inequality in the working class the unanticipated consequences of union organization and strikes this paper explores one possible explanation for the uniquely apolitical character of the u s labor movement compared to the labor movements of other western capitalist democracies employing a neo marxist class perspective the author examines the relationship of union density union members as a percentage of the nonagricultural work force and of strike frequency to the distribution of earned income in the united states from 1949 to 1976 time series regression analysis of the quintile distribution of earned income and the gini index of the inequality of earned income shows that union density has had mixed effects on inequality with higher union density tending to redistribute income from middle income workers to both the least prosperous and most prosperous workers whereas higher strike frequency has tended to reduce income inequality generally the author suggests that union organization may be a source of divisiveness within the working class in the postwar era

welfare benefits and unemployment in affluent democracies the moderating role of the institutional insider outsider divide the effect of generous welfare benefits on unemployment is highly contested the dominant perspective contends that benefits provide disincentive to work whereas others portray benefits as job sea

democracy creeping socialism and ideological socialism in rent seeking societies rent seeking societies suffer from a serious distortion of incentives incentives to engage in distributional struggles to seek contrived transfers are strong but incentives to engage in productive work are too weak stagnation and some unemployment should be expected long lasting democracies within unchanged borders create a permissive environment for rent seeking the provision of rents very much depends on government the stronger the governmental involvement in the economy the higher social security spending the more rents the government is likely to generate therefore creeping socialism understood as increased government control of the economy should reinforce the rent seeking society and the corresponding negative effects on growth and employment whether such creeping socialism is backed by ideological socialism or not should make little difference for growth or employment these ideas have been tested and partially supported by a 19 nation sample of industrial democracies using data from the sixties and seventies by and large the rent seeking approach is fairly successful in explaining national differences in economic growth rates but receives ambiguous support or less for unemployment olson s 1982 1983 proposition about the negative impact of long lasting democracy within unchanged borders on economic growth is much better supported than the growth retarding effects of government revenues or social security spending are

europe vs america institutional hysteresis in a simple normative model we show how the differences in us and european institutions can arise in a normative model the paper focuses on the labor market and the government s decision to set unemployment benefits in response to an unemployment shock the government balances insurance considerations with the tax burden of benefits and the possibility that they introduce adverse incentive effects whereby benefits increase unemployment it is found that when an adverse shock occurs benefits should be increased most when the adverse incentive effects of benefits are largest adjustment costs of changing benefits introduce hysteresis and can help explain why post oil shock benefits remained high in europe but not in the us desirable features of the model are that we obtain an asymmetry out of a symmetric environment and that the mechanism yielding hysteresis is both simple requires the third derivative of the utility function to be non negative and self correcting empirical evidence concerning the role of corporatism is discussed

competition cooperation and innovation organizational arrangements for regimes of rapid technological progress abstract discussions of the link between firm size and innovation are outmoded because the boundaries of the firm have become fuzzy in recent decades strategic alliances constellations of bilateral agreements among firms are increasingly necessary to support innovative activities such alliances can facilitate complex coordination beyond what the price system can accomplish while avoiding the dysfunctional properties sometimes associated with hierarchy antitrust law and competition policy need to recognize that these new organizational forms are often the functional antithesis of cartels though they may have certain structural similarities a more complete understanding of bilateral contracts and agreements ought to reveal when and how cooperation can support rather than impede innovation and competition

the effects of human resource management practices on productivity a study of steel finishing lines the authors investigate the productivity effects of innovative employment practices using data from a sample of thirty six homogeneous steel production lines owned by seventeen companies the productivity regressions demonstrate that lines using a set of innovative work practices which include incentive pay teams flexible job assignments employment security and training achieve substantially higher levels of productivity than do lines with the more traditional approach which includes narrow job definitions strict work rules and hourly pay with close supervision their results are consistent with recent theoretical models which stress the importance of complementarities among work practices

unequal organizations or unequal attainments an empirical comparison of sectoral and individualistic explanations for aggregate inequality explanations derived from the sectoral perspective in sociology and the humancapital screening perspectives in economics are used to predict income inequality in the american states the sectoral perspective is represented by an indicator of the dispersion of concentration in product markets across manufacturing establishments within each state and by the dispersion of employment across enterprises in eight size categories individualistic explanations favored by neoclassical economists are operationalized with the dispersion in educational attainments and by the dispersion in the age experience of the labor force with the percentage of blacks and three additional variables in the equations four hypotheses receive consistent support the strongest determinant of income inequality is the dispersion in educational attainments but the indicator of concentration is significant in all equations states with more blacks and greater variance in establishment size also were likely to be comparatively unequal these results are consistent with both the individualistic emphasis in the neoclassical perspective and the emphasis on economic power in the sectoral perspective they also indicate that studies of income inequality by human capital economists may have been biased by a failure to control for the institutional variables that are emphasized in sectoral theories

industry and firm specific factors of innovation novelty this article investigates the underlying factors that might shape the firm s choices with respect to degrees of innovation novelty using a sample of 2983 firms observed under the portuguese community innovation survey we assess the relative relevance of a set of firm and industry specific factors in explaining firms choices about incremental or radical innovation the results indicate that both the firm s idiosyncratic historical factors giving rise to heterogeneous r d capabilities and the industry context have power to shape the firm s innovation choices even though firm specific factors appear to be more powerful the estimated impacts on firm s innovation novelty are nonetheless significantly moderated by the type of firm and industry

unemployment institutions and reform complementarities re assessing the aggregate evidence for oecd countries there is no or limited consensus on the quantitative impact of institutions on unemployment which has led some to question the case for structural reforms recent studies suggest also that institutions interact with each other and cannot be analysed in isolation in this paper we estimate a standard reduced form model to explore the institutional determinants of unemployment and assess its robustness using a large battery of robustness checks we show that although the impact of each individual policy varies across countries due to policy interactions the simple linear model can be used to draw inferences for countries with an average mix of institutions the model is then extended to encompass systemic interactions in which individual policies interact with the overall institutional framework we find relatively robust evidence of broad reform complementarities

