time out of work and skill depreciation this paper investigates the role of skill depreciation in the relationship between work interruptions and subsequent wages using swedish data from two waves 1994 and 1998 of the international adult literacy survey which included results of tests gauging respondents ability to read and make practical use of printed information the authors are able to analyze changes in individuals skills as a function of time out of work they find statistically strong evidence of a negative relationship between work interruptions and skills the analysis suggests that depreciation of general skills was economically important a full year of non employment for example was associated with a 5 percentile move down the skill distribution

globalization and the great u turn income inequality trends in 16 oecd countries the debate on the resurgence of income inequality in some advanced industrial societies has often focused on the impact of an increasingly integrated world economy typified by growing capital mobility heightened international competition and an increase in migration this study represents one of the first systematic cross national examinations of the role of globalization in the inequality u turn results indicate on the one hand that total inequality variation is principally affected by the percentage of the labor force in agriculture followed by the institutional factors union density and decommodification and only then by globalization on the other hand longitudinal variation in inequality while still dominated by the percentage of the labor force in agriculture is also principally affected by aspects of globalization such as southern import penetration and direct investment outflow and to a lesser extent by migration in other words globalization explains the longitudinal trend of inc

asymmetric fdi and tax treaty bargaining theory and evidence abstract tax treaties are often viewed as a mechanism for eliminating tax competition however this approach ignores the need for bargaining over the treaty s terms this paper focuses on how bargaining can affect the withholding taxes set under the treaty in a simple framework we develop hypotheses about patterns in treaty tax rates a key determinant for these patterns is the relative size of bilateral foreign direct investment fdi activity in plausible situations more asymmetric countries will negotiate treaties with higher tax rates this theory is then tested using 1992 data from us and organization for economic cooperation and development oecd bilateral tax treaties overall the data supports the prediction that greater asymmetric fdi activity increases the negotiated tax rates

licensing effect in consumer choice abstract most choices in the real world follow other choices or judgments the authors show that a prior choice which activates and boosts a positive self concept subsequently licenses the choice of a more self indulgent option the authors propose that licensing can operate by committing to a virtuous act in a preceding choice which reduces negative self attributions associated with the purchase of relative luxuries five studies demonstrate the proposed licensing effect of a prior commitment to a virtuous act on subsequent choice consistent with the authors theory the preference for an indulgent option diminishes if the licensing task is attributed to an external motivation the authors also report a mediation analysis in support of their theoretical explanation that the licensing effect operates by providing a temporary boost in the relevant self concept

interactions of factors impacting implementation and sustainability of renewable energy sourced electricity abstract two renewable energy sourced electricity res e technologies are at the forefront of the current energy transition away from fossil fuels wind and solar photovoltaic however res e must overcome implementation and sustainability challenges from factors identified in economic policy societal technological and environmental dimensions res e diffusion is also a complex problem and this critical review suggests that outcomes depend on interdependencies between factors within a single or across multiple dimensions four categories of interactivity have been identified higher capital costs or market inequalities associated with the economic dimension of res e drive supportive policies or incentives in the policy dimension in the policy policy category interactions between res e demand or supply side incentives influence electricity pricing energy market mixes or greenhouse gases emissions the society technology category examines societal technological interactions at both micro and macro scales the environment technology category details interactions between res e and the environment the technology technology category examines synergies between res e when collocated with conventional electricity generation technologies this review identified several knowledge gaps first research on res e implementation lacks system level analyses on the impact of interactions on project outcomes a well developed line of research examines interactions between multiple simultaneous supportive policies on res e implementation in developed nations however a second gap exists on the understanding of these interactions in developing nations a third gap exists on evaluating the impact of technological lock in this includes the impact on res e implementation rates when the complex economic policy governance and societal factors implicated in lock in are removed

wage curve analyses of establishment data from western germany using the iab establishment panel which is representative for western germany the authors find that establishment level wages reacted to variations in the regional unemployment rate the elasticity of wages with respect to unemployment they estimate was about 0 1 this responsiveness of the wage to regional variation is close to estimates found by other researchers using individual rather than establishment data for other countries and contradicts the view that germany s labor market largely due to the nature of collective bargaining in that country is relatively inflexible possible explanations for this finding are that the negotiated wage is treated like a minimum wage with firms deviating from it in order to increase work effort bargaining between firms and individual workers or between firms and works councils produces wage differences or collective agreements do not restrict firms to the extent that is often assumed

industrial shift skill mismatch and income inequality a decomposition analysis of changing distributions in the oslo region this paper examines changing income inequality in the oslo region between 1993 and 2000 adopting a decomposition approach the analysis reveals that both earnings inequality and post tax inequalit

recent developments of solar energy in india perspectives strategies and future goals abstract power is the most paramount ingredient of infrastructure for growth in economics and welfare of a nation development for sustaining the growth of the indian economy in the existing infrastructure is crucial the power sector of india is one of the largest expanded power sectors in the world due to the continuous increment in electricity demand day by day indian power sector is interfacing some challenges to maintain the balance between the power generation and demand with suffering from supply constraints and shortages in power for maintaining the ratio of generation and demand of power moving from conventional sources to non conventional sources is not only an option it is a necessity the importance of using solar as an energy source in india s perspectives in not only to increase power generation but also to expand energy reliability with considering the environmental social independent and financial beneficial properties this paper analyzes the recent scenario strategies availability future potential policies and development of solar energy in emerging indian power sector

avoiding labor shortages by employer signaling on the importance of good work climate and labor relations reversing the original signaling model this study explains how employers signal the non observable quality of their workplace and thereby reduce labor shortages based on a company data set of 204

are green hopes too rosy employment and welfare impacts of renewable energy promotion in view of pressing unemployment problems policy makers across all parties jump on the prospects of renewable energy promotion as a job creation engine which can boost economic well being our analytical model shows that initial labor market rigidities in theory provide some scope for such a double dividend however the practical outcome of renewable energy promotion might be sobering our computable general equilibrium analysis of subsidized electricity production from renewable energy sources res e in germany suggests that the prospects for employment and welfare gains are quite limited and hinge crucially on the level of the subsidy rate and the financing mechanism if res e subsidies are financed by labor taxes welfare and employment effects are strictly negative for a broad range of subsidy rates the use of an electricity tax to fund res e subsidies generates minor benefits for small subsidy rates but these benefits quickly turn into significant losses as the subsidy rate exceeds some threshold value

