Pig in the middle: Overcoming inflexibility unemployment

The growth in unemployment is not inevitable. It is the product of an implicit consensus amongst the most powerful social actors, which instead of implementing rules adapted to the new technological and economic era, fight to preserve the old rules from which they continue to draw profit. In the short run, preserving the inflexible attitudes towards work (the single salaried job with full salary) is such that unemployment is bound to increase and social strife will intensify. A more flexible approach to work supply and demand is illustrated by the game ‘pig in the middle’, which, with an equitable distribution of gains in productivity directly related to the implementation of new technology, does not exclude full employment for all.     

关于降低我国失业率的构想

从我国失业率的变化趋势看，城市登记失业率、真实失业率都呈上升趋势。究其原因，主要是劳动力供给过剩所使然。而失业率过高，无论是国家还是居民家庭都会为此付出巨大代价。为了减少失业、降低失业率，我们必须从劳动力供求两个方面努力，一方面要积极发展经济，扩大劳动力需求；另一方面尽可能地缩小劳动力供给。     

对我国“经济高增长与高失业并存”现象的思考

近几年我国经济持续高速的增长同时,失业率也在迅速攀升。这一问题是有悖于国际上经济增长的通常经验的,也与传统经济学理论有所矛盾。在对形成这一矛盾现象的原因进行研究的基础上,指出其原因在于我国过去经济增长采用的是传统的、粗放型的经济增长模式,造成了巨大的潜在效率损失。为了有效地解决这一问题,就必须转变经济增长方式,通过技术进步和制度性的改革来有效地提高经济效率。     

Profit sharing as a worker discipline device

A synthesis of profit-sharing and efficiency wage models is constructed to provide a preliminary account of how a firm determines its pay parameters, and why it chooses to be a profit-sharing or a fixed-wage firm. We find that the properties of the worker's effort function crucially influence the firm's choices between different compensation systems, and that the adoption of a profit-sharing scheme cannot guarantee the attainment of full employment. Other findings of the paper also seem to be very different from those of Weitzman's share model.     

效率工资理论中的监督成本问题

在梳理效率工资理论相关理论文献基础上,本文研究效率工资理论中的监督成本问题.与现有效率工资理论不同的是,本文认为,失业并不是由雇主支付高于市场均衡工资所致,而是雇员的过度劳动引发的,在竞争劳动市场条件下,雇员劳动边际产出价值支付雇主的监督成本和雇员自身的劳动薪酬,作为回报,雇主给予雇员持续的、认可的工作条件和环境.在这交换中,雇员将出现超过一般强度的过度劳动.     

Labor Unemployment Concern and Corporate Discretionary Disclosure

We investigate how firms strategically vary their disclosure policies in response to labor unemployment concern. Using changes in state unemployment insurance laws as exogenous variations of labor unemployment concern, we show that firms provide more bad news forecasts when unemployment concern is low. This relation is stronger when firms are financially constrained, when CEOs and CFOs have higher equity incentives, and when workers are likely to be affected more by unemployment. Our findings are not driven by earnings management reversal or underlying performance changes, and are robust to a battery of identification tests. Finally, we find a similar effect of unemployment concern on disclosure using the tone of 10‐K and 10‐Q filings as an alternative proxy for corporate disclosure. Overall, our findings suggest that labor unemployment concern is an important consideration for corporate discretionary disclosure.     

周期性失业与宏观财政政策的就业效应

通过对失业进行分解,利用菲利普斯曲线间接地估算自然失业率,研究表明中国实际失业率的变动趋势与自然失业率的变动趋势基本一致,且两者之间具有明显的阶段性。采用格兰杰因果检验和协整回归模型对财政政策变量与就业变量进行的计量分析结果表明:就业增长的确引致了政府投资的增加,但政府投资对就业的影响率并不是很高即政府投资存在逆就业倾向;虽然中国政府投资支出与就业量增长具有相同的变动趋势,但政府支出拉动就业的成本要远高于民间投资拉动就业的成本。因此,必须同时着眼于周期性失业和自然失业此两种不同成因的失业,一方面适时调整财政政策宏观调控的目标,另一方面进一步培育和完善劳动力市场机制以降低经济活动成本,才能够有针对性地制定和实施治理失业的措施。     

WHAT CAN CHANGES IN STRUCTURAL FACTORS TELL US ABOUT UNEMPLOYMENT IN EUROPE?

This paper examines the impact of temporal variation in labour market institutions and other structural factors on unemployment in Europe. A system comprising a labour demand and a wage equation is estimated on pooled time‐series data for the six largest EU countries for the 1980s and 1990s. The results suggest that changes in regional mismatch, trade union density and the ratio between consumer and producer prices are positively associated with structural unemployment. This result is robust to a wide variety of different specifications. No consistent role is found for other institutional factors (such as social security benefits, employment security and minimum wage).     

The Unemployment Effects of Proposed Changes in Social Security's “Normal Retirement Age”

This paper identifies and analyzes an inherent conflict between some proposed U. S. Social Security reform measures, which would encourage delayed retirement decisions, and the objective of minimizing the economy's unemployment rate. Using recent demographic trends in the age composition of the U.S. labor force, the study suggests that such proposed U.S. Social Security reform measures may actually increase the economy's unemployment rate. It concludes that measures to encourage older workers would relieve labor market pressures (while also helping the Social Security system) if and only if unemployment was persistently near the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU). However, in an economy with above NAIRU unemployment, which has been the case most often in recent years, the opposite Social Security policy logic would apply. JEL Classification H557     

借鉴西方国家经验治理我国失业问题

针对资本主义不同发展时期出现的失业现象，西方经济学各流派提出了相应的治理理论，并付诸实践。我们应借鉴西方经济学的失业治理理论和西方国家的治理经验，制定出适合我国国情的就业政策。