price versus quantity in a mixed duopoly abstract we revisit the classic discussion of the endogenous choice of a price or a quantity contract but in a mixed duopoly we find that choosing the price contract is a dominant strategy for both firms whether the goods are substitutes or complements

a mixed oligopoly in the presence of foreign private firms in this paper a mixed oligopoly model is considered in which a state owned public firm competes with both domestic and foreign private firms previous articles on mixed oligopoly did not include foreign private firms the effect on the equilibrium involves a lower price and a different allocation of production relative to the case when all private firms are domestically owned in addition issues such as the effects of an open door policy allowing foreign firms to enter and the effects of foreign acquisition of domestic firms are discussed

measuring and decomposing the gender pay gap a new frontier approach abstract the gender pay gap measures the differences in the wages earned by female workers when compared to male workers accurately measuring the gender pay gap is an important exercise in order to assess how far we are from the ideal of equal pay for work of equal value determining the different sources of the gender pay gap is also very important in order to design appropriate policies for eliminating this gap we develop an enhanced method to measure and decompose the gender pay gap this method is based on the data envelopment analysis dea technique and on the malmquist index mi we use dea and the mi to construct an index reflecting an adjusted measure of the gender pay gap taking into account multiple productive characteristics and multiple types of pay furthermore we propose a decomposition of the gender pay gap into four components same gender pay gap cross gender frontier gap magnitude productive characteristics bias and pay package bias the method is applied to data relative to 15 712 men and 17 175 women working as business and administration associate professionals in the finance and insurance industry in 20 countries the results reveal the existence of a gender pay gap in all countries and that the value of the gap and of its components vary considerably between countries requiring different policies to tackle it

trade policy and mixed enterprises this paper demonstrates that the degree of state ownership affects neither the level of socially optimal activities nor welfare if the government chooses optimal trade policy instruments in the case of rivalry in the home market the optimal import tariff is independent of the degree of state ownership and the optimal production subsidy decreases with state ownership if the optimal tariff is positive for the case of cournot rivalry in a third market the optimal export subsidy increases with state ownership while in the case of bertrand rivalry with differentiated products the optimal export tax increases

equal pay by gender and by nationality a comparative analysis of switzerland s unequal equal pay policy regimes across time what explains the adoption of two different policies on equal pay by gender epg and by nationality epn in switzerland and why is the liberal litigation based equal pay policy regime set up by the gender equality act of 1996 much less effective than the neocorporatist accompanying measures to the bilateral european union switzerland agreement on free movement of persons adopted in 1999 to ensure equal pay for workers of different national origins the formation of two different policy regimes cannot be explained by different levels of political will equally different varieties of capitalism cannot explain the setup of the two different equal pay policy regimes within the very same country instead our qualitative comparative analysis across time suggests that the differences can be best explained by a particular constellation of attributes namely the use of different policy frames that is anti discrimination in the epg and unfair competition in the epn case and the different setting of interest politics epitomised by the opposite stances adopted by switzerland s employer associations in the two cases

disability job mismatch earnings and job satisfaction in australia we examine the relationship between disability job mismatch earnings and job satisfaction using panel estimation on data from the household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda survey 2001 08 while we do not find any relationship between work limiting disability and overskilling it appears that there is a positive relationship between work limiting disability and overeducation which is consistent with disability onset leading to downward occupational movement at least in relative terms we find a negative correlation between work limiting disability and both earnings and job satisfaction however there is only evidence of a causal relationship in terms of the latter where the impact of disability is found to be multifaceted

law and employment lessons from latin america and the caribbean analyzing the effects of regulation and deregulation on latin american labor markets law and employment joins the ongoing debate about the virtues and costs of legislating mandatory benefits for workers of the numerous labor regulations that were altered or created in latin america during the last thirty years many have had unintended and far reaching results nobel prize winning economist james j heckman and carmen pages document the behavior of firms attempting to stay in business and be competitive while facing the high costs of complying with these labor laws they challenge the prevailing view that labor market regulations affect only the distribution of labor incomes and have little or no impact on efficiency or the performance of labor markets this volume shows that mandated benefits reduce employment have a disruptive impact on turnover rates and labor market flexibility promote inequality and discriminate against marginal workers along with in depth studies of colombia peru brazil argentina chile and uruguay law and employment provides comparative analysis from a range of european countries and the united states while also covering important changes in reg