reducing public health insurance expenditure a numerical analysis for germany in recent decades germany s statutory health insurance expenditure increased drastically to combat moral hazard moderate copayments for the purchase of prescription drugs were introduced and increased several times these measures however have been insufficient to buck the steadily increasing tide of germany s statutory health care expenditure making further reforms indispensable among a multitude of potential reform proposals such as a switch to a health premia regime are two policy options that provide for incentives to limit health care demand mandatory deductibles and further elevating copayments by combining an applied general equilibrium age model with abundant empirical data on heterogeneous household types this article investigates the economic effects of these two policy options thereby looking at both the current earnings related shi system and a hypothetical health premia regime characterized by per capita premia as a key outcome we find that the decrease in expenditure associa

consumer preference for a no choice option the traditional focus in the decision making literature has been on understanding how consumers choose among a given set of alternatives the notion that preference uncertainty may lead to choice deferral when no single alternative has a decisive advantage is tested in seven studies building on recent research the article shows that the decision to defer choice is influenced by the absolute difference in attractiveness among the alternatives provided and is not consistent with trade off difficulty or the theory of search these findings are then extended to show that choice deferral can also be modified for the same alternatives by manipulations that make them appear more similar in attractiveness or that decrease the need to differentiate among them the results are consistent with the notion that preference uncertainty results in a hesitation to commit to any single action since small differences in attractiveness among the alternatives are potentially reversible consistent with this premise the effect of attractiveness difference on choice deferral decreased significantly when subjects were first allowed to practice making monetary trade offs among the available alternatives

from inherent value to incentive value when and why pointless effort enhances consumer preference companies typically use clear fonts and bright pictures in their ads web sites and product package designs place their products on easy to reach shelves and emphasize ease of usage to make their products appear desirable to consumers however we suggest that customers focused on incentive value getting the best product may instead see products associated with noninstrumental pointless effort as more desirable we suggest that because effort is usually required to get the best outcomes people looking for the best outcomes also mistakenly presume effort must imply the best possible outcome across five studies we show that highlighting incentive value for instance by message framing or by measuring chronic focus or by manipulating situational focus on incentive value enhances preference toward outcomes associated with noninstrumental effort we discuss the importance of our findings for understanding everyday consumption decisions and argue for a widespread tendency among individuals wanting the best to infer value from noninstrumental effort

the last word on the wage curve abstract since 1990 there has been extensive international research on the responsiveness of wages of individuals to changing local labour market conditions for many countries an inverse relationship between wages and local unemployment rates has been found in their book the wage curve blanchflower and oswald argued that the unemployment elasticity of pay is around 0 1 in most countries in a 1995 literature survey card referred to this striking empirical regularity as being close to an empirical law of economics nonetheless reported elasticities do vary even excluding outliers between about 0 5 and 0 1 there is also considerable heterogeneity among wage curve studies in terms of data and model specification this paper carries out meta analytic techniques on a sample of 208 elasticities derived from the literature to uncover the reasons for the differences in empirical results across studies several causes of variation are identified there is also clear evidence of downward publication bias in addition many reported t statistics are biased upwards due to the use of aggregate unemployment rates a maximum likelihood method and a trimming procedure are used to correct for these biases both methods give similar results for our sample an unbiased estimate of the wage curve elasticity at the means of study characteristics is about 0 07

power sector reform in india current issues and prospects power sector reforms in india were initiated at a juncture when the sector was plagued with commercial losses and burgeoning subsidy burden investment in the sector was not able to keep pace with growing demand for electricity this paper takes stock of pre reform situation in indian power sector and identifies key concerns that led to initiation of the process of reform the paper discusses major policy and regulatory changes undertaken since the early 1990s the paper also illustrates changes in the market structure as we move along the reform process we also discuss some of the major provisions of the recently enacted electricity act 2003 that aims to replace the prevailing acts which govern the functioning of the power sector in the country in this context we discuss two issues arising out of it namely open access and multi year tariff that we think would have a significant bearing on the performance of the sector in the near future the paper also evaluates the reform process in the light of some of the regulatory changes undertaken finally the paper briefly discusses the issues involved in introduction of competition in the power sector primarily through development of a market for bulk power

reconciling the wage curve and the phillips curve the wage curve is the negative relationship that links wage levels to the unemployment rate it fits accurately with modern non competitive labour market models but goes against a phillips curve modelling because the latter ties wage growth to the unemployment rate in this article we present a comprehensive review of these non competitive models highlighting recent contributions that try to eliminate the possible gap that exists between the concepts of the wage curve on the one hand and the phillips curve on the other copyright blackwell publishers ltd 2005

when more is less and less is more the role of ideal point availability and assortment in consumer choice contrary to the common wisdom that more choice is always better selections made from large assortments can lead to weaker preferences building on the extant literature this research identifies ideal point availability as a key factor moderating the impact of assortment on choice it is proposed that in the case of large assortments ideal point availability can simplify choice leading to a stronger preference for the selected alternative in contrast for choices made from smaller assortments ideal point availability is proposed to have the opposite effect leading to weaker preferences data obtained from four experiments lend support for the theory and the empirical predictions advanced in this article

further evidence on the wage curve in this paper we replicate and extend the wage curve proposed by blanchflower and oswald 1990 our replication only partly confirms their findings our extensions relate to gender effects and to a refinement of the unemployment measure the results show that wage curves for males and females differ for females unemployment both has a wage effect and a discouraged worker effect

wage flexibility in the chinese labour market 1989 2009 abstractwage flexibility in the chinese labour market 1989 2009 regional studies china s bureaucratic wage determination system is gradually being replaced by a market based system leading to a novel version of a dual labour market this paper studies wage flexibility in this dual market its principal findings are as follows wages in both sectors have become less responsive to changes in official registered unemployment with an alternative market based measure of unemployment becoming more relevant there is evidence of convergence of flexibility between the two sectors the wages of women exhibit greater flexibility than those of men and there is evidence of differences in wage flexibility between workers who have urban residential rights and rural migrants

an introduction to the wage curve en conomists and policymakers are interested in understanding the forces that determine the level of unemployment and the level of wages this paper describes an empirical discovery made with the help of international microeconometric evidence covering more than a dozen nations about a link between these two variables the connection can be portrayed on a graph with the level of unemployment on the horizontal axis and the level of wages on the vertical axis then the wage curve as shown in figure 1 is a downwardsloping locus this relationship tells us that holding others things constant if a region has a rise in unemployment in a particular year those who live there will have a fall in their wages in that year what does this curve mean how in a field where fully controlled experiments are almost impossible could there be any convincing scientific basis for this wage curve what is the relationship between the wage curve and a phillips curve other than that the curve of figure 1 looks like a phillips curve with the vertical axis mislabeled how does the wage curve fit into existing economic knowledge and is the empirical finding consistent with competitive theory this paper sketches answers to these kinds of questions the discussion draws on our book the wage curve blanchflower and oswald 1994 where the points raised here are investigated more fully it also rests upon work done by other economists whose work is listed in the paper and the bibliography

