Dinámicas del sector agropecuario argentino en el siglo XXI : La distribución del ingreso en regiones pampeanas y extrapampeanas

En este trabajo se analizan una serie de aspectos que resultan centrales para comprender la situación de los trabajadores en el sector agropecuario. En primer lugar, se contrapone la evolución del producto del sector con su capacidad para generar puestos de trabajo. Luego, se da cuenta de las condiciones de empleo poniendo especial énfasis en el estudio del grado de informalidad y de los niveles salariales. Se compara, a continuación, la distribución primaria del ingreso del sector con la de la economía nacional en su conjunto. Este análisis distributivo se complementa con dos estudios de caso que intentan poner de manifiesto las implicancias de los distintos cultivos llevados a cabo en diferentes regiones. El estudio muestra que el salario medio del sector agropecuario sigue estando muy por debajo de la remuneración promedio de la economía y que, además, la participación de los salarios en el valor agregado del sector se ha reducido desde la salida de la Convertibilidad, incluso en un contexto de aumento del salario medio sectorial. Finalmente, sobre la base del análisis de los casos mencionados, se asocia la distribución del ingreso con los distintos cultivos y las regiones donde estos se desarrollan. Al respecto, se discute el rol de las ganancias individuales como guía orientadora del uso de la tierra cultivable

Determinantes de la eficiencia en el canal de distribución: análisis en agencias de viajes

El incremento de la competencia entre agencias de viajes y el impacto del comercio electrónico como una alternativa al canal de distribución turístico tradicional han dado lugar a un entorno en el que la gestión eficiente de los recursos productivos resulta fundamental para las agencias de viajes. Así, el objetivo del trabajo consiste en estimar la eficiencia con la que operan los intermediarios del sector minorista español de distribución turístico, y conocer la influencia de algunos de sus factores determinantes (salarios, antigüedad y oferta de servicios de comercio electrónico). La metodología de investigación se apoya en la estimación de una frontera paramétrica de naturaleza estocástica. El análisis empírico efectuado sobre una muestra de 1086 agencias de viajes en 2004 evidencia bajos niveles de eficiencia, que son explicados por el nivel de salarios medio y por la antigüedad de la agencia.

Annotated almanac, 1786

Almanac has sporadic annotations and is accompanied by a gathering of unruled paper. The gathering contains entries of baptisms and burials, accounting records and notes of household activities, including entries related to boarders. There is a receipt signed by Sally Robinson for payment of wages by Hannah Winthrop among the entries.

Euro-area governance: what to reform and how to do it. Bruegel Policy Brief 2015/01 February 2015

The Issue Reform of the governance of the euro area is being held back by disagreement on what is at the root of the euro area’s woes. Pre-crisis, the euro area suffered from the built-up of financial imbalances, price and wage divergence and an insufficient focus on debt sustainability. During the crisis, the main problems were slow resolution of banking problems, an inadequate fiscal policy stance in 2011-13 for the area as a whole, insufficient domestic demand in surplus countries and slow progress with structural reforms to overcome past divergences. Policy Challenge Euro-area governance needs to move beyond the improvements brought about by banking union and should establish institutions to prevent divergences of wages from productivity. We propose the creation of a European Competitiveness Council composed of national competitiveness councils, and the creation of a Eurosystem of Fiscal Policy (EFP) with two goals: fiscal debt sustainability and an adequate area-wide fiscal position. The EFP should have the right in exceptional circumstances to declare national deficits unlawful and to be able to force parliaments to borrow more so that the euro-area fiscal stance is appropriate. A euro-area chamber of the European Parliament would have to approve such decisions. No additional risk-sharing would be introduced. In the short term, domestic demand needs to be increased in surplus countries, while in deficit countries, structural reform needs to reduce past divergences.

A House Divided: Employers & the Challenge to Pattern Bargaining in a United Germany. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 05.5, 1994

Recently, increasing numbers of new German firms have begun to break from tradition and refuse to join employers' associations. Simultaneously, an unprecedented portion of affiliates have begun to reconsider employers' association membership. The spectre of declining membership in German employers' associations-century-old pillars of organized capitalism-is particularly noteworthy because of the importance of these institutions to the German economy as a whole. Some observers have attributed this trend to the impact of German unification, yet a careful analysis reveals that its principal causes arose in the decade preceding it. The economic strain of unification, however, has accelerated "association flight'' and has provided dissidents with an unprecedented opportunity to challenge the hegemony of employers' associations over the regulation of wages and working conditions in the Federal Republic.

[Census reports] Tenth census. June 1, 1880.

Published also as House, Misc. doc. 42, pt. 1-22, 47th Cong., 2d sess.

Recommendation relating to wage garnishment and related matters.

"This pamphlet will appear in Volume II of the Commission's [1972 annual report:] Reports, recommendations, and studies."

Ferdinand Lassalle as a social reformer,

"With some slight alterations, a translation of ... [the author's] introduction to the complete edition of Lassalle's Speeches and works."

Union labor in California.

Data for 1931-1938, 1940 never published.

Wage bargaining, privatisation, ability to pay and outside options:evidence from Hungary

This article examines the determinants of short-term wage dynamics, using a sample of large Hungarian companies for 1996–99. We test the basic implications of an efficient contract model of bargaining between incumbent employees and managers, which the data do not reject. In particular, there are structural differences between the ownership sectors consistent with our prior knowledge on relative bargaining strength and unionisation measures. Stronger bargaining position of workers leads to higher ability to pay elasticity of wages, and lower outside option elasticity. Our results indicate that while bargaining position of workers in domestic privatised firms may be weaker than in the state sector, the more robust difference relates to state sector workers versus privatised firms with majority foreign ownership.

Wage bargaining, privatisation, ability to pay, and outside options:evidence from Hungary

This paper examines the determinants of short-term wage dynamics, using a sample of large Hungarian companies for the period of 1996-1999. We test the basic implications of an efficient contract model of bargaining between the incumbent employees and the managers, which we are unable to reject. In particular, there are structural differences between the ownership sectors consistent with our prior knowledge on relative bargaining strength and unionisation measures. Stronger bargaining position of workers leads to higher ability to pay elasticity of wages, and lower outside option elasticity. Our results indicate that while bargaining position of workers in domestic privatised firms may be weaker than in the state sector, the more robust difference relate to state sector workers versus the privatised firms with the majority foreign ownership. We examine several extensions. We augment the bargaining specification by controls related to workers' skills and find that the basic findings are robust to that. We take a closer look at the outside options of the workers. We find some interactive effects, where unemployment modify the impact of availability of rents on wages. We interpret our results as an indication that bargaining power of workers may be affected by changes in their outside options. We also experiment with one concise indicator of reservation wage which is closest to the theoretical model specification and combines sectoral wages, unemployment benefits and regional unemployment levels,. We found that measure performing well. Finally, we found that while responsiveness of wages towards ability to pay is higher in the state sector, variation in wage dynamics is lower. This may indicate some wage smoothing in the state sector, consistent with the preferences of employees.

Guardas prisionais, contextos de atuação e motivações

O contexto prisional tem recebido nos últimos anos uma grande atenção por parte dos investigadores portugueses. Porém, esse estudo não se têm centrado nos guardas prisionais, como grupo profissional. Dada a inexistência de pesquisas sobre esta temática, o presente estudo pretende analisar os contextos em que se desenrola o exercício das funções dos guardas prisionais, uma vez que estas podem produzir desmotivação e desgaste profissional nestes indivíduos. A investigação decorreu com a participação de guardas prisionais, a exercer funções nos Estabelecimentos Prisionais de Chaves, Lamego e Izeda. Para serem atingidos os objetivos propostos, optou-se pelo método qualitativo,através da aplicação de entrevistas semiestruturadas como instrumento de recolha de dados. Durante o mês de Abril e Maio de 2016 foram realizadas entrevistas a quinze guardas prisionais que trabalhavam em contacto direto com os reclusos. Ao longo da análise das entrevistas ficaram patentes nas declarações algumas fontes de desmotivação devido ao congelamento de salários e das progressões na função pública, à inexistência de concursos internos e à ineficácia e injustiça das avaliações de desempenho. Por outro lado, os profissionais estudados afirmam sentir uma fraca valorização das suas funções no serviço, a par de uma má imagem da sua profissão, difundida e sustentada pelos meios de comunicação social. Estes fatores podem contribuir para que eles próprios não se sintam identificados com o grupo profissional ao qual pertencem. Finalmente, os entrevistados manifestam sentir uma falta de formação contínua, cuja existência consideram fundamental.

