why an informed principal may leave rents to an agent this paper characterizes incentive contracts for the situation where a principal is privately informed about the technology governing an agency relationship in contrast to a standard principal agent relationship it is shown that a principal who values effort highly will choose to induce effort by paying a high base wage and low bonus payments moreover the equilibrium contract has the principal transferring rents to the agent even though contracting possibilities are unrestricted and both principal and agent are risk neutral consequently the informed principal framework is shown to provide a rational for the payment of efficiency wages copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the gender asset gap land in latin america summary the gender asset gap in latin america with respect to ownership of land is significant in few countries do women constitute even one quarter of the landowners gender inequality in land ownership is related to male preference in inheritance male privilege in marriage male bias in community and state programs of land distribution as well as gender bias in the land market with women less likely than men to be successful buyers but there are also important di erences by gender in how land is acquired inheritance is the primary means by which most women become landowners men are much more likely than women to acquire land through its distribution by communities or the state and via the market factors contributing toward a trend toward greater gender equity in land inheritance and in recent state programs are highlighted 2003 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

wage loss following displacement the role of union coverage using two canadian data sets the authors explore the role of union coverage in displaced workers wage losses while only 32 of the workers had unionized jobs prior to displacement the wage loss suffered by these workers represented about 80 of the wages lost by all displaced workers in both samples losing union status was associated with large losses whether or not a worker switched industries after displacement extrapolating the results to the united states the authors estimate that one third to one half of u s displaced workers wage losses may be due purely to the loss of union coverage

counterfactual decomposition of changes in wage distributions using quantile regression we propose a method to decompose the changes in the wage distribution over a period of time in several factors contributing to those changes the method is based on the estimation of marginal wage distributions consistent with a conditional distribution estimated by quantile regression as well as with any hypothesized distribution for the covariates comparing the marginal distributions implied by different distributions for the covariates one is then able to perform counterfactual exercises the proposed methodology enables the identification of the sources of the increased wage inequality observed in most countries specifically it decomposes the changes in the wage distribution over a period of time into several factors contributing to those changes namely by discriminating between changes in the characteristics of the working population and changes in the returns to these characteristics we apply this methodology to portuguese data for the period 1986 1995 and find that the observed increase in educational levels contributed decisively towards greater wage inequality copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

from plan to plant effects of certification on operational start up in the emergent independent power sector in this paper we study the transition from planned venture to operational start up in the emergent independent power sector planned ventures face tremendous obstacles in assembling the resources necessary to begin operations we hypothesize and show that formal certification from authorized actors increases the likelihood of making this transition moreover we find that the effects of certification are contingent on the legitimacy of the sector as a whole certifications have a stronger effect on start ups when sector legitimacy is low than when it is high this research helps us understand a rarely studied organizational transition from entrepreneurial intention to actual operations within nascent sectors it directs attention to the legitimating effects of formal certification highlights the importance of a multilevel approach to legitimacy and contributes to the growing rapprochement between entrepreneurial studies and institutional theory

female headed households and female maintained families are they worth targeting to reduce poverty in developing countries controversy exists over whether to target public and private sector programs to female headed households in developing countries in the attempt to combat poverty and social disadvantage the issues related to the definition and measurement of female headship and the importance of the concept for development policy are discussed a systematic review is then presented of the empirical evidence on the relation between female headship and poverty if female headed households tend to be poorer on average than other households headship should seriously be considered as a potentially useful criterion for targeting antipoverty interventions especially in developing countries where means testing is not feasible the authors examine the potential costs and benefits of targeting female headship and review the experience of chile one of the few countries which has targeted female headship through government intervention and the only one which has evaluation data available the analysis of the project experience is used along with a review of the empirical evidence to answer the question of the desirability and efficiency of targeting female headship in order to reduce poverty in developing countries

