Labour market adjustment to third-party competition: Evidence from Mexico

China's exports reduce wages in importing countries, but few studies have looked at competition in third-party markets. We examine labour market outcomes in Mexico's apparel and textile sectors associated with US apparel and textile imports from China. Using data on US imports in conjunction with quarterly Mexican labour force surveys, we show that US imports from China are associated with a reduction of employment in Mexico's apparel and textile sectors. These effects are the most pronounced for the least educated. Wages were not impacted on net except for possibly the poorest which would indicate stronger local labour market ties in the left tail of the wage distribution. Finally, the effects of trade-induced demand shocks dissipate after about two quarters indicating low firm-level adjustment costs.     

Mismeasured Household Size and Its Implications for the Identification of Economies of Scale: Correction

We correct an error from Halliday (2010) in which we explored the degree to which household size is measured with errors.     

The moral regulation of markets: Professions, privatization and the english insolvency act 1986

Both economists and sociologists in the last two decades have pointed to the variety of ways that markets require normative foundations and legitimation. In order to understand better how market morality is constructed through law, this paper examines how Mrs Thatcher's Conservative Government used the 1986 Insolvency Act to produce a reconstruction of market behavior. First, it championed privatization in the administration of bankruptcy and in corporate liquidation and reorganization. To do so required a clean-up of the “unacceptable face of capitalism.” It used the insolvency reforms to develop a moral code that distinguished among three types of commercial behavior — mistakes, recklessness, and criminal activity. Second, the Act attempted to “professionalize” some elements of business practice. It did so by developing codes that exposed reckless and criminal company directors to civil actions with strong punitive sanctions, including personal liability and disqualification from management. And third, the legislation created a new occupational monopoly of insolvency practitioners, which was charged with the monitoring of directors' behavior, and reporting recklesssness and the appearance of criminality to government enforcement agencies. The paper concludes that Mrs Thatcher's Government used the ideals and actuality of professionalization as an instrument to define and improve both market morality and efficiency. This linkage between professionalization and market rejuvenation further demonstrates how states may use professions as agents of economic surveillance and enforcers of commercial morality. It raises questions about the conditions under which states will exert their enormous leverage over licensing to compel professions to act as moral agents on the state's behalf.     

Tracking wage inequality trends with prices and different trade models: evidence from Mexico

Mexican wage inequality rose following Mexico’s accession to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization in 1986. Since the mid-1990s, however, wage inequality has been falling. Since most trade models suggest that output prices can affect factor prices, this paper explores the relationship between output prices and wage inequality. A Salter–Swan trade model with firm heterogeneity driven by variations in the relative price of tradable relative to non-tradable goods can explain the decline in wage inequality. The paper compares this model’s predictions with Mexican inequality statistics using data on output prices, census data, and quarterly household survey data. In spite of the model’s simplicity, the model’s predictions match Mexican variables reasonably well during the years when wage inequality fell.     

Trade,FDI, migration,and the place premium: Mexico and the United States

Large wage differences between countries (“place premiums”) are well documented. Theory suggests that factor price convergence should follow increased migration, capital flows, and commercial integration. All three have increased between the United States and Mexico over the last 25 years. This paper evaluates the degree of wage convergence between these countries during the period 1988 and 2011. We match survey and census data from Mexico and the United States to estimate the change in wage differentials for observationally identical workers over time. We find very little evidence of convergence. What evidence we do find is most likely due to factors unrelated to US–Mexico integration. While migration, trade, and FDI may reduce the US–Mexico wage differential, these effects are small when compared to the overall wage gap.     

Mismeasured Household Size and its Implications for the Identification of Economies of Scale*

We consider the possibility that demographic variables are measured with errors which arise because household surveys measure demographic structures at a point‐in‐time, whereas household composition evolves throughout the survey period. We construct and estimate sharp bounds on household size and find that the degree of these measurement errors is non‐trivial. These errors have the potential to resolve the Deaton–Paxson paradox, but fail to do so.     

Consumers' motives for buying goods and services on an off-the-books basis

This is a conceptual paper that sheds light on how trust works by distinguishing 'placed trust' from 'trust as response'. This distinction has implications for management practice and provides directions for future research. The paper reviews, critiques and re-interprets different understandings of trust across several strands of management literature. Trust, as a means of coping with uncertainty by reducing perceived risk, is contrasted with two other options, regulation and opportunism. Trust reduces risk by placing obligations on the trustee to be trustworthy and it is argued that trust is calculating by contrasting it with naiveté. Consideration is then given to its role in creating customer satisfaction, service quality and commitment. The distinction conceptualized between the initiatory act of trusting and the response of trusting enables retail and distribution management to optimize use of trust in the service encounter.     

The allocation of resources for R&D in the world's leading pharmaceutical companies

A survey of 45 leading pharmaceutical companies has been used to investigate aspects of their Research and Development (R&D) strategies, the allocation of resources including the financing and staffing of R&D functions, and the numbers of New Chemical Entities (NCEs) in the development process. The companies included the top ten by R&D expenditure in 1992 (top 10 companies). The study identified characteristics of leading companies and provided comparative data. The principal findings are that:
top ten companies had the highest R&D to sales ratios, progressed more NCEs after the drug candidate selection stage in 1992 and had achieved a greater geographical decentralization of staff than any other company.
Japanese companies differed in some respects from western companies, even those of a similar size. They operated with smaller clinical and regulatory affairs functions and made detailed plans for R&D expenditure further ahead than western companies, on average, more than 5 years compared with 3 years.
an increase in aggregated R&D staffing had occurred between 1990 and 1992 in 33 companies for which data for both years were available and staff numbers had decreased in only five of those companies.
top ten companies differed from others in their apparent productivity measured in terms of staff or R&D expenditure per NCE after the drug candidate selection stage, utilizing more staff and having greater R&D expenditure per NCE.
The results also appear to indicate early signs of a change in the structure of the industry according to R&D expenditure, which has since become more apparent. There was a distinct polarization by R&D budget size among the respondent companies: five companies were spending $900m or more on R&D in 1992 while the majority of the rest were spending less than a third of that amount.     

Autonomy as a key resource for women in low gender egalitarian countries: A cross‐cultural examination

Relying on Conservation of Resources theory and a sample of 23,439 workers in 26 countries, we develop and test a multilevel moderated mediation of the effects of perceived job autonomy on work–life balance, engagement, and turnover intentions, depending on employee gender and country‐level gender egalitarianism (GE), and indirectly through stress. We find that perceived job autonomy relates to these outcomes indirectly through stress such that these effects are stronger for women in lower GE countries compared with women in higher GE countries and are not significant for men. Practical implications for engaging and retaining global female talent are discussed.