the rise of intra occupational wage inequality in the united states 1983 to 2002 wage inequality has increased dramatically in the united states since the 1980s this article investigates the relationship between this trend and occupational structure measured at the three digit level using the current population survey from 1983 to 2002 we find that the direct association between occupations and wage inequality declined over this period as within occupational inequality grew faster than betweenoccupational inequality we estimate multilevel growth models using detailed occupational categories as the unit of analysis to assess how the characteristics of occupations affect changes in mean wages and levels of wage inequality across this time period the results indicate that changes in mean wages across occupations vary depending on the characteristics of individuals in those occupations and that intraoccupational inequality is difficult to predict using conventional labor force data these findings seem largely inconsistent with the common sociological view of occupation as the most fundamental feature of the labor market correspondingly a more comprehensive approach one that incorporates the effects of organizational variables and market processes on rising wage inequality in the new economy is warranted

the effect of unemployment benefits on the duration of unemployment insurance receipt new evidence from a regression kink design in missouri 2003 2013 abstract we provide new evidence on the effect of the unemployment insurance ui weekly benefit amount on unemployment insurance spells based on administrative data from the state of missouri covering the period 2003 2013 identification comes from a regression kink design that exploits the quasi experimental variation around the kink in the ui benefit schedule we find that ui durations are more responsive to benefit levels during the recession and its aftermath with an elasticity between 0 65 and 0 9 as compared to about 0 35 pre recession

distributional coalitions and other sources of economic stagnation on olson s rise and decline of nations one of the most important recent contributions to the field of comparative political economy is mancur olson s the rise and decline of nations in that work olson deduces from his logic of collective action a series of implications regarding the impact of social organizations in particular distributional coalitions on economic growth that can explain variations in national growth rates across a wide range of time and space this article considers the assumptions upon which that logic is founded the plausibility of the several implications drawn from that logic and the application of the theory to account for differences among five nations in rates of economic growth in the post world war ii era the analysis suggests that the characteristics of group activity emphasized by olson represent at best only a small perhaps negligible part of the explanation of cross national differences in growth instead it suggests that an important source of the variation among nations in growth rates is the international political and economic system in particular the discussion of the german japanese and british cases suggests that stagnation or growth is to a considerable extent the product of a nation s position in the world economy the policy responses through which governments seek to perpetuate or improve that position and the constraints upon or opportunities for growth oriented domestic economic policy posed by that position

the dynamics of trade unionism and national economic performance i test two theories of the political processes of trade unions the first argues that wage moderation depends on a centralized labor movement the second contends that institutional conditions permitting unions coordination of bargaining strategies is sufficient coordination is most likely to he achieved when there are small number of unions that do not compete for members that is when union monopoly is high important empirical anomalies may be resolved by analyzing the effects of union centralization and monopoly separately rather than combining them into a composite index of corporatism reanalyzing comparative data from organization of economic cooperation and development countries between 1963 and 1985 largely corroborates the hypothesis that monopoly is more important than either centralization or composite indices of corporatism for national economic performance the conceptual rationale underlying indices of corporatism should be reexamined

employers and the welfare state the political economic organization of firms and social policy in contemporary capitalist democracies the authors argue that the organization of employers shapes social policy support among firms and in turn affects social policy outcomes specifically the authors argue that the centralization and cohesion of employer groups and economic cooperation across enterprises positively affects social welfare provision empirically the authors assess the impacts of business organization on social welfare effort in 15 developed democracies between the 1970s and 1990s the authors also provide analysis of the impact of employer organization on active labor market policy the authors find that the organization of employers is one of the most important determinants of overall social welfare effort the authors also find that employer organization affects the development of active labor market policies and it influences the degree to which social democratic parties pursue active labor market programs the authors conclude with a discussion of the findings implications for theories of social corporatism and the w

gender domestic labor time and wage inequality this paper explores the relationship between domestic labor and wage labor by estimating the relative influence of hours spent in domestic labor e g housework and child care on women s and men s wages it is hypothesized that involvement in domestic activities negatively affects wages and is likely to be an important factor in explaining women s lower wages relative to men findings from ols regression analyses of white currently employed currently married women and men indicate that domestic labor time significantly decreases both sexes wages in order to assess whether this relationship differs by class the sex specific earnings equations also are estimated within the working class and the non working class the negative effect of domestic labor time on both sexes income persists in the within class analyses working class men are more vulnerable to the detrimental influence of domestic production unexpectedly housework and child care time decreases non workingclass women s wages more so than working class women s wages it is noted that these findings should be interpreted with caution due to the cross sectional nature of the data which precludes an unequivocal assessment of potential nonrecursivity in the linkages among key variables in the model overall the findings imply that a more equitable distribution of work in the home is necessary before labor market inequalities between the sexes can be ameliorated

asymmetry stability and growth in a step by step r d race abstract we define a notion of stability of equilibrium in an infinitely repeated step by step r d race the unique symmetric equilibrium is shown to be unstable and stable asymmetric equilibria arise if product market competition is intense firms are patient imitation is difficult and innovations are large some predictions based on symmetric equilibria e g that less patient firms always invest less in research or that more intensive competition leads to higher economic growth are reversed for realistic values of the underlying parameters

work organization employment security and macroeconomic stability abstract there is substantial evidence that both training and worker participation in decision making are more effective when employers avoid layoffs when one company s choice to avoid layoffs affects the relative costs of layoffs for other firms there is an externality and multiple equilibria are possible if all firms lay off workers in recessions then recessions will be deeper deep recessions in turn raise the costs of firms that have high levels of training participation and employment security on the other hand if all firms have no layoff policies then recessions will be shallower lowering the costs of such policies in three data sets training and participation are more common in companies with high levels of job security

