Labor Economics Commons^™

Wealth, Success, And Personhood: Trajectories Of Labour Migration From Mwinilunga District, 1930s-1970s, Iva Peša

Zambia Social Science Journal

What were the causes and consequences of labour migration from Mwinilunga District between the 1930s and 1970s? Within Zambian historiography, economic and political aspects of labour migration have received much attention. Labour migration has been analysed within dichotomies of rural-urban, development-underdevelopment or tradition-modernity. Instead, this article proposes to bridge such dichotomies and to foreground the socio-cultural dispositions behind labour migration. If mobility is viewed as a social, rather than a geographical practice, connections and long-term continuities come to light. Through the case of Mwinilunga District the causes, motives and effects of labour migration will be examined. Why did individuals decide …

Allowing For Low-Cost Labor In Underdeveloped And Developing Countries As A Method For Initiating Economic Industrialization, Jordon A. Wolfram

Selected Honors Theses

The topic presented here closely examines the link between low-cost labor and the affect that it has on initiating industrialization in underdeveloped and developed countries. It can ultimately create a better standard of living for a country’s general population in the future, but the initial conditions for the laborers can be harsh. The low wage labor force achieves this goal by creating a competitive labor market which has the ability to stimulate economic growth. Once the initial steps of creating manufacturing and industry are achieved, then the general standard of living has robust potential to increase in the country as …

Jobs Don’T Grow On Trees, Nicholas Johnson

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2013

Most contemporary macroeconomic models account for unemployment by making the simplifying assumptions that 1) there is an equilibrium level of unemployment and that 2) when the economy is not at that level it will tend towards equilibrium. Implicit in these models is also the assumption that the actual behavior of unemployment does not affect the equilibrium level. This paper joins a growing number of economists pointing out that such assumptions are false: the equilibrium does depend on past behavior, a trait called hysteresis. This paper considers the hysteresis hypothesis by using an iterated version of OLS to construct a series …

How Do We Know Occupational Labor Shortages Exist?, Burt S. Barnow, John Trutko, Jaclyn Schede Piatak

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Responding To The Needs Of Workers During The Great Recession, Randall W. Eberts, Stephen A. Wandner

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Overcoming Environmental Injustices: An Analysis Of Citizen Assemblies’ Fight Against Open-Pit Mining In Bariloche And Esquel, Sara Kleinkopf

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Worldwide, environmentalism and environmental concern is growing. Additionally, environmental issues like pollution and contamination are no longer considered simply environmental problems; environmental issues are now frequently analyzed from a sociological perspective. Beginning in the 1980s in the United States, the investigation of the relationship between environmental and social issues developed into the theory of environmental justice. This theory postulates that the unequal distribution of environmental harm occurs in correlation with (or is a direct result of) a lack of political recognition and participation.

In this investigation, I utilize the theory of environmental justice to analyze the development of open-pit mining …

Pennsylvania’S True Commonwealth: The State Of Manufacturing – Challenges And Opportunities (Full Report), Edward W. Hill, John R. Brandt, Iryna Lendel, Faith Noble, Ellen Cyran, Charles Post, Jim Samuel, Fran Stewart

Ellen Cyran

The Industrial Resource Center Network of Pennsylvania is the state’s affiliate of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership program. Both the IRC program and the MEP have longstanding traditions of self-assessment and evolution as ways of being accountable to the public and of promoting continuous improvement. The IRC program and the MEP are charged with helping manufacturing in general, and small to midsized manufacturers in particular, improve their competitive position. The IRC program uses the outcomes from these assessments to think about the challenges their constituents face due to rapid evolution in the globally competitive …

Understanding The Ocean Economy Within Regional And National Contexts, Charles S. Colgan, Judith T. Kildow Dr

Presentations

• Extending discussion of the ocean economy beyond “How Big”

– Changes in the U.S. related to the Great Recession

– Decomposing changes to major types of change

– Finding relative sizes

• Exploring the expanding attention to the ocean economy in other parts of the world

– Likenesses and differences in:

• Definitions
• Measures
• Geographies
• Purposes

Where do we go from here?

2

Contending Theories Of Wage Determination: An Intersectoral Analysis Of Real Wage Growth In The U.S. Economy, James Sheffield

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

In recent years, social movements and popular media have drawn attention to the issue of income inequality in the United States. This growing inequality in the distribution of income is often seen as a function of stagnating wage growth in the U.S. economy. There appears to be a fairly broad consensus among commentators that wage growth for many workers in the U.S. has stagnated in recent decades, though the precise causes and implications of this trend are a matter of considerable dispute. Some see it as a function of stagnant productivity growth, while others attribute it to the declining strength …

Social Costs Of Jobs Lost Due To Environmental Regulations, Timothy J. Bartik

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper estimates the social costs of job loss due to environmental regulation. Per job lost, potential social costs of job loss are high, plausibly over $100,000 in present value costs (2012 dollars) per permanently lost job. However, these social costs will typically be far less than the earnings associated with lost jobs, because labor markets and workers adjust, increased leisure has some value, and employers benefit from wage reductions. A plausible range for social costs is 8–32 percent of the associated earnings of the lost jobs. Social costs will be higher for older workers, high-wage jobs, and in high …

Introducing Students To The Competing Schools Of Thought In Intermediate Macroeconomics, Harlan M. Smith Ii

Harlan M. Smith

The article discusses how the intermediate macroeconomics instructor can introduce students to ways of old and new Keynesians and classical theorists addressed the question on why output and employment fluctuate. Keynesian macroeconomics characterizes a school of thought developed around two central prepositions. New Keynesians develop alternative ways of explaining short-run movements in output and employment in the early 1970's. All individuals maximize utility, firm maximizes profits. Recently, new classicals developed an alternative approach in explaining short-run fluctuation in employment and output by redefining the concept of the short run.

