Labor market reform and the changing structure of wage determination in China's state sector during the 1980s

China's market-oriented labor market reform has been in place for about one and a half decades. This study uses individual data for 1981 and 1987 to examine the success of the first half of the reform program. Success is evaluated by examining changes in the wage setting structure in the state-owned sector over the reform period. Have the market reforms stimulated worker incentives by increasing the returns to human capital acquisition? Has the wage structure altered to more closely mimic that of a market economy? In 1987, there is evidence of a structural change in the system of wage determination, with slightly increased rates of return to human capital. However, changes in industrial wage differentials appear to play the dominant role. It is argued that this may be due to labor market reforms, in particular the introduction of the profit related bonus scheme.J. Comp. Econom.,December 1997,25(3), pp. 403–421. Australian National University, Canberra, ACT0200, Australia and University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, and University of Aberdeen, Old Aberdeen, Scotland AB24 3QY.

Location and labor: Critical crossroads in global film and television

I approached the editorial prompt as an opportunity to work through some of the concerns driving my current research on creative labor in emergent or ‘peripheral’ media hubs, centers of production activity outside established media capitals that are nevertheless increasingly integrated into a global production apparatus. It builds from my research on the role that film, television and digital media production have played in the economic and cultural strategies of Glasgow, Scotland, and extends the focus on media work to other locations, including Prague and Budapest. I am particularly drawn to the spatial dynamics at play in these locations and how local producers, writers, directors and crew negotiate a sense of place and creative identity against the flows and counter-flows of capital and culture. This means not only asking questions about the growing ensemble of people, places, firms and policies that make international productions possible, but also studying the more quotidian relationships between media workers and the locations (both near and far) where they now find work. I do not see these tasks as unrelated. On the one hand, such queries underscore how international production depends on a growing constellation of interchangeable parts and is facilitated by various actors whose agendas may or may not converge. On the other hand, these questions also betray an even more complicated dynamic, a process that is shifting the spatial orientation of both location and labor around uneven and contested scales. As local industries reimagine themselves as global players, media practitioners are caught up in a new geography of creative labor: not only are personnel finding it increasingly necessary to hop from place to place to follow the work, but also place itself is changing, as locations morph into nebulous amalgamations of tax rebates, subsidized facilities, production services and (when it still matters) natural beauty.

Essays on Labor Market Frictions, Technological Change and Macroeconomic Fluctuations

The dissertation consists of an introductory chapter and three essays that apply search-matching theory to study the interaction of labor market frictions, technological change and macroeconomic fluctuations. The first essay studies the impact of capital-embodied growth on equilibrium unemployment by extending a vintage capital/search model to incorporate vintage human capital. In addition to the capital obsolescence (or creative destruction) effect that tends to raise unemployment, vintage human capital introduces a skill obsolescence effect of faster growth that has the opposite sign. Faster skill obsolescence reduces the value of unemployment, hence wages and leads to more job creation and less job destruction, unambiguously reducing unemployment. The second essay studies the effect of skill biased technological change on skill mismatch and the allocation of workers and firms in the labor market. By allowing workers to invest in education, we extend a matching model with two-sided heterogeneity to incorporate an endogenous distribution of high and low skill workers. We consider various possibilities for the cost of acquiring skills and show that while unemployment increases in most scenarios, the effect on the distribution of vacancy and worker types varies according to the structure of skill costs. When the model is extended to incorporate endogenous labor market participation, we show that the unemployment rate becomes less informative of the state of the labor market as the participation margin absorbs employment effects. The third essay studies the effects of labor taxes on equilibrium labor market outcomes and macroeconomic dynamics in a New Keynesian model with matching frictions. Three policy instruments are considered: a marginal tax and a tax subsidy to produce tax progression schemes, and a replacement ratio to account for variability in outside options. In equilibrium, the marginal tax rate and replacement ratio dampen economic activity whereas tax subsidies boost the economy. The marginal tax rate and replacement ratio amplify shock responses whereas employment subsidies weaken them. The tax instruments affect the degree to which the wage absorbs shocks. We show that increasing tax progression when taxation is initially progressive is harmful for steady state employment and output, and amplifies the sensitivity of macroeconomic variables to shocks. When taxation is initially proportional, increasing progression is beneficial for output and employment and dampens shock responses.

