Get fact: were there really 50,000 boat arrivals a year under Labor?

Tony Abbott has claimed that before he “stopped the boats”, they were coming in at a rate of 50,000 a year. Is that true? David Tittensor, a research fellow to the UNESCO Chair, with Deakin’s Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation, checks the claim.

Working hours in supply chain Chinese and Thai factories: evidence from the fair labor association's 'soccer project'

This article examines the determinants of working excessive hours, defined as working in excess of 60 hours per week or for more than six consecutive days, in Chinese and Thai supply chain factories. We use a matched employer-employee dataset collected from 15 Chinese and Thai footwear and sporting apparel supply chain factories, which supply international brands. Matched employer-employee data allow us to examine the effect of worker and firm characteristics on hours worked. We find that in addition to the demographic and human capital characteristics of workers, firm-level characteristics and worker awareness of how to refuse overtime are important in explaining variation in hours worked. © John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2011.

Migrants as Homo economicus : explaining the emerging phenomenon of a shortage of migrant labor in China's coastal provinces

The problem of a shortage of migrant labor is a new development in China's coastal provinces. We discuss the reasons for this emerging phenomenon using a conceptual framework that extends the traditional Lewis dualistic labor market model to incorporate a migrant labor market. We emphasize that migrant labor shortage in China not only reflects a declining wage gap between what peasants receive and what migrants can earn in the cities, but also the institutional legacies of the planning era such as the hukou (household registration) system which discriminates against migrants vis-a-vis urban residents in terms of access to social insurance and other social services. We proceed to draw on a unique survey of migrants and urban residents collected in Jiangsu to show that migrants receive lower incomes, and they have poorer access to social insurance than those with an urban registration in China's cities. Our findings have important implications for the alleviation of the migrant labor shortage problem.

The comparative efficiency and productivity of labor-managed and capital-managed firms

The available empirical literature comparing the efficiency and productivity of labor-managed and capital-managed firms is reviewed and meta-analysed. The results suggest that labor-managed firms are not less efficient or less productive than capital-managed firms. Labor-managed firms have lower output-to-labor ratios and even lower capital-to-labor ratios. However, the differences in these ratios are not statistically significant. The labor-managed firm's democratic governance, industrial relations climate, and organisational setting do not appear to adversely affect productivity and efficiency. © 1997 by URPE All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

Discrimination, Peformance and Career Progression in Australian Public Sector Labor Markets

While promotion is an important mechanism for allocating labor within organizations, relatively little is known about the determinants of promotion in the highly diverse and traditionally heavily regulated Australian labor markets. This study uses unique data from the Victorian Public Sector Census 2004 to identify the extent and nature of bias in the promotion process. Specifically, we use the promotion histories of 16,675 public sector employees to investigate the existence of discrimination in promotion on the basis of gender, disability and cultural diversity. We find that some differences exist in the rate of promotion on the basis of gender, and to a lesser extent, of birthplace, but, importantly, most of these are due to differences in endowments. There are effectively no differences in promotion on the basis of disability. We find that the main driver of promotion in Victorian public sector labor markets is worker effort and performance. Compared to labor markets elsewhere, the Australian public sector is relatively free of discrimination in promotions.

The bright incubate at night: sexual dichromatism and adaptive incubation division in an open-nesting shorebird

Ornamentation of parents poses a high risk for offspring because it reduces cryptic nest defence. Over a century ago, Wallace proposed that sexual dichromatism enhances crypsis of open-nesting females although subsequent studies found that dichromatism per se is not necessarily adaptive. We tested whether reduced female ornamentation in a sexually dichromatic species reduces the risk of clutch depredation and leads to adaptive parental roles in the red-capped plover Charadrius ruficapillus, a species with biparental incubation. Males had significantly brighter and redder head coloration than females. During daytime, when visually foraging predators are active, colour-matched model males incurred a higher risk of clutch depredation than females, whereas at night there was no difference in depredation risk between sexes. In turn, red-capped plovers maintained a strongly diurnal/nocturnal division of parental care during incubation, with males attending the nest largely at night when visual predators were inactive and females incubating during the day. We found support for Wallace's conclusion that reduced female ornamentation provides a selective advantage when reproductive success is threatened by visually foraging predators. We conclude that predators may alter their prey's parental care patterns and therefore may affect parental cooperation during care.

Functional genomic analysis of systemic cell division regulation in legumes

Legumes develop root nodules from pluripotent stem cells in the rootpericycle in response to mitogenic activation by a decorated chitin-likenodulation factor synthesized in Rhizobium bacteria. The soybean genes encoding the receptor for such signals were cloned using map-based cloning approaches. Pluripotent cells in the root pericycle and the outer or inner cortex undergo repeated cell divisions to initiate a composite nodule primordium that develops to a functional nitrogen-fixing nodule. The process itself is autoregulated, leading to the characteristic nodulation of the upper root system. Autoregulation of nodulation (AON) in all legumes is controlled in part by a leucine-rich repeat receptor kinase gene (GmNARK). Mutations of GmNARK, and its other legume orthologues, result in abundant nodulation caused by the loss of a yet-undefined negative nodulation repressor system. AON receptor kinases are involved in perception of a long distance, root-derived signal, to negatively control nodule proliferation. GmNARK and LjHAR1 are expressed in phloem parenchyma. GmNARK kinase domain interacts with Kinase Associated Protein Phosphatase (KAPP). NARK gene expression did not mirror biological NARK activity in nodulation control, as q-RT-PCR in soybean revealed high NARK expression in roots, root tips, leaves, petioles, stems and hypocotyls, while shoot and root apical meristems were devoid of NARK RNA. High through-put transcript analysis in soybean leaf and root indicated that major genes involved in JA synthesis or response are preferentially down-regulated in leaf but not root of wild type, but not NARK mutants, suggesting that AON signaling may in part be controlled by events relating to hormone metabolism. Ethylene and abscisic acid insensitive mutants of L. japonicus are described. Nodulation in legumes has significance to global economies and ecologies, as the nitrogen input into the biosphere allows food, feed and biofuel production without the inherent costs associated with nitrogen fertilization [1]. Nodulation involves the production of a new organ capable of nitrogen fixation [2] and as such is an excellent system to study plant – microbe interaction, plant development, long distance signaling and functional genomics of stem cell proliferation [3, 4]. Concerted international effort over the last 20 years, using a combination of induced mutagenesis followed by gene discovery (forward genetics), and molecular/biochemical approaches revealed a complex developmental pathway that ‘loans’ genetic programs from various sources and orchestrates these into a novel contribution. We report our laboratory’s contribution to the present analysis in the field.

Informality in labor market and welfare

The neoclassical growth model with two sectors in production is employed in this paper in order to investigate how a change in the tax structure affects informality and welfare. We calibrate and simulate the model and find that welfare always increases when we reduce the tax rate on the demand for labor and adjust the tax rate on the value added so that the government revenue remains constant.