chasing after good jobs do they exist and does it matter if they do most people believe that there are such things as good jobs jobs that a worker would consider herself lucky to get but for economists the existence of good jobs is debatable in this paper i provide a definition of a good job based on various theories of the labour market a job that involves a surplus captured partly by the worker i use that definition to guide an empirical investigation of the existence and importance of good jobs i conclude that good jobs do exist that the labour market does not just function according to a roy model with wage differentials reflecting only skill differentials compensating differentials or bond posting and that their impact on the overall wage structure is substantial finally i discuss the implications of the existence of good jobs for policy setting and for assessments of the justice of a society resume la chasse aux bons emplois est ce qu ils existent et est ce que cela importe qu ils existent la plupart des gens croient qu il y a telles choses que de bons emplois des emplois qu un travailleur se trouverait chanceux d avoir mais pour les economistes l existence de bons emplois est discutable dans ce texte l auteur propose une definition de bon emploi fondee sur diverses theories du marche du travail un emploi qui engendre un surplus capture en partie par le travailleur il utilise cette definition pour guider son enquete empirique sur l existence et l importance de bons emplois on conclut que les bons emplois existent que le marche du travail ne fonctionne pas seulement selon le modele de roy avec des differentiels de salaires qui refletent seulement les differentiels d habiletes les differentiels compensatoires ou le depot d une caution et que leur impact sur la structure globale des salaires est substantielle finalement l auteur discute les implications de l existence de bons emplois sur la definition de politiques et sur l evaluation du caractere juste d une societe

a decomposition method on employment and wage discrimination and its application in urban china 2002 2013 abstract labor market discrimination is an important issue in developing countries where path dependent institutions have been dominant while effective institutional arrangements and policies have been hidden by local customs and culture however the existing applications of classical blinder oaxaca decomposition face criticism for their imprecise understanding of the factors affecting institutional discrimination in labor markets as well as for their lack of power in formulating well targeted anti discrimination policies following oaxaca 1973 we propose a new method to decompose the total discrimination index tdi to analyze employment and wage discrimination in the labor markets of developing countries the tdi is decomposed into the employment discrimination index edi and the wage discrimination index wdi then into the underpayment index to majorities upi and the overpayment index to minorities opi we apply this method to the institutional discrimination against rural migrants in china s urban areas using national representative data from 2002 to 2013 we have found that 1 the tdi increased quickly after china entered the wto then dropped after anti discrimination policies were implemented 2 the tdi is mainly determined by the upi while the tdi s fluctuation is mainly determined by the wdi our method provides insights into the changing composition of employment and wage discrimination and their respective labor market outcomes in developing countries as a result appropriate policy measures may be developed accordingly

the positive externalities of social capital benefiting from senior brokers the importance of an actor s network to his her private benefits is well explored less well understood are the positive externalities of an actor s social capital that is whether it spills over a

wage and employment determination in a unionized industry the iwa and the british columbia wood products industry two non nested models of union wage and employment determination are estimated using data on the international woodworkers of america iwa and the british columbia wood products industry one model predicts wage and employment outcomes on the labordemand function while the other predicts efficient outcomes on the contract curve the models provide empirical estimates of the union s preferences the production technology and the comparative statics of the models an attempt is made to choose the true model for this industry unfortunately non nested hypothesis tests and other criteria for model discrimination cannot reject one model in favor of the other

media legitimation effects in the market for initial public offerings in this study we argue that media provided information affects investors impressions of newly public firms in 225 initial public offerings ipos the volume of mediaprovided information had a negative diminishing relationship with underpricing and a positive diminishing relationship with stock turnover on the first day of trading the relationship between the tenor of media provided information and underpricing increases at a nonlinear rate and decreases similarly for turnover findings provide important evidence that publicly available information not only reflects ipos legitimacy but also adds to their legitimacy and influences investor behavior in the last 20 years an increasing amount of research on markets has been conducted from a social constructionist perspective emphasizing how social structures enhance the flow of useful and credible information that market participants use to reduce the uncertainty of market exchanges e g aldrich fiol 1994 zuckerman 1999 further recent organizational research has begun to stress the influence of information intermediaries such as financial analysts and the media on mar