does an employment protection law lead to unemployment a panel data analysis of oecd countries 1990 2008 this paper analysed the oecd data on employment protection for 23 oecd countries over the time span 1990 2008 on the basis of alternative dynamic panel data models and panel causality tests and examines the validity of the neo liberal argument that strictness of employment protection hurts labour through increased long term and youth unemployment rates while it finds no empirical basis for this orthodox standpoint it observes that long term unemployment dampens aggregate production which in turn aggravates unemployment problem

does the level of occupational aggregation affect estimates of the gender wage gap the traditional decomposition of the gender wage gap distinguishes between a component attributable to gender differences in productivity related characteristics and a residual component that is often taken as a measure of discrimination this study of data from the 1989 canadian labour market activity survey shows that when occupation is treated as a productivity related characteristic the proportion of the gender wage gap labeled explained increases with the number of occupational classifications distinguished however on the basis of evidence that occupational differences reflect the presence of barriers faced by women attempting to enter male dominated occupations the authors conclude that occupation should not be treated as a productivity related characteristic and in a decomposition of the gender wage gap that treats occupation as endogenously determined they find that the level of occupational aggregation has little effect on the size of the explained component of the gap

gender wage inequality in inclusive and exclusive industrial relations systems a comparison of argentina and chile drawing on an empirical and comparative mixed methods analysis of argentina and chile this article investigates arguments about the role of inclusive versus exclusive industrial relations systems in promoting gender wage equity and enabling attractive wage returns to women investing in higher education our findings confirm the importance of argentina s inclusive industrial relations system in narrowing gender pay differences to a greater extent than chile nevertheless chile s industrial relations institutions are not wholly exclusive its high level statutory minimum wage has played a strongly distributive role in the 2000s and compressed wages in the lower half of the wage distribution also notable is the finding from quantile regression that highly educated women in high paid jobs enjoy a larger wage premium in the class equal argentina than in chile despite a far wider wage gap between low high educated workers in chile overall

mixed oligopoly privatization subsidization and the order of firms moves several types of objectives abstract we show the robustness of results in earlier works for a subsidy in mixed oligopoly these results do not depend upon the fact that each private firm maximizes its own profits

endogenous timing in duopoly games stackelberg or cournot equilibria abstract simultaneous versus sequential play is studied in an extended game in a preplay stage players decide whether to select actions in the basic game at the first opportunity or to wait until observing their rivals first period actions in one extended game players first decide when to select actions without committing to actions in the basic game the equilibrium has a simultaneous play subgame unless payoffs in a sequential play subgame pareto dominate those payoffs in another extended game deciding to select at the first turn requires committing to an action both sequential play outcomes are the equilibria only in undominated strategies

equal pay as a moving target international perspectives on forty years of addressing the gender pay gap this paper provides an overview of the key factors impacting upon the gender pay gap in the uk europe and australia forty years after the implementation of the first equal pay legislation the pay gap remains a key aspect of the inequalities women face in the labour market while the overall pay gap has tended to fall in many countries over the past forty years it has not closed in some countries it has been stubbornly resistant or has even widened in reviewing the collection of papers that make up this special issue we identify four broad themes with which to group the contributions and draw out the explanations for diverse trends theoretical and conceptual debates legal developments and their impacts wage setting institutions and changing employer demands and newly emerging pay inequalities between and within educational and ethnic groups across the four themes we underline how the trends in the gender pay gap capture the dynamism of inequalities as the market power of different groups and stakeholders changes over times three key dimensions emerge from the papers to provide a framework for future research and policy discourse the relationship between litigation and bargaining strategies the interaction between wage setting institutions and new organisational practices and the increasing and range of diversity or equality strands competing for equal treatment we conclude that progress towards closing the gender pay gap will not be easy will require a collective effort of various actors and will not be quick

endogenous price leadership and the strategic acquisition of information we model a differentiated bertrand duopoly in which a firm s earlier knowledge of market demand than its competitor results in endogenous price leadership with the information advantaged firm leading in such a setting with second mover advantage we then study the firms incentives to acquire information and analyze an information acquisition game both i neither firm acquiring information and ii one firm acquiring information can arise as subgame perfect equilibrium but both firms acquiring information is never an equilibrium outcome even if information is free information may have a negative value if it causes a change in the timing of price competition