What You Should Know About "Right To Work" Laws, 2013 Update, Bureau Of Labor Education. University Of Maine

Bureau of Labor Education

This is a brief 2013 update to the Bureau of Labor Education’s (BLE) 2011 briefing paper, “The Truth about ‘Right to Work’ Laws.” As documented in the 2011 BLE paper, the term “right-to-work” is highly misleading, and many studies have shown that RTW laws are not helpful to the well-being of working people. “Right-to-work” does not protect against unfair firing, or promote equitable wages and decent working conditions. By undermining unions and the ability of labor and management to bargain freely, right-to-work laws weaken the ability of workers to protect their rights through a union contract. There are two major …

Unemployment And Economic Growth In Nigeria: An Empirical Re-Examination, Emmanuel Ating Onwioduokit

Bullion

This paper investigates the relationship between unemployment and economic growth in Nigeria through the implementation of the Okun’s law using the data from 1980 to 2013. The result indicates that the Okun’s law cannot be confirmed for Nigeria as the Okun’s co-efficient though properly signed was not significant at conventional level. As a result economic policies allied to demand management might not have the desired outcome of reducing unemployment in the country. Thus, the implementation of economic policy learning towards structural change and reforms in the labour market would be more appropriate to reduce unemployment in Nigeria.

Heterogeneous Preferences And Provision Of Public Goods, Francesco Scervini, Luna Bellani

Francesco Scervini

This paper examines the role of social classes’ cleavages on in-kind redistribution. In presence of heterogeneous income as well as heterogeneous preferences over the types of public goods provided, the total amount of redistribution depends on the distance between those preferences. Under very general assumptions, we describe an environment in which the more a society is fractionalized, the less redistribution we can expect. In particular, with respect to the baseline model with heterogeneous incomes but homogeneous preferences over public goods, social distance decreases the amount of public goods preferred by all individuals. Our paper innovates the previous literature on this …

Research Brief: "How Are Iraq/Afghanistan-Era Veterans Faring In The Labor Market?", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

In this study, researchers found significant differences in employment among recently returned veterans based on age, health, and service era. The Iraq/Afghanistan-era veterans, ages 18-24, were more likely to have higher earnings if employed, while older veterans, ages 37-64, had higher odds of unemployment. In practice, veterans may be experiencing an employment divide in which those who can find work command high wages, while others are not able to find work at all. In policy, policymakers may wish to revisit these issues by increasing the availability of programs and services for older veterans and those from previous eras who are …

Labor Productivity And Vocational Training: Evidence From Europe, José Ignacio Silva

José Ignacio Silva

In this paper we show that vocational training is an important determinant of productivity growth. We construct a multy-country, multi-sectoral dataset, and quantify empirically to what extent vocational training has contributed to increase the growth rate of labor productivity in Europe between 1999 and 2005. We find that one extra hour of training per employee accelerates the rate of productivity growth by around 0.55 percentage points.

It's All About The Power, James Castagnera

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Terms Of Trade Gains And Tariff Changes On The Measurement Of Us Productivity Growth, Robert C. Feenstra, Benjamin R. Mandel, Marshall B. Reinsdorf, Matthew J. Slaughter

Dartmouth Scholarship

The acceleration in US productivity growth since 1995 is often attributed to declining prices for information technology (IT ) goods, and therefore enhanced productivity growth in that sector. We investigate an alternative explanation for these IT price movements: gains in the US terms of trade and tariff reductions, especially for IT products, which led to greater gains than shown by official indexes. We do not, however, investigate the indexes used to deflate the domestic absorption components of GDP, and if upward biases are present in those indexes that could offset some of the effects of mismeasured export and import indexes. …

The Impact Of The Kalamazoo Promise On College Choice: An Analysis Of Kalamazoo Area Math And Science Center Graduates, Michelle Miller-Adams, Bridget F. Timmeney

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

The Kalamazoo Promise has led to a pronounced shift in the college-going patterns of Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS) students who attend the Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center (KAMSC). Following the introduction of the Kalamazoo Promise in 2005, the percentage of KPS KAMSC students attending public, in-state institutions of higher education has almost doubled—a shift that reflects the program rules of the Promise, which covers tuition and fees only at public postsecondary institutions in Michigan. The percentage of non-KPS KAMSC students attending an in-state, public institution also rose in the post-2006 period but only very slightly, suggesting that the Promise …

The Future Of Wages In Singapore, Hian Teck Hoon

Research Collection School Of Economics

Prof Hoon discussed the future of wages in Singapore and identified major trends affecting Singapore's labour market over the past decade. He noted that in the future, SMEs that are unable to raise workers' productivity to match the higher labour costs will exit the industry, thus leading to job destruction. Also, for there to be a steady supply of jobs with good pay for Singaporeans, the country would need to continue to attract MNCs by harnessing its relative strength in institutional quality and the availability of a highly skilled workforce. Success in helping SMEs to raise their productivity levels and …