Recent changes in the Mexican industrial labor force

"We study...some of the repercussions of the crisis and economic restructuring on the manufacturing labour force in the main urban areas of Mexico. Using the data of the National Survey of Urban Employment for the period 1986-1992, we set, first of all, the evolution of female and male presence in the manufacture of the country's main industrial cities. Further, some of the characteristics of the manufacturing labour force in different types of cities are examined. For this purpose, we are considering several issues: the condition of wage earner and non-wage earner workers, the size of the establishment, some sociodemographic aspects (gender, age, schooling level, and condition of the head of household), as well as different aspects related to labour conditions (length of workday, job benefits, and salary levels)." (EXCERPT)     

Stratification by regulation: Are bootleggers and Baptists biased?

This paper investigates whether and to what extent regulation may be associated with wage inequality. Using regulation measures created by Al-Ubaydli and McLaughlin (Regul Govern 11:109–123, 2017), I find that regulation is associated with larger within-occupation wage inequality. Specifically, I show that a worker at the 90th wage percentile realizes a raise of $1.19 per hour relative to the 10th percentile earner for each standard deviation increase in regulation. That represents a 3.5% raise for a worker at the 90th percentile. Overall, increases in the regulatory burden are associated with 42–45% of the change in the 90th–10th percentile wage ratio from 2002 through 2014.

     

The Role of Government in Collective Bargaining: Scandinavia and the Low Countries

This article compares the role of government in collective bargaining in five small West European countries. For the period until the second half of the 1970s, a distinction is made between countries in which government often interfered in wage bargaining, e. g. Denmark and The Netherlands, and countries in which government refrained from intervention, like Sweden. Belgium and, to a lesser degree, Norway. In all countries the tradition of (non)-intervention had already started before the Second World War. The article reviews some explanatory variables: in Scandinavia centralization of labour relations is crucial, in the Low Countries the nature of political verzuiling . Recent developments show that government intervention has become a characteristic of labour relations in all but one country.     

Is Small Still Flexible? An Evaluation of Recent Trends in Danish Politics

How has Denmark been able to adjust its economic and industrial policies in an era of major changes in the international economy? The article gives a survey of the last 10 years, especially more recent years. Before 1986 wage policy and public-expenditure policy were dominant. Since then they have been supplemented by a new structural policy to increase the level of technology, to improve education and research and to change the composition of Danish exports as far as products and markets are concerned. The adjustment of policies has taken place in a stable multi-centred political system. The process has been characterized by institutionalized campaigning, moulding of interests and mobilization of compromises and mutual understanding. The capacity for flexible adjustment seems to originate from the stability of the political system. Likewise, uncertainty and instability seem to weaken the capacity for political flexibility. During the last two years the transformation of the elite consensus into state programmes and administrative decision-making has been hampered and the whole structural policy approach has been challenged by a neoliberal alternative. This is mainly due to an extraordinary parliamentary stalemate in a situation of extreme minority parliamentarism.     

The political economy of childcare in OECD countries: Explaining cross-national variation in spending and coverage rates

If childcare policy has become topical in most OECD countries over the last ten years or so, actual developments display huge cross-national variations. Countries like Sweden and Denmark spend around 2 per cent of GDP on this service, and provide affordable childcare places to most children below school age. At the other extreme, in Southern Europe, only around 10 per cent of this age group has access to formal daycare. Against this background, this article aims to account for cross-national variations in childcare services. It distinguishes two dependent variables: the coverage rate and the proportion of GDP spent subsidising childcare services. Using a mix of cross-sectional and pooled times-series methods, it tests a series of hypotheses concerning the determinants of the development of this policy. Its main conclusion for the coverage rate is that key factors are public spending and wage dispersion (both positive). For spending, key factors are the proportion of women in parliaments (positive) and spending on age-related policies (negative).     

