the north south divide questions of existence and stability this paper investigates the relationship between regional earnings and unemployment by use of information primarily from the general household surveys of 1975 and 1982 conventional earnings functions are augmented to capture the effects of the level and duration of unemployment and of regional differences in living costs in common with previous studies the authors find personal characteristics and the occupation or industry of employment to be important in earnings determination in this paper however they generally find that although higher unemployment is associated with reduced regional earnings ceteris paribus long term unemployment has little influence in regional earnings determination copyright 1990 by royal economic society

spatial patterns of private sector and public sector non agricultural jobs in rural northeast thailand lohmann c and liefner i spatial patterns of private sector and public sector non agricultural jobs in rural northeast thailand regional studies published evidence from developing countries shows that in rural areas participation in non agricultural wage employment rises with proximity to urban centres while earnings do not this paper explores the reasons for this phenomenon analysing the job characteristics of rural workers in detail the data set consists of 900 jobs the results show that public jobs are over represented in rural remote regions driving up the mean wage of this type of region when considering private sector employment only spatial wage and income differentials do exist showing that workers in remote areas are economically more disadvantaged than workers in peri urban areas

turnover liquidity and the transmission of monetary policy we provide empirical evidence of a novel liquidity based transmission mechanism through which monetary policy influences asset markets develop a model of this mechanism and assess the ability of the quantitative theory to match the evidence

are national agreements a source of nominal wage rigidity in the depressed regions of britain elliott r f and hemmings p j 1991 are national agreements a source of nominal wage rigidity in the depressed regions of britain reg studies 25 63 69 this study uses unpublished new earnings survey data to evaluate the relative rigidity of national wage rates a simple model is constructed to test the extent to which rates of pay set by management in firms not covered by any form of collective bargaining respond more quickly to changes in levels of excess demand than do rates established by national bargaining elliott r f et hemmings p j 1991 les conventions nationales sont elles une source de rigidite des salaires nominaux aux regions en perte de vitesse en grande bretagne reg studies 25 63 69 a partir des donnees provenant d une enquete sur les salaires actuels new earnings survey qui n ont pas ete publiees cette etude evalue la rigidite relative des taux nationaux des salaires on construit un modele simple pour jauger dans quelle mesure les taux des salaires decides par la

on the future of macroeconomics a new monetarist perspective this article argues that a pressing goal for macroeconomics is to incorporate financial considerations but we need models with solid microfoundations in particular the use of assets in facilitating exchange as well as different credit or other financial arrangements should be outcomes of not inputs to theories as a preview i suggest that mainstream macro does a good job explaining many phenomena and a financial crisis does not disprove such theory but understanding crises requires better incorporating factors related to money credit banking and liquidity the approach called new monetarist economics can help a lot in this regard

wage differentials between the public and private sectors abstract public sector employment and the tax pressure has grown very rapidly in denmark in recent years this paper discusses a new policy option for government using its role as a dominant employer to reduce relative public sector wages the paper contains an empirical analysis of wage differences between the public and the private sectors in denmark using a longitudinal data set covering the years 1976 1985 fixed effect regressions show that a wage twist policy of this type has been used in these years one of the consequences of a wage twist policy in the public sector is recruitment and retention problems for public employees

regional pay the public private sector pay differential abstractregional pay the public private sector pay differential regional studies this paper extends the debate on making public sector wages more responsive to those in the private sector the way in which the public private sector wage differential is calculated dramatically alters conclusions and far from there being substantial regional disparity in wages offered to public sector workers any differences are predominantly concentrated in london and the south east where public sector workers are significantly disadvantaged relative to private sector workers this has implications for staff recruitment and retention such findings question the need for regional market facing pay but highlight the necessity to revisit the london weighting offered to public sector workers

classical unemployment accommodation policies and the adjustment of real wages a model of wage formation and stabilization policy in economies with strong trade unions is developed the analysis provides a theoretical underpinning for the assertion that accommodation policies may cause wage inflation and ultimately reduce employment various methods of accomplishing a real wage adjustment are discussed i a policy of complete nonaccommodation 2 continued accommodation policies but with lower employment targets 3 social contracts and 4 tax based incomes policies tip

public service employment and the public private wage differential in british regions successive forms of regional policy in the uk have sought to support the maintenance and creation of public sector employment opportunities in relatively disadvantaged regions nationally negotiated public sector pay rates mean that the private public pay gap is likely to be wider in lower demand regions this will be reinforced by the relative absence of private sector employment crowding out in such higher unemployment regions this paper investigates the association between private and public sector service employment using panel data for british regions and estimates regional public private wage differentials using british household panel survey data for 1991 to 1996 across britain private sector employment growth is weakly positively associated with higher public service employment growth but the association is stronger in scotland and the north of england the pattern of regional wage differentials found is consistent with lower crowding out in higher unemployment regions this suggests that reg