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

wage flexibility evidence from five eu countries based on the wage curve abstract this paper examines wage flexibility in five eu countries by estimating their respective wage curves using information provided by a homogeneous panel data set the echp we are able to demonstrate that contrary to the habitual finding the wage elasticity to unemployment in fact varies across countries

wage flexibility in regional labour markets evidence from italy and germany ammermuller a lucifora c origo f and zwick t wage flexibility in regional labour markets evidence from italy and germany regional studies this paper investigates the functioning of regional labour markets in italy and germany for different employee groups and regions it derives theoretical hypotheses on group specific correlations between regional unemployment and individual wages distinguishing between regions using micro data matched to local unemployment rates wage equations are specified and empirically tested for italy no evidence is found in favour of a relationship between wages and local unemployment in germany results appear to be sensitive to model specification and type of employees in both countries the reaction of wages to local unemployment varies significantly along the wage distribution being more sensitive around median quantiles ammermuller a lucifora c origo f et zwick t la flexibilite des salaires dans les marches du travail regionaux des preuves provenant de

centralization of bargaining and wage inequality a correction of wallerstein wage inequality is a subject of intense political and substantive concern and di erencesin the extent of wage inequality between the anglo american economies and those of con tinental europe animate public and scholarly discussion the wide earnings di erentialsobserved in the united states and the united kingdom are commonly justi ed as the properand necessary incentives for a mature growth oriented economy the narrower income dif ferentials encountered in continental europe are rationalized as necessary for the protectionof the less well paid and the integrity of the social fabric the upward secular trend in wageinequality in the us since the 1970s which is a stark reversal of the pattern observed duringthe preceding 40 years is also a topic attracting wide public and scholarly attention despite the importance of the subject and the amount of attention that it has received the extensive literature on the economic impact of wage bargaining institutions in advanceddemocratic societies contains only a few widely accepted ndings one of these is that morecentralized bargaining institutions strongly encourage wage equality no less an authoritativeorgan than the oecd notes for instance that there is a fairly robust relation betweencross country di erences in earnings inequality and bargaining structures oecd 1997 p 64 several well designed country speci c studies support the claim that the system ofcollective bargaining is a major determinant of variations in the extent of wage inequality hibbs and locking 1996 2000 erickson and ichino 1995 yet even the most careful andwell executed country level results may be a ected by idiosyncratic country speci c factors evidence at the cross national level is required the most careful and convincing cross national empirical documentation of the link between centralized bargaining institutionsand wage inequality appears in wallerstein 1999 published in this journal

status of electricity act 2003 a systematic review of literature abstract the electricity act 2003 was a landmark act which promised to remove the maladies which afflict the indian power sector and that too at a time when the sector was ridden with problems with concepts such as open access multiple distribution licensees wheeling of electricity etc the said act intended to encourage competition which in turn was meant bring a paradigm shift in the sector the paper undertakes a systematic literature review to find the status of review of the promising act more than a decade has passed since its enactment and amendments are due with the legislative body of india but none of the literature reviewed gives a comprehensive view encompassing all the objectives of the act moreover these documents study either the probable impact or the impact on a particular segment only it has important implications for the power sector which highlights a significant gap in literature and provides a basis on which future research can be built upon

forecasting regional employment with the entrop method the paper provides an outline of a method useful for forecasting problems the approach is based on a combination of top down and bottom up techniques it is applied to project employment in all 327 western german districts for a time span of two years the most important step in the preparation of the forecast uses the entrop method which is an entropy optimizing procedure a generalization of common ras techniques newly developed for the estimation of matrices from heterogeneous information in a defined sense the estimated matrix is the most probable one the method chosen is very flexible and uses any available information extensively therefore the estimates are reliable as is shown in an ex post forecast there is a double purpose for the forecast of employment first it helps to gain insights in the causal processes generating regional developments and spatial disparities on labour markets second it is useful for regional labour market policies e g the budgetary planning of the federal em

does active labour market policy increase employment theoretical considerations and some empirical evidence from sweden does active labour market policy increase employment theoretical considerations and some empirical evidence from sweden

troubled banks impaired foreign direct investment the role of relative access to credit during the 1980 s theories were developed to explain the striking correlation between real exchange rates and foreign direct investment fdi however this relationship broke down for japanese fdi in the 1990 s as the real exchange rate appreciated while fdi plummeted we propose the relative access to credit hypothesis and show that unequal access to credit by japanese firms contributes to the explanation of declining japanese fdi using bank level and firm level data sets we find that financial difficulties at banks were economically and statistically important in reducing the number of fdi projects by japanese firms into the united states jel g21 f36

wage curve evidence from panel data abstract we examine the us wage curve using longitudinal micro data results support the wage curve but are sensitive to inclusion of regional and or personal fixed effects we find that hourly wages are less responsive to local unemployment than annual earnings

the wage curve a review in the wage qurve david g blancflower and andrew j oswald argue that there is a fundamental negative relation between wages and the unemployment rate in a worker s local labor market blancflower and oswald use large scale micro data sets to estimate this relation for the united states britain and 10 other countries i review their empirical methods and findings and provide some further evidence on the nature of the wage curve relationship in the united states i conclude that there is a strong statistical correlation between rates of pay and local unemployment although the interpretation of this correlation remains unresolved this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the role of explanations and need for uniqueness in consumer decision making unconventional choices based on reasons this research investigates the interaction between a very common task explaining decisions and an individual difference need for uniqueness nfu on buyer decision making we propose that explaining or providing reasons for decisions shifts the focus from the choice of options to the choice of reasons furthermore buyers who explain their decisions and have high nfu tend to select unconventional reasons and are consequently more likely to make unconventional choices these predictions were supported in a series of studies involving choices between conventional and less conventional options such as whether to switch to a brand on sale whether to select a compromise option and whether to accept a gamble with a possible loss the findings also indicate that the effects of providing reasons are not due to attempts to act rationally or to concerns about being evaluated three boundary conditions on the generalization that high nfu consumers who provide reasons tend to make unconventional choices we

