elasticities of real wages to unemployment that vary less across countries and are substantially lower than those obtained with observed shares.     

Interindustry wage differentials in dummy variable models

Normalized interindustry wage differentials à la Krueger and Summers [Krueger, A.B., Summers, L.H., 1988. Efficiency wages and the inter-industry wage structure. Econometrica 56, 259–293] derive from a general specification of wage equations with dummy variables which cannot be directly estimated. This note illustrates how they can be obtained from the coefficients of a more specific parameterization and how their estimated variances can be transformed accordingly.     

Firm Size and Wages in Germany – Trends and Impacts of Mobility

The analysis of firm-size wage differentials in Germany, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, firstly corroborates the finding that wages rise with firm-size and shows that the rank order of mean wages between firm-size classes is stable for the period 1984–1993. Secondly, the most important novel results are as follows: (i) wage differentials between firm-size classes increased during the period investigated after controlling for individual attributes and computing with deflated values; (ii) average levels of the qualification of employees have diverged noticeably between small and large firms; (iii) movers from small to larger firms have to accept wages below the average pay of incumbents with comparable attributes in the new firms: (iv) movers to smaller firms, however, retain a portion of their higher wages in larger firms; and (v) wage differentials between smaller and larger firms decline with increasing unemployment.     

Privatization and efficiency wages

The impact of privatization is investigated in a shirking model of efficiency wages. Without trade unions, privatization — modeled as a stricter control of employees — lowers wages and raises employment, output, and profits, while effort and productivity effects depend on the employees' risk aversion. However, for a utilitarian monopoly union, facing a company characterized by a constant-elasticity labor-demand schedule, privatization raises efficiency wages. If privatization is modeled as a stronger profit orientation, wages, effort, and labor productivity will rise, while employment will shrink in a wage-setting firm. Again, wage and employment effects can be reversed in the case of wage negotiations.     

Wages distribution in Poland: The roles of privatization and international trade, 1992-96

This paper reports an investigation into the changes in the wage distribution in Poland in the first half of the 1990s. We concentrate on the effects of privatization and international trade. We show that the tendency towards increased dispersion in wages halted between 1992 and 1996, despite a rapid expansion in private-sector work. We also show that, during the same period, private-sector workers typically earned less than their state-sector counterparts on an hourly basis, and this gap widened. However, if one controls for experience, tenure and size of workplace, then there existed a small positive private-sector premium. On the effects of international trade, we find suggestive circumstantial evidence that the increase in trade with Western Europe raised wages and employment in manufacturing.     

A Comparison of Wage Determination in New South Wales and Queensland (Australian) Clubs

ABSTRACT

Australia's industrial relations framework has undergone substantial change since the 1990s. This has involved federal and state governments attempting to replace the centralised system, based on awards, to a decentralised system based on formalised enterprise and individual bargaining. The move to a decentralised system will supposedly, according to critics of the centralised system, provide significant improvements in flexibility, especially for the hospitality industry. This article examines the results from two studies of registered clubs, one undertakenin New South Wales (NSW)in 1996 and the other in Queensland in 2003, to examine the impact of regulatory changes on wage determination and associated variables in the sector. The findings indicate that despite the rhetoric of proponents of decentralisation, very few clubs have moved from the centralised system to the decentralised one. However, within the centralised system, clubs have undertaken a high level of informal bargaining, both in 1996 and 2003. Despite the level of informal bargaining club managers felt relatively restricted by awards and trade unions.     

低工资率下向左上方倾斜的劳动力供给曲线分析——“民工荒”现象的又一种解释

近年来屡屡出现的＂民工荒＂现象是由于低工资率下向左上方倾斜的劳动力供给曲线的存在而导致的。随着工资率的上涨,低收入者的劳动供给时间将减少,从而导致＂民工荒＂现象的出现。＂民工荒＂现象的微观主体原因是,新生代农民工已经成为农村劳动力迁移者的主体。中国目前仍处于＂刘易斯拐点＂前期,可以预计,农民工收入将步入快速增长期,从而给中国产业结构的调整带来新的约束条件。     

经济增长视角下我国城镇职工工资与就业的动态效应分析

促进就业对实现社会稳定发展起到至关重要的作用。面对经济增长时期就业情况的变化,本文根据1978-2011年我国城镇职工的统计数据,建立了基于经济增长的工资与就业之间的变参数动态模型-状态空间模型,给出了工资与就业的动态效应分析。研究结果表明：工资与就业存在长期均衡关系;工资对就业的影响经历了“负相关-不相关-正相关”的动态演变过程;经济增长对就业的影响一直是正相关的,且2000年以后对就业的影响程度大于工资对就业的影响。