privatization neutrality theorem revisited fjell and heywood 2004 show that privatization is not necessarily welfare neutral in mixed oligopolies under a production subsidy if firms move sequentially we find that the neutrality holds for any time structure if instead an output floor is introduced

gender gaps in unemployment rates in oecd countries in some oecd countries the male and female unemployment rates are very similar but in others notably the mediterranean countries the female unemployment rate is much higher than the male explaining these cross country differences is the subject of this article we show that in countries where there is a large gender gap in unemployment rates there is a gender gap in both flows from employment into unemployment and from unemployment into employment we conclude that differences in human capital accumulation between men and women interacted with labor market institutions is an important part of the explanation

mixed duopoly privatization and subsidization with excess burden of taxation we investigate optimal tax subsidy policies in mixed and private oligopolies with excess burden of taxation we compare the optimal subsidies and the resulting welfare levels among four regimes mixed and private cournot duopolies and stackelberg competition with public and private leaderships we show that in contrast to the existing works on the privatization neutrality theorem privatization affects resulting welfare duopole mixte privatisation et subsidisation en presence de fardeau fiscal excedentaire on examine les politiques optimales de taxes et de subventions dans le cas d oligopoles mixtes et prives en presence de fardeau fiscal excedentaire on compare les subsides optimaux et les effets sur le niveau de bien etre dans quatre regimes les duopoles de cournot mixte et prive et la concurrence a la stackelberg avec leadership public et prive on montre que contrairement a ce que suggeraient les travaux anterieurs sur le theoreme de la neutralite de la privatisation la privatisation affecte les niveaux de bien etre

gender inequality and economic growth a cross country analysis abstract this paper investigates empirically the determinants of economic growth for a set of semi industrialized export oriented economies in which women provide the bulk of labor in the export sector the primary hypothesis tested is that gender inequality which contributes to women s relatively lower wages was a stimulus to growth via the effect on exports during 1975 95 empirical analysis shows that gdp growth is positively related to gender wage inequality in contrast to recent work which suggests that income inequality slows growth evidence also indicates that part of the impact of gender wage inequality on growth is transmitted through its positive effect on investment as a share of gdp

second mover advantage and price leadership in bertrand duopoly we consider the issue of first versus second mover advantage in differentiated product bertrand duopoly with general demand and asymmetric linear costs we generalize existing results for all possible combinations where prices are either strategic substitutes and or complements dispensing with common extraneous and restrictive assumptions we show that a firm with a sufficiently large cost lead over its rival has a first mover advantage for the linear version of the model we invoke a natural endogenous timing scheme coupled with equilibrium selection according to risk dominance the analysis yields as the unique equilibrium outcome sequential play with the low cost firm as leader

the role of shocks and institutions in the rise of european unemployment the aggregate evidence two key facts about european unemployment must be explained the rise in unemployment since the 1960s and the heterogeneity of individual country experiences while adverse shocks can potentially explain much of the rise in unemployment there is insufficient heterogeneity in these shocks to explain cross country differences alternatively while explanations focusing on labour market institutions explain current heterogeneity well many of these institutions pre date the rise in unemployment based on a panel of institutions and shocks for 20 oecd nations since 1960 we find that the interaction between shocks and institutions is crucial to explaining both stylised facts

from wage regulation to wage gap how wage setting institutions and structures shape the gender wage gap across three industries in 24 european countries and germany whilst a common and persisting feature of advanced market economies the gender wage gap nevertheless varies across countries amongst the factors affecting this wage gap industrial relations and industry differences still require further research using data from eu silc in 25 european countries this article analyses how national wage setting institutions impact wage differences between male and female full time employees in three distinct industries complementing the country comparison is an in depth study of the german case using data from the german linked employer employee database shedding light on the interaction of industry specific wage setting regulations and gender equity in living wages findings from the international comparison suggest a substantial gender wage gap for full time employees across industries with specific country patterns country patterns seem to be due to the overall influence of trade unions and the relationship between pay bargaining strategies and specific minimum wage policies the german case adds to these findings by analysing the impact of sectoral models of wage bargaining for industry specific gender wage gaps focussing on living wages for skilled full time employees