credit frictions and participation in over the counter markets abstract this paper formalizes a nash bargaining game between two players constrained by capacity decisions made prior to entering the negotiation in equilibrium strategic interactions drive capacity choices to zero and shut trade down despite the existence of gains from trade the game is embedded in a general equilibrium model of decentralized asset trade with credit frictions to investigate the interaction between availability of credit and investors participation modeled through their choices of inventory and payment capacity partial access to credit is sufficient to restore trade the strategic interactions between payment capacity and inventory generate endogenous heterogeneity in holdings trade sizes and prices and complementarity between money and credit

international business cycles the quantitative role of transportation costs we evaluate the quantitative effects of introducing costs of transportation into an international trade model we model these costs through the introduction of international transportation services sector costs of transportation have substantial long run effects on welfare and may impact the pattern of trade however the business cycle effects on relative price movements and on international comovements are less pertinent since decreased trade volatility counteract the effects of transportation cost variations nevertheless it is also shown that costs of transportation combined with delivery lags go a long way towards resolving in particular the international comovement puzzle

long term unemployment hysteresis and the unemployment vacancy relationship a regional analysis jones d r and manning d n 1992 long term unemployment hysteresis and the unemployment vacancy relationship a regional analysis reg studies 26 17 29 in this paper we investigate the unemployment vacancy uv relationship in the ten standard regions of great britain in particular we test the hypothesis of hysteresis in the unemployment rate and consider the importance of long term unemployment in the hysteresis mechanism previous work has demonstrated the importance of long term unemployment in empirical models of the aggregate uv relationship in the regions of britain there is considerable heterogeneity both in the measured uv relationship and in the relative importance of long term unemployment the nature of this heterogeneity is considered in this paper jones d r et manning d n 1992 le chomage de longue duree l hysterese et le rapport chomage offres d emploi une analyse regionale reg studies 26 17 29 cet article etudie le rapport chomage offres d emploi c o dans les dix zo

exchange rate determination the role of factor price rigidities and nontradeables this paper introduces factor labor markets into the intertemporal monetary model of obstfeld and rogoff and combines this richer market structure with a new utility independent representation of nontradeables this allows us to explore the international monetary transmission mechanism for factor price wage rigidities under different degrees of macroeconomic openness factor price rigidities imply similar properties for the international transmission mechanism as domestic producer price rigidities nontradeables give raise to interesting new effects under asymmetric monetary shocks they create short run ppp deviations increase exchange rate volatility relative to price level volatility and reduce positive consumption and negative output comovements 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

trade costs and the open macroeconomy trade costs are known to be a major obstacle to international economic integration following the approach of new open economy macroeconomics this paper explores the effects of international trade costs in a micro founded general equilibrium model that also allows for pricing to market trade costs are shown to create an endogenous home bias in consumption and reduce cross country consumption correlations in addition trade costs magnify exchange rate volatility in response to monetary shocks and typically turn a monetary expansion into a beggar thy neighbor policy it is striking that trade costs generally lead to these results both under producer and local currency pricing

tariffs and exchange rate dynamics redux abstract this paper builds a two country intertemporal macroeconomic model similar to one developed recently by obstfeld and rogoff imperfectly competitive producer consumers maximize an intertemporal utility function with consumption real money balances and output as arguments we use the framework to examine both the short run and steady state effects of the imposition of a tariff in one of the countries this results in a fall in the tariff imposer s output in both the steady state and in the short run a small tariff may make a country worse off contrary to the usual result under perfect competition spillover effects are also considered

public sector pay bargaining and regional labour markets regional pay differentials for women working as nurses within the uk national health service spoor c and sutherland j 2007 public sector pay bargaining and regional labour markets regional pay differentials for women working as nurses within the uk national health service regional studies 41 115 129 the policy context of this paper is the controversy over pay bargaining processes and the advantages claimed for decentralized pay bargaining as opposed to centralized bargaining for nurses the single most important occupational grouping within the uk national health service and conventionally associated with a problem of labour shortages making use of a pooled cross section data set from eight successive sweeps of the labour force survey which consists of women who possess a nursing qualification this paper examines regional wage differentials from two perspectives first regional wage differentials accruing to women employed as nurses within the national health service are examined these differentials are seen to be sizeable evidence compatible with an existing degree of localization

consumption and real exchange rates in dynamic economies with non traded goods abstract we examine the possibility that non traded goods may account for several striking features of international macroeconomic data large persistent deviations from purchasing power parity small correlations of aggregate consumption fluctuations across countries and substantial international real interest rate differentials a dynamic exchange economy is used to show that non traded goods in principle can account for each of these phenomena in the theory there is a close relation between fluctuations in consumption ratios and those in bilateral real exchange rates but we find little evidence for this relation in time series data for eight oecd countries