the wage curve revisited estimates from a uk panel abstract panel data from the uk are used to estimate a wage curve allowing simultaneously for time individual and spatial effects thereby correcting for grouped and cross classified data bias estimates of the unemployment elasticity of the wage are volatile and imprecise

are results from non hypothetical choice based conjoint analyses and non hypothetical recoded ranking conjoint analyses similar conflicting findings have been found in previous research that compared choice based conjoint analysis and ranking conjoint analysis in a public good setting the present paper revisits this issue for a private good in a non hypothetical context using small and large choice sets our results suggest that in a small choice set setting participants preferences and willingness to pay are similar across the two conjoint analysis formats however in large choice sets a divergence between the two conjoint analysis formats emerges hence the two conjoint analysis formats can only be used interchangeably in small choice sets not in large choice sets

the role of unemployment in wage determination further evidence on the wage curve from turkey this paper presents an empirical estimation of the correlation between wages and regional unemployment rates in turkey more specifically it explores the role of regional unemployment rates in wage determination the analysis builds upon a series of recent empirical studies on the wage unemployment relationship now commonly known as the wage curve a downward sloping curve in wage unemployment space the existing studies are for most part in advanced market economies while this paper presents one of the few attempts at a wage curve analysis within the context of a developing market economy a cross sectional estimation of micro level individual wage data for the turkish labour market in 1994 suggest a statistically significant negative correlation between wages and regional unemployment rates separate regressions for men and women however show a wage curve to exist only in the male labour market the study also presents the results on other variables of wage determination such as returns to school

job competition and the wage curve longhi s job competition and the wage curve regional studies the wage curve literature consistently finds a negative relationship between regional unemployment rates and regional wages the most widely accepted theoretical explanations interpret the unemployment rate as a measure of job competition this paper proposes new ways of measuring job competition alternative to the unemployment rate and finds that the negative relationship still holds when job competition is measured following the job search literature while for men the wage impact of the theoretically based measures of job competition is rather similar to the wage impact of the unemployment rate for women the difference is substantial longhi s la competition pour l emploi et la courbe des salaires regional studies la documentation sur la courbe des salaires affirme systematiquement que le taux de chomage regional est en correlation faible avec les salaires regionaux les explications theoriques les plus recues considerent le taux de

german wage curves 1979 1990 abstract this paper presents evidence for a wage curve i e a negative relationship between the wage level and the regional rate of unemployment in germany

a review of renewable energy investment in the brics countries history models problems and solutions abstract this paper reviews the history of renewable energy development in the brics countries the financing models for renewable energy development of brics countries include bank financing institutional loans industry funds and international financing this paper identified several problems with financing in brics countries including a lack of financing channels investment shortage for small and medium sized enterprises and imperfect government policies the solutions to these problems include expanded capital markets the financing of leasing services and build operate transfer and build own operate projects further a financial citizen participation model should be employed similar to that as germany and european union emissions trading system eu ets a financial citizen participation model means that legal entities private individuals and agricultural enterprises invest in renewable energy infrastructure through equity a regional reserve ratio monetary policy is suggested to allow regions to develop renewable energy

supply and demand allocation and wage inequality an international comparison an allocation model of workers differentiated by their field of study is developed to test whether international differences in the wage structure can be explained by differences in labour demand and supply in each country the model explicitly takes into account the effects of supply and demand shifts on the allocation structure to disentangle country specific differences in the recruitment for one occupation from real supply demand effects empirical results based on data for nine countries show that cross country differences in wage inequality explain at least two third of the differences in labour demand and supply

the effect of forced choice on choice abstract whereas most academic and industry studies of consumer preferences and decision making involve forced choice i e participants are told to choose one of the presented product or service alternatives buyers usually also have the option not to select any alternative an implicit assumption in the experimental practice of forcing choice is that the no choice option draws proportionately from the various available alternatives such that the qualitative conclusions are unaffected however the authors propose that the no choice option competes most directly with alternatives that buyers tend to select when they are uncertain about their preferences building on this general proposition the authors show that the introduction of the no choice option strengthens the attraction effect weakens the compromise effect and decreases the relative share of an option that is average on all dimensions they also examine the mechanisms underlying the impact of having the option not to choose and the condi

self control for the righteous toward a theory of precommitment to indulgence prior research has examined consumers use of self control to avoid hedonic myopic temptations such as overspending and smoking in this research we investigate the opposite form of self control whereby consumers force themselves to indulge and avoid default forms of spending on utilitarian necessities and or savings in particular consumers who have difficulty choosing items that are perceived as indulgences or luxuries e g a cruise over necessities e g saving for college education and cash in everyday decisions may use precommitments to indulgence especially when the psychological cost of such commitments is less concrete these propositions were tested in a series of studies involving real and hypothetical choices as well as process measures the results indicate that a substantial segment of consumers choose hedonic luxury rewards over cash of equal or greater value consumers typically explain such choices based on the need to precommit to indulgence to make sure that the award does no

income distribution factor endowments and trade openness abstract this paper studies the empirical links among factor endowments trade and personal income distribution by using panel data we show that land and capital intensive countries have a less equal income distribution while skill intensive countries have a more equal income distribution we also show that the effects of trade openness on inequality depend on factor endowments in a way consistent with several recent case studies but not with the simple hecksher ohlin framework our results are robust to the division of the sample according to level of income the inclusion of different regressors the use of different measures of trade openness and of relative factor abundance and tests for possible problems of endogeneity

using survey data to assess the distributional effects of trade policy the author develops and applies a methodology to empirically explore the effects of trade policies on the distribution of income and poverty in developing countries he uses a methodology based on two links one connecting trade policies to prices and another connecting prices to household welfare the author applies the methodology to the study of the distributional effects of mercosur on argentine families the main finding is that mercosur benefits the average argentine household across the entire income distribution there is evidence of a pro poor bias of the regional trade agreement on average poor households gain more from the reform than middle income households whereas the effects on rich families are positive but not statistically significant prior to the reform argentine trade policy protected the rich over the poor and after the reform granted some protection to the poor as relative pre mercosur tariffs are higher on relatively skill intensive goods the tariff removals tend to benefit the poor over the rich these findings indicate that trade reforms may actually help improve the distribution of income and reduce poverty in the country