Workers are doing it for themselves? Local labor solidarity in precarious times

Historically, organized labor has played a fundamental role in guaranteeing basic rights and privileges for screen media workers and defending union and guild members (however unevenly) from egregious abuses of power. Yet, despite the recent turn to labor in media and cultural studies, organized labor today has received only scant attention, even less so in locations outside Hollywood. This presentation thus intervenes in two significant ways: first, it acknowledges the ongoing global ‘undoing’ of organized labor as a consequence of footloose production and conglomeration within the screen industries, and second, it examines a case example of worker solidarity and political praxis taking shape outside formal labor institutions in response to those structural shifts. Accordingly, it links an empirical study of individual agency to broader debates associated with the spatial dynamics of screen media production, including local capacity, regional competition, and precariousness. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with local film and television workers in Glasgow, Scotland, I consider the political alliance among three nascent labor organizations in the city: one for below-the-line crew, one for facility operators, and (oddly enough) one for producers. Collectively, the groups share a desire to transform Glasgow into a global production hub, following the infrastructure developments in nearby cities like Belfast, Prague, and Budapest. They furthermore frame their objectives in political terms: establishing global scale is considered a necessary maneuver to improve local working conditions like workplace safety, income disparity, skills training, and job access. Ultimately, I argue these groups are a product of an inadequate union structure and outdated policy vision for the screen sector , once-supportive institutions currently out of sync with the global realities of media production. Furthermore, the groups’ advocacy efforts reveal the extent to which workers themselves (in additional to capital) can seek “spatial fixes” to suture their prospects to specific political and economic goals. Of course, such activities manifest under conditions outside of the workers’ control but nevertheless point to an important tension within capitalist social relations, namely that the agency to reshape the spatial relationships in their own lives recasts the geography of labor in terms that aren’t inherent or exclusive to the interests of global capital.

La reinserción social de los ex-presidiarios en la Argentina de las primeras décadas del siglo XX : algunos comentarios biográficos sobre Jorge H. Frías, fundador del Patronato de Liberados y Excarcelados de la Capital Federal

Resumen: Este trabajo pretende avanzar sobre una problemática escasamente abordada por la historiografía jurídica y social argentina: la reinserción social de los egresados de las prisiones. Así, partiendo de la utilidad que tienen para la historiografía los estudios biográficos y de instituciones penitenciarias y post-penitenciarias, analizaremos algunos aspectos de la labor profesional de Jorge H. Frías, distinguido jurista, presidente de la Cámara de Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional y fundador en 1918 de la primera institución de reinserción social de la Argentina: el Patronato de Liberados y Excarcelados de la Capital Federal. Esperamos que este breve trabajo contribuya a alentar la realización de otros estudios sobre diferentes aspectos del universo penitenciario argentino (directores de presidios, viajeros penitenciarios, congresos penitenciarios nacionales e internacionales, revistas de los funcionarios de prisiones, etc.) que aún hoy en día permanecen desconocidos.

An Estimated New-Keynesian Model with Unemployment as Excess Supply of Labor

Wage stickiness is incorporated to a New-Keynesian model with variable capital to drive endogenous unemployment uctuations de ned as the log di¤erence between aggregate labor supply and aggregate labor demand. We estimated such model using Bayesian econometric techniques and quarterly U.S. data. The second-moment statistics of the unemployment rate in the model give a good t to those observed in U.S. data. Our results also show that wage-push shocks, demand shifts and monetary policy shocks are the three major determinants of unemployment fl uctuations. Compared to an estimated New-Keynesian model without unemployment (Smets and Wouters, 2007): wage stickiness is higher, labor supply elasticity is lower, the slope of the New-Keynesian Phillips curve is flatter, and the importance of technology innovations on output variability increases.

Capital, trabalho, saúde e meio ambiente: uma relação destrutiva analisada em uma indústria de pelotização

O presente trabalho visa analisar as condições do processo de trabalho de uma empresa mineradora, de capital multinacional, em usinas de pelotização, instaladas em Anchieta/ES. Pretende, também, examinar os determinantes desse processo e as conseqüências para a saúde dos trabalhadores, levando em consideração sua exposição aos riscos, relacionadas à destruição do meio ambiente. Os procedimentos metodológicos adotados na pesquisa consistiram basicamente de estudo bibliográfico, análise documental e aplicação de questionários aos trabalhadores da empresa residentes nesse município. O estudo parte da relação existente entre capital, trabalho e saúde do trabalhador, tendo como marco histórico a revolução industrial. Destacam-se nesse resgate os diferentes momentos do sistema produtivo capitalista, fazendo um paralelo com os sistemas de saúde em relação ao trabalhador. Verificamos que, com a expansão dos estudos sobre trabalho e saúde do trabalhador, as discussões não ficaram restritas ao chão da fábrica, passando a articular o mundo da produção e o ambiente de trabalho, introduzindo o debate sobre a deterioração das condições ambientais em escala planetária no atual estágio de desenvolvimento do capitalismo. O campo de análise em que os aspectos pontuados são examinados é a cidade de Anchieta/ES, onde se localiza a empresa pesquisada. O processo de operação das usinas de pelotização nessa localidade transformou o pequeno lugarejo praiano, que vivia apenas da pesca, da agricultura familiar e do turismo tradicional, no litoral sul do Espírito Santo, em sede de um possível conglomerado de empresas e indústrias ligadas ao minério, à siderurgia, ao petróleo e gás. Como resultantes dos efeitos desse processo de produção, nas condições de vida dos trabalhadores, observa-se que as alterações produzidas pela empresa influenciam destrutivamente as duas principais fontes de produção da sua riqueza: a natureza, configurada no meio-ambiente local e nacional, e a força de trabalho nela alocada que fica submetida a todos os fatores de risco a sua saúde.