a model of the evolution of duopoly does the asymmetry between firms tend to increase or decrease this paper is an attempt to identify some of the factors that affect the evolution of market structure in a model of dynamic competition between two firms the stochastic evolution of the state of competition depends on the respective effort rates of the firms the question is whether the current leader works harder than the laggard does the gap between firms tend to increase or decrease we show that several effects are at work the state tends to evolve in the direction where joint payoffs are greater since joint payoffs are related to joint product market profits less joint effort costs there are two classes of effect the joint profit effect and various joint cost effects the latter result in part from the pattern of profits and in part from endpoint effects that give relief from efforts asymptotic expansions illuminate these influences moreover we show by numerical simulation that there is another kind of joint cost effect the pattern of joint effort costs can influence the pattern of evolution of market structure and the evolution of the pattern of market structure can influence the pattern of efforts in a mutually self reinforcing manner in particular there may be equilibria in which this last effect means that the laggard works harder than the leader even though all the other effects work in favour of the leader

the role of interfirm networks in technological innovation and education this article examines the sociopolitical conditions for preventing market failure in public goods investment based on international social survey program data for 17 advanced industrialized countr

unemployment benefits and work incentives the us labour market in the great recession in the midst of sharply rising long term unemployment a series of unemployment benefit ub eligibility extensions raised the regular 26 week limit to as many as 99 weeks in some states in response leading economists have invoked the laws of economics to warn that the extensions may be responsible for much of the current unemployment crisis this prediction follows directly from a neoclassical vision in which jobs are taken only to generate the income necessary for desired levels of consumption and leisure workers can price themselves into a job by lowering wage demands and benefit eligibility rules are not effectively enforced so any income replacement must reduce work incentives and increase unemployment in contrast in a keynesian institutionalist vision there is job rationing in economic downturns worker identities are often closely linked to work there is recognition of long run scarring effects of extended unemployment and ub work rules are enforced so even generous income replacement is not likely to produce much voluntary unemployment especially in recessions this paper reviews the evidence on the effects of the ub extensions of 2008 9 the case for the orthodox prediction has relied heavily on extrapolating from pre great recession findings particularly through the use of selected spike at benefit exhaustion results from the early 1980s we conclude that the more recent spike evidence the recent shifts in the beveridge curve and the labour flows data unemployment to employment evidence offer little support for the orthodox disincentive view of the current unemployment crisis in the us if ub generosity has increased unemployment it has done so more by keeping workers attached to the labour market than by reducing the incentive to work copyright 2011 oxford university press

the care economy gender economic restructuring and job polarization in the u s labor market the u s job structure became increasingly polarized at the turn of the twenty first century as high and low wage jobs grew strongly and many middle wage jobs declined prior research on the sourc

union strength neoliberalism and inequality contingent political analyses of u s income differences since 1950 do historically contingent political accounts help explain the growth in family income inequality in the united states we use time series regressions based on 60 years to detect such relationships

working class power capitalist class interests and class compromise this article proposes a general theoretical framework for understanding the concept of class compromise in terms of a reverse j model of the relationship between the associational power of workers and the interests of capitalists increases in working class power adversely affect capitalist class interests until such power crosses some intermediate threshold beyond which further increases in working class power are potentially beneficial to capitalists interests this article argues that the reverse j curve is itself the result of two distinct kinds of effects of workers power on capitalists interests one a negative effect in which workers power undermines the capacity of capitalists to unilaterally make various kinds of decisions and the second a positive effect in which workers power helps capitalists solve the various kinds of collective action problems they face

welfare spending in advanced industrial democracies 1950 1980 this paper addresses long standing debates over the role of demographic structure class power class based political parties and democraphic political participation in the growth of the welfare state in advance industrial democracies from 1950 to 1980 it distinguishes four theories industrialism monopoly capitalism social democratic and interest group politics and tests them using pooled cross sectional time series data for 18 nations and seven time points total social welfare spending composed primarily of social insurance benefits is dominated by the size of the aged population smaller but important effect of nonclass political variables such as voting participation and electoral competition and interaction of age with political and other variables public assistance means tested programs however are dominated by class variables although evaluation of the theories must consider the domain of programs to which each best applies the results generally favor an interest group politics theo

distribution and redistribution the shadow of the nineteenth century the authors present an alternative to power resource theory as an approach to the study of distribution and redistribution while they agree that partisanship and union power are important they argue that both are endogenous to more fundamental differences in the organization of capitalist democracies specifically center left governments result from pr consensus political systems as opposed to majoritarian systems while strong unions have their origins in coordinated as opposed to liberal capitalism these differences in political representation and in the organization of production developed jointly in the early twentieth century and explain the cross national pattern of distribution and redistribution the clusters have their origins in two distinct political economic conditions in the second half of the nineteenth century one in which locally coordinated economies were coupled with strong guild traditions and heavy investment in cospecific assets and one in which market based economies were coupled with liberal states and more mobile assets

wage inequality and varieties of capitalism this article draws on a new data set that enables the authors to compare the distribution of income from employment across oecd countries specifically the article conducts a pooled cross sectional time series analysis of the determinants of wage inequality in sixteen countries from 1973 to 1995 the analysis shows that varieties of capitalism matter the authors find that the qualities that distinguish social market economies from liberal market economies shape the way political and institutional variables influence wage inequality of particular interest to political scientists is the finding that the wage distributive effects of government partisanship are contingent on institutional context union density emerges in the analysis as the single most important factor influencing wage inequality in both institutional contexts