the economics of product variety a survey demand for variety may arise from a taste for diversity in individual consumption and or from diversity in tastes even when each consumer chooses a single variant the full degree of variety potentially demanded will not in general be supplied because scale economies even to a small degree mean that the potential welfare or revenue gain from greater variety must be balanced against the lower unit production costs with fewer variants the economics of product variety consists essentially in analysing the effect of this balance in different situations and comparing the degree of product variety for different market structures with each other and with the optimum the survey commences with the work on market structures with single product firms generalized monopolistic competition tracing modern developments in both the chamberlinian and hotelling traditions the latter has been particularly fruitful due to the expansion of the original locational ideas into virtual spaces in product characteristics the emphasis in recent work on product variety has been on multiproduct firms in both monopolistic and oligopolistic structures including strategic market preemption although most work has been in a full information context there have been advances in product variety under imperfect information either by consumers to properties of the firms products or firms as to consumers demands

the turkish wage curve evidence from the household labor force survey this paper examines the turkish wage curve using individual data from the household labor force survey including 26 nuts 2 regions over the period 2005 2008 we find an unemployment elasticity of 0 099 with a higher elasticity for younger less educated less experienced and female workers

insider forces and wage determination this paper investigates the relative importance of firm specific factors i e insider forces in wage determination using firm level data on 219 u k companies over 1974 82 it finds that a 1 percent rise in a firm s prices or productivity relative to the aggregate economy leads to a rise in relative wages of 0 1 0 2 percent as a corollary to this outside factors like the aggregate wage and the unemployment rate also play an important role there is evidence for insider based hysteresis effects but these are inversely related to the extent to which firms take national agreements into account copyright 1990 by royal economic society

wheeling of power under deregulated environment of power system a bibilographical survey the power industry is moving rapidly from regulated conventional setup to a deregulated environment there is an urgent need to keep a track of international experiences and activities taking place in this emerging field this paper gives a bibliographical survey and general backgrounds of research and development in the field of power system wheeling under deregulated environment based on over 170 published articles wheeling in general and the establishment of wheeling rate in particular are subjects of extensive debate today this will be very much useful for all countries especially those developing countries which are moving toward the unbundling of electricity supply industry esi the collected literature have been divided into many section so that new researchers do not face any difficulty for obtaining literature particularly in the area of wheeling of power under deregulated environment

exploring the impact of trade and investment on income inequality a cross national sectoral analysis of the developed countries this article explores the relationship between international integration and domestic inequality in the developed countries in the mid 1980s and early 1990s the analysis examines two major modes of integration trade and direct investment disaggregating each by economic sector and distinguishing between imports and exports and inbound and outbound flows and stocks in measuring income inequality extensive use is made of micro data sets that have recently become available through the luxembourg income study lis which provides much more detailed and comparable data on income inequality than has heretofore been the case in particular lis data can be aggregated at the level of economic sector and permit the comparison of pre and post government income the study finds few significant relationships between either trade or investment and sectoral income distribution the overall conclusion is that economic globalization is not a critically important factor in explaining recent trends in income inequa

disaggregated wage curves in the united states evidence from panel data of young workers the paper presents wage curve results disaggregated over time by individual characteristics occupations industries and regions in the united states using a panel data set of young workers the results suggest that instead of a strong aggregate wage curve there are a number of different wage curves over time and for different worker groups the slope of the aggregate wage curve varies over time with the strongest wage curves in the late 1980s wage curves exist for most labour market groups the wages of the least educated hispanics those in relatively low skill occupations or service industries are most sensitive to changes in unemployment wages of government workers and those in the mining industry increase with unemployment finally wage curves are steepest in the western states

informal export barriers and poverty the author investigates the poverty impacts of informal export barriers like transport costs cumbersome customs practices costly regulations and bribes he models these informal barriers as export taxes that distort the efficient allocation of resources in low income agricultural economies this distortion lowers wages and household agricultural income thereby leading to higher poverty the author investigates the poverty impacts of improving export procedures in moldova this is a unique case study poverty is widespread half of the moldovan population lives in poverty the country is very open and relies on agricultural exports for growth formal trade barriers are fairly liberalized and informal export barriers are common and widespread the author finds that improving export practices would benefit the average moldovan household across the whole income distribution for example halving informal export barriers would cause poverty to decline from 48 3 percent of the population to between 43 3 and 45 5 percent potentially lifting 100 000 180 000 individuals out of poverty

monopsony power and relative wages in the labor market for nurses this paper examines the thesis that monopsony power is an important determinant of wages in nursing labor markets using data from the 1985 93 current population surveys measures of relative nurse non nurse wage rates for 252 labor markets are constructed contrary to predictions from the monopsony model no positive relationship exists between relative nursing wages and hospital density or market size nor is support found for the presence of monopsony power based on evidence on union wage premiums slopes of experience profiles or the mix of rn to total hospital employment