contradictions and misalignments in the eu approach towards the gender pay gap the aim of this paper is to highlight the tensions within the eu s governance architecture concerning pay equality specifically after a preliminary outline of the theoretical discussion on the eu s new old governance the analysis focuses on two empirical fields the first one enables an assessment of the contradictions between old and new governance in eu equal pay policy this analysis highlights the inconsistencies between the architecture of the antidiscrimination framework established following the eu s old governance by law approach and the assessment of equal pay public policy measures in the context of the eu s new governance by numbers approach to this extent the problems related to the political use of the unadjusted gender pay gap gpg indicator are pointed out the second empirical field enables an assessment of the tensions within the eu s new governance system itself specifically between the approach in the area of equal pay and in the area of economic policy with specific regard to the participatory role of the social partners in tackling the gpg if the role of the social partners is emphasised in several policy documents the potentialities of their action are seriously jeopardised by the push for decentralisation of collective bargaining aimed at anchoring wages to productivity fostered by the eu s governance reforms responding to the crisis in particular by the euro plus pact and by the six pack regulations of 2011 as the paper finally remarks both empirical fields of investigation confirm a narrowing down of pay equality in the context of an eu flexibility centred and neoliberalist political perspective

comparing bertrand and cournot in mixed markets abstract we revisit the classic comparison between bertrand and cournot outcomes in a mixed market with private and public firms the results are often strikingly different and opposite to the ones obtained from a similar comparison in the standard setting with all profit maximizing firms

do workplace smoking bans reduce smoking in recent years workplace smoking policies have become increasingly prevalent and restrictive using data from two large scale national surveys we investigate whether these policies reduce smoking our estimates suggest that workplace bans reduce smoking prevalence by 5 percentage points and daily consumption among smokers by 10 percent although workers with better health habits are more likely to work at firms with smoking bans estimates from systems of equations indicate that these results are not subject to an omitted variables bias the rapid increase in bans can explain all of the recent drop in smoking among workers relative to nonworkers

privatization and efficiency in a differentiated industry we consider a market in which a public firm competes against private ones and ask what happens when the public firm is privatized in the short run privatization is harmful because prices rise the disciplinary role of the public firm is lost in the long run privatization leads to further entry the net effect is beneficial if consumer preference for variety is not too weak a sufficient statistic for the social surplus to be higher in the long run is that the public firm makes a loss this suggests that profitable firms should not necessarily be privatized

endogenous role in mixed markets a two production period model in this paper i investigate endogenous roles in a mixed duopoly where private and state owned public firms compete by allowing two production periods i find that many equilibria exist including the cournot type equilibrium and one stackelberg type equilibrium where the public firm becomes the follower however another stackelberg type equilibrium where the public firm becomes the leader does not exist if small inventory costs are introduced the unique equilibrium outcome becomes the stackelberg type where the public firm is the follower

are litigation and collective bargaining complements or substitutes for achieving gender equality a study of the british equal pay act we present a socio legal case study of the recent equal pay litigation wave in britain which saw an unprecedented increase in the number of claims triggered in part by the entry of no win no fee law firms into this part of the legal services market although the rise in litigation led to greater adversarialism in pay bargaining litigation and collective bargaining mostly operated as complementary mechanisms in advancing an equality agenda although there are limits to the effectiveness of law driven strategies in the face of organisational pressures to canalise and diffuse human rights litigation may be a more potent force for social change than some recent accounts have suggested

endogenous price leadership we consider a linear price setting duopoly game with differentiated products and determine endogenously which of the players will lead and which one will follow while the follower role is most attractive for each firm we show that waiting is more risky for the low cost firm so that consequently risk dominance considerations as in harsanyi and selten a general theory of equilibrium selection in games mit press cambridge ma 1988 allow the conclusion that only the high cost firm will choose to wait hence the low cost firm will emerge as the endogenous price leader

welfare consequence of an asymmetric regulation in a mixed bertrand duopoly abstract i investigate an asymmetric duopoly where a public enterprise must supply the demand it faces while a private enterprise has no such obligation i show that such an asymmetric regulation yields the first best outcome walrasian equilibrium