does the organization of capital matter employers and active labor market policy at the national and firm levels does the organization of business matter for social policy development in the advanced capitalist democracies conventional welfare state analysis has given this significant question scant attention we argue however that the representational power of business coordination across business interest units and integration of associations in corporatist policy making forums or what we call the social corporatist organization of business should result in greater support and participation by employers in social policy formation and implementation we test our arguments with models both of 1980 98 pooled time series data on withinand across country variation in spending on active labor market programs and of extensive firm level survey data from denmark and the united kingdom we find that the centralization and coordination of employers as well as the integration of employer organizations in corporatist policy making forums are strongly associated with shares of national income devoted to active labor market policy we find moreover that the degree of employer organization conditions active labor market policy responses to de industrialization and increases in general unemployment at the firm level membership in an employer association has a significant positive effect on employer participation in active labor market programs in corporatist denmark but not in the pluralist united kingdom

how shortening the potential duration of unemployment benefits affects the duration of unemployment evidence from a natural experiment in this article we investigate the disincentive effects of shortening the potential duration of unemployment insurance ui benefits we identify these disincentive effects by exploiting changes in slovenia s unemployment insurance system a natural experiment that involved substantial reductions in the potential duration of benefits for four groups of workers plus no change in benefits for another group which served as a natural control we find that the change had a positive effect on the exit rate from unemployment to new jobs and other options for unemployment spells of various lengths and for several categories of unemployed workers

social corporatism a superior economic system social corporatism and economic performance introduction and conclusions jukka pekkarinen et al lessons from corporatist theorizations goran therborn corporatism and wage bargaining matti pohjola corporatism and labour market performance bob rowthorn corporatism patterns of employment and access to consumption andrew glyn saving and economic growth from a nordic perspective katri kosonen social corporation and long term economic performance michael lanesmann and juhana vartiainen industrial policies and social corporatism michael landesmann exchange rate policy and employment in small open economies sixten korkman corporatism and economic performance in sweden norway and finland jukka pekkarinen corporatism success or failure austrian experiences alois guger the swiss model corporatism or liberal capitalism wolfgang blaas the unexpected emergence of australian corporatism robin archer

cooperation and political economic performance in affluent democratic capitalism research on comparative political economic performance has traditionally followed two separate tracks one concerned with collective economic gain growth and efficiency and the other focused on distribution and redistribution cooperative institutions offer a key to understanding cross national variation among the affluent capitalist democracies in both facets of political economic performance these institutions cluster along two dimensions neocorporatism and firm level cooperation pooled time series analysis for 18 nations over 1960 89 suggests that 1 neocorporatism is a major source of distributive redistributive policies and outcomes and of several sources of collective gain 2 firm level cooperation is a key contributor to economic growth

determinants of inflationary performance corporatist structures vs central bank autonomy studies by economists have shown that countries with autonomous central banks experience lower inflation than others banian laney and willett 1983 and bade and parkin 1987 one reason for this may be that countries with autonomous central banks are less likely to monetize their deficits burdekin and wahar 1990 studies by political scientists have used measures of the strength of corporatist structures to explain macroeconomic outcomes cameron 1984 however neither economics nor political science research has employed measures of both central bank autonomy and the strength of corporatist structures to explain comparative inflation rates the present paper tests whether measures of corporatist structures and central bank autonomy explain the comparative inflation performance of eighteen industrialized countries this issue is of great importance for students of piecemeal monetary reform in countries where the central banking structure is susceptible to reorganization the results of this paper should inform parties who are active in the reformation and reorganization of central banks in lesser developed and nascent market economics throughout the world

scar effects of unemployment an assessment of institutional complementarities this article uses panel data from the survey of income and program participation sipp and the european community household panel echp for a comparative analysis of workers post unemployment earnings trajectories in the united states and 12 western european countries across the study sample of industrialized countries results of difference in difference propensity score matching show post unemployment earnings losses to be largely permanent and particularly significant for high wage and older workers as well as for women the analyses also show that negative effects of unemployment on workers subsequent earnings are mitigated through either generous unemployment benefit systems or strict labor market regulation these effects stem partly from favorable behavioral responses that prevent downward occupational and industrial mobility and partly from changes in the overall structure of labor markets favoring the transferability of worker skills between jobs these positive effects materialize despite t

gonna party like it s 1899 party systems and the origins of varieties of coordination this article explores the origins of peak employers associations to understand why countries produce highly centralized macrocorporatist groups weaker national associations but stronger industry level groups or highly fragmented pluralist associations the authors suggest that the structure of partisan competition played a vital causal role in the development and evolution of these peak associations the leadership for peak employers association development came from business oriented party activists and bureaucrats who sought both to advance industrial development policy and to solve specific problems of political control business oriented party leaders and bureaucrats in both predemocratic and democratic regimes feared the rising tide of democracy and labor activism and viewed employer organization as a useful tool for political control to secure parliamentary advantage and to serve as a societal counterweight to workingclass activism because leadership for association building came from the state the political rules of the game were crucial to outcomes the structure of party competition and state centralization shaped incentives for strategic coordination for both political actors and employers dedicated business parties were more likely to develop in countries with multiparty systems and limited federal power sharing than in countries with two party systems and federalism in a multiparty context where no single party was likely to gain power each party had an incentive to cooperate with other social groups moreover business oriented party leaders and bureaucrats in multiparty systems were motivated to delegate policy making authority to coordinated societal channels for industrial relations because they anticipated that employers would win more in these channels than in parliamentary settings where the center and left could form a coalition against the right again centralized party systems were more likely than federal ones to develop a dedicated national business party that transcended regional cleavages and to retain a strong role for the state in the governance of industrial relations

social democracy christian democracy constitutional structure and the welfare state the literature on the determinants of welfare state effort displays many inconsistencies and contradictins this article takes imoprtant stepts toward resolving these issues with the use of pooled