the red and the black mental accounting of savings and debt in the standard economic account of consumer behavior the cost of a purchase takes the form of a reduction in future utility when expenditures that otherwise could have been made are forgone the reality of consumer hedonics is different when people make purchases they often experience an immediate pain of paying which can undermine the pleasure derived from consumption the ticking of the taxi meter for example reduces one s pleasure from the ride we propose a double entry mental accounting theory that describes the nature of these reciprocal interactions between the pleasure of consumption and the pain of paying and draws out their implications for consumer behavior and hedonics a central assumption of the model which we call prospective accounting is that consumption that has already been paid for can be enjoyed as if it were free and that the pain associated with payments made prior to consumption but not after is buffered by thoughts of the benefits that the payments will finance another important concept is coupling which refers to the degree to which consumption calls to mind thoughts of payment and vice versa some financing methods such as credit cards tend to weaken coupling whereas others such as cash payment produce tight coupling our model makes a variety of predictions that are at variance with economic formulations contrary to the standard prediction that people will finance purchases to minimize the present value of payments our model predicts strong debt aversion that they should prefer to prepay for consumption or to get paid for work after it is performed such pay before sequences confer hedonic benefits because consumption can be enjoyed without thinking about the need to pay for it in the future likewise when paying beforehand the pain of paying is mitigated by thoughts of future consumption benefits contrary to the economic prediction that consumers should prefer to pay at the margin for what they consume our model predicts that consumers will find it less painful to pay for and hence will prefer flat rate pricing schemes such as unlimited internet access at a fixed monthly price even if it involves paying more for the same usage other predictions concern spending patterns with cash charge or credit cards and preferences for the earmarking of purchases we test these predictions in a series of surveys and in a conjoint like analysis that pitted our double entry mental accounting model against a standard discounting formulation and another benchmark that did not incorporate hedonic interactions between consumption and payments our model provides a better fit of the data for 60 of the subjects the discounting formulation provides a better fit for only 29 of the subjects even when allowing for positive and negative discount rates the pain of paying we argue plays an important role in consumer self regulation but is hedonically costly from a hedonic perspective the ideal situation is one in which payments are tightly coupled to consumption so that paying evokes thoughts about the benefits being financed but consumption is decoupled from payments so that consumption does not evoke thoughts about payment from an efficiency perspective however it is important for consumers to be aware of what they are paying for consumption this creates a tension between hedonic efficiency and what we call decision efficiency various institutional arrangements such as financing of public parks through taxes or usage fees play into this tradeoff a producer developing a pricing structure for their product or service should be aware of these two conflicting objectives and should try to devise a structure that reconciles them

the influence of managed care on generic prescribing rates an analysis of hmo physicians retail expenditures on prescription drugs continue to grow annually by double digits while the share of prescriptions dispensed as generics remains relatively constant efforts to curtail rising drug expenditures have been exhibited by managed care organizations mcos yet drug expenditures continue to rise using the national ambulatory medical care survey namcs for 1997 2000 this study examines how managed care specifically health maintenance organizations hmos influence the physician s decision to prescribe the generic version of a multi source drug the findings show that hmo physicians are not significantly more likely to prescribe generic drugs than non hmo physicians among hmo physicians different cost reduction tools effect generic prescribing behaviour in different ways with the size of the effect depending on the patient and physician relationship with the hmo

choice based on reasons the case of attraction and compromise effects building on previous research this article proposes that choice behavior under preference uncertainty may be easier to explain by assuming that consumers select the alternative supported by the best reasons this approach provides an explanation for the so called attraction effect and leads to the prediction of a compromise effect consistent with the hypotheses the results indicate that 1 brands tend to gain share when they become compromise alternatives in a choice set 2 attraction and compromise effects tend to be stronger among subjects who expect to justify their decisions to others and 3 selections of dominating and compromise brands are associated with more elaborate and difficult decisions

a closer look at small hydropower projects in india social acceptability of two storage based projects in karnataka abstract associated with being green clean and small scale small hydroelectric power shp projects generally enjoy a positive image in india shp promises answers to issues such as meeting a growing electricity demand facilitating lucrative investment opportunities and climate change considerations the features of being green clean and small scale have contributed to the assumption of shp as an essentially uncontested technology empirical studies questioning this assumption are scarce research on shp has so far remained rather hypothetical and policy level focused this article investigates the social acceptability of small hydroelectric plants in india by empirically looking at how people engage with these plants it thereby underlines the importance of studying technologies in their local context based on a detailed case study analysis of two shp projects in karnataka india the article shows how shp projects are contested on the local level the engagement of local people played a crucial role in the contestation of the plants and led to significant and unexpected outcomes and effects the article highlights the importance of having a broader perspective in the development of shp that goes beyond a mindset of technological fixes this includes taking account of existing water infrastructure and a broader range of water users the article shows that the implementation of shp projects does not take place in a void rather complex existing physical and social realities on the ground matter for the development and performance of shp

the gatt wto has promoted trade but only in capital intensive commodities this article uses gravity models to explore the impact of the general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt world trade organization who on bilateral trade in a sample of 46 countries over the period 1965 to 1997 our data enable us to disaggregate trade by broad commodity aggregates the results for total trade are similar to those reported by rose 2004 however the disaggregated estimates reveal that the gatt wto has had a positive and statistically significant impact on trade in capital intensive commodities but no statistically significant impact on trade in other commodities the article demonstrates that simple modifications of rose s approach lead to results that are much more common sense than his jel f10 f15

differences and changes in wage structures preface introduction and summary richard b freeman lawrence f katz 1 a comparison of changes in the structure of wages in four oecd countries lawrence f katz gary w loveman david g blanchflower 2 international differences in executive and managerial compensation john m abowd michael l bognanno 3 the gender earnings gap some international evidence francine d blau lawrence m kahn 4 international wage curves david g blanchflower andrew j oswald 5 the changing structure of male earnings in britain 1974 1988 john schmitt 6 real wages employment and wage dispersion in u s and australian labor markets robert g gregory francis vella 7 labor markets and economic growth lessons from korea s industrialization 1970 1990 dae il kim robert h topel 8 wage differentials in italy market forces institutions and inflation christopher l erickson andrea c ichino 9 the swedish wage structure the rise and fall of solidarity wage policy per anders edin bertil holmlund 10 getting together and breaking apart the decline of centralized collective bargaining richard b freeman robert s gibbons 11 earnings inequality in germany katharine g abraham susan n houseman 12 a comparative analysis of east and west german labor markets before and after unification alan b krueger jorn steffen pischke contributors author index subject index

the front men of wall street the role of cdo collateral managers in the cdo boom and bust i study the incentives of the collateral managers who selected securities for abs cdos securitizations that figured prominently in the financial crisis specialized managers without other businesses that could suffer negative reputational consequences invested in low quality securities underwritten by the cdo s arranger these securities performed significantly worse than observationally similar securities managers investing in these securities were rewarded with additional collateral management assignments diversified managers who did assemble cdos suffered negative reputational consequences during the crisis institutional investors withdrew from their mutual funds overall the results are consistent with a quid pro quo between collateral managers and cdo underwriters this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

