a multiobjective approach to vendor selection abstract purchases from vendors involve significant costs for many firms decisions related to these purchases include the selection of vendors and the determination of order quantities to be placed with the selected vendors such decisions are frequently multiobjective in nature that is they are evaluated by more than one criterion at least 23 criteria for various vendor selection problems have been identified in this article we present a multiobjective approach to systematically analyze the inherent tradeoffs involved in multicriteria vendor selection problems the approach is motivated by and demonstrated with an actual purchasing problem facing a division of a fortune 500 company

political economic markets perts and pests in food and agriculture j i lyniversity of california berkeley jjept of agricultural and resource economic l working paper al cljdare i lorking paper 0 231 politic eco lic l rxets a d pests i j food l ti achiculture by per ts cordon c rausser ja nlnl tt junot tlon a riii ent st ticn giannini fou 1cl itiol1of ar ricultllrnj econo ll i cs july 11 w

the employment effects of shorter working hours an application to japanese data this paper applies a simple model of hours employment and earnings to japanese manufacturing data and shows that a reduction in the number of standard hours is likely to increase overtime and reduce employment these findings are in line with recent theoretical developments and in contrast to the predictions of traditional analysis of hours and employment adjustment this difference is shown to be due to the treatment of the wage rate copyright 1989 by the london school of economics and political science

has work sharing worked in germany industry by industry basis in an attempt to raise employment whether this work sharing works is theoretically ambiguous i exploit the cross industry variation in standard hours reductions to examine their impact on actual hours worked wages and employment analysis of industry level data suggests that work sharing may have reduced employment in the period 1984 1994 using individual data from the german socio economic panel i substantiate the union claim of full wage compensation the hourly wage rose enough to offset the decline in actual hours worked

macroeconomic linkages taxes and subsidies in the u s agricultural sector lj ar division of agricultural sciences unlversily of califorj ha ma croecono nc linkages t xes and subsidies in tiie u s agr cuttural secl or by gordon c rausser james a chalfant h alan love and kostas g stamoulis tt r i f r in i jq lifor ia agricultura experiment station clmoation of j gricultural economics january 1986

predatory versus productive government the case of u s agricultural policies this essay will argue that agricultural policy in the united states has led to both the enhancement of efficiency through productive policies and the transfer of wealth and income to special interests through redistributive or predatory policies these two activities can be labeled as pests and perts pest policies or political economic seeking transfers are meant to redistribute wealth from one social group to another and are not explicitly concerned with efficiency in contrast perts or political economic resource transactions are intended to correct market failures or to provide public goods these policies have neutral distributional effects at least in design a review of the history of public policy in agriculture reveals not only tension between the pert and pest roles of the public sector but also some coordination between these two types of activities as different interest groups pressure the political process the government trades off pests and perts in its attempts to acquire balance and secure political power at times this has led to combinations of programs that appear incoherent in such a world the challenge for economists is to design and advocate policies that are both economically productive and politically sustainable

green goals and full employment are they compatible abstract two empirical correlations are studied one between economic growth and environmental impacts and the other between the lack of economic growth and unemployment it is demonstrated that at a global level economic growth is strongly correlated with environmental impacts and barriers to fast decoupling are large and numerous on the other hand low or negative growth is highly correlated with increasing unemployment in most market economies and strategies to change this lead to difficult questions and tradeoffs the coexistence of these two correlations which have rarely been studied together in the literature on green growth degrowth and a growth justifies ambivalence about growth to make key environmental goals compatible with full employment the decoupling of environmental impacts from economic output has to be accompanied by a reduction of dependence on growth in particular strategies to tackle unemployment without the need for growth several of which are studied in this article need much more attention in research and policy

purchasing raw materials with uncertain fluctuating prices on identifie les differentes etapes de la decision d achat des matieres premieres ainsi que les differentes approches et les aptitudes requises on decrit plusieurs methodes et modeles proposes et appliques aux differentes etapes les aspects importants etant l inadequation des modeles de stocks classiques l application de la programmation lineaire au probleme de melange la prevision des prix a l aide de l econometrie et de l analyse des series temporelles et la prise de decision sequentielle pour l achat au jour le jour