Beyond signaling and human capital: Education and the revelation of ability

We provide evidence that college graduation plays a direct role in revealing ability to the labor market. Using the NLSY79, our results suggest that ability is observed nearly perfectly for college graduates, but is revealed to the labor market more gradually for high school graduates. Consequently, from the beginning of their careers, college graduates are paid in accordance with their own ability, while the wages of high school graduates are initially unrelated to their own ability. This view of ability revelation in the labor market has considerable power in explaining racial differences in wages, education, and returns to ability.

The effect of ownership structure, country governance, and financial development on the capital structure of unlisted eastern European firms

This paper investigates the determinants of capital structure for a sample of 20,713 unlisted firms from 11 eastern European countries over the period 1994-2004. We employ usual firm-specific financial variables as well as country-specific variables that describe the degrees of governance structure and financial development of each country. Using regression analysis, our results indicate that firm ownership concentration and country governance structure are insignificant explanatory variables to the degree of leverage of the firms in our sample. On the other hand, indicators of country financial development are robust determinants of capital structure. However, the marginal explanatory power of country-specific variables is small. We conclude that firm-specific characteristics are decisive in capital structure.

How does globalization affect the tax burden on labour income, capital income and consumption in different welfare regimes? The case of Western and Eastern EU Member States

This article analyzes the effects of globalization on implicit tax rates (ITRs) on labor income, capital income, and consumption in the EU15 and Central and Eastern European New Member States (CEE NMS). We find supportive evidence for an increase in the ITR on labor income in the EU15, but no effect on the ITR on capital income. There is evidence of convergence in terms of the ITR on consumption, as countries with higher than average ITR on consumption respond to globalization by decreasing their tax rates. There are important differences among the welfare regimes within the EU15. Social-democratic countries have decreased the tax burden on capital, but increased that on labor due to globalization. Globalization exerts a pressure to increase taxes on labor income in the conservative and liberal regimes as well. Taxes on consumption decrease in response to globalization in the conservative and social-democratic regimes. In the CEE NMS, there is no effect of globalization on the ITR on labor and capital income, but we find a negative impact on the ITR on consumption in the CEE NMS with higher than average ITR on consumption. (JEL H23, H24, H25, F19, F21)

Distortionary Taxation and Labor Supply: Evidence from Canada.

This paper examines empirically the effects of distortionary taxation on labor supply using a general equilibrium framework. The long-term relations predicted by the model are derived and tested using Canadian data between 1966 and 1993. While the cointegrating predictions of the model without taxation are rejected, the ones of the model with labor taxation are not. Persistent labor tax rate increases appear to play an important role in the observed downward trend in hours worked.

