The Changing Nature of Employment and the Reform of Labor and Social Security Legislation in Post-Apartheid South Africa

This paper tries to understand the current status of South African labor market, which is changing in contradictory directions, i.e. a strengthening of the rights and protection of workers at the same time as the flexibilization of employment, in the context of the characteristics of labor and social security legislation in South Africa, as well as the nature of labor and social security reforms after democratization. We put emphasis on the corporatist nature of labor policy-making as the factor influencing the course of reforms; it is argued that the apparently contradictive changes can be explained consistently by the corporatist labor policy-making process which has been practiced notwithstanding the problem of representativeness.

The Role of the Namayande in Iran's Textile Industry

The Iranian textile industry still remains important as one of the largest sources of employment within the non-petroleum sector, although it no longer plays the large role it used in the country's economy (having been replaced by petroleum as the economy's primary industry). The subject of this study are middlemen known as namayande in the Iranian textile industry who plays a very important role in the operations of the innumerable small and medium-sized private firms. When private firms import materials from abroad, namayande make the connections between them and foreign sellers. These middlemen are not local sales agents of foreign companies as is usually the case; rather the namayande specialize in purchasing goods for local buyers. This study will point out some of the reasons why the namayande exist, and examine the present state of Iran's textile industry along with the particular management problems found within the firms' operations.

Migration and Wellbeing at the Lower Echelons of the Economy: A Study of Delhi Slums

This paper based on a primary survey of households (2004-05) in the slum clusters of Delhi examines whether migrants are likely to experience upward mobility in their place of destination or alternatively, if they merely transfer their poverty from rural areas to large cities. First, a simple bifurcation of population in terms of poor and non-poor sub-groups is examined along with the incidence of poverty across different categories of occupations and non-workers. Then, an explanation of the variations in per capita expenditure across households is provided, and a binomial logit model (poor/non-poor) is developed identifying the variables which raise (or reduce) the probability of being non-poor (or poor). Next, an estimate of the wellbeing (deprivation) index is derived from factor analysis of a large number of variables including demographic and economic aspects of households. Empirical findings suggest that while duration of migration and the wellbeing index do not have a definite relationship, migrant households who have been in the city for a very long time have a higher wellbeing index on average than those who migrated in the last ten years. This tends to support the view that migrants do not merely transfer rural poverty to urban areas, and further that population mobility yields improvement in the living standard, if only in the very long term. Implementation of "employment-cum-shelter" support schemes in the urban areas may contribute to their wellbeing.

The size distribution of all Cambodian establishments

This paper presents empirical evidence on the size distribution of all Cambodian establishments in the nonfarm sector for 2009. Small- and large-scale establishments account for the largest share of employment, pointing to a “missing middle” that is commonly observed in developing countries. The analysis provides little evidence for Zipf’s law because Cambodian industry is characterized by a more dense mass of small establishments than the Zipf distribution would predict.

Economic integration, location of industries, and frontier regions : evidence from Cambodia

We examine changes in the location of economic activity in Cambodia between 1998 and 2008 in terms of employment growth. During this period, Cambodia joined ASEAN and increased trade with neighboring countries. Drawing on the predictions of the new economic geography, we focus on frontier regions such as border regions and international port cities. We examine the changing state of manufacturing in Cambodia from its initial concentration in Greater Phnom Penh to its growth in the frontier regions. The results suggest that economic integration and concomitant trade linkages may lead to the industrial development of frontier regions as well as the metropolitan areas in Cambodia.

Agglomeration Economies in Japan: Technical Efficiency, Growth and Unemployment

This paper examines if the effects of agglomeration economies get manifested in technical efficiency and generate faster economic growth and higher (lower) levels of employment (unemployment). Using the prefecture level data for each of the two-digit groups of industries in Japan, the paper estimates region-specific technical efficiency index based on the stochastic frontier production function framework. The results of the factor analysis show that in most of the industry-groups (with a few exceptions) efficiency has a positive association with external scale variable(s). Though the relationship is not seen to be very strong, it would be equally erroneous to ignore the effect of agglomeration economies on efficiency. In the case of some of the light goods industries the agglomeration effect is relatively stronger. Further, economic growth varies positively with external scale variable(s) and unemployment rate tends to fall with respect to growth and concentration. All this tends to suggest that measures against industrial concentration may be counter-productive, particularly in the context of globalisation when countries are in dire need of raising productivity.

International real business cycles : a re-visit

It is well known that several quantitative properties of international real business cycle models with are at odds with the data. First, the cross-country correlations are much higher for consumption than for output, while in the data the opposite is true (the BKK puzzle). Second, cross-country correlations of employment and investment are negative, while in the data they are positive. This paper quantitatively shows that preferences with a zero income effect on labor supply help generate a correct cross-country correlation in employment even without any restrictions on financial markets. In a bond economy, a zero income effect in labor supply, combined with time-to-build investment, can generate a positive cross-country correlation in investment, and the BKK puzzle is also resolved when the inter-temporal elasticity of substitution in labor supply is low.