political economy of public policies insights from distortions to agricultural and food markets the agricultural and food sector is an ideal case for investigating the political economy of public policies many of the policy developments in this sector since the 1950s have been sudden and transformational while others have been gradual but persistent this paper reviews and synthesizes the literature on trends and fluctuations in market distortions and the political economy explanations that have been advanced based on a rich global data set covering a half century of evidence on commodities countries and policy instruments the paper identifies hypotheses that have been explored in the literature on the extent of market distortions and the conditions under which reform may be feasible

the employment effects of a shorter working week labor organizations currently argue that reducing the standard working week will help lower the high unemployment of the 1980s opponents maintai n that this will increase labor costs and therefore not alleviate un employment this paper analyzes the employment effects of a cut in ho urs using the monopoly union and efficient bargaining models of the union and firm under various developments of the models the results are quite consistent a reduction in hours has employment effects th at are at best ambiguous and very often negative a puzzle remains as to why trade unions are pressing for shorter hours copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited

working time reduction and employment experiences in europe and economic policy recommendations the paper seeks to evaluate the evidence on the employment effects of the collective working time reductions in europe over the past 20 years while theoretical analyses produce contradictory assessments most empirical studies show positive employment effects but take insufficient account of the conditions under which the reductions in working time were implemented these conditions for the success of collective working time reductions include an active training policy designed to minimise skill shortages in the labour market the modernisation of work organisation wage increases in conjunction with productivity gains and a more equal income distribution

societal metabolism working hours and degrowth a comment on sorman and giampietro can we choose whether to degrow sorman and giampetro in this special issue argue that degrowth can only be forced upon us it will never be the outcome of voluntary or collective choice in this commentary i argue instead that although sooner or later we will have to degrow because of bio physical limitations we still have a choice of how to do it constructing a positive vision of degrowth as an inspirational political project that mobilizes citizens increases the likelihood of a prosperous way down i agree with the authors that in an energy scarce world we will have to work more to maintain the same level of material affluence but i contend that under conceivable conditions we might be equally happy with less work less energy and less material affluence a multi scalar analysis of societal metabolism is essential for the evaluation of degrowth policies and trajectories however unlike what sorman and giampietro suggest there is nothing in existing metabolic analyses that suggests that a prosperous degrowth trajectory is a priori impossible

measuring the degree of market power exerted by government trade agencies the principle of profit maximization is used to derive an equilibrium condition for noncompetitive markets and to provide explicit parametric tests for market power exerted in both domestic and foreign markets by a government trade agency our study goes beyond previous work by considering simultaneous exertion of market power in both domestic and foreign markets and by jointly estimating market power parameters with cost and demand parameters these innovations allow nested tests of market power as opposed to prevailing nonnested tests based on simulation models or conditional tests based on prior estimates of demand and cost parameters japan is found to exert a high degree of monopsony power in the world wheat market and no monopoly power in the domestic market

revealed preference of the federal reserve using inverse control theory to interpret the policy equation of a vector autoregression how close is observed federal reserve policy to policy that would be optimal in the control theory sense the question is addressed by using an inverse control methodology federal reserve policy is characterized by a feedback equation for either changes in the interest rate or money stock optimal policy is characterized by solution of the ricatti equation parameters are estimated that characterize the relative importance to the federal reserve of stabilizing output inflation interest rates and money growth the period of study is 1947 through 1992 evidence is uncovered that policy is optimal within distinct regimes

evaluating alternative monetary policy rules abstract this paper examines monetary policy from an optimal control perspective five loss functions are minimized for each of five models and the results are compared the basic true loss function targets inflation and unemployment the other loss functions target respectively inflation alone unemployment alone nominal growth alone and real growth alone the five models are two small structural models two var models and a large structural model a numerical procedure is presented that can handle a variety of loss functions and models

work sharing employment and wages the paper analyzes the effects of a reduction in working time on wages and employment with a monopoly union in general it is not clear in which directions these variables move but if employment and working time are perfect substitutes the effects are related to how working time has been determined initially the wage increases if initial working time is smaller than or equal to the trade union optimum whereas the result is unclear when it is larger in this case it is never optimal for a trade union to reduce both the wage and working time in response to a recessionary supply shock the analysis may help to explain varying attitudes towards work sharing in different countries