how national institutions influence technology policies and firms knowledge building strategies a study of fuel cell innovation across industrialized countries abstract the central thesis advanced in this study is that firms knowledge building strategies can be usefully explained by the variations in their national institutional contexts using an inductive approach a study of fuel cell innovation across the u s france japan and norway demonstrates how countries socio political institutions characterized by their levels of statism and corporatism contribute to variations in technology policies pertaining to investment collaboration internationalization and diversity these technology policies are sources of advantages and disadvantages for firms with implications for their knowledge building strategies the proposed theoretical framework is especially relevant in the context of industry emergence and r d internationalization

economic segmentation worker power and income inequality how economic segmentation generates income inequality constitutes a central question for theories of economic and social organization and of socioeconomic achievement previous research emphasizes two sources of the structural variation in income 1 employers with large amounts of resources for a variety of reasons may find it in their interests to pay workers higher wages and 2 some workers are able to acquire power against their employers as well as against other workers and can therefore extract higher earnings in this paper we investigate several issues involved in the links among economic segmentation worker power and income inequality we argue that the structure of economic segmentation is multidimensional and reflects such distinct concepts as concentration economic scale state intervention in the market capital intensity and organization size worker power also is derived from diverse sources such as union membership occupational skill and licensing class position and tenure wi

working hours and productivity in swedish manufacturing the magnitude of the elasticity of output with regard to working hours is an important factor in the debate on working time despite some attempts at its estimation little is known about this elasticity and empirical studies have yielded contradictory results feldstein 1967 craine 1973 and leslie 1984 obtain an output elasticity with respect to working hours considerably above one which implies that shorter working hours reduce productivity on the other hand elasticities below one are reported in studies by malinvaud 1973 tatom 1980 leslie and wise 1980 hart and macgregor 1984 and aberg 1985 suggesting that shorter working hours increase labor productivity part of this discrepancy naturally reflects differences between the economies and sectors studied types of data and the methods applied the main objective of this study is to analyze the sensitivity of the magnitude of the elasticity of output with respect to working hours to different production function specifications along the lines suggested by hart and macgregor 1984

government partisanship labor organization and macroeconomic performance governments of the left and right have distinct partisan economic policies and objectives that they would prefer to pursue their propensity to do so however is constrained by their desire for reelection we argue that the ability of governments to further their partisan interests and preside over reelectable macroeconomic outcomes simultaneously is dependent on the organization of the domestic economy particularly the labor movement we hypothesize that there are two different paths to desirable macroeconomic performance in countries with densely and centrally organized labor movements leftist governments can promote economic growth and reduce inflation and unemployment conversely in countries with weak labor movements rightist governments can pursue their partisan preferred macroeconomic strategies and achieve similarly beneficial macroeconomic outcomes performance will be poorer in other cases these hypotheses are supported by analysis of pooled annual time series data for 16 advanced industrial democracies between 1967 and 1984

when unionization disappears state level unionization and working poverty in the united states although the working poor are a much larger population than the unemployed poor u s poverty research devotes much more attention to joblessness than to working poverty research that does exist o

unwelcome immigrants the labor market experiences of 1980 mariel cuban and haitian refugees in south florida this article examines the situation of 2 recently arrived and disadvantaged immigrant groups in the context of 2 competing theoretical traditions classical assimilation and recent labor market segmentation theories predictions of both concerning us labor market entry of foreign minorities and determinants of subsequent mobility are tested on the basis of representative surveys most are not confirmed the analysis supports the hypothesis of heterogeneous modes of incorporation into the labor market including substantial numbers of refugees who remain outside of it sizable proportions have only managed to find fringe employment in a energing informal economy in south florida among cubans employment in the ethnic enclave is associated with positive returns comparable to those of entry into the primary labor market haitians lack an enclave option and thus cluster into secondary and informal employment although most remain without work determinants of these various situations are examined on the basis of multivariate logistic regressions implications of results for immigration theory and policy are discussed authors

unions norms and the rise in u s wage inequality from 1973 to 2007 private sector union membership in the united states declined from 34 to 8 percent for men and from 16 to 6 percent for women during this period inequality in hourly wages increased by over 40 percent we report a decomposition relating rising inequality to the union wage distribution s shrinking weight we argue that unions helped institutionalize norms of equity reducing the dispersion of nonunion wages in highly unionized regions and industries accounting for unions effect on union and nonunion wages suggests that the decline of organized labor explains a fifth to a third of the growth in inequality an effect comparable to the growing stratification of wages by education

getting paid wage arrears and stratification in russia1 wage arrears have played an important yet unappreciated role in the stratification of contemporary russian society delays in wage payments became rampant and persistent during the 1990s because of the particular structural institutional and policy context that accompanied russia s market reforms recent improvements in russia s economy have reduced but not eliminated wage arrears an innovative practice that has become institutionalized in some but not all postsocialist societies analyses of survey data collected in early 1998 confirm the independent stratifying role of arrears inequality in getting paid is socially structured in a different manner than inequality in contracted wages and the former proves equally or more decisive in shaping inequality in actual wages arrears occur with some regularity in other national and historical contexts this study of russia shows that where arrears are rampant researchers should incorporate them into conceptual and empirical models of earnings inequalit

competition and growth with step by step innovation an example this paper develops a simple example to analyse the relationship between product market competition and growth in a model with step by step innovations where laggards can never leapfrog the current industry leaders but instead must first catch up with the leaders before battling for technological leadership in the future unlike in existing schumpeterian models of growth more intense product market competition and or imitations may be growth enhancing