towards a gendering of the labour market regulation debate gender equality has become an issue in the labour market regulation debate now that evidence suggests that regulation is not always a barrier to good employment performance recent contributions have focused on its impact in exacerbating within workforce inequalities including gender inequality this article reveals that the evidence supporting this proposition is thin and inconclusive and questions the search for a cross national relationship between regulations and gender this approach leaves out of consideration the differences in institutional interactions in specific national contexts and the differences in the institution of gender across time and space this critique is developed through more detailed and context specific analyses of interactions between gender and six areas of labour market regulation the article concludes by arguing that simply introducing a general gender variable into non gendered analyses of labour markets misleads more than informs and distracts from the development of regulations to promote gender equality copyright the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

csr in an asymmetric duopoly with environmental externality we investigate a linear state differential game describing an asymmetric cournot duopoly with capacity accumulation a la ramsey and a negative environmental externality pollution in which one of the firms has adopted corporate social responsibility csr in its statute and therefore includes consumer surplus and the environmental effects of production in its objective function if the market is sufficiently large the csr firm sells more accumulates more capital and earns higher profits than its profit seeking rival

using cost observation to regulate firms the paper emphasizes the use of accounting data in regulatory or procurement contracts when the supplier 1 has superior information about the cost of the project and 2 invests in cost reduction the main result states that under risk neutrality the supplier announces an expected cost and is given an incentive contract linear in cost overruns this optimal contract moves toward a fixed price contract as the announced cost decreases an investment choice is then introduced and the use of a rate of return regulation is studied

partial privatization in mixed duopoly abstract we investigate a quantity setting duopoly involving a private firm and a privatized firm jointly owned by the public and private sectors the private firm maximizes profits while the privatized firm takes both profits and social welfare into consideration we consider how many shares the government should hold in the privatized firm we find that neither full privatization the government does not hold any shares nor full nationalization the government holds all of the shares is optimal under moderate conditions

the 40 year pursuit of equal pay a case of constantly moving goalposts progress towards equal pay is elusive this article reviews debates on and prescribed remedies for gender pay equality over the past 40 years of equal pay policy it looks at pay from four perspectives the economic the sociological the institutional and the organisational and explores how and why once an apparent remedy for unequal pay is pursued the goalposts tend to shift the argument is made that the difficulties in securing long term progress may be attributed to a number of factors including the multifaceted nature of pay as a social phenomenon the challenge of pursuing social objectives in a rapidly changing and fragmenting environment the need for political will not technical solutions to achieve redistribution and the potential for gender inequalities to re emerge in new forms

the gender wage gap among phds in the uk this article analyses the gender wage gap gwg among phd graduates in the uk 42 months after their graduation in 2004 5 we find a sizeable overall gwg of 19 log percentage points which is explained by a large wage premium for men outside academia compared to women and men in academia the gwg in academia is small in comparison whilst the gwg outside academia is very high six months after graduation and remains largely unaltered the gwg inside academia doubles in the following three years the oaxaca decomposition suggests that for this relatively homogeneous group the gwg cannot be explained by differences in endowments university and employment characteristics we find stark differences in wage patterns between the fields of study and a strongly increasing coefficient effect for higher quantiles

the subsidiarity bias in regulation abstract we study the choice of the regulatory structure when a firm engages in different activities for different countries under decentralization regulatory contracts suffer from two opposite distortions the competition between regulatory authorities leads to too high powered contracts however with a dispersed ownership structure contracts tend to be too low powered for sufficiently substitutable activities decentralization always leads to an inefficient drift towards fixed price contracts nonetheless when regulators have private agendas and possess the discretion to distort their policy to gain the support of some interest groups decentralization may be preferred to centralization as competition between regulatory authorities mitigates their discretionary power