estimating the objectives of a public firm in a natural resource industry abstract the purpose of this paper is to understand the behavior of policymakers in a public firm to accomplish this goal the objectives of a government owned firm operating in the saskatchewan uranium industry are econometrically estimated the estimates are used to determine the importance policymakers attach to the outcomes resulting from their behavior and to examine how the firm might respond to changes in its economic environment empirical results indicate that the public firm is willing to reduce profits in order to increase employment and reserves

wages hours and overtime premia evidence from the british labor market unlike the united states britain has no national laws regulating overtime hour assignment or compensation using individual level data on male non managerial workers from the 1998 british new earnings survey the authors investigate relationships among the standard hourly wage rate hourly earnings including overtime the overtime premium and the length of overtime hours they find that when overtime is accounted for average hourly wage earnings are fairly uniform across firms in a given industry because firms paying below market level straight time wages tend to award above market level overtime premiums and conversely firms paying above market level straight time wages provide below market level overtime premiums

inflation targeting as a monetary policy rule the purpose of the paper is to survey and discuss in ation targeting in the context of monetary policy rules the paper provides a general conceptual discussion of monetary policy rules attempts to clarify the essential characteristics of in ation targeting compares in ation targeting to other monetary policy rules and draws some conclusions for the monetary policy of the european system of central banks jel classi cation e42 e52

the effects of inflation and real wages on employment this paper considers the effects of inflation on employment the absence of index linked loans and the possibility that errors are committed in times of inflation lead to a higher probability of bankruptcy during inflation if firms care about bankruptcy this implies a lower level of employment empirical results confirming this are presented and suggest that higher inflation has substantially contributed to the fall in employment in the united kingdom the authors also demonstrate that a negative real wage elasticity is not robust to changes in specification copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited

habit prisoner s dilemma and americans welfare cost of working much more than europeans europeans work much less than americans some studies claim this is due to high taxes in europe which would benefit by adopting us tax rates and work time others find that taxes have little or no impact on work time i examine the hypothesis that americans would benefit by reducing work time to europe s level empirical and experimental studies show utility falls as other people s income rises due to its historical experience europe is able to internalize this and other negative externalities by restricting work time through minimum vacation time and maximum weekly work hours while the us is not resulting in a prisoner s dilemma overworking trap equilibrium a simple model and work time data are used to derive the us welfare gain from reducing work time to europe s level findings are i parameter values are consistent with experimental results on the relative impact of own and other people s income ii the welfare gain s present value is about 120 percent of annual welfare and iii even if europe s policy reduces work time excessively it does remain beneficial as long as the reduction is less than twice the optimal one

political preference functions and public policy reform a model of policy making is developed where governments seek to maximize support from social groups through the combination of both pert social welfare increasing and pert welfare transferring policies the implicit weights of a political preference function shift with a change in the relative cost of interest group organizing attention is paid to the degree of wealth transfers as total social welfare increases because of pert policy changes the model demonstrates that in the case of two competing groups the weight given to one group in the allocation of social surplus will increase as total social welfare increases with a bias toward the other group the relative weights placed on consumers and producers based on pest policies alone are misleading indicators of the political influence of groups a number of general implications of this political economic analysis for the reform of public policies are investigated

the 35 hour workweek in france straightjacket or welfare improvement workweek reduction laws may be beneficial if market interactions do not fully take into account the preferences reflected in declining secular trends in working hours the most recent law in france shortened the workweek from 39 to 35 hours in 2000 for large firms and in 2002 for small firms analysing differences between large and small firm employees before and after the law we find that aggregate employment was unaffected but labour turnover increased as firms shed workers who became more expensive survey responses indicate that the welfare impact of the law was different across groups of workers women but not men may have benefited from coordination to a shorter workweek and there is also evidence of negative welfare effects for managers possibly due to the law s administrative burden marcello estevao and filipa sa

productive and predatory public policies research expenditures and producer subsidies in agriculture governments are postulated to maximize a political preference function in choosing two policy instruments research expenditures a productive policy that improve social welfare and production subsidies a predatory policy that incur deadweight losses each policy affects the distribution of income between producers and consumers governments determine the optimal mix of policies taking into account interaction effects between research and subsidy expenditures in addition to providing an explanation for underinvestment in research the paper determines conditions under which research and subsidy policies are complementary such conditions are shown to characterize u s agriculture underinvestment in research is therefore less severe than in some other countries