Essays on Information Frictions, Prices and Unemployment

I investigate the effects of information frictions in price setting decisions. I show that firms' output prices and wages are less sensitive to aggregate economic conditions when firms and workers cannot perfectly understand (or know) the aggregate state of the economy. Prices and wages respond with a lag to aggregate innovations because agents learn slowly about those changes, and this delayed adjustment in prices makes output and unemployment more sensitive to aggregate shocks. In the first chapter of this dissertation, I show that workers' noisy information about the state of the economy help us to explain why real wages are sluggish. In the context of a search and matching model, wages do not immediately respond to a positive aggregate shock because workers do not (yet) have enough information to demand higher wages. This increases firms' incentives to post more vacancies, and it makes unemployment volatile and sensitive to aggregate shocks. This mechanism is robust to two major criticisms of existing theories of sluggish wages and volatile unemployment: the flexibility of wages for new hires and the cyclicality of the opportunity cost of employment. Calibrated to U.S. data, the model explains 60% of the overall unemployment volatility. Consistent with empirical evidence, the response of unemployment to TFP shocks predicted by my model is large, hump-shaped, and peaks one year after the TFP shock, while the response of the aggregate wage is weak and delayed, peaking after two years. In the second chapter of this dissertation, I study the role of information frictions and inventories in firms' price setting decisions in the context of a monetary model. In this model, intermediate goods firms accumulate output inventories, observe aggregate variables with one period lag, and observe their nominal input prices and demand at all times. Firms face idiosyncratic shocks and cannot perfectly infer the state of nature. After a contractionary nominal shock, nominal input prices go down, and firms accumulate inventories because they perceive some positive probability that the nominal price decline is due to a good productivity shock. This prevents firms' prices from decreasing and makes current profits, households' income, and aggregate demand go down. According to my model simulations, a 1% decrease in the money growth rate causes output to decline 0.17% in the first quarter and 0.38% in the second followed by a slow recovery to the steady state. Contractionary nominal shocks also have significant effects on total investment, which remains 1% below the steady state for the first 6 quarters.

Trade Shocks and Local Labor Markets' Linkages: Theory and Evidence

In the past few years, there has been a concern among economists and policy makers that increased openness to international trade affects some regions in a country more than others. Recent research has found that local labor markets more exposed to import competition through their initial employment composition experience worse outcomes in several dimensions such as, employment, wages, and poverty. Although there is evidence that regions within a country exhibit variation in the intensity with which they trade with each other and with other countries, trade linkages have been ignored in empirical analyses of the regional effects of trade, which focus on differences in employment composition. In this dissertation, I investigate how local labor markets' trade linkages shape the response of wages to international trade shocks. In the second chapter, I lay out a standard multi-sector general equilibrium model of trade, where domestic regions trade with each other and with the rest of the world. Using this benchmark, I decompose a region's wage change resulting from a national import cost shock into a direct effect on prices, holding other endogenous variables constant, and a series of general equilibrium effects. I argue the direct effect provides a natural measure of exposure to import competition within the model since it summarizes the effect of the shock on a region's wage as a function of initial conditions given by its trade linkages. I call my proposed measure linkage exposure while I refer to the measures used in previous studies as employment exposure. My theoretical analysis also shows that the assumptions previous studies make on trade linkages are not consistent with the standard trade model. In the third chapter, I calibrate the model to the Brazilian economy in 1991--at the beginning of a period of trade liberalization--to perform a series of experiments. In each of them, I reduce the Brazilian import cost by 1 percent in a single sector and I calculate how much of the cross-regional variation in counterfactual wage changes is explained by exposure measures. Over this set of experiments, employment exposure explains, for the median sector, 2 percent of the variation in counterfactual wage changes while linkage exposure explains 44 percent. In addition, I propose an estimation strategy that incorporates trade linkages in the analysis of the effects of trade on observed wages. In the model, changes in wages are completely determined by changes in market access, an endogenous variable that summarizes the real demand faced by a region. I show that a linkage measure of exposure is a valid instrument for changes in market access within Brazil. By using observed wage changes in Brazil between 1991-2000, my estimates imply that a region at the 25th percentile of the change in domestic market access induced by trade liberalization, experiences a 0.6 log points larger wage decline (or smaller wage increase) than a region at the 75th percentile. The estimates from a regression of wages changes on exposure imply that a region at the 25th percentile of exposure experiences a 3 log points larger wage decline (or smaller wage increase) than a region at the 75th percentile. I conclude that estimates based on exposure overstate the negative impact of trade liberalization on wages in Brazil. In the fourth chapter, I extend the standard model to allow for two types of workers according to their education levels: skilled and unskilled. I show that there is substantial variation across Brazilian regions in the skill premium. I use the exogenous variation provided by tariff changes to estimate the impact of market access on the skill premium. I find that decreased domestic market access resulting from trade liberalization resulted in a higher skill premium. I propose a mechanism to explain this result: that the manufacturing sector is relatively more intensive in unskilled labor and I show empirical evidence that supports this hypothesis.

Essays on labor economics.

Doctor of Philosophy in subject of Economics