The reservation wages of Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries

There exists a lot of research on the reservation wages of the unemployed as a determinant of unemployment duration. Little is known about the reservation wages of those who are not in the labor force but might be potential labor force returnees, such as Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) beneficiaries. The main objective of this article is to assess what can be learned from the subjective reservation wages of DI beneficiaries. Using the New Beneficiary Data System (NBDS), the article assesses the magnitudes of reservation wages compared to the last wage earned and the benefit amount, as well as the determinants of reservation wages in a regression framework. The NBDS is unique in that it provides the reservation wages and the work history of DI beneficiaries before and after joining the DI rolls. The article has several noteworthy results and policy implications: *Data show that a significant portion of beneficiaries report being likely to accept a job if offered one. Based on the NBDS, 13 percent of DI beneficiaries who did not work since joining the rolls in 1981-1982 reported in 1991 that they would be willing to work if offered a job and provided their reservation wages. *DI beneficiaries do not appear to price themselves out of the labor market. Half of them would want a wage that is 80 percent or less of the last wage earned before receiving DI. It is estimated that approximately 7 percent of long-term DI beneficiaries may potentially return-to-work if they search for jobs and have a wage offer distribution with a mean at 80 percent of their last wage. *The nonlabor income in addition to the benefit is positively and significantly associated with the reservation wage, while the benefit amount per se is not. However, this result needs to be treated with caution given that nonlabor income is endogenous to the model. *Heterogeneity exists between persons still under the DI program and those that have moved to the Old-Age program. The subsamples of persons who have shifted to the Old-Age program and those who are still under the DI program have median reservation wage to the last wage ratios of 0.69 and 0.93, respectively. A significantly lower reservation wage for persons who have moved to the Old-Age program was also found in a regression framework. This heterogeneity between the two groups may result in part from the different program characteristics both groups face, for instance, in terms of benefit termination and Medicare eligibility rules. *Subjective reservation wage data can be useful to study populations that are out of the labor force. This article is innovative in that it focuses on a group of persons who are typically considered as being out of the labor force, and therefore are not asked reservation wages in general household surveys such as the Current Population Survey. It would be of great interest to collect more reservation wage data for DI beneficiaries in a longitudinal data set to expand this analysis, for instance, to assess conclusively the effects of changing program characteristics on reservation wages and return-to-work outcomes as beneficiaries transition to the Old-Age program or as new return-to-work programs are put in place.     

Trade union behaviour and inter-regional variations in unemployment rates

An important problem in the political economy of the UK is that the disparity of unemployment rates across its regions is much more marked than the corresponding dispersion of wage rates. One possibility is that this is due to the attitude of trade unions to their members in different regions. If unions wish to preserve parity between members in different regions then they will value wage equality between regions over and above wage levels. This may then persuade them to overlook inter-regional productivity differences in setting wages. The price that low-efficiency regions will then pay for this desire for wage equality is higher unemployment rates.Much of the research for this paper was carried out while the author was visiting the Trade Union Economics Research Institute (FIEF), Stockholm in 1989. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a seminar there and the author is gratefully to Villy Bergstrom, Paul Chen, Douglas Hibbs, Eva Udden-Jondal and other institute members for several useful comments. Comments from Kevin Lee, John Spencer and an anonymous referee have also substantially improved the paper. The usual disclaimer applies.     

New Public Management Reforms of the Danish and Swedish Welfare States: The Role of Different Social Democratic Responses

This article investigates market-type reforms of the service welfare states in Sweden and Denmark. Sweden has implemented such reforms to a greater extent than Denmark. The explanation should be found in the different responses of the Social Democratic parties to the NPM agenda in general and market-type reforms in particular. In Denmark, the Social Democrats have opposed market-type reforms, whereas in Sweden they have been more open towards these ideas. With this focus, the paper differs from most other writings about variation in the extent of NPM.     

Why Denmark and Belgium Have Different Implementation Records: On Transposition Laggards and Leaders in the EU

Statistics of the European Commission show different performances among member states regarding the implementation of European policies. In particular, this article explains why Denmark and Belgium have different records with respect to the legal or administrative transposition of European Union environmental directives. The article starts with a short overview of the implementation problematique and a presentation of the latest available statistics. Then European-level factors are ruled out as possible explanations for the differences in performance. The author argues, on the contrary, that the differences between Belgium and Denmark must be explained by national institutional contexts. To this end, an institutional approach is presented, which draws attention to 'hard' and 'soft' institutions as explanatory variables. In total seven categories of variables are discussed: four 'hard' categories – the constitutional and administrative context (division of competencies and coordination mechanisms), institutional capacity, administrative and legal adaptation pressure, communication and continuity – and three 'soft' categories – institutional jealousy, Europeanisation and political adaptation pressure. It was found that both member states under study have different scores on almost all variables, pointing to rather unfavourable implementation conditions for Belgium and much more favourable conditions for Denmark.     