directly unproductive profit seeking dup activities this paper propses directly unproductive profit seeking dup activities as a general concept that embraces a wide range of recently analyzed economic activities including the subset of rent seeking activities considered by krueger it then proceeds to provide a synthesis and generalization of the welfare theoretic analysis of such activities by developing a fourfold categorization of cases depending on the levels of distortions before and after the dup activity thus a unification and overview of the subject are achieved

causes of u s farm commodity programs this paper i s an attempt to explain variations by commodity in producer protection afforded by farm price support programs since the1930s particularly emphasized are theideas that these programs are essentially income redistributional measures and that given political forces the programs are attempts to redistribute efficiently variables associated with the cost to producers of generating political pressure and the social cost deadweight losses of redistribution are both found to be empirically important copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

hourly wages and working time in the dutch market sector 1962 1995 this article analyses the joint behaviour of hourly wages and standard hours in the netherlands with respect to the development of full time hours to different hypotheses are suggested work sharing or productivity sharing under the work sharing hypothesis high unemployment would lead to reduced hours whereas under productivity sharing increased productivity leads to higher wages or reduced hours the evidence is in favour of the productivity hypothesis there is no direct impact of unemployment on the evolution of hours moreover although reduced hours tend to increase hourly wages in the short run this is not the case in the long run

working time regulation in a search economy with worker moral hazard abstract this paper analyzes the consequences of a working time reduction within an integrated shirking matching model under laissez faire workers and employers bargain over wages and working hours when unemployment is high the no shirking condition is binding and the number of working hours is lower than the level that would be negotiated in the absence of unobservable shirking in this case a work sharing policy increases aggregate employment at the opposite for low unemployment countries the no shirking condition does not bind and a working time regulation always worsens the labour market situation

shadow economies size causes and consequences using various methods the size of the shadow economy in 76 developing transition and oecd countries is estimated average size varies from 12 percent of gdp for oecd countries to 23 percent for transition countries and 39 percent for developing countries increasing taxation and social security contributions combined with rising state regulations are driving forces for the increase of the shadow economy especially in oecd countries according to some findings corruption has a positive impact on the size of the shadow economy and a growing shadow economy has a negative effect on official gdp growth

the economics of degrowth economic degrowth is ecologically desirable and possibly inevitable but under what conditions can it become socially sustainable how can we have full employment and economic stability without growth what will happen to public spending and to public debt how would production be organised in a degrowing economy and under what plausible socio political conditions could such grand changes happen standard economic theories and models ignore these questions for them economic growth is an axiomatic necessity this article reviews recent contributions in the economics of degrowth and identifies research avenues for ecological economists

estimating statistical properties of political economic decisions revelation of criteria implicit in setting policy is addressed in a political economic framework that includes identification and estimation of unknown parameters in the presence of multiple sources of uncertainty policy formation is viewed as an optimization process under which the government maximizes a criterion function subject to market constraints a method for estimating political criterion function weights and their associated standard errors over multiple time periods is presented the approach is illustrated with an empirical example from japanese rice and wheat trade policy

the demand for hours of labor direct evidence from california california s longstanding requirement that most women receive time and a half pay for workhours beyond eight in one day was extended to men in 1980 analyzing current population survey data from 1973 1985 and 1991 we find that this overtime penalty substantially reduced the amount of daily overtime worked by california men relative to men in other states comparisons that use women to control for california specific shocks show even stronger effects the estimates imply a price elasticity of demand for overtime hours of at least 20 5

using alsace moselle local laws to build a difference in differences estimation strategy of the employment effects of the 35 hour workweek regulation in france france s 1998 implementation of the 35 hour workweek has been one of the greatest regulatory shocks on labor markets few studies evaluate the impact of this regulation because of a lack of identification strategies for historical reasons due to the way alsace moselle was returned to france in 1918 the implementation of france s 35 hour workweek was less stringent in that region than in the rest of the country which is confirmed by double and triple differences yet it shows no significant difference in employment with the rest of france which casts doubt on the effectiveness of this regulation