yes but this other one looks better works better how do consumers respond to trade offs between sustainability and other valued attributes consumers are increasingly facing product evaluation and choice situations that include information about product sustainability i e information about a product s relative environmental and social impact in many cases consumers have to make decisions that involve a trade off between product sustainability and other valued product attributes similarly product and marketing managers need to make decisions that reflect how consumers will respond to different trade off scenarios in the current research we study consumer responses across two different possible trade off scenarios one in which consumers face a trade off between product sustainability and hedonic value and another in which they must trade off between product sustainability and utilitarian value our results suggest that overall consumers are more likely to trade off hedonic value e g esthetics for sustainability than to trade off utilitarian value e g functional performance for sustainability in studies 1a and 1b we presented participants with a product choice task and also measured their anticipatory emotions as they contemplated their options the results suggest that given a trade off consumers are more likely to choose a sustainable product when they have to trade off hedonic value than when they have to trade off utilitarian value further these studies provide some insight into the emotions underlying this effect in study 2 we use a different consumer response measure relative purchase likelihood and investigate the effect of trade off type across categories that vary in the degree to which hedonic and utilitarian attributes are perceived to be important referred to as product type our results suggest that the effect of trade off type still holds yet is moderated by product type such that consumers greater willingness to trade off hedonic value vs utilitarian value for sustainability is attenuated as the relative importance of hedonic vs utilitarian attributes increases in addition to building on our theoretical understanding of decision making given trade offs with moral attributes this research is also intended to support managers as they define and choose among various strategic product development and marketing promotion options

current status and analysis of renewable promotional policies in indian restructured power sector a review restructuring has changed the traditional mission and mandates of power utilities in complex ways and had large impacts on environmental social and political conditions for any particular country at the same time new regulatory approaches are being found for reducing environmental impacts in restructured power sectors india has a vast supply of renewable energy resources and it has one of the largest programs in the world for deploying renewable energy based products and systems so this paper attempts to review the various policies and measures undertaken by indian government for promotion of renewable energy the aim of this paper is also to review the current policy mechanisms especially investment or generation based price driven and capacity driven mechanisms ranging from investment incentives for the development of renewable energy projects feed in tariffs production tax incentives tradable green certificates and their effects upon the prospects of encouraging as well as expanding the development of renewable energy in indian restructured power sector this will make renewable more attractive in the indian future electricity market

ability biased technological transition wage inequality and economic growth thispaper develops a growthmodel characterizedbyability biasedtechnological transition in which the evolution of technology education attainment and wage inequality is consistent with the observed pattern in the united states and other advanced countries over the past several decades it argues that an increase in the rate of technological progress raises the return to ability and simultaneously generates an increase in wage inequality between and within groups of skilled and unskilled workers an increase in average wages of skilled workers a temporary decline in average wages of unskilled workers an increase in education and a productivity transitory slowdown

the german wage curve evidence from the iab employment sample abstract this paper examines the german wage curve using the institut fur arbeitsmarkt und berufsforschung iab employment sample over the period 1981 1990 a random sample of 6590 employees covering 142 labor market regions over a ten year period is considered the total number of observations is 40 852 taking into account the endogeneity of unemployment as well as controlling for region and time effects this paper finds support for the wage curve in germany the overall unemployment elasticity estimate is 0 07 and is higher for younger workers than older workers the wages of less qualified workers are more responsive to local unemployment rates than the wages of more qualified workers also the wages of men are slightly more responsive to local unemployment rates than the wages of women ignoring endogeneity of the local unemployment rate yields results in favor of the wage curve only for younger and less qualified workers accounting for endogeneity of the unemployment rate yields evidence in favor of the wage curve across all types of workers

variety vice and virtue how assortment size influences option choice assortment size has been shown to influence whether consumers make a choice but could it also influence what they choose five studies demonstrate that because choosing from larger assortments is often more difficult it leads people to select options that are easier to justify virtues and utilitarian necessities are generally easier to justify than indulgences consequently choosing from larger assortments often shifts choice from vices to virtues and from hedonic to utilitarian options these effects reverse however when situational factors provide accessible reasons to indulge underscoring the role of justification implications for choice difficulty and justification processes are discussed

compensation of regional unemployment in housing markets why are regional unemployment differentials in europe so persistent if as the wage curve literature demonstrates there is no compensation in labour markets we hypothesize that workers in high unemployment regions are compensated in housing markets modelling regional unemployment differentials as a consequence of centralized wage bargaining we show that clearing of land markets may undo the incentive for workers to migrate to low unemployment regions in general equilibrium the compensating differentials hypothesis is tested on city level data for several countries controlling for variation in income and amenities housing is found to be about 3 percent less expensive on average in cities where unemployment is 10 percent up an analysis of housing demand survey data which takes account of housing heterogeneity yields a similar negative relationship the magnitude of the income effect generated by this compensating differential is consistent with a 0 10 wage curve elasticity these findings weaken the case for regional support programs

review of proposals for practical power sector restructuring and reforms in a dynamic electricity supply industry abstract south africa s electricity supply industry esi remains a vertically integrated monopoly despite global trends towards restructuring the monopolistic nature of the esi could hinder the development of distributed power systems as penetration of renewable electricity increases the research aims to rationalise south africa s esi evolution propose practical power sector restructuring in the short to medium term and to determine their potential impact the research methodology included a single case study instrument with embedded sub units of analysis primary research data was gathered using semi structured interviews with industry experts in addition to which secondary data from government documents and archival records were used for triangulation research results conclude that south africa s esi grew due to techno economic industrialisation factors while apartheid era policies influenced the esi in only some specific respects the vertically integrated status quo was sustained in the post transformation period due to government s focus on social imperatives lack of regulatory policy certainty and conflicts in political ideology south africa did not experience the pre conditions that triggered global power sector reforms in the late 20 th century but these pre conditions are now becoming evident privatisation of eskom generation and introduction of wholesale and retail competition are not practical in the short to medium term proving the infeasibility of the standard model of reform locally the introduction of an independent system and market operator ismo using a single buyer model is seen as the most favourable and practical option with the ismo owning transmission infrastructure the research suggests that esi changes will increase system efficiencies economic performance and private sector involvement but will not reduce electricity tariffs the scenarios challenges and proposals identified in this research are also applicable to other countries in africa and other developing regions of the world that have similar social and political backgrounds ensuring sustainable supply of electricity