domestic alliance network to attract foreign partners evidence from international joint ventures in china partner selection is a critical issue in building international joint ventures ijvs we argue that foreign firms are more likely to select local firms with unique network structural advantages within a local alliance network we frame structural advantages as two network position traits centrality and brokerage specifically network centrality acts as a stronger network trait than brokerage in attracting foreign ijv partners however such a relationship may be moderated by foreign firms local experience and perceived capabilities we contend that when foreign firms have a high level of local market experience and perceived capabilities they may prefer a local broker over a centrally located local firm data on the domestic alliance network in china s electronics and information technology it industries largely support our hypotheses we conclude that as foreign investors become strategic insiders they may not only seek a local partner s capability attributes but also more critically pay attention to a local partner s domestic network

canadian economics research on immigration through the lens of theories of justice we assess the current state of knowledge in the economics of immigration and consider how economic theories of knowledge can be used to further the goal of developing a just immigration policy in the process we highlight the contributions of economists working in canada and canadian economists internationally in furthering our understanding of this important research area we identify research gaps such as the need for more research on the underlying causes of the poor returns to foreign work experience for immigrants from non traditional source countries and the effect of immigrants on stimulating innovation more research is also needed on the implications of temporary foreign worker tfw programs and the growing importance of employers in immigrant selection systems la recherche canadienne en economie de l immigration a travers la lentille des theories de la justice on jauge l etat present des connaissances en economie de l immigration et on examine comment les theories economiques de la connaissance peuvent etre utiles dans la poursuite d un objectif qui serait de mettre en place une politique d immigration juste dans ce processus on souligne les contributions des economistes travaillant au canada a notre comprehension de ce chantier de recherche on identifie certaines zones d ombre comme la recherche pour comprendre les causes sous jacentes aux pauvres rendements de l experience de travail des immigrants en provenance des pays qui ne sont pas des sources d immigration traditionnelles et celle pour comprendre les effets des immigrants sur la stimulation de l innovation il faudra aussi davantage de recherches sur les implications des programmes pour attirer et accueillir les travailleurs etrangers temporairement et sur l importance croissante des employeurs dans les systemes de selection d immigrants

gender and ethnicity differentials in school attainment and labor market earnings in ecuador summary indigenous people in ecuador are most likely to be disadvantaged and live in poverty this paper reports on the findings of an econometric analysis which explores the extent to which lower educational attainment and labor market discrimination contribute to these disparities the analysis utilizes a proportional hazard regression model to examine which factors raise the probability of early school departure it also employs a classic regression model to explore the relationship between low educational attainment and earnings together with an oaxaca decomposition which parses out the extent to which earning differentials can be attributed to differences in human capital or to discrimination

who pays the price of brokerage transferring constraint through price setting in the staffing sector this article analyzes how a broker s ability to affect prices and extract superior value from its position has economic consequences for the actors tied to it i argue that intermediaries may exercise partial control in price setting by transferring the price constraints imposed on them by the actors on one side of the market to those on the other side in so doing they generate unequal returns for the brokered parties who then receive different prices due to the nature of the tie between the broker and its other exchange partners i investigate this argument using a novel mix of quantitative and qualitative data gathered from an intermediary in the staffing sector the results show that the broker is able to transfer discounts offered to valued buyers clients on to the sellers workers matched with them instead of reducing its own margins as a result actors with the same resource endowments receive different prices depending on the relationships among other exchange partners in a given triadic ne

gender differences in wealth at retirement recent economic trends like the growing prevalence of defined contribution retirement plans have made individuals increasingly responsible for their own financial security financial security greatly depends on the ability to accumulate adequate wealth edward wolff 1998 wealth can be a significant source of retirement income for individuals less and less able to rely on social security and employerprovided defined benefit pension plans one concern in the current economic climate is the persistent gap in wealth between men and women several papers for example lucie schmidt and purvi sevak 2006 have found that the gap is significant even after controlling for individual characteristics this paper contributes to the literature by studying the role of risk preferences in addition to other characteristics specifically it addresses the following research question controlling for other factors do gender differences in risk preferences contribute to the gender wealth gap at retirement the underlying premise is that women are more risk averse than men which is supported by previous research for example robert b barsky et al 1997 a simple theoretical model of household decision making illustrates that retirement wealth is a function of income earned over the lifetime and risk aversion the model is empirically tested using data from the health and retirement study hrs 1 results show that the gender gap in wealth persists even when risk preferences are added to the set of controls thus the unexplained gap remains a cause for concern