工作找寻的强度、保留工资与起薪——来自硕士毕业生的证据

本文根据应届毕业硕士研究生就业状况调查数据,考察了工作找寻理论的两个重要议题——工作找寻的努力程度与保留工资。实证结果与国际上已有的研究发现相一致,那就是求职者工作找寻的强度越大,他们的保留工资也会更高;而且求职者工作找寻的强度与保留工资对于他们最终实际找到工作的起薪都有着显著的促进作用。     

Are Leftist Governments More Generous Toward Public Sector Employees? Evidence From Canada, 1967–1984

This article tests the hypothesis that leftist governments concede higher wage increases to their public sector employees than right-wing governments. Leftist governments are expected to be more generous toward public sector employees because of their commitment to public sector intervention, and because of the heavy representation of the public sector among leftist party elite and clientele. The study examines all major wage settlements signed between 1967 and 1984 in the Canadian provincial public sector and finds that, everything else being equal, wage increases are 10% higher under leftist governments. The standard economic variables (labor demand, expected inflation and spillover from previous contracts) that have been shown to affect wage increases in the private sector also emerge as significant. Finally, the data indicate that the greater the public debt the more constrained governments feel to negotiate minimal wage increases. These findings establish that a proper understanding of public sector labor relations requires a consideration of political as well as economic variables.     

Evaluation in and of Public-sector Reform: The Case of Denmark in a Nordic Perspective

The purpose of this article is to shed light on the twinned development of public-sector reforms and evaluation in Denmark. While there is a substantial literature on both public-sector reforms and on evaluation, focus has only recently been put on the relations between these phenomena. The case of Denmark has, however, not been included in the international comparison. This article therefore discusses the case of Denmark, comparing it briefly to Finland, Norway and Sweden. The article analyses both 'evaluation in' and 'evaluation of' public-sector reform. 'Evaluation in' refers to the question to what extent evaluation (in line with other elements such as, e.g. privatization and performance management) has been part of the content of reforms. 'Evaluation of' refers to the questions of whether and how reforms themselves have been evaluated. The analysis shows that although the rhetoric of reforms have been similar in the Nordic countries, reform actions and especially the twinned development of reforms and evaluation have differed between the countries.     

Let's go outside: bodies,prostitutes, slaves and worker citizens

In liberal thought, slavery is imagined as reducing the human being to nothing but a body, while the free and equal political subjects of modern liberal democracies are held to be abstract, universal and disembodied individuals. In theory, bodies are also unimportant in the wage labour exchange. Though traditional models of worker citizenship insist on state and employers' duty to protect the human worth of worker citizens, they also assume the disembodied, thing-like nature of commodified labour power. Because bodies are so obviously important in the exchange between prostitute and customer, sex work is difficult to reconcile with liberal fictions of disembodiment, and one strand of feminist debate on prostitution is preoccupied by the question of whether prostitutes are like slaves or wage labourers. Protagonists on both sides of this debate often reproduce liberal understandings of labour power as a ‘thing’ that can be detached from the person. And yet labour power is also a contested commodity, and wage labour has historically been likened to slavery by activists struggling against the commodification of labour power. This article argues that stepping outside liberal fictions of disembodiment and recognising the parallels between prostitution, wage labour and slavery would allow greater scope for establishing a common political subjectivity amongst prostitutes, other wage workers and all those who have an interest in halting and reversing the current global trend towards the commodification of everything. In this way, common political ground between prostitutes and other wage workers is more visible when we step outside liberal assumptions about embodiment, slavery, work and citizenship.     

Old Ideas and New Investments: Divergent Pathways to a Knowledge Economy in Denmark and Finland

This article identifies and explains two very different pathways to a knowledge economy, based on investment in training in Denmark and research in Finland. The fact that these ostensibly similar countries have pursued such divergent strategies cannot be explained using the established literature on employer organization, labor power resources, and small states. This article develops and resolves this puzzle by focusing on the interaction among organized actors. It argues that nineteenth‐century economic and geopolitical challenges generated two distinctive and enduring collective responses based on industry–labor cooperation in Denmark and state–industry cooperation in Finland. Those coalitions continue to shape the twenty‐first‐century experimentation, supporting investment in continuing education in Denmark and technological innovation in Finland. In explaining these differences, this article not only identifies an enduring and constructive role for strategic cooperation but also explains how it varies among ostensibly similar coordinated economies.     