winners and losers a micro level analysis of international outsourcing and wages our paper investigates the link between international outsourcing and wages utilizing a large household panel and combining it with industry level information on industries outsourcing activities from input output tables this approach avoids prob lems such as aggregation bias potential endogeneity bias and poor skill definitions that commonly hamper industry level studies we find that outsourcing has had a marked impact on wages applying two alternative skill classifications we find evidence that a 1 percentage point increase in outsourcing reduced the wage for workers in the lowest skill categories by up to 1 5 while it increased wages for high skilled workers by up to 2 6 this result is robust to a number of different specifications jel classification f16 j31 gagnants et perdants une analyse micro economique de la sous traitance internationale et des salaires ce memoire etudie le lien entre la sous traitance internationale et les salaires a l aide de donnees d un grand panel de menages qu on combine avec des donnees au niveau des industries sur les activites de sous traitance de celles qui en font obtenues des tableaux interindustriels cette approche evite les problemes qui habituellement polluent les etudes au niveau de l industrie biais d agregation biais d endogeneite potentielle mauvaises definitions des habiletes on decouvre que la sous traitance a un effet sur les salaires a l aide de differentes formes de classification des habiletes il appert qu un point de pourcentage d augmentation dans la sous traitance reduit les salaires des travailleurs dans les categories d habilete les plus basses de 1 5 alors qu il accroit les salaires de travailleurs specialises de 2 6 ce resultat est robuste et avere meme quand on utilise diverses specifications

welfare state retrenchment revisited entitlement cuts public sector restructuring and inegalitarian trends in advanced capitalist societies in recent years it has become commonplace for comparativists to emphasize the resilience of welfare states in advanced capitalist societies and the failure of neoliberal efforts to dismantle the welfare state challenging some tenets of the resilience thesis this article seeks to broaden the discussion of welfare state retrenchment the authors argue that a sharp deceleration of social spending has occurred in most oecd countries since 1980 that welfare states have failed to offset the rise of market generated inequality and insecurity and that welfare programs have become less universalistic they stress the distributive and political consequences of market oriented reforms of the public sector

the east german wage curve 1993 1998 abstract this paper examines the east german wage curve using the employment statistics of the federal employment services of germany bundesanstalt fur arbeit over the period 1993 1998 the six waves of this panel include a total of 32 188 684 individual employment spells the statistics comprise the entire population of people gainfully employed and included in the social insurance system these are classified into 114 administrative districts landkreise taking into account the endogeneity of unemployment as well as controlling for region and time effects this paper finds support for the wage curve in east germany the overall unemployment elasticity estimate is 0 15 and is higher for female workers than male workers

the discriminating consumer product proliferation and willingness to pay for quality abstract the authors propose that a crowded product space motivates consumers to better discriminate between options of different quality specifically this article reports evidence from three controlled experiments and one natural experiment that people are prepared to pay more for high quality products and less for low quality products when they are considered in the context of a dense as opposed to a sparse set of alternatives to explain this effect the authors argue that consumers uncertain about the importance of quality learn from observing market outcomes product proliferation reveals that other consumers care to discriminate among similar alternatives and in turn this inference raises the importance of quality in decision making

estimating social effects in matching markets externalities in spousal search this paper investigates the hypothesis that individuals are less willing to marry when there are more potential partners to search amongst and thus when others are also less prone to marry to do this it develops a reduced form method a variation on manski s 1993 model that allows identification of such spillovers in two sided matching markets estimates from this method are internally consistent unbiased robust to different definitions of the marriage market and large enough to warrant attention additional evidence suggests that the effect works via the proposed search mechanism

the rise and fall of centralized wage bargaining during the three decades spanning the early 1950s to the early 1980s the wage setting process in most northern european countries was dominated by centralized bargaining i e peak level labor and employer associations set wages nationwide in the early 1980s centralized wage bargaining began to collapse in this paper we assess a novel explanation for both the initial establishment of a centralized wage setting process and its subsequent collapse according to our theory centralized wage bargaining was set up as a response to the spillovers created by the unemployment benefit program its collapse was the result of the increase in the productivity gap across workers brought about by equipment specific technological progress and equipment skill complementarity

left government policy and corporatism explaining the influence of partisanship on inequality the author argues that to understand the relationship between partisan government and equality two fundamental things need to be done separate the effects of partisanship on policy and of policy on the economy and assess the influence of government partisanship once the mediating role of corporatism is accounted for the main goal of this article is to explore the relationship between government partisanship policy and inequality at the lower half of the wage distribution the analysis is motivated by a puzzling finding in previous work the absence of government partisanship effects on earnings inequality the author focuses on the role of three different policies government employment the generosity of the welfare state and minimum wages the results show that government employment is a most significant determinant of inequality although it is affected by left government only when corporatism is low they also demonstrate that welfare state generosity does not affect inequality and in turn is not associated with left government finally they reveal that the effect of government partisanship on minimum wages and of minimum wages on inequality is completely conditional on the levels of corporatism these effects are only present when corporatism is low the author explains why specific policies do or do not affect earnings inequality and also why corporatism mitigates or magnifies the influence of government partisanship by explicitly exploring the determinants of policy and earnings inequality the article represents an important contribution to our understanding of how governments can promote redistribution

labor market slack and the wage curve abstract the unemployment rate might not serve as an accurate measure of labor market slack when analysing countries with large scale labor market programs we replicate and extend the wage curve for east germany the results are in favor of the incorporation of such policy measures

monetary union and wage bargaining institutions in the eu extrapolating from some member state experiences this article considers the question of how monetary union in the eu is likely to impact the preferences of governments employers and unions regarding the organization of wage bargaining european monetary union involves a decentralization of wage bargaining centered at the national level in relation to monetary policy centralized at the european level drawing on recent literature and on the experience of two member states italy and spain which prior to emu underwent periods of intense bargaining fragmentation the author argues that the imposition of restrictive monetary policy in a fragmented wage bargaining context in which workers nonetheless have substantial bargaining rights tends to have perverse effects these effects ultimately led governments and bargaining actors in italy and spain to seek a reorganization of bargaining that gave national actors greater control over wage setting the article considers to what extent a similar dynamic might play out in the euro zone

estimating a wage curve for britain 1973 90 following a w phillips s 1958 original work on the united kingdom applied research on unemployment and wages has been dominated by the analysis of highly aggregated time series data sets however it has proved difficult with such methods to uncover statistically reliable models this paper adopts a different approach it uses macroeconomic data on 175 000 british workers from 1973 to 1990 to provide evidence for the existence of a negatively sloped relationship linking the level of pay to the local rate of unemployment the paper casts doubt on standard ideas in macroeconomics regional economics and labor economics copyright 1994 by royal economic society