innovation and cooperation implications for competition and antitrust n k robel laureate robert solow and his colleagues on mit s industrial productivity commission recently noted dertouzos lester and solow 1989 p 7 undeveloped cooperative relationships between individuals and between organizations stand out in our industry studies as obstacles to technological innovation and the improvement of industrial performance and later p 105 that interfirm cooperation in the u s has often though not always been inhibited by government antitrust regulation these striking conclusions warrant further exploration unfortunately industrial organization textbooks still discuss horizontal cooperation and competition almost exclusively in terms of standard cartel theory on the other hand vertical cooperation contracting is viewed differently and some textbooks provide treatments of supplier buyer relationships in which cooperation is viewed as enhancing efficiency both in the textbooks and in policy discussion among economists cooperation among competitors is highly suspect being perhaps the last bastion of what was once referred to as the inhospitality tradition in antitrust as a result very little literature addresses how cooperation among competitors can promote competition notwithstanding that cooperation among competitors may sometimes be essential if innovating firms are to compete in today s increasingly global markets imai and baba 1989 such cooperation is already important in japan and in europe 1

family change employment transitions and the welfare state household income dynamics in the united states and germany since the demise of modernization theory social scientists have sought explanations for persisting differences in the stratification of industrialized societies primarily by studying how educational and labor market institutions shape the life chances of individuals this approach undervalues two key features of any stratification system family dynamics and the welfare state employment changes changes in household composition and changes in the employment situation of a spouse or partner can all trigger large shifts in income and material well being the impact of these events is mediated by public tax and transfer mechanisms and by private actions taken by household members this comparative analysis of household income dynamics in the united states and germany shows that variations in welfare state policy produce distinct societal patterns of income mobility and furthermore shows that the relative importance of labor market events family change and welfare state policies for income dynamics depends on gender the strong interrelationship between individual incentives and the structure of opportunity produces an asymmetry in the long term impact of events the negative effects of events that reduce income generally decay over time while the effects of positive events generally persist

unemployment benefits unemployment duration and post unemployment jobs a regression discontinuity approach structural unemployment appears to be strongly correlated with the potential duration of unemployment across organization for eco nomic co operation and development oecd countries stephen nickell and richard layard 1999 the idea is that extended benefit duration discourages searching for a job and thus leads to prolonged unemployment in this paper i propose testing this idea by studying discontinuous changes in benefit dura tion at the age of 50 which are embedded in the austrian unemployment insurance system in particular job seekers who become unem ployed at 50 years of age or older and satisfy a previous work requirement are eligible for 52 weeks of extended benefits rather than 39 weeks moreover due to special restructuring demands in the state owned steel sector austria temporarily implemented a regional extended benefit program rebp covering job seekers who enter unemployment at 50 years of age or older who had been living in certain regions of austria for at least six months and who satisfy a previous work requirement those individuals were eligible for 209 weeks of benefits instead of 39 weeks austrian unemployment insurance rules create a rich design allowing us to study the effects of small increases in benefits by 13 weeks 39 to 52 weeks in regions that were excluded from the extended benefit program and large benefit extensions by 170 weeks 39 weeks to 209 weeks in regions with access to the extended benefit program because these benefit entitlement rules were discontinuous in age the corresponding causal effects can be identified in a regression discontinuity framework this paper contributes to two strands of the literature the first strand is concerned with measuring the effects of potential benefit dura tion on unemployment duration recent con tributions to this literature include david card unemployment benefits unemployment duration and post unemployment jobs a regression discontinuity approach

central bank independence and macroeconomic performance some comparative evidence this note uses information on a sample of sixteen oecd countries to assess the relationship between central bank independence and macroeconomic performance as previous work suggests politically controlled central banks are more likely to pursue policies that lead to high and variable inflation however the authors find little evidence that political control of central bank policy has any impact on measures of the level or variability of growth unemployment or the ex ante real interest rate copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

strategic r d policy this paper uses a natural extension of lee and wilde s 1980 model to show that the outcome of technological competition between firms or countries depends on the resolution of two forces the profit incentive and the competitive threat using a duopoly model of a patent race the paper illustrates that by understanding the relative strength of these two forces one can not only go a long way to understanding the outcome of these races but also obtain crucial insights into the desirability of various r d policies the particular example considered in the paper is the subsidizing of r d effort copyright 1989 by royal economic society

unions wages and the common interest three models have dominated recent research on the relationship between labor unions wage behavior and national economic performance a simple linear model a parabolic model and a political model this article argues that an unemployment mediated linear model is theoretically preferable in a context of low unemployment encompassing labor movements can be expected to restrain wage demands whereas localized unions have much less incentive to do so in a context of high unemployment localized unions should exhibit wage moderation and the pressure on encompassing unions to restrain wage demands is further accentuated these four models are assessed as predictors of wage changes inflation and misery index levels for 15 industrialized nations over the periods 1960 1973 1974 1979 and 1980 1990 the linear models outperform the parabolic and political models in each of the latter two time periods for the mid to late 1970s the simple linear model performs best but for the 1980s the unemployment medi

economic dualism a critical review in this paper we examine the model underlying the dual economy approach to labor market segmentation we provide a specification of the components of the model as well as the linkages between components this construction of the underlying model allows us to evaluate it systematically as a model to consider and to evaluate each component and linkage separately while we conclude that there are several important contributions to retain from the dual approach including the insight that capital structure conditions labor market outcomes we argue that it is inadequate for sustaining theoretical and empirical development as a new starting point for the study of economic and labor market segmentation we suggest a resource perspective which retains insights from the dual approach but avoids its overly restrictive assumptions

politics institutions and welfare spending in industrialized democracies 1960 82 electoral turnout as well as left and center governments increase welfare effort that the welfare efforts of governments led by particular types of parties show significant differences and vary notably with the strength of oppositional and junior coalitional parties and that relatively neocorporatist centralized and traditionalistic polities are high on welfare effort overall our findings suggest that contrary to many claims both partisan and nonpartisan facets of democratic politics and political institutions shape contemporary social welfare effort

a structural decomposition of black white earnings differentials this research demonstrates the impact of labor market structure and segmentation on differentials in black and white earnings this paper argues that there are two very different factors which create black white earnings differences 1 differences between blacks and whites within divisions of the labor market and 2 differences between labor market divisions in earnings combined with the differential distribution of blacks and whites across labor market divisions use of a decomposition based on a regression standardization approach discloses that the second factor accounts for a minimum of 14 of the black white earnings gap this implies that eliminating all black white differences within labor market divisions would still leave a significant earnings gap between blacks and whites due to the structure of the labor market

further evidence on returns to schooling by establishment size stolzenberg 1978 has argued thatfor white male employees the effect of schooling on logearnings is greater in larger establishments we replicate stolzenberg s study using the 1979 current population survey this survey includes information on establishment size and provides a much larger sample size to work with our results do not indicate a positive establishment size schooling interaction to the contrary when stolzenberg s 1978 model specification is used ourfindings suggest that the interaction may be negative we explore the sources of this discrepancy and are skeptical of the conventional wisdom that returns to schooling increase with establishment size

property rights and stratification in socialist redistributive economies in socialist economies work organizations differ widely in the compensation they provide employees despite the absence of key product and labor market processes thought to ex plain such inequalities in market economies existing theories of stratification in socialist economies focus on the power and privilege of elites but inequalities among organizations are not created by political particularism or elite power in this paper i sketch elements of an institutional theory of stratification anchored in a conception of property rights the right to derive income from productive assets two aspects of property rights guide the analysis 1 the dispersion of property rights across a hierarchy of governmentjurisdictions and 2 the exercise of these rights by government jurisdictions as they extract revenues primarily through taxation extraction of revenues from a work organization varies with the budgetary resources of a government jurisdiction and the dependence of that jurisdiction on the out puts of the organization variation in revenue extraction in turn creates inequalities among work organizations in their abilities to provide benefits to employees an analysis of survey data on the provision of housing and benefits by work organizations in the large industrial city of tianjin china provides provisional support for these ideas s tudents of communist states have had little reason to dispute lenski s 1966 claim that the distribution of rewards in a society is a func tion of the distribution of power p 63 as ex emplified in szelenyi s wedding of elite theory to institutional economics this idea has been de veloped primarily in terms of the power of class es or occupational groups szelenyi 1978 be gan with the observation that planned economies operate according to redistributive rather than market principles however the process of re

welfare states and the scar effects of unemployment a comparative analysis of the united states and west germany1 the article examines whether through supporting workers search for adequate reemployment the decommodification achieved by welfare state transfers reduces the longer run scar effects of unemployment drawing on employment history data from the survey of income and program participation and the german socio economic panel the analysis establishes positive effects of unemployment benefits on workers post unemployment jobs workers risks of incurring severe earnings losses of experiencing occupational mobility and of entering unstable job arrangements are considerably reduced in both the united states and west germany as workers face constrained choices in labor markets however this institutional protection of workers economic status comes at the economic cost of prolonged unemployment simulation analyses suggest that higher benefit coverage alone might account for up to 20 of the smaller cumulative disadvantages associated with unemployment for german workers

mythologies of work a comparison of firms in state socialism and advanced capitalism comparative studies of capitalist and state socialist countries have rested on weak empirical bases namely the comparison of ideal type models or comparisons of the realities often distorted of one society with an ideal type of the other this is particularly true of the firm which has remained a black box in conventional analyses of state socialism on the basis of case studies of two comparable firms one in the united states and one in hungary we criticize eight stereotypes that underly the presumption that state socialist firms are necessarily less efficient than capitalist firms we then propose conditions under which capitalistfirms may be less technically efficient than state socialist firms

local industrial dominance and earnings attainment drawing on the ecological concept of local industrial dominance we examine how the industrial distribution of the metropolitan labor force influences workers earnings industrial dominance is defined as the proportional overrepresentation of the local labor force in a given industry or industrial sector a contextual analysis of census microdata for the largest 125 smsas shows that within industries and sectors workers in metropolitan areas in which their industry is dominant have significantly higher earnings than workers in areas in which that industry is less dominant these results holdfor two different measures of dominance andfour racelsex groups the effects of local dominance on earnings appear stronger for industries in the core and state sectors for financial business and personal service functions andfor public administration the influence of dominance is partly explained by the tendency of locally dominant industries to be composed of larger establishments

understanding organizational wage structures a resource dependence approach data on the salaries for high level administrative positions in 608 colleges and universities were used to examine the relative salaries for six positions controlling for other factors we found t

does firm size matter anymore the new economy and firm size wage effects researchers have long known that large firms pay higher wages than small firms for workers with similar measured characteristics however an agreed upon explanation for this firm size wage effect fswe has not been reached recent changes in the economy provide new leverage for testing competing theories for the effect while questions about the existence and nature of the new economy provide new motivation for exploring this topic this study uses the 1988 2003 current population survey and finds that the fswe has declined by about one third over the study period examining the competing explanations for the fswe this study finds that while the sorting of workers by traits unions and industry factors all contribute to some portion of the effect in cross section they fail to explain why it has declined over time market power explanations also fail to find support shifts in organizational structures particularly a decline of internal labor markets appear to best fit the results these findings

competition imitation and growth with step by step innovation is more intense product market competition and imitation good or bad for growth this question is addressed in the context of an endogenous growth model with step by step innovations in which technological laggards must first catch up with the leading edge technology before battling for technological leadership in the future in contrast to earlier schumpeterian models in which innovations are always made by outsider firms who earn no rents if they fail to innovate and become monopolies if they do innovate here we find first that the usual schumpeterian effect of more intense product market competition pmc is almost always outweighed by the increased incentive for firms to innovate in order to escape competition so that pmc has a positive effect on growth second that a little imitation is almost always growth enhancing as it promotes more frequent neck and neck competition but too much imitation is unambiguously growth reducing the model thus points to complementary roles for competition anti trust policy and patent policy