risk beliefs and smoking behavior i introduction more people die from smoking each year than from any other consumption activity these risks arise from consumer choices in a market context as a result whether consumers are cognizant of the attendant hazards is a central concern in assessing whether there is a market failure and the extent of such a failure influencing people s risk beliefs has been a primary focus of many government interventions in this market including warnings requirements and public information campaigns public opinion poll data provide some insight into general trends in smoking risk beliefs but do little to resolve the more fundamental concern of whether people underestimate the risks posed by cigarettes typical questions ask respondents if cigarette smoking is one of the causes of lung cancer or whether smoking is harmful 1 these general measures of risk awareness provide a useful historical perspective on smoking risk beliefs but do not make it possible to determine whether the public perceives the risk accurately recognizing that smoking is harmful does not imply that the perceived risk level is as great as the actual risk the first exploration of the adequacy of risk beliefs was in viscusi 1990 1992 which examined the adequacy of lung cancer risk beliefs using a quantitative risk question 2 the 1985 national survey used in these studies asked respondents how many smokers out of 100 would get lung cancer because they smoke people generally overestimate the risks of getting lung cancer due to smoking these risk beliefs in turn affect the decision to smoke in the expected manner at least for this risk component which has been the most prominent smoking risk since the 1964 surgeon general report linking smoking and lung cancer the empirical evidence does not indicate a market failure notwithstanding these results a variety of puzzles remain do smokers also perceive the other hazards of cigarettes such as the total mortality risk of smoking if they understand the risk of death do they also properly assess how much life expectancy will be lost due to their premature mortality even if there is such a general understanding on average for the population are there major pockets of ignorance the difference between the smoking and the nonsmoking populations is striking the current u s smoking population is less well educated and has lower income levels than the non smoking population a possible explanation for this difference is that the higher education levels of nonsmokers enable them to obtain a better understanding of the hazards of smoking leading to lower smoking rates among the better educated such differences in risk beliefs have never been analyzed previously due to the absence of smoking risk belief surveys that include such demographic information in this article we exploit the more refined capabilities of two large data sets a 1997 national survey of smoking risk beliefs and a 1998 survey undertaken in massachusetts each of these surveys includes several quantitative risk perception measures as well as much more comprehensive data on background characteristics than in the 1985 survey analyzed in viscusi 1990 1992 in section ii we introduce the survey data and provide an overview of smoking risk beliefs irrespective of the risk measure there is a pronounced tendency to overestimate the risk level compared to objective scientific measures of the risk these results contrast with the frequently expressed claim in the literature that cigarette smokers are the victims of companies advertising 3 according to this alternative view companies have allegedly designed their advertising strategies to exploit potential irrationalities in order to foster higher rates of smoking section iii explores the determinants of these risk beliefs yielding some intriguing results better educated respondents do have more accurate beliefs but because people generally overestimate the risks of smoking the greater accuracy is reflected in a lower assessment of the risks

understanding the variations of unions litigation strategies to promote equal pay reflection on the british case despite their traditional mistrust of the use of the law and their uneasy relationship with the concept of equality british trade unions have used the law in various ways in order to advance both gender and pay equality since 1970 some trade unionists have been making use of european legislation to improve legal norms and build a strong body of case law they have developed legal expertise and detailed knowledge of the practicalities of the law and have supported numerous claims however this use of litigation has not developed consistently over time and across unions litigation has been quite controversial within the trade union movement this article seeks to investigate what are the conditions under which some trade unionists have decided to rely upon litigation to further their female members interests depending on the time period the article emphasises the crucial role these local trade unionists have played in the development of equal pay litigation the paper builds on a developmental approach that differentiates several stages or phases in which union s litigation strategies for equal pay figure differently

corporate social responsibility or payoff asymmetry a study of an endogenous timing game we revisit an endogenous timing game by introducing corporate social responsibility into firms payoffs previous research investigates an endogenous timing game in a mixed oligopoly wherein one welfare maximizing public firm competes against profit maximizing private firms it shows that the outcome is completely different from that of private oligopoly in contrast to its result we find that this change in payoff does not matter as long as the payoffs are symmetric our result indicates that asymmetry and not welfare concerning objectives yields specific results in the literature on mixed oligopoly

mixed oligopoly privatization and strategic trade policy this paper investigates the effects of privatization in the presence of strategic trade policies within an international mixed oligopoly serving a single market if the government uses a domestic production subsidy then welfare is always increased with privatization while the optimal subsidy falls if the government uses an import tariff privatization increases welfare over much of the parameter space the optimal tariff however may rise or fall in recent years many countries around the world are privatizing their state owned industries at the same time many of these countries are also showing remarkable changes in their economic policies toward international trade on many occasions tariffs are significantly altered and domestic production subsidies are substantially reduced for example russia has privatized its aircraft industry and doubled its tariff on imported aircraft colombia has privatized its stateowned automobile maker colombia automotriz and reduced the import tariffs on foreign made cars in argentina the government is pursuing a policy of selective privatization and subsequent reduction of subsidies in western europe countries such as germany and spain have privatized their major airlines lufthansa and iberia respectively and significantly reduced subsidies what is the connection between privatization and strategic trade policies does privatization require a welfare maximizing government to alter trade barriers the objective of this paper is to answer these questions by investigating the interaction between privatization and strategic trade policies the effects of privatization are typically analyzed in the context of mixed oligopoly models where state owned welfare maximizing public firms interact with profit maximizing private firms 1 we investigate the interaction between privatization and strategic trade policies by incorporating strategic trade instruments in an international mixed oligopoly model specifically we consider two strategic trade instruments an import tariff and a domestic production subsidy the government chooses the optimal level of tariff or subsidy to maximize domestic welfare for each trade instrument we primarily focus on two questions first does privatization increase

ethnicity and gender in the labour market in central and south eastern europe the roma are both the largest minority ethnic group in central and south eastern europe csee and the one that suffered most from transition to the market still today nearly 40 years after the introduction of the european union eu 1975 discrimination directive and with the end of the roma decade 2005 15 in sight people from the roma minority have unemployment rates far above and employment rates and wages far below those of majority populations one issue that has received relatively little attention concerns the double discrimination facing roma women not only do roma women face poorer employment and wage outcomes in the labour market than non roma women in most csee countries the gender earnings gap is significantly larger amongst roma compared to non roma this paper seeks to analyse and explain differences in the gender gap in the earnings of roma the paper employs a non parametric matching approach to identify the main factors underlying the gender difference educational attainment plays a relatively small role explaining only around one fifth of the gap industrial and occupational segregation appear to be playing a strong role as do the civil status of individuals household socio economic status and whether or not individuals live in a predominantly roma community

australia s gender pay equity legislation how new how different what prospects australia s equal pay laws have recently been renovated through the workplace gender equality act 2012 and the fair work act 2009 in light of these changes it is timely to ask how effective australia s legislative approach is likely to be for progressing pay equity this article presents an analysis of australia s current equal pay provisions assessing their potential on the basis of their operation to date and through recent experience in canada and the uk although focused on outcomes we argue that australia s new workplace based mechanism under the workplace gender equality act may prove relatively ineffective in both diagnosing and remedying pay inequality in comparative perspective the fair work act provisions provide significant capacity to improve pay equity across large sectors of the labour market to date the use of these provisions point to some practical limitations in realising this potential moreover the inadequate legislative and policy integration between labour market sectoral workplace and individual approaches together with a wavering political commitment to equality legislation generally suggest gender pay inequity will remain a persistent feature of australian employment

careers and motherhood policies for compatibility this paper examines the economic issues relevant to policy debates that surround the increasing labour force participation of mothers we review the main changes in women s labour market participation in britain the main source of increase in women s participation rates has come from mothers returning to work after child birth after progressively shorter intervals the major influences on this behaviour and the length of time spent out of work over the first childbirth and the associated empirical work are also reviewed these changes have raised issues relevant to maternity and parental leave childcare provision employers family friendly working arrangements and children s welfare the paper makes some recommenda tions about how to further gender equity in a form compatible with family life

gender pay gaps and the restructuring of graduate labour markets in southern europe in this article we investigate whether education job mismatches and growing occupational diversity are important explanatory factors of gender pay gaps amongst university graduates in southern europe namely in portugal spain and italy we use standard decomposition techniques and test the implications of controlling for selection bias our results indicate that over education and greater occupational segregation associated with the emergence of new graduate job profiles are important determinants of earnings inequality whilst our focus is on graduates early careers demonstrating that occupational assignment and selection into employment shape gender pay gaps amongst the highly skilled provides a more pessimistic view on the ability of educational expansion or equal pay legislation to significantly reduce gender pay inequality southern european economies are also particularly interesting to look at since there may be a greater degree of mismatch between the pace of higher education expansion and the changes in the job structure making women particularly vulnerable to over education

should civil servants be restricted in wage bargaining a mixed duopoly approach abstract should civil servants employees in the public sector be allowed to bargain collectively to answer this question we construct a model of unionized mixed duopoly and examine the regulatory framework of public institutions especially focusing on a wage regulation imposed on the public firm the wage regulation turns out to yield critical welfare implications as it gives rise to two opposing strategic effects the wage regulation intensifies downstream market competition while it loosens upstream market competition the overall welfare effect is ambiguous depending crucially on the degree of product differentiation between the firms we also show that in contrast to the popular belief granting the right to bargain collectively to civil servants would not necessarily help them because they tend to demand excessively high wages when they are allowed to bargain collectively finally we briefly discuss a new perspective on the role of profit motives in public institutions when the wages are determined endogenously