interindustry wage differentials and efficiency wages some canadian evidence using the 1986 labour market activity survey as their major source of data the authors estimate interindustry wage differentials in canada at the one and two digit levels of industry aggregation for various types of workers the major findings are that substantial interindustry wage differentials exist and are relatively stable over time that the pattern of interindustry wage differentials is very similar for different kinds of workers and that these differentials cannot be explained easily by compensating factors the differentials seem to be consistent with the rent sharing explanations of the labor market such as those based on the notion of efficiency wages

wage tenure contracts in a frictional labour market firms strategies for recruitment and retention a common assumption in equilibrium search and matching models of the labour market is that each firm posts a wage to be paid to any worker hired this paper considers the implications of firms posting contracts in a random matching model with on the job search more complex contracts enable firms to address both recruitment and retention problems by for example increasing the wage with tenure the effect on the labour market is to reduce turnover below the level required for efficient matching of workers to firms copyright 2004 wiley blackwell

changes in wage inequality in canada an interprovincial perspective this paper uses the canadian labour force survey to understand why the level and dispersion of wages have evolved differently across provinces from 1997 to 2013 the faster increase in the level of wages and the decline in wage dispersion in newfoundland saskatchewan and alberta are the starkest interprovincial differences we find that they are accounted for by the growth in the extractive resources sectors which benefited less educated and younger workers the most increases in minimum wages since 2005 are found to be the main reason why wages at the very bottom grew more than those in the middle of the distribution

social capital at the top effects of social similarity and status on ceo compensation this study explored the effects of social capital measured both absolutely and relatively on ceo compensation in a sample of 61 ceo compensation committee chairperson dyads we controlled for var

determinants of hourly earnings in ecuador the role of labor market regulations ecuadorian labor costs are said to be high because of the existence of many mandated benefits using the 1994 living standards measurement survey we show that the effect of these benefits is actually mitigated by a reduction of base earnings that is of the foundation on which they are paid the reduction is larger in the private than in the public sector and is negligible for unionized workers we also show that in spite of mandated benefits interindustry wage differentials are comparable to those of bolivia a country characterized by flexible labor markets but otherwise similar to ecuador

decomposing the gender wealth gap in ecuador abstract unlike the gender earnings gap that has been amply studied the gender wealth gap has only recently begun to receive attention studies of the gender wealth gap have been concentrated on developed countries and have been limited by the use of household level data using individual level and sex disaggregated wealth data for ecuador this paper examines the pattern of wealth inequality across genders at different points of the wealth distribution for sole and then partnered household heads we use a new oaxaca blinder type decomposition method based on unconditional quantile regression to investigate the sources of the gap at different quantiles our results show that among sole heads the gap favors men across the distribution and is largest at the lower tail among partnered heads the gap is much less pronounced throughout the distribution actually reverting at the lower tail for both sole and partnered heads at the lower tail of the distribution the gender gap is primarily associated with differing returns to covariates at the median and upper quantiles gender differences in endowments ownership of savings accounts education and age drive the gap gender bias in inheritance plays a significant role only at lower and median wealth levels overall our results show stark contrasts with results for developed countries and important differences between sole versus partnered heads our study also adds evidence to the long standing debate over whether female household heads are poorer than male heads and calls for the pursuit of wealth differentiated policies and social programs to increase women s participation in the formal economy as well as the returns to their participation

on the value of life in rich and poor countries and distributional weights beyond utilitarianism this paper discusses the use ofdistributional weights in cba based on a generalbergson samuelson swf in particular it illustratessome consequences of applying a swf characterized byconstant inequality aversion which includes classicalutilitarianism as a special case together with aconstant relative risk aversion utility function whencalculating the damage costs of global warming itextends and clarifies earlier unintuitive results andemphasizes that utility must be seen as fully cardinalin terms of levels in this context in the specialcase of utilitarianism on the other hand it issufficient to be able to make interpersonalcomparisons of utility changes

