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Full-Text Articles in Business

Labor Retrenchment Laws And Their Effect On Wages And Employment: A Theoretical Investigation, Kaushik Basu, Gary S. Fields, Shub Debgupta Aug 2011

Labor Retrenchment Laws And Their Effect On Wages And Employment: A Theoretical Investigation, Kaushik Basu, Gary S. Fields, Shub Debgupta

Gary S Fields

Many countries have legislation which make it costly for firms to dismiss or retrench workers. In the case of India, the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, requires firms that employ 50 or more workers to pay compensation to any worker who is to be retrenched. This paper builds a theoretical model to analyze the effects of such anti-retrenchment laws. Our model reveals that an anti-retrenchment law can cause wages and employment to rise or fall, depending on the parametric conditions prevailing in the market. We then use this simple model to isolate conditions under which an anti-retrenchment law raises wages and …


Do Inequality Measures Measure Inequality?, Gary S. Fields Aug 2011

Do Inequality Measures Measure Inequality?, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] In the literature, much attention has been paid to a number of aspects of inequality including the distinction between relative and absolute inequality, axiomatization of inequality, the Lorenz criterion for inequality comparisons, properties of various inequality measures, and inequality decomposition. In no way do I wish to argue with the main results derived in these areas. Rather, my purpose here is to add to the theory of inequality measurement by dealing with one aspect of inequality which has been largely ignored by economists and by others. This is the question of how inequality changes - in particular, whether it …


Income Mobility, Gary S. Fields Aug 2011

Income Mobility, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

Income mobility means different things to different people. This article explains the six different mobility concepts used in the literature, reviews the various indices used in the mobility literature to measure these concepts, summarizes the difference the use of different mobility concepts and measures makes in practice, presents the axiomatic approach to income mobility, and discusses a number of other issues that arise in the mobility literature.


The Employment Problem In South Africa, Gary S. Fields Aug 2011

The Employment Problem In South Africa, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

South Africa is experiencing a major employment problem that includes not only unemployment, but also low labour market earnings. In this article, Gary Fields discusses what can be done to alleviate South Africa's employment problem.


International Labor Standards And Decent Work: Perspectives From The Developing World, Gary S. Fields Aug 2011

International Labor Standards And Decent Work: Perspectives From The Developing World, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] It is a very positive development that the world community has now reached agreement on four core labor standards, described further below. The moral force of this agreement will help slow and possibly even reverse the infamous "race to the bottom"—for example, child labor in the carpet industries of India undermining Nepal's efforts to keep its carpet industry free of child labor (Hensman, 2000). Ironically, some of the loudest and most strident voices against international labor standards come from the poorest parts of the world. My thesis in this chapter is that while some of the arguments being voiced …


Does Income Mobility Equalize Longer-Term Incomes? New Measures Of An Old Concept, Gary S. Fields Aug 2011

Does Income Mobility Equalize Longer-Term Incomes? New Measures Of An Old Concept, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

This paper develops a new class of measures of mobility as an equalizer of longer-term incomes – a concept different from other notions such as mobility as time-independence, positional movement, share movement, income flux, and directional income movement. A number of properties are specified leading to a class of indices, one easily-implementable member of which is applied to data for the United States and France. Using this index, income mobility is found to have equalized longer-term earnings among U.S. men in the 1970s but not in the 1980s or 1990s. In France, though, income mobility was equalizing throughout, and it …