endogenous timing in a mixed oligopoly abstract endogenous order of moves is analyzed in a mixed oligopoly where the firms first choose the timing for choosing their quantities the results are strikingly different from those obtained in a corresponding oligopoly with all profit maximizing firms

facilitating healthy dietary habits an experiment with a low income population abstract this paper tests an intervention aimed at facilitating cognitively the adoption of healthy dietary habits we provide easy to understand information about the risks of developing diabetes or heart diseases and give easy to follow dietary recommendations to minimize these risks we implement two variations one consisting of generic information the other consisting of information tailored to the individual the latter resembling newly developed on line health assessment tools on top of the information treatment we implement a second experimental variation encouraging people to spend more time thinking about their decisions we find evidence that the information intervention leads to healthier choices in the short run but mostly in the generic treatment surprisingly we find that people are on average pessimistic about their health and therefore receive good news on average when the information is tailored to them we find no evidence that increasing the time available to make choices leads to healthier choices and find no evidence of long term changes in habits these results do not support a bounded rationality explanation for poor dietary choices

family policies wage structures and gender gaps sources of earnings inequality in 20 countries this study uncovers an unexpected effect of family friendly policies on women s economic attainments using hierarchical linear models the analysis combines individual level data obtained from th

do high performance work practices exacerbate or mitigate the gender pay gap the impact of performance oriented work practices on the gender pay gap has been the subject of considerable conjecture but little empirical investigation using the 2004 and 2011 british workplace employment relations surveys the analysis finds that whilst average earnings are significantly higher for men and women across private sector workplaces that have introduced so called high performance work practices the presence of such practices is not associated with a narrowing of the gender pay gap and if anything tends to exacerbate the differential in earnings between men and women data from the 2004 survey suggest that women are more likely to work in high performance workplaces but this is not the case for 2011 there is no evidence that gender segregation is significantly less in high performance workplaces than in workplaces taking a more traditional route policy makers and employing organisations therefore need to be careful in reconciling their performance and equality strategies in particular they need to examine whether the former are truly gender neutral this requires additional measures possibly the introduction of human resource audits in the public and private sectors

r d competition between public and private sectors abstract we investigate a mixed market where a welfare maximizing public research institute competes against profit maximizing private firms we investigate r d competition by using a standard model of patent races where each firm chooses both its innovation size and r d expenditure we find that the innovation size r d expenditure chosen by the public institute is too small too large from the viewpoint of social welfare respectively and so the government should control the public institute appropriately we also discuss the welfare implications of privatization of public research institutes

swimming upstream trends in the gender wage differential in the 1980s using michigan panel study of income dynamics data for 1979 and 1988 we analyze how a falling gender wage gap occurred despite changes in wage structure unfavorable to low wage workers the decrease is traced to gender specific factors which more than counterbalanced changes in measured and unmeasured prices working against women supply shifts net of demand were unfavorable for women generally and hurt high skilled more than middle and low skilled women by analyzing wages we find support for the notion of a gender twist in supply and demand having its largest negative effect on high skilled women

mixed oligopoly privatization and subsidization abstract this paper demonstrates three effects of domestic production subsidies in a mixed oligopoly industry regarding privatization and efficiency first if subsidies are used before and after privatization welfare is unchanged by privatization second if subsidies are used only before privatization then privatization always lowers welfare regardless of the number of private firms in the industry third the subsidy contributes to overall efficiency in a mixed oligopoly due to cost distribution effects

regulation distance labour segmentation and gender gaps existing theories on human capital labor market segmentation and discrimination fail to fully explain gender gaps for example the large gender gap in elite occupations where women apparently possess high labor market power this chapter seeks a more complete occupation related understanding through the interaction between labor segmentation regulation content and regulation distance the last referring to the extent to which employment of particular workers is un regulated regulation distance encompasses a continuum from regulation proximity to market proximity the domestic sphere the state unions and class relations all influence the content of regulation each of these also influences norms by which groups in power operate a greater reliance on the market does not necessarily remove pay distortions rather it might increase their impact through gendered norms