the impact of protective measures for female workers policies designed to protect female workers have controversial effects on labor market outcomes both in theory and in practice the analysis uses repeated cross sections of household survey data for taiwan to estimate the impact of working hours restrictions and maternity benefits differential coverage across industrial sectors and demographic groups provides a unique opportunity to identify the impact of both policies in a single natural experiment framework while working hours restrictions have a negative impact on women s actual hours worked and employment maternity benefits increase these labor inputs implying that women value the opportunity to return to jobs they might otherwise have to leave

in search of rational government what political preference function studies measure and assume political preference function ppf studies assume that policy making can be described by a mathematical problem in which a rational government maximizes a function of interest groups welfares the purpose of my paper is to explain in depth ramifications of ppf study assumptions and methodology ppf studies that attempt to measure interest group political power do so by measuring marginal rates of transformation along a pareto frontier one can estimate political power with a ppf only if observed policies are pareto efficient which may depend on the assumed number of interest groups and policy instruments marginal rates of transformation need not reveal anything meaningful about interest group political power and may incorrectly measure the direction of transfers

political criterion functions and the analysis of wealth transfers agricultural economics devotes much attention to analyzing market interventions and their distributional implications recent research emphasis has shifted from the analysis of policy effects toward explaining the underlying causes of farm policy gardner 1983 one popular research tool in analyzing the latter issue is the metaphor of aggregate rationality policies are the outcome of a single optimization problem that balances the welfare of conflicting pressure groups the criterion function that rationalizes policies is often called a political preference function e g rausser and freebairn in the present paper we investigate two assumptions underlying agricultural economic models of the political economy of wealth transfers that the political process is indeed characterized by aggregate rationality as questioned by bates 1989 and that governments objectives are limited to fiscal concerns and political rewards from pressure groups many studies posit that individual rationality in rent seeking leads to a form of aggregate rationality in policy outcome gardner 1983 rausser and freebairn other studies describe policy formation as a bargaining game leading to the maximization by a single policy maker of a criterion function of groups welfare measures zusman rent seeking activities by interest groups determine the weights given individual surplus measures in the criterion function roe and graham tomasi rausser and de gorter a surplus possibility or transformation set constrains this maximization of a weighted sum of surpluses one infers the relative weights on group s welfare from the marginal rates of transformation of one surplus measure into another why might this model of aggregate rationality make sense the political process often leads to enforceable contracts e g the u s farm bill which are outcomes of a recurring and predictable process e g five year farm bill cycle enforcement mechanisms and the repeated nature of the political economic process make plausible the use of cooperative game theoretic arguments i e the assumption of a pareto efficient political equilibrium shubik studies typically treat the government as a monolithic actor fafchamps sadoulet and de janvry lopez oehmke and yao and some studies additionally posit cooperation of all players in the political economic game love rausser and burton the aggregation of individual rational behaviors of rent seekers and government agencies may not lead to a cooperative game equilibrium bates 1990 north 1991 the folk theorem admits many solutions to a bargaining game and does not necessarily lead to pareto optimality fudenberg and maskin by contrast the original rent seeking literature as opposed to the cooperative efficient view of government choice posits government inefficiency as a cornerstone tullock the existence of deadweight losses associated with transfers is prima facie evidence of inefficiency in addition enforcement mechanisms are often incomplete and costly north 1990 and governments may have a vested interest in incompletely enforced property rights which exacerbate rent seeking and inefficient outcomes this problem of aggregate rationality we term the integrability problem of policy choice that is can one recover a well behaved criterion function from a set of equations describing observed policy outcomes the second assumption regarding government behavior has a strong and weak form the strong assumption excludes government as a fullfledged player in the political economic game algebraically speaking the government s objohn beghin and william foster are assistant professors department of agricultural and resource economics north carolina state university the authors thank d s bullock for his comments d burton l karp a love and g rausser for helpful discussions

estimating compensating wage differentials using voluntary job changes evidence from germany the author develops a model predicting that in a labor market that attaches a wage premium to jobs with a disamenity a compensating wage differential the premium s upper bound will be defined by the average wage change of voluntary job movers whose consumption of the disamenity rises as a result of their move its lower bound by the wage change of those whose consumption of the disamenity falls these predictions will not hold if as predicted by a segmented labor market model the labor market attaches a wage penalty to workplace disamenities using longitudinal data on job characteristics and wages in germany in 1984 2001 the author estimates the market returns to four workplace disamenities heavy workload job insecurity poor hours regulation and a mismatