comment on inflation dynamics with search frictions a structural econometric analysis by krause lopez salido and lubik abstract the implications of search frictions on the inflation dynamics are shown here for the case with wage adjustments typically belonging to the new keynesian model not to the mortensen pissarides framework in that model variant i identify the role of search frictions by an additional term entering the slope coefficient of the inflation equation after a numerical exercise i find results that are in line with those obtained by krause et al 2008 inflation dynamics with search frictions a structural econometric analysis journal of monetary economics 55 doi 10 1016 j jmoneco 2008 05 003

biofuel investment in tanzania omissions in implementation abstract increasing demand for biofuels as a component of climate change mitigation energy security and a fossil fuel alternative attracts investors to developing countries like tanzania ample unused land is critical for first generation biofuels production and an important feature to attract foreign direct investments that can contribute towards agricultural modernization and poverty reduction initiatives despite the economic justifications the existing institutional and infrastructural capacities dictate the impacts of biofuels market penetrations furthermore exogenous factors like global recessionary pressure depressed oil prices below the level at which biofuel production were profitable in 2007 making tanzania s competitiveness and potential benefits questionable this paper investigates the extent that first generation jatropha based biofuels industry development in tanzania observed during fieldwork in kisarawe and bahi may fulfill policy objectives this paper argues that without strong regulatory frameworks for land investment management and rural development biofuel industrialization could further exacerbate poverty and food insecurity in tanzania the paper concludes with policy recommendations for first generation biofuel development while keeping in mind implications of second generation production since the topic is broad and multifaceted a multidisciplinary approach is used that includes political institutional and agricultural economics to analyze and conceptualize biofuel industry development and food security

the ir relevance of real wage rigidity in the new keynesian model with search frictions we explore the role of real wage dynamics in a new keynesian business cycle model with search and matching frictions in the labor market both job creation and destruction are endogenous we show that the model generates counterfactual inflation and labor market dynamics in particular it fails to generate a beveridge curve vacancies and unemployment are positively correlated introducing real wage rigidity leads to a negative correlation and increases the magnitude of labor market flows to more realistic values however inflation dynamics are only weakly affected by real wage rigidity this is because of the presence of labor market frictions which generate long run employment relationships the measure of real marginal cost that is relevant for inflation dynamics via the phillips curve contains a dynamic component that does not necessarily move with real wages

the determinants of australian trade union membership summary this paper investigates the determinants of trade union membership in australia using the engle and granger 1987 theory of co integrated economic variables applying the theory of co integration yields a model of union membership which can be interpreted as distinguishing between long run and business cycle determinants of union membership the principal long run determinant of union membership is found to be the level of employment disaggregated by industry classification business cycle variables the real wage and the change in unemployment are also shown to influence movements in union density these findings are consistent with recent studies which have attributed the decline in union membership in australia since the early 1980s to the changing composition of employment and movements in the rate of unemployment

the role of the desire for union status in the decision to enter local government job queues the us evidence following a two stage bivariate probit approach this study estimates local government and union job queues in a simultaneous equations framework by relaxing the restrictive assumption of independence between the worker s queuing and the employer s hiring decisions it overcomes a major limitation of most of the earlier job queue estimates the results indicate that the worker s queuing decision for local government jobs in the united states is determined partly by the desire for unionized employment the converse however is not true seniority with the current employer emerges as a significant determinant of both workers queuing and employers hiring decisions furthermore local governments act as model employers by being more likely to hire minorities and females from the pool of job applicants

federal and union job queues further evidence from the us labour market recent research on union differentials suggests that although the premium to unionization is higher in the private sector it can hardly be ignored in the federal sector consequently the nature and length of the federal queue may differ between union and non union sectors similarly the union queue may not necessarily be homogeneous between federal and private sectors we estimate separate queues for federal union federal non union and private union jobs from the same sample this avoids the problem of simultaneity between the federal queue and the union queue in addition it explores several important differences that exist between these queues

identifying and addressing land governance constraints to support intensification and land market operation evidence from 10 african countries beyond concerns about agricultural productivity growth issues of land governance have attracted global interest as demand for land acquisition by outsiders has increased rapidly but most of the transfers failed to live up to expectations and instead disrupted local livelihoods we use the land governance assessment framework to identify key conceptual issues and identify how land governance in 10 african countries compares to global good practice results point towards weak protection of rights in practice large gaps in female land access and limited outreach and effectiveness of institutions to record rights and adjudicate disputes we note that programs to improve performance along these lines had significant impact in other contexts suggesting that efforts to improve land governance will be warranted and should be closely monitored and evaluated in an effort to identify models suited to african conditions and assess their impact and interaction with other factor markets

large scale agricultural investments and smallholder welfare a comparison of wage labor and outgrower channels in tanzania summary this article evaluates household welfare effects of large scale agricultural investments in tanzania one of the main recipients of such investments in africa specifically the article compares households participating in sugar and rice investments through outgrower schemes or as agro industry workers with non participants in terms of household income and income poverty building on primary household data it is one of the first studies to empirically analyze ex post impacts of large scale agricultural investments in africa the analysis draws on cross section survey data of 516 households collected in kilombero district a priority cluster for the southern agricultural growth corridor of tanzania sagcot the results show overall positive household welfare differences between participants of the investments and the respective counterfactual however there are large differences between arrangements and subsectors estimated effects for outgrowers are largest yet for land rich outgrowers more so than for land poor effects for agro industry workers in the sugar investment are significantly larger than for those in the rice investment though in both investments land poor workers seem to benefit hence the study results suggest potential benefits of outgrower schemes and potentials of agro industry wage employment for the land poor to escape extreme poverty yet it also stresses particularly the need to address the constraints of land poor outgrowers qualitative interviews for example pointed to growing risks for land poor outgrowers in the context of rising elite capture by larger outgrowers

evaluating the evidence on union employment and wages using current population survey data for the years 1973 86 this study tests the hypothesis that the steep decline of union employment shares since 1973 is related to increases in union wages relative to nonunion wages the authors show that although the aggregate union wage premium has changed little since 1973 some industry specific premiums have risen substantially and the industries with the rising premiums are those experiencing declines in union employment shares the increase in the premium explains from 21 to 64 of the decline in union shares depending on the equation specification the paper also presents a detailed set of union wage premiums and employment shares for the sample period

job destruction and propagation of shocks this paper considers propagation of aggregate shocks in a dynamic general equilibrium model with labor market matching and endogenous job destruction cyclical fluctuations in the job destruction rate magnify the output effects of shocks as well as making them much more persistent interactions between capital adjustment and the job destruction rate play an important role in generating persistence propagation effects are shown to be quantitatively substantial when the model is calibrated using job flow data incorporating costly capital adjustment leads to significantly greater propagation

union organizing costs and benefits this paper examines the costs and benefits to current union members in manufacturing of programs to organize the unorganized the marginal cost of organizing an additional employee in constant dollars is estimated for a sample of unions between 1964 and 1977 the primary benefit of organizing that is quantifiable is the extent to which the maintenance or extension of union coverage permits the maintenance of or increase in the union wage estimates of this benefit are derived from previous econometric research linking the union wage to the percentage of the industry organized this single benefit is found to be larger than the estimated marginal cost of extending union coverage in 19 of 20 manufacturing industries

the effect of the union wage differential on management opposition and union organizing success that large union wage differentials increase organization is incorrect for the united states today it is incorrect because organization is the joint decision of workers and management not a worker s decision while potential wage increases are a plus to workers they reduce profits and thus are a minus to management in an institutional setting in which management allocates significant resources to convince workers to vote against unions it is erroneous to analyze the effect of the union wage differential on organizing solely from the workers side just as it is erroneous to analyze any economic outcome solely in terms of one blade of the market scissors my claim is threefold

what happened to long term employment the role of worker power and environmental turbulence in explaining declines in worker tenure recent declines in the average length of time that u s workers spend with a given employer represent an important change in the nature of the employment relationship yet it is one whose causes are poorly understood i explore those causes using current population survey data on the tenure of men aged 30 65 from the years 1979 2008 i argue that long term employment relationships primarily occur when workers pressure employers to close off employment from market competition reducing the attractiveness of external mobility relative to internal opportunities and increasing employment security i then explore how two changes in organizations environments a decline in union strength and increased turbulence from changes in technology and globalization might have affected workers ability to secure such closed employment relationships over the last 30 years my results support the argument that declines in tenure reflect the reduced power of workers to secure closed employment relationships recent declines in tenure have been concentrated in large organizations and many of those declines are explained by controlling for the changing levels of industry unionization i find little evidence that foreign competition or technological change affected mobility the results are robust to measures of changing industry growth rates and within industry reorganization supplementary analyses suggest that layoffs are associated with different industry pressures than tenure and that voluntary mobility may have played an important role in declines in tenure

using national statistics to increase transparency of large land acquisition evidence from ethiopia the 2007 08 commodity price boom triggered a rush for land in developing countries yet many affected countries lacked the regulatory infrastructure to cope with such demand and reliable data on investors performance this study uses the example of ethiopia to show how simple improvements in administrative data collection can help to address this by i allowing assessment of the productivity of land use and taking measures to increase it ii comparing productivity between large and small farms to identify spillovers and ways to improve these and iii setting in motion a process of continuing improvement implications for global investment in this area are drawn out

equilibrium unemployment job flows and inflation dynamics this paper develops a general equilibrium model to explain a set of facts regarding job flows unemployment and inflation dynamics it integrates a theory of equilibrium unemployment into a monetary model with nominal price rigidities the labor market displays matching frictions and endogenous job destruction the model can explain the cyclical behavior of unemployment job creation job destruction and the joint fluctuations of the labor input along both the extensive and the intensive margin conditional on a shock to monetary policy allowing for variation of the labor input at the extensive margin leads to a significantly lower elasticity of marginal costs with respect to output this helps to explain the sluggishness of inflation and the persistence of output after a monetary policy shock

some evidence on demand fluctuations and the increased stability of the post war american economy this paper investigates the implications of a sticky wage contracting model that can explain both the decline in wage and price flexibility and the increased stability of the post war american economy the reduction in the size of demand shocks in the post war period has increased agents incentives to write longer contracts though longer contracts have rendered real activity more responsive to demand shocks in the post war period the reduction in the size of these shocks has dominated the increase in the size of response to a particular shock overall real activity has become more stable in the post war period as predicted by theory

the politics of union decline the contingent determinants of union recognition elections and victories despite the close political regulation of union recognition disputes sociologists have paid little attention to recent political determinants of success in these contests a state centered political opportunity approach suggests that if conservative political officials can reduce the number of union recognition elections union organization will be blocked partly because many labor scholars claim there was a postwar departure in labor movement fortunes we attempt to detect and model a contingent break in the relationship between republican control of the presidency and these elections using interactive specifications our findings show that shortly after the conservative anti union reagan administration took office recognition elections and union victories in these elections fell sharply with macroeconomic and other determinants held constant other political conditions with explanatory power include congressional oversight committee ideology and conservative appointments to the key regulatory age

accounting for the decline in union membership 1950 1980 this study analyzes the components of the post 1950 trends in the share of the private work force organized by unions which rose from 1950 to 1954 and then fell steadily to 1980 the authors decompose the sources of growth and decline into changes in organizing activity success in certification elections losses from decertification elections and net growth due to economic causes the last a residual measure designed to capture the effect of factors such as plant closings layoffs and new hires they find that all factors except decertifications accounted for a substantial part of the decline since 1954 when the level of aggregate economic activity is held constant loss of membership due to other economic causes shows no downward trend a finding that challenges the view that the decline in the unionized share of the work force has been due primarily to a secular decline in employment in the strongly unionized industries

union certification success under voting versus card check procedures evidence from british columbia 1978 1998 the author estimates the impact of compulsory election laws on certification success using data on over 6 500 private sector certifications from british columbia over the years 1978 98 a unique quasi experimental design is used by exploiting two changes in the union recognition law first in 1984 the introduction of mandatory elections and second in 1993 the repeal of elections and their replacement by the original card check procedure the author also estimates the effectiveness of management opposition tactics across union recognition regimes success rates declined by an average of 19 percentage points during the voting regime and then increased by about the same amount when card checks were re instituted the results indicate that the mandatory election law can account for virtually the entire decline in addition the findings suggest that management opposition was twice as effective under elections as under card checks

bargaining laws as a cause and consequence of the growth of teacher unionism this study analyzes state level data for 1959 78 to determine whether the rapid growth of teacher unionism during those years was primarily a result or a cause of the public sector bargaining laws adopted during the same period the author finds contrary to the view of some scholars that the enactment of laws requiring public sector employers to bargain with majority representatives of their employees was the single most important cause of the growth in the proportion of teachers covered by union contracts although the growth in teacher unionism in turn encouraged the adoption of some new or stronger bargaining laws this effect was relatively weak more important predictors of new bargaining laws included the extent of political patronage in a state and the bargaining laws adopted by neighboring states

the influence of management consultants on the outcome of union certification elections this study examines the effect of management consultants on the probability of union victory in representation elections an analysis of data on 130 elections in retail grocery outlets shows that c

public and private sector wages interactions in a general equilibrium model it is common wisdom that public sector wages are not determined in the same way as private sector wages at the same time the empirical evidence available for oecd countries finds a strong positive correlation between public and private sector wages in this paper we develop a model that is consistent with a political economy view of the determination of public sector wages and employment while being consistent with the said empirical evidence public finance constraints are crucial in booms governments expand employment and wages while in downturns lack of tax revenues forces the government to cut back the wage bill

economic impacts of new unionization on private sector employers 1984 2001 economic impacts of unionization on employers are difficult to estimate in the absence of large representative data on establishments with union status information estimates are also confounded by selection bias because unions could organize at highly profitable enterprises that are more likely to grow and pay higher wages using multiple establishment level data sets that represent establishments that faced organizing drives in the united states during 1984 1999 this paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of unionization on business survival employment output productivity and wages essentially outcomes for employers where unions barely won the election e g by one vote are compared with those where the unions barely lost the analysis finds small impacts on all outcomes that we examine estimates for wages are close to zero the evidence suggests that at least in recent decades the legal mandate that requires the employer to bargain with a certified union has had little economic impact on employers because unions have been somewhat unsuccessful at securing significant wage gains

biofuel development in ghana policies of expansion and drivers of failure in the jatropha sector abstract biofuel development was mainly promoted in several parts of africa as an energy security or rural development strategy jatropha was the biofuel feedstock that received the most interest across africa from investors however jatropha expansion gave rise to a number of contested issues which produced conflicts winners and losers access to land was at the heart of several of these conflicts though some success stories of individual jatropha projects have been documented the overwhelming majority of these projects in africa have either collapsed or faced significant difficulties understanding the reasons behind the failure of the jatropha sector is an important gap in the academic literature while the lessons learnt from failed projects could inform future policies and practices this literature review synthesizes the key drivers of failure of the jatropha sector in ghana as identified in the literature and complemented through site visits and expert interviews it identifies a number of reasons behind the failure of individual jatropha projects such as poor business planning institutional barriers limited community participation unfair compensation practices obstacles posed by civil society and unconstructive involvement of chiefs the findings indicate the systemic nature of these problems as they often worked synergistically to catalyse the collapse of many jatropha projects in ghana re vitalising the biofuel and especially the jatropha industry is virtually impossible given the current challenges this would require a renewed political interest in ghana particularly to deal with the deficits of the land administration institutions

the legal environment and incentives for change in property rights institutions summary land conflicts in many parts of the world indicate pressures for change in the property rights institutions governing land acquisition and land use whether or not institutional change occurs depends on the incentives and capacities of political actors this article argues that the legal environment is one factor influencing incentives for institutional change three case studies of land governance in southeast asia s palm oil industry illustrate three types of legal environment rule by law legalism legal pluralism and lawlessness or routinized illegality the cases show that the legal environment shapes modes of resistance to property reallocations in the palm oil industry rule by law legalism supports legalized modes of resistance through the court system in contrast legal pluralism and lawlessness favor the use of political strategies to contest property reallocations the mode of resistance in turn determines whether actors acquiring property have incentives to gain legal cover or whether investing in political resources is more rewarding although the effectiveness of resistance is largely determined by the distribution of political resources the mode of resistance helps explain whether there is demand for property rights institutions that offer generalized legal certainty in property protection path dependence arising from the legal environment therefore influences the direction of institutional change

biofuels in sub sahara africa drivers impacts and priority policy areas there has been a growing interest in jatropha and sugarcane based biofuels across sub sahara africa biofuel expansion in the region reflects policy concerns related to energy security poverty alleviation and economic development however biofuels have also been linked to numerous environmental and socioeconomic impacts such as ghg emissions water availability pollution deforestation biodiversity loss poverty alleviation energy security loss of access to land and food security to name just a few yet there is a an insufficient understanding of these impacts and their synergies in sub sahara africa and b a lack of policies that could regulate the biofuel sector and ensure its viability while at the same time preventing its negative impact the aim of this literature review is to synthesize the current knowledge about biofuel impacts in africa and to identify priority policy areas that should be targeted for enhancing biofuel sustainability in the continent the findings of this review indicate that biofuel impacts can be positive or negative depending on several factors such as the feedstock the environmental socio economic context of biofuel production and the policy instruments in place during biofuel production use and trade in most cases there are significant trade offs but at least part of the negative impacts can be mitigated through careful planning the incomplete and piecemeal understanding of these trade offs combined with agronomic institutional and market failures are currently the most important barriers for the viability and sustainability of biofuel investments in the continent

a note on the severity of the decline in union organizing activity using data on representation elections conducted by the national labor relations board from 1975 to 1987 the authors examine the extent of the recent decline in union organizing activity an analysis of elections for selected unions and in major industry categories shows no widespread recovery from the sharp drop in organizing that occurred from 1981 to 1982 although union success rates in new units have been fairly constant the low number of new members recruited through elections points to a continuation of the downward trend in union density

five facts about prices a reevaluation of menu cost models are price decreases 3 the frequency of price increases covaries strongly with inflation whereas the frequency of price decreases and the size of price increases and price decreases do not 4 the frequency of price change is highly seasonal it is highest in the first quarter and then declines 5 we find no evidence of upwardsloping hazard functions of price changes for individual products we show that the first second and third facts are consistent with a benchmark menu cost model whereas the fourth and fifth facts are not

union organization in advanced industrial democracies i suggest a new explanation of cross national differences in unionization rates the size of the labor force size matters because the gains unions are able to achieve in collective bargaining depend on the proportion of substitutable workers who are organized while the costs of organizing depend in part on the absolute number to be recruited the comparison of the costs and benefits of organizing new workers yields the conclusion that unions in larger labor markets will accept lower levels of unionization statistical analysis of cross national differences in unionization rates among advanced industrial societies in the late 1970s indicates that the size of the labor force and the cumulative participation of leftist parties in government explain most of the variance

the effects of corporate strategy and workplace innovations on union representation this paper explores the decline of union membership within partially organized firms using data from two conference board surveys of labor relations practices 1977 and 1983 the authors test a series of propositions concerning the effects of corporate industrial relations values and strategies and workplace innovations on union representation and membership the results show that whereas the average firm reduced the number of workers represented by unions by approximately 977 from 1977 to 1983 firms that placed a high priority on union avoidance reduced union representation by an average of 2 647 workers over the same period moreover the typical firm that emphasized union avoidance reduced the probability that its new facilities would be organized from approximately 15 percent to less than 1 percent

the effect of unions on wage inequality in the u s labor market this study uses current population survey micro data for 1973 74 and 1993 to evaluate the effect of changing union membership on trends in male and female wage inequality unionization rates of men fell between the two sample periods with bigger declines among lower skill groups these trends account for 15 20 of the rise in male wage inequality union membership rates of low wage women also declined while unionization increased among higher wage women on balance shifting unionization accounts for very little of the rise in female wage inequality economy wide trends in unionization mask a sharp divergence between the private sector where unionism was declining and the public sector where it was rising comparisons across sectors suggest that unionization substantially slowed the growth in wage inequality in the public sector

whose wages do unions raise a dynamic model of unionism and wage rate determination for young men we estimate the union premium for young men over a period of declining unionization 1980 87 through a procedure which identifies the alternative sources of the endogeneity of union status while we estimate the average increase in wages resulting from union employment to be in excess of 20 we find that the return to unobserved heterogeneity operating through union status is substantial and that the union premium is highly variable we also find that the premium is sensitive to the form of sorting allowed in estimation moreover the data are consistent with comparative advantage sorting our results suggest that the unobserved heterogeneity which positively contributes to the likelihood of union membership is associated with higher wages we are unable however to determine whether this is due to the ability of these workers to extract monopoly rents or whether it reflects the more demanding hiring standards of employers faced by union wages 1998 john wiley sons ltd

union suppression and certification success over the past decade a number of provinces have abandoned the long standing canadian tradition of automatic certification of unions based on card signing and instead opted for mandatory representation voting this trend however has developed with little understanding of the effectiveness of management opposition within a voting regime in this paper the impact of union suppression on union organizing success within the voting regime of british columbia is examined we find that union suppression tactics were highly effective with estimates rivalling those found in the united states moreover results from instrumental variable models suggest that ols estimates may seriously underestimate the true impact of suppression effort de suppression du syndicat et succes dans le processus de certification au cours de la derniere decennie un certain nombre de provinces canadiennes ont abandonne la pratique traditionnelle de certification automatique des syndicats sur la base des signatures de cartes d adhesion au syndicat et ont choisi de reclamer un scrutin pour determiner le support des membres potentiels on ne comprend pas bien l efficacite de l action d opposition des patrons au syndicat dans ce regime de scrutin ce memoire examine l impact des efforts de suppression des syndicats sur les succes des syndicats dans leurs efforts d organisation dans le cadre du regime de scrutin en colombie britannique on decouvre que ces tactiques ont ete tres efficaces tout autant qu aux etats unis de plus les resultats obtenus a l aide de modeles de variables instrumentales montrent que ceux qu on obtient a l aide de la methode des moindres carres ordinaires peuvent sous evaluer l impact des tactiques de suppression de maniere significative

worker replacement costs and unionization origins of the u s labor movement the embattled state of u s labor has generated a voluminous body of research on the processes of deunionization contributing to its decline revisiting the less researched topic of unionization this study explores the social conditions facilitating union growth during the labor movement s formative years focusing on the first decade of the twentieth century in many respects for labor a period not unlike the present i seek to explain the pattern of organizing success and failure across industries and occupations i find that the most organized settings occurred where workers had greater disruptive capacities due to the high cost of being replaced during work stoppages the highest replacement costs were associated with three conditions scarcity of skilled labor geographically isolated worksites that raised the cost of importing strikebreakers and time sensitive tasks that rendered replacement workers economically impractical workplaces that had at least one of these conditions formed the backbone o

diverging trends in aggregate and firm volatility this note documents the diverging trends in volatility of the growth rate of sales at the aggregate and firm levels we establish that the upward trend in firm volatility is not simply driven by a compositional bias in the sample studied we argue that this new fact brings into question the proposed explanations for the decline in aggregate volatility and that given the symmetry of the diverging trends at the micro and macro levels a common explanation is likely we conclude by describing one such theory

british unions dissolution or resurgence two employees in five belong to a union in great britain this is a higher density figure than those of our main ec partners but it masks the longest sustained period of membership loss ever experienced union responses to the loss of a third of their members are examined mergers among unions will influence union organization and structure but will not affect total membership much it is emphasized that their interaction with employers is of paramount importance in determining unions future their dealings with present non union members are of secondary importance the state can play a key role too further attacks on collectivism point to decay but encouragement of collective bargaining by a future government would lead to a resurgence in union fortunes copyright 1991 by oxford university press

resuscitating the wage channel in models with unemployment fluctuations higher wages all else equal translate into higher inflation more rigid wages imply a weaker response of inflation to shocks this view of the wage channel is deeply entrenched in central banks views and models of their economy in this paper we present a model with equilibrium unemployment which features three distinctive properties first using a search and matching model with right to manage wage bargaining a proper wage channel obtains second accounting for fixed costs associated with maintaining an existing job greatly magnifies profit fluctuations for any given degree of wage fluctuations which allows the model to reproduce the fluctuations of unemployment over the business cycle and third the model implies a reasonably low elasticity of steady state unemployment with respect to changes in benefits the calibration of the model implies low profits but does not require a small gap between the value of working and the value of unemployment for the worker

the tragedy of the grabbed commons coercion and dispossession in the global land rush rural populations around the world rely on small scale farming and other uses of land and natural resources which are often governed by customary traditional and indigenous systems of common property in recent years large scale land acquisitions have drastically expanded it is unclear whether the commons are a preferential target of these acquisitions here we argue that the contemporary global land rush could be happening at the expense of common property systems around the world while there is evidence that common property systems have developed traditional institutions of resource governance that make them robust with respect to endogenous forces e g uses by community members it is less clear how vulnerable these arrangements are to exogenous drivers of globalization and expansion of transnational land investments in common property systems farmers and local users may be unable to defend their customary rights and successfully compete with external actors we define the notion of commons grabbing and report on an exploratory study that applied meta analytical methods drawing from the recent literature on large scale land acquisitions and land grabbing informed by political economy and political ecology approaches we coded selected cases on the basis of acquisition mechanisms claims and property rights changes in production system and coercive dynamics and explored the interactions between the different variables using association tests and qualitative comparative analysis we found that the majority of the cases included in this analysis 44 of 56 could be examples of commons grabbing

intertemporal substitution in labor supply evidence from micro data the sensitivity of the supply of labor to intertemporal variation in the wage is an important issue in macroeconomics the analysis of social security and pensions and the study of life cycle patterns of work this paper explores two approaches to the measurement of intertemporal substitution that have appeared in the literature the first approach is to use consumption to control for wealth and unobserved expectations about future wages in the labor supply equation the second approach is to estimate a first difference equation for hours in which labor supply from the previous period serves as a control for wealth and wage expectations the results indicate that intertemporal substitution elasticity for married men is positive but small

public sector earnings and the extent of unionization many studies have examined the influence of union density union members as a percentage of all workers on earnings in the private sector but few such studies have looked at the public sector using data from the 1991 current population survey this study estimates the determinants of earnings for state and local government employees in both the union and nonunion sectors the extent of public sector unionization appears to be positively correlated with earnings for both state and local government workers and for those covered and not covered by collective agreements although the effect for non covered employees is smaller than that for covered employees both effects are larger than those typically found in similar estimates for the private sector the authors also find that bargaining structure has some influence on earnings with the most consistent effect being a positive influence of arbitration on the earnings of local government workers

wal mart innovation and productivity a viewpoint abstract technology effects business process development and productivity growth are considered in the context of a single company wal mart the starting point is the 2001 mckinsey global institute report which finds that over 1995 2000 a quarter of u s productivity growth is attributable to the retail industry and almost a sixth of that is attributable to wal mart wal mart is interesting as well because of its rapid growth in canada this is now canada s largest private sector employer we also consider other evidence relevant to public policy formation concerning wal mart and conclude with a discussion of options for partially filling important data gaps

unionization and profitability evidence from the capital market this paper examines the effect of unionization on the profitability of firms abnormal monthly common stock returns for a sample of 253 nyse listed firms are estimated for the month in which the union petitions for an election and for the month in which the national labor relations board certifies the election outcome the results suggest that unionization on average is associated with a reduction in equity value when unions win an election the average loss associated with the unionization drive is 3 8 percent of equity value when unions lose an election there is an average net reduction of 1 3 percent in the equity value of the firm

on firm level industry level and aggregate employment fluctuations employment fluctuations are examined at different levels of aggregation in a model with firm specific hiring decisions due to search frictions and sticky pricing the results indicate that firm level employment dispersion rises with higher price stickiness and higher demand elasticity whereas it falls with more convexity of search costs and with a higher labor supply elasticity industry level employment is more volatile and less procyclical than aggregate employment and a larger industry size reduces volatility and raises co movement with output the calibrated model is able to match the volatility autocorrelation and cyclical correlation of us industry level employment when incorporating firm specific technology shocks

a comparison of the cyclical behavior of union and nonunion wages in the united states this paper presents an extensive analysis of the behavior of union and nonunion wages over the business cycle using quasi panels developed from the current population survey in an attempt to resolve or reconcile competing claims about the cyclical behavior of union and nonunion wages union wages were roughly as procyclical as nonunion wages were prior to the early 1980s substantial reductions in union wage procyclicality since then are associated with reductions in the procyclical exercise of bargaining power

union nonunion compensation differentials across plant sizes evidence from cps 1983 previous empirical work on the relationship between plant size and union nonunion differentials has focused either on wages podgursky 1986 or benefits bramley wunnava and robinson 1989 freeman 1981 this note extends this research by simultaneously focusing on both wages and benefits there are several arguments that can be made in explaining union nonunion differentials across plant sizes 1 union threat effects 2 efficiency wage effects and 3 wage dispersion effects our study focuses on measuring the union nonunion differential in total compensation for this end estimates of total compensation are obtained using mellow s suggestion 1982 for combining hourly wage information with qualitative data on pensions and health insurance and ross s imputations 1989 for holidays and vacations benefits our results based on the may 1983 cps supplemented by bls data on pensions health insurance holidays and vacation benefits indicate significant union nonunion total compensation differentials exist only for workers in establishments with less than 500 workers these results are consistent with podgursky s wage differential findings

u s labor market dynamics revisited the picture of u s labor market dynamics is opaque empirical studies have yielded contradictory findings and debates have emerged regarding their implications this paper aims at clarifying the picture which is important for the understanding of the operation of the labor market for the study of business cycles for the explanation of wage behavior and for the formulation of policy the paper determines what facts can be established what are their implications and what remains to be further investigated the main contributions made here are i listing of data facts that can be agreed upon these indicate that there is considerable cyclicality and volatility of both accessions to employment and separations from it hence both are important for the understanding of the business cycle ii presenting the business cycle facts of key series iii pointing to specific gaps in the data picture disparities in the measurement of the sizeable flows between employment and the pool of workers out of the labor force disagreements about the relative volatility of job finding and separation rates across data sets and the fact that the fit of the gross flows data with net employment growth data differs across studies and is not high the definite characterization of labor market dynamics depends upon the closing of these data gaps

contraction and expansion the divergence of private sector and public sector unionism in the united states the institutional structure of the american labor market changed remarkably from the 1950s and 1960s to the 1980s in the 50s and 60s trade unions seemed permanently established in the private sector of the economy a third of nonagricultur al wage and salary workers and over half of blue collar workers were union members hundreds of thousands of workers voted annually in national labor relations board nlrb representation elections to join unions most large firms sought stable collective bargaining relations with their unions by contrast in the public sector only 10 12 percent of workers were union members fewer were covered by collective bargaining contracts and most experts regarded public employees as intrinsically nonorganizable according to afl cio president george meany it was impossible to bargain collectively with the government kramer 1962 p 14 the massive contraction of unionism in the private sector and expansion in the public sector in the 1970s and 1980s see exhibit 1 has produced an utterly different situation today in the private sector the proportion of wage and salary workers in unions plummeted to 14 percent in 1986 a level comparable to that in the great depression only a minuscule number of workers joined unions through nlrb elections and national companies openly proclaimed their intent to establish a union free environment by contrast in the public sector over a third of the work force was unionized some 40 percent were covered by collective contracts 1 and 1 estimates of organization in the public sector differ somewhat among sources though all data show greater organization than in the private sector see freeman ichniowski and zax forthcoming for a detailed analysis of the various statistics

trends in union organizing expenditures 1953 1977 this paper tests the charge by some observers that one reason for the decline in unions share of private sector employment has been a decline in their commitment to growth the author presents several measures of the organizing expenditures of 27 national unions representing about one half of all union members in this country over the 1953 77 period these data show that organizing expenditures rose significantly over that period whether measured in current or constant dollars although they declined slightly as a proportion of total union expenditures

nominal and real union wage differentials and the effects of industry and smsa density 1973 83 many studies have examined the influence of union density union members as a percentage of all workers on earnings in the private sector but few such studies have looked at the public sector using data from the 1991 current population survey this

the mystery of capital formation in sub saharan africa women property rights and customary law summary economists such as hernando de soto have argued that clearly defined property rights are essential to capital formation and ultimately to economic growth and poverty alleviation this article traces two impediments to the clear definition of property rights in the african context customary law and the status of women both of these issues interfere with the attempt of african countries to rearticulate property law with the goal of capital formation constructive attempts to define property rights must address the problem of enforcement in under resourced environments where changes may not be welcomed

labour market effects of large scale agricultural investment conceptual considerations and estimated employment effects summary large scale agricultural investments lsais in general and their socio economic implications in particular have been heavily debated in recent years while some claim that lsais are an important catalyst for development in neglected rural areas others caution that they pose a risk to rural communities livelihoods the extent to which lsais provide benefits for local communities is hence still contested this paper sets out to conceptually understand what effects the establishment of a large scale farm has on the rural labor market in low and middle income countries in addition we empirically address the question of whether large scale farming as recorded in the land matrix creates or destroys employment we develop a transition matrix to identify several scenarios based on key determinants of the direct employment creation potential of lsais namely the former land use the crop type and the production model we empirically assess the actual importance of these scenarios and the employment creation to be expected from this sample of lsais based on labor intensities we further look into the net employment effects for land formerly used by smallholder farmers our analysis shows that lsais massively crowd out smallholder farmers which is only partially mitigated through the cultivation of labor intensive crops and the application of contract farming schemes this holds true for all regions targeted by lsais although regional differences are found in terms of magnitude the paper concludes that these effects tend to be large on the local scale i e in the immediate surroundings of the investment site but small in relation to total national employment in agriculture however indirect employment creation related to lsais which is discussed but not empirically addressed in this paper needs to be taken into account to have the full picture

inflation and labor market dynamics revisited abstract we demonstrate that the presence of an empirically plausible labor adjustment decision at the firm level rationalizes strategic complementarities in price setting which help explain inflation dynamics those strategic complementarities are typically assumed away in the related existing literature this motivates our revisiting of inflation and labor market dynamics

determinants of biofuel oriented land acquisitions in sub saharan africa abstract the recent surge of investors interest for african land has triggered the debate about the drivers and effects of the so called land grabbing after a review of the relationship between investment in land and biofuel development in sub saharan africa we contribute to the existing literature in four dimensions we use the updated version of land matrix whose potentialities are currently underexploited we concentrate on land deals for cultivating biofuel crops which are emblematic of the food land energy nexus we focus on fdi to the african continent the most targeted region for land grabbing finally we delve deeper into the influence of institutional quality by testing the role of different institutional dimensions we find that abundance of water resources and general business conditions security and regulatory quality facilitate the investment in land for biofuels as for land governance what matters is the strength and security of land tenure rights rather than the type of tenure system

the geographic and sectoral patterns of large scale farmland investments in sub saharan africa following the food and energy price crises of the mid 2000s sub saharan africa has become one of the largest recipients for large scale farmland investments while much has been written on the phenomenon scant reliable empirical evidence is available as to the precise geographic and sectoral patterns and underlying drivers employing strict data quality requirements this paper addresses these knowledge gaps by analyzing 563 farmland projects that have been established between 2005 and 2013 in sub saharan africa findings show that the investment intensity and associated risks are not geographically uniform moreover the study highlights a number of popular misconceptions regarding investor origin and their sectoral interests and motives

contemporary processes of large scale land acquisition in sub saharan africa legal deficiency or elite capture of the rule of law summary growth of emerging economies policy commitments to biofuels and volatility in commodity prices have contributed to a marked increase in the pace and scale of foreign direct investment in land based enterprises in the global south this paper explores the relationship between policy and practice associated with customary rights protections in the context of large scale land acquisitions through a document review and case study analyses from ghana mozambique tanzania and zambia findings point to the difficulty of safeguarding customary rights even in countries providing best practice legal protections and point to the fundamental role of human agency in shaping outcomes

the eyes of the needles a sequential model of union organizing drives 1999 2004 this paper models three stages of the union organizing drive using a new dataset covering more than 22 000 drives that took place between 1999 and 2004 the correlated sequential model tracks drives through all of their potential stages holding an election winning an election and reaching first contracts only one seventh of organizing drives that filed an election petition with the nlrb managed to reach a first contract within a year of certification the model which controls for the endogeneity of unfair labor practice ulp charges finds that a ulp charge was associated with a 0 smaller cumulative chance of reaching such a contract ulp charges had less effect on the votes cast than on the decision to hold an election and the ability to reach a first contract a sequential model such as this one could be extended to test between some competing theories about the determinants of union organizing

union effects on productivity profits and growth has the long run arrived this article interprets literature examining union effects on economic performance production function studies indicate small overall union impacts on productivity positive effects where they exist appear to result from management response to decreased profit expectations and from a natural selection process lower profitability among unionized firms is well established more interesting is the possibility that unions appropriate quasi rents deriving from long lived tangible and intangible capital the connection between unions investment behavior and productivity growth emerges as a particularly fruitful line of empirical inquiry although it does not encourage a sanguine view of unionism s long run impact

search frictions real rigidities and inflation dynamics the standard new keynesian model suffers from the so called macro micro pricing conflict in order to match the dynamics of inflation implied by macroeconomic data the model needs to assume an average duration of price contracts which is much longer than what is observed in micro data here i show how departing from the standard model s assumption of a perfectly competitive labor market can help resolve the pricing conflict i do so by assuming search frictions in the labor market in this framework labor becomes firm specific and marginal cost curves become upward sloping this mechanism reduces the slope of the new keynesian phillips curve given a frequency of price adjustment conversely given an estimate of this slope my model implies shorter price durations than the standard model for a plausible calibration and for different slope values my model consistently delivers price durations that are roughly half of those implied by the standard model

where have all the union members gone this paper examines trends in union membership during the twentieth century the hypothesis is advanced that the provision of certain social welfare benefits by government substitutes for the private provision by unions thereby reducing the attractiveness of union membership the empirical implications of this hypothesis are examined using time series data on aggregate union membership for the period 1904 80 and using pooled state data for the period 1964 80 these latter data are used to examine the effect of departures from the traditional doctrine of employment at will both the time series and the cross section evidence suggest that government supply of union like services reduces union membership

real business cycles in this paper we demonstrate how certain very ordinary economic principles lead maximizing individuals to choose consumption production plans that display many of the characteristics commonly associated with business cycles our explanation is entirely consistent with i rational expectations ii complete current information iii stable preferences iv no technological change v no long lived commodities vi no frictions or adjustment costs vii no government viii no money and ix no serial dependence in the stochastic elements of the environment we also provide a completely worked out example of the type of artificial economy we have in mind the time series properties of the example exhibit some major features of observed business cycles although this type of model may not be capable of explaining all of the regularities in actual business cycles we believe that it provides a useful well defined benchmark for assessing the relative importance of factors e g monetary disturbances

employment efficiency and sticky wages evidence from flows in the labor market i consider three views of the labor market in the first wages are flexible and employment follows the principle of bilateral efficiency workers never lose their jobs because of sticky wages in the second wages are sticky and inefficient layoffs do occur in the third wages are also sticky but employment governance is efficient i show that the behavior of flows in the labor market strongly favors the third view in the modern u s economy recessions do not begin with a burst of layoffs unemployment rises because jobs are hard to find not because an unusual number of people are thrown into unemployment

quantifying spillover effects from large land based investment the case of mozambique summary almost a decade after a spike in land demand following the 2007 08 commodity boom evidence on impacts of this phenomenon remains limited and mostly case study based we show that information on location and start data of large farms combined with existing smallholder farm surveys allows to complement this with a difference in difference approach to systematically assess spillovers from large farm establishment illustrative application to mozambique suggests positive short term effects from newly established large farms on adoption of agricultural practices and input use by small farms less than 50 km from newly established large operations robustness checks for crop farms only also suggest job creation in the proximity of newly established crop but not livestock farms yet large farm establishment decreased perceived well being within a 25 km band and in the time horizon considered here did not lead to better access to output markets cultivation of larger areas or once other factors are controlled for higher yields this allows us to reject the notion of negative spillovers from large farm establishment but casts doubt on the wisdom of large unconditional subsidies to attract investors in addition to drawing policy conclusions for mozambique we highlight the methodology s wider applicability and scope for expansion

first contract arbitration effects on bargaining and work stoppages newly certified unions often experience difficulty negotiating a first agreement to remedy this the employee free choice act proposes that the national labor relations act provide for first contr