the structure of class conflict in democratic capitalist societies the article presents a theory of class conflict between workers and capitalists who pursue their material interests under a form of societal organization that combines private ownership of instruments of production with representative political institutions there exist economic and political conditions under which both classes would simultaneously choose courses of action that constitute a class compromise workers consent to the institution of profit and capitalists to democratic institutions through which workers can effectively press claims for material gains when these conditions hold and a compromise is in force the role of the state consists in institutionalizing coordinating and enforcing the terms of a compromise that represents the preferences of workers as well as capitalists the combination of private ownership of the instruments of production with representative political institutions based on widespread suffrage constitutes a compromise between workers who consent to the private appropriation of profit by owners of capital and capitalists who accept the democratic institutions through which workers can make effective claims for an improvement of their material conditions this form of societal organization was con

sex segregation and sectors an analysis of gender differences in returns from employer changes sweet james 1973 women in the labor force new york seminar press vanek joann 1974 time spent in housework scientific american 231 116 20 1980 household work wage work and sexual equality pp 275 91 in sarah f berk ed women and household labor beverly hills ca sage walker k and m woods 1976 time use a measure of household production of family goods and services washington d c american home economics association

business organization segmentation and location taylor m and thrift n 1983 business organization segmentation and location reg studies 17 445 465 this paper is intended to provide a coherent theoretical framework for industrial geography industrial economics and organization theory based on the notion of the segmentation of business organizations the literature on dualism and segmentation of business organizations is reviewed and found wanting an alternative process oriented account of segmentation of the business organization is presented which can account for the structural variations in present day developed economies the geographical implications of the framework are brought out

the varieties of capitalism and hybrid success denmark in the global economy the varieties of capitalism literature maintains that advanced capitalist countries whose institutions best fit either the liberal or coordinated market economy types will perform better than countries whose institutions are mixed this is because hybrids are less likely to yield functionally beneficial institutional complementarities the authors challenge this assertion denmark has performed as well as many purer cases during the 1990s and denmark has recently developed a more hybrid form than is generally recognized by a increasing the exposure of actors to market forces and b decentralizing collective learning and decision making the institutional complementarities associated with such hybridization have contributed to its success however these complementarities are based on institutional heterogeneity rather than homogeneity this is demonstrated by analyses of three cases danish labor markets vocational training and industrial policy the implication of the authors argument is that the

the payoff to consistency in performance this study investigates whether firms are willing to pay higher wages to workers who demonstrate consistent performance than to those whose performance is more volatile a formal model reflects a production technology view assuming the law of diminishing marginal product this model suggests that a more consistent worker produces higher expected output and therefore receives a higher wage the test of the model uses data from the national basketball association the empirical data support the model players whose performances were more consistent than the performances of other players received higher wages on average jel d41 j31 m52 z20

structural dependence of the state on capital a central claim of both marxist and neoclassical political theory is that under capitalism all governments must respect and protect the essential claims of those who own the productive wealth of society this is the theory of structural dependence of the state on capital using a formal model the internal logic and the robustness of the theory is examined we conclude that in a static sense the theory is false virtually any distribution of consumption between wage earners and owners of capital is compatible with continual private investment once an appropriate set of taxes and transfers is in place yet the state may be structurally dependent in a dynamic sense policies that once in place redistribute income without reducing investment do reduce investment during the period in which they are anticipated but not yet implemented

unemployment compensation and high european unemployment a reassessment with new benefit indicators generous unemployment benefits lie at the heart of the conventional explanation for persistent high unemployment the effects of benefit generosity on work incentives are more ambiguous in a broader behavioural framework in which workers get substantial disutility from unemployment given income and know that unemployment has scarring effects in the future the micro evidence suggests modest effects of changes in generosity but there are reasons to doubt that the impacts on national unemployment rates are consequential the empirical case for the orthodox prediction comes from cross country regressions on the oecd s gross replacement rate grr but the published evidence is mixed and we find little support in the pattern of annual changes in the grr and the unemployment rate for oecd countries over the last three decades we take advantage of new and much improved net replacement indicators from the oecd which show little correlation with either the grrs or with unemployment and employment rates we conclude that the available evidence does not offer compelling support for the conventional view

political and monetary institutions and public financial policies in the industrial countries institutions and policies vittorio grilli donato masciandaro and guido tabellini why do countries as similar as the industrialized oecd countries go through such different experience in terms of public deficits and debts or in terms of inflation the answer cannot come from macroeconomic policy responses to different disturbances nor from the principles of optimal taxation but rather from politics this article focuses on the role that particular institutions exert in providing constraints and incentives which shape the actions of policymakers the electoral process and political traditions affect the ability of governments to deal with deficits and mounting debts what seems to matter most it is found is the effect of the durability of governments governments with short horizons act myopically and never quite tackle the hard choices such governments typically exist in countries with an electoral system favouring many small political parties central bank independence promotes low inflation with no apparent costs in terms of real economic performance irrespective of the political institutions in fact there is no link between monetary and fiscal discipline these findings carry powerful implications for countries facing high indebtedness or stubborn inflation but also for the construction of the european economic and monetary union

the political economy of technological innovation and employment building on the varieties of capitalism thesis of comparative advantages in technological innovation the authors theorize the effect of sociopolitical coordination from a dynamic perspective and then apply the dynamic theories to the political economy of employment in comparison to the existing employment literature situated in a constant technology context based on cross sectional survey as well as pooled time series aggregate data the authors argue that new technologies not only increase productivity through process innovation but also generate rents through product innovation by preventing opportunistic behavior between firms sociopolitical coordination intensifies reciprocal sharing of innovation which increases productivity returns but dilutes rents leading to comparative advantage in process over product innovation because process innovation is labor saving but product innovation is employment friendly interfirm coordination further leads to comparative disadvantage in job creation from in

good times bad times postwar labor s share of national income in capitalist democracies this article returns to a classic question of political economy the zero sum conflict between capital and labor over the division of the national income pie a detailed description of labor s shar