Welfare,work experience,and economic self‐sufficiency

The potential of former AFDC recipients to earn a living wage is central to the success of welfare‐to‐work programs. Previous studies have found that welfare recipihyphen;ents see little increase in their wages over time. Low wage growth could arise from either low returns to work experience or low levels of experience. This distinction is important for designing effective welfare policy. In the following paper, we estimate how wages grew with work experience between 1978 and 1992 for a national sample of women from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We compare women who never received welfare with both short‐ and long‐term recipients in order to see to what extent the rates of wage growth with work experience differ. We find that they differ very little. We use numerous specification checks to test the robustness of our results and find consistent evidence that the wages of AFDC recipients grew at a rate similar to those of nonrecipients once work experience is taken into account. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

As steel goes… A report on Youngstown

This paper analyzes the rhetoric and policy goals of the living wage movement. While the rhetoric focuses on workers in the context of their families, the wage levels demanded by activists and mandated by laws are almost never adequate to support families with children, especially single‐parent families. We contend the problem is a fundamental, conceptual one: focusing only on setting a single hourly wage obscures the diverse needs of poor families. In this context, the needs of the most marginalized families (single‐parent families) become invisible. However, a “living wage” is recently being conceived more broadly by activists, in terms of wage and non‐wage work supports, and is seen as applying to the working poor more generally. We argue that the current transformation of the idea of a living wage must continue if the movement is to represent all poor workers. We explore implications for the policy agenda of the movement.     

Minimum wages and the economic well‐being of single mothers

Using pooled cross‐sectional data from the 1992 to 2005 March Current Population Survey (CPS), this study examines the relationship between minimum wage increases and the economic well‐being of single mothers. Estimation results show that minimum wage increases were ineffective at reducing poverty among single mothers. Most working single mothers were not affected by minimum wage hikes because they already earned wages above state and federal minimum wages. And less‐educated single mothers who were affected did not see a rise in net income because of negative employment and hours effects. For this low‐skilled population, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage was associated with an 8.8 percent reduction in employment and an 11.8 percent reduction in annual hours worked. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Economic integration and the relationship between profit and wage taxes

This paper analyzes the development of the ratio of corporate taxes to wage taxes using a simple political economy model with workers and capitalists that own internationally mobile and immobile firms. Among other results, our model predicts that countries reduce their corporate tax rate, relative to the wage tax, when preferences for public goods increase, or when the share of capital employed in multinational firms is rising. We further show how an increase in the wage share changes both the relative size of tax bases and the political influence of different income groups. The predicted relationships are tested using panel data for 23 OECD countries for the period 1980 through 2004. The results of the empirical analysis support our main hypotheses.     

Entrepreneurship among Nonprofit Arts Organizations: Substituting between Wage and Flexible Labor

Nonprofit entrepreneurship is largely viewed through the lens of commercialization, overshadowing other ways that entrepreneurship manifests within the sector. One such way involves nonprofits' tendency to meet workforce needs by substituting flexible for wage labor, which may be especially attractive to arts organizations given the proclivity of workers in this sector to be self-employed. The authors examine the use of flexible versus wage labor by nonprofit arts organizations, relying on panel data to account for changes in organizational size over time. The results provide evidence of a substitution effect, in which the use of wage labor by arts organizations declines in response to greater reliance on flexible labor. The findings suggest that nonprofit arts organizations are innovative employers, responding to changes in their resource environments by adjusting their mix of wage and flexible labor while also providing outlets for freelance arts workers to pursue their chosen line of work.     

Wage inequality across regions in India: Exploring the role of education and skills

This study explores regional differences in wage inequality in India and examine various contributory factors for increasing disparities in wages across different regions in India. Using data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2011–12 and employing RIF regression methodology, the study investigates the influence of the level of education, experience, English and computer skills, gender, age, religion, and other background characteristics on wage inequality. The findings reveal that higher education levels, experience, English, and computer skills significantly contribute to wage disparities across regions. The study highlights the importance of addressing these factors to promote greater equity and inclusivity in the labor market.