Unemployment insurance benefits and income smoothing

Labor unemployment insurance reduces unemployment concerns. We argue that these benefits moderate incentives to smooth earnings to reduce employees’ concerns about unemployment risk. Using exogenous variations in unemployment insurance benefits, we find evidence consistent with this argument. We also find that the link between unemployment insurance benefits and income smoothing is stronger when there is higher unemployment risk and when the firm is likely to employ more low-wage workers, who find unemployment insurance benefits especially useful. Our paper contributes to the literature by showing that public policy decisions such as unemployment insurance have significant, albeit probably unintended, externalities on corporate financial reporting.     

行业间工资差异和垄断租金分享

以产业门类为基准测算的中国行业间工资差异明显且自1988年以来呈现逐步上升趋势，随着产业细分，行业间工资差异进一步提高。对劳动市场工资决定的理论分析表明，行业间工资差异主要源于各行业就业人员的人力资本差异和可能的垄断租金分享。实证研究中发现，就业人员性别、年龄和教育等就业人员特征只能解释行业平均报酬变差系数的60％左右，其余部分源于垄断行业的租金分享。其中，技术／知识型市场垄断行业租金分享比例不高，但非竞争性垄断行业普遍获得了超额报酬，约占其行业高工资的50％以上。后者超额报酬和超水平高福利主要源于相关行业无偿或低成本的自然资源占用和国有资产经营、攫取消费者福利、成本膨胀亏损的财政或社会公众补贴，因此要从其垄断机理和初次分配制度上改革以建立公平收入分配秩序。     

Labor unemployment risk and firm risk

This paper examines the effect of labor unemployment risk on firm risk. Using unemployment insurance benefits as a proxy for unemployment risk, we find an economically significant positive relation between unemployment risk and firm risk. This positive relation is more pronounced for firms that are more labor-intensive, have a higher layoff propensity and are more financially constrained. While existing literature that employs corporate policy measures such as debt and cash holdings suggests an opposite relationship, our paper presents evidence that the effects stemming from earnings management, earnings quality and reporting quality appear to dominate.     

Lost in intervention. The Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson effect on the peseta/dollar real exchange rate (1870–1998)

We have decomposed the peseta/dollar real exchange rate (1870–1998) into its trend and cyclical components and used the former to proxy its time-varying equilibrium. Then, we have compared changes in the equilibrium with changes in the Spanish and the USA productivity differentials to identify years that do not fit with the Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson (HBS) hypothesis. The greatest maladjustment is found in the 1940s and 1950s, decades of strong exchange rate intervention in Spain. Conversely, the link between equilibrium and differentials adjusts to the hypothesis when using the non-intervened peseta/dollar exchange rate on the Tangier black market. These contrasting results back up the idea that exchange rate intervention, so common in developing countries, might explain their scanter evidence in favour of the HBS effect.     

Wage Differentials among Ownership Groups and Worker Quality in Vietnamese Manufacturing

Wholly foreign multinational enterprises (WFs), joint-venture multinationals (JVs), state-owned enterprises (SOEs) pay higher wages than domestic private firms in Vietnamese manufacturing. In large samples of medium–large (20+ employees) firms, conditional differentials accounting for worker education and occupation, as well as capital intensity, size, and shares of female workers, were substantially smaller, but positive and significant. Wage levels and differentials varied substantially among industries. Conditional differentials remained positive and significant for WFs and JVs in most of the 11 industries examined, but estimates of SOE-private differentials were insignificant in most industries. Robustness checks using 2007 data yielded similar results.     

The Importance of Tax Adjustments When Evaluating Wage Expectations*

Using elicited expectations of future gross salaries, we evaluate characteristics causing German students to make larger or smaller estimation errors. While students seem to underestimate actual salaries by 18 percent, we show that these errors are highly attributable to misconceptions of the progressive income tax. Developing a suitable adjustment procedure, we correct students’ estimates and find that errors decline by 12 percentage points. Conducting regression analyses, we reveal strong connections with students’ age, gender, work experience, secondary school track, and knowledge about student loans. These results change notably if not controlling for students’ misconceptions of the tax system.     

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.     

Wage differences between Austrian men and women: <Emphasis Type="Italic">semper idem?</Emphasis>

In most OECD countries, the wage gap between men and women has narrowed during the past two decades. Developments of the last 20 years, e.g., increased labour market attachment of women or the introduction of equal pay laws, may have reduced the gender wage gap. We investigate the extent, persistence, and socio-economic determinants of the gender wage gap in Austria, for the years 1983 and 1997. Using wage decomposition techniques, we find that the average gender wage gap was almost as high in 1997 as it was in 1983. Not accounting for differences, the gender wage gap dropped from 25.5 to 23.3% of men’s wages. Taking observable differences between men and women into account, we estimate that the mean gender wage gap that cannot be explained, i.e., discrimination against women, dropped from 17 to 14% of men’s wages. A decomposition of the gender wage gap over time indicates that both returns to human capital and less discrimination were responsible for the narrowing of the gender wage gap.

我国FDI流入的地区差异与影响因素分析——基于1992-2007年省级面板数据

本文利用1992-2007年我国省级面板数据,分析了我国FDI流入的地区差异与影响因素。实证分析结果表明:经济发展水平与FDI规模正相关,且在中西部地区表现明显;劳动力成本与FDI规模反向变动,且东部影响较弱、中西部影响较强;基础设施与FDI规模正相关;对外开放度对东部FDI有正影响,对中部为负影响,而对西部的影响并不显著;沿海区位优势是东部FDI高于中西部的重要原因。最后,针对中西部地区吸引外资提出了政策建议。     

中国行业收入不平等问题的解析

进入新世纪以来,中国行业收入不平等有持续扩大的趋势。基于回归方程的Shap-ley分解结果表明,人力资本、所有制、资本投资、技术等因素对行业收入差距有显著影响,其中人力资本对行业收入差距的贡献约为45%,所有制的贡献在20%以上。因此在治理措施上,实施教育均等化,提高教育回报率,开放垄断行业的劳动力市场,推行劳资谈判制度可以有效缓解行业收入差距持续扩大的问题。