Capital humain et différentiel de revenu chez les artistes canadiens

L’essence de la théorie du capital humain (Becker, 1964) prédit que l’investissement dans les activités visant à renforcer le potentiel productif des individus se traduit par une augmentation de leurs revenus tout au long de leur carrière (Benjamin, Gunderson et Riddell, 2002 : 245). Pour le groupe occupationnel constitué par les artistes, la littérature s’accorde pourtant pour dire que l’investissement en capital humain demeure rentable financièrement, mais à un niveau sensiblement moindre que pour les autres professions (Snooks, 1983; Filer, 1990; Rengers, 2002; Alper et Wassall, 2006). Nous exposons les théories du capital humain, des différences de salaire compensatoires (Smith, 1776) ainsi que la théorie hédonique des salaires (Rosen, 1974; Rosen et Thaler, 1975) afin d’atteindre deux objectifs. Premièrement, nous cherchons à vérifier empiriquement l’impact de l’acquisition de capital humain sur le revenu d’emploi autonome des artistes canadiens . Dans une autre perspective, nous souhaitons également évaluer la nature et la taille du différentiel de revenu d’emploi par rapport aux autres professions et investiguer les facteurs sur lesquels il repose. Le projet comble un vide dans la littérature portant sur les déterminants du revenu d’emploi des artistes canadiens et permet de réfléchir à l’orientation des politiques publiques culturelles entourant la formation académique de ceux-ci. Nous employons une analyse de régression multivariée sur des variables de capital humain en ayant recours aux données du recensement canadien de 2006 . Plus précisément, nous tentons de mesurer la relation associative entre le revenu de travail autonome exprimé sous forme de logarithme du salaire hebdomaire des artistes canadiens et la scolarité, l’expérience de travail, le sexe, le statut marital légal, la profession/spécialité artistique (classification selon la CNP-S, en vigueur en 2006), le statut d’immigrant, le statut de minorité visible, le fait d’être le principal soutien de la famille ainsi que la zone de résidence. Les résultats nous apprennent que la scolarité demeure rentable financièrement pour la majorité des spécialités artistiques, mais que des profils de scolarité précis ont avantage à être privilégiés selon la spécialité artistique. L’expérience de travail s’avère quant à elle moins rentable au niveau de la rémunération que chez les autres professions, tout comme elle est moins avantageuse financière pour les artistes issus des arts performatifs chez qui la carrière se termine habituellement assez tôt. En ce qui concerne l’effet des variables sociodémographiques, soulignons seulement que le fait d’être de sexe masculin est associé à de plus hauts revenus chez les artistes, mais dans une proportion moindre que chez les autres professions. Quant aux effets des statuts d’immigrant et de minorité visible sur le revenu d’emploi, ceux-ci varient mais demeurent moins pénalisants chez les artistes, ce qui suggère que le marché du travail culturel serait moins discriminant que le marché du travail traditionnel.

Core Labor Rights

The working paper’s main objective is to explore the extent to which non-compliance to international labor rights is caused by global competition. From the perspective of institutional economics, compliance with core labor rights is beneficial for sustainable development. Nonetheless, violations of these rights occur on a massive scale. The violators usually blame competitive pressures. A number of studies have come to the conclusion that non-compliance does not provide for a competitive edge, thereby denying any economic rationale for non-compliance. While we sympathize with this conclusion, we find that these studies suffer from faulty assumptions in the design of their regression analyses. The assumption of perfect markets devoid of power relations is particularly unrealistic. While workers' rights promise long-term benefits, they may incur short-term production cost increases. On the supply side, the production sites with the highest amount of labor rights violations are characterized by a near perfect competitive situation. The demand side, however, is dominated by an oligopoly of brand name companies and large retailers. Facing a large pool of suppliers, these companies enjoy more bargaining power. Developing countries, the hosts to most of these suppliers, are therefore limited in their ability to raise labor standards on their own. This competitive situation, however, is the very reason why labor rights have to be negotiated internationally. Our exploration starts with an outline of the institutionalist argument of the benefits of core labor rights. Second, we briefly examine some cross-country empirical studies on the impact of trade liberalization (as a proxy for competitive pressures). Third, we develop our own argument which differentiates the impact of trade liberalization along the axes of labor- and capital-intensive production as well as low and medium skill production. Finally, we present evidence from a study on the impact of trade liberalization in Indonesia on the garment industry as an example of a low skill, laborintensive industry on the one hand, and the automobile as an example for a medium skill, capital-intensive industry on the other hand. Because the garment industry’s workforce consists mainly of women, we also discuss the gender dimension of trade liberalization.

Disfunciones en el ordenamiento territorial del Distrito Capital a partir de la acción de los curadores urbanos distritales

Este trabajo parte de la necesidad de responder a la pregunta de por qué si la figura de los Curadores Urbanos fue creada para suplir una deficiencia del Estado; garantizar una eficiencia en la expedición de licencias de urbanismo y construcción y otorgar tecnicidad a una labor que tiene como principal objeto velar para que el ordenamiento territorial de la capital se aplique de manera eficaz, Bogotá continúa desordenada y caótica, con altos índices de precariedad, déficit habitacional y con problemas serios de espacio público, entre otros. Problemas que se fueron agudizando como consecuencia de las migraciones del campo a la ciudad y el aumento normal en las tasas de crecimiento demográfico. El Distrito, con las administraciones de Antanas Mockus y Enrique Peñalosa, buscó la manera de organizar los instrumentos para darle más coherencia a los procesos urbanos en la ciudad.

Conflict and child labor: evidence from poor households in Colombia

Colombia suffers from one of the longest civil conflicts in the world, which is believed to have had several consequences on the country’s economic and development performance. This study uses measures of central government deterrence effort as instruments of conflict to estimate the impact of conflict on children’s time allocation to two different types of work: housework and work performed outside the household for poor families living in small municipalities in Colombia. I find that conflict significantly increases the amount of time children allocate to work. Both housework, for girls, and work outside the household, for boys, increase with Guerrilla attacks. However, the later effect is the opposite for Paramilitary attacks.