economic policy in a second best environment the article begins by summarizing the arguments that lie behind the use of first best models and notes the inappropriateness of using these results in what is patently a second best world using several well known examples from the literature it is claimed that if second best considerations are taken seriously then it is much more difficult if not impossible to divorce efficiency from equity than one might have thought from the use of first best economic models from this it follows that policy recommendations require us to make and use interpersonal comparisons of utility and that we should do this as well as we can even if it is not scientific

intergenerational transfers and the accumulation of wealth h t ouseholds acquire wealth from two sources they save out of income they have earned and they receive transfers from other people the first method of wealth accumulation goes under the name of life cycle saving in which people save during their working lives and dissave after retirement the second involves either an inter vivos transfer that is a transfer between living people or a bequest a transfer that occurs at the death of the donor while inter vivos transfers and bequests will arise in dynastic models where preferences include a taste for the well being of one s descendents few empirical life cycle models reflect these concerns indeed a sharp debate has arisen over the ability of the simple life cycle model to explain observed wealth accumulation understanding the relative sizes of these sources of wealth accumulation affects a variety of issues for example the effects of government debt social insurance public transfer programs estate taxes and incentives for charitable giving depend to some extent on the magnitude and nature of private saving and transfers of wealth analyses of the inequality of wealth may depend on whether most of wealth is earned or received as transfers appropriate policies for encouraging private saving may look rather different depending on whether most saving is to be consumed later in life or passed along to the next generation finally evidence on transfer patterns relates to more fundamental

bargaining sorting and the gender wage gap quantifying the impact of firms on the relative pay of women there is growing evidence that rm specic pay premiums are an important source of wage inequality these premiums will contribute to the gender wage gap if women are less likely to work at high paying rms or if women negotiate worse wage bargains with their employers than men using longitudinal data on the hourly wages of portuguese workers matched with balance sheet information for rms we show that the wages of both men and women contain rm specic premiums that are strongly correlated with employer productivity we then show how the impact of these rm specic pay dierentials on the gender wage gap can be decomposed into a combination of bargaining and sorting eects consistent with the bargaining literature we nd that women receive only 90 of the rm specic pay premiums earned by men notably we obtain very similar estimates of the relative bargaining power ratio from our analysis of between rm wage premiums and from analyzing changes in

gender inequalities in ownership and control of land in africa myth and reality lack of clarity behind measurement and interpretation of statistics on gender and land leads to an inability to clearly articulate a policy response to the potential inequalities faced by women and men this article sets out to explore conceptually and empirically the levels and relative inequalities in land rights between women and men in african countries the first section of the article engages in a conceptual discussion of how to measure gendered land outcomes what ownership and control mean in different contexts and why attention to these factors is important for the development of gender and land statistics the second section of the article systematically reviews existing evidence from microlevel large sample studies to summarize recent trends in land access ownership and control by sex the third section presents new statistics from a variety of nationally representative and large scale unpublished data on gender and land in africa results provide not only a nuanced understanding of the importance of measuring land indicators for gendered development in africa and globally but also new statistics on a variety of land outcomes to aid stakeholders in the discussion of gender land inequalities

the importance of ethics in environmental economics with a focus on existence values the importance of ethics and fundamental value judgments in environmental economics is high lighted by discussing the controversial concept of existence values the social value depends crucially on the social objective which is not necessarily self evident e g since some individuals tend to value nature intrinsically it is shown that the motives behind willingness to pay figures matter for the social value and the conventional view that people respond to cv questions solely in order to maximize their own utility or well being is questioned the importance of being explicit about value judgments is emphasized and it is argued that environmental economics should consider non conventional assumptions which take the social context into account to a larger degree

differences in wage distributions between canada and the united states an application of a flexible estimator of distribution functions in the presence of covariates we construct a tractable flexible functional form estimator of cumulative distribution functions for non negative random variables which admits large numbers of covariates the estimator adopts and extends techniques from the spell duration literature for estimating hazard functions to distribution functions for wages earnings and income we apply these methods to investigate sources of wage inequality for full time male workers between canada and the united states finding that the canadian wage density has a thinner left tail because low educated workers have higher pay and a thinner right tail because of a lower proportion of highly educated workers unions appear to play a large role in these outcomes