persistent real exchange rates abstract three well known facts that characterize exchange rate data are a the high correlation between bilateral nominal and real exchange rates b the high degree of persistence in real exchange rate movements and c the high volatility of real exchange rates this paper attempts a joint albeit partial rationalization of these facts in an environment with no staggered contracts and where prices are preset for only one quarter there are two key innovations in the paper first we augment a standard two country open economy model with learning by doing in production at the firm level this induces monopolistically competitive firms to endogeneize the productivity effect of their price setting behavior specifically firms endogenously choose not to adjust prices by the full proportion of a positive monetary shock in order to take advantage of the productivity benefits of higher production second we introduce habits in leisure this makes the labor supply decision dynamic and adds an additional source of propagation we show that the calibrated model can quantitatively reproduce significant fractions of the aforementioned facts moreover as in the data the model also produces a positive correlation between the terms of trade and the nominal exchange rate

how does a devaluation affect the current account abstract this paper explores how an exchange rate devaluation affects the current account in a sticky price inter temporal optimizing model the main issue addressed is how the features of international pricing affect the response of the current account when prices are all set in the producer s currencies the effect of a devaluation on the current account depends on the conventional marshall lerner conditions this is fundamentally an a temporal condition depending on the elasticity of substitution between home and foreign goods however when prices are all set in consumer s currencies the response of the current account depends upon the size of the inter temporal elasticity of substitution of consumption across time periods this represents an inter temporal condition when pricing to market is partial the effect of devaluation on the current account depends on the strength of the a temporal elasticity relative to the inter temporal elasticity

bargaining under liquidity constraints unified strategic foundations of the nash and kalai solutions abstract we provide unified strategic foundations for the nash 1950 and kalai 1977 solutions in the context of negotiations under liquidity constraints we propose an n round game where in each round a seller and a buyer with limited payment capacity negotiate a bundle of divisible goods where bundle sizes can vary across rounds according to rubinstein s 1982 alternating offer game the game implements the nash solution if n 1 and the kalai solution if n and bundle sizes are infinitesimal if n is set by one player ex ante the buyer chooses n 1 while the seller chooses n we endogenize liquidity constraints and show they bind for all n even when there is no cost in holding liquidity

public and private sector wages in the netherlands there is much debate in the netherlands about underpayment of public sector workers relative to private sector workers in this paper we analyze the wage structures in both sectors using an endogenous switching regression model unlike previous dutch studies we find that the earnings prospects of public sector workers are better in the public sector than in the private sector for private sector workers we find the exact opposite their earnings prospects are better in the private sector moreover the allocation over sectors points to comparative advantages

international dimensions of optimal monetary policy abstract this paper provides a baseline general equilibrium model of optimal monetary policy among interdependent economies with monopolistic firms and nominal rigidities an inward looking policy of domestic price stabilization is not optimal when firms markups are exposed to currency fluctuations such a policy raises exchange rate volatility leading foreign exporters to charge higher prices vis a vis increased uncertainty in the export market as higher import prices reduce the purchasing power of domestic consumers optimal monetary rules trade off a larger domestic output gap against lower consumer prices optimal rules in a world nash equilibrium lead to less exchange rate volatility relative to both inward looking rules and discretionary policies even when the latter do not suffer from any inflationary or deflationary bias gains from international monetary cooperation are related in a non monotonic way to the degree of exchange rate pass through

excess capacity monopolistic competition and international transmission of monetary disturbances analyzes the excess capacity monopolistic competition and international transmission of monetary policy disturbances in the united states sheds light on the international impact of monetary policy emphasis on the spillover effects of monetary disturbances similarity of framework used with open economy macroeconomics

what is a public sector pension worth we measure accruals in defined benefit db pension plans for public and private sector workers in britain using typical differences in scheme rules and sector specific lifetime age wage profiles by sex and educational group we show not just that coverage by db pension plans is greater in the public sector but that median pension accruals as a percentage of salary are more than 6 higher among db covered public sector workers than covered private sector workers this is largely driven by earlier normal pension retirement ages but also by differences in earnings profiles across the sectors

international real business cycles we ask whether a two country real business cycle model can account simultaneously for domestic and international aspects of business cycles with this question in mind we document a number of discrepancies between theory and data the most striking discrepancy concerns the correlations of consumption and output across countries in the data outputs are generally more highly correlated across countries than consumptions in the model we see the opposite

devolved government and public sector pay reform considerations of equity and efficiency elliott r f bell d scott a ma a and roberts e 2005 devolved government and public sector pay reform considerations of equity and efficiency regional studies 39 519 539 public sector pay is of critical concern to the governments in westminster and edinburgh it accounts for the major part of these government s current expenditures and is a crucial determinant of the quality and range of the services they provide the paper details the current arrangements for setting public sector pay it is shown that these mechanisms are for the most part uk wide and that they result in national rates of pay that reveal little sensitivity to specific labour market conditions in scotland in consequence in scotland public sector workers toward the lower end of the distribution of pay are now significantly better paid than their private sector counterparts while those at the upper end are now paid about the same the paper uses data from the labour force survey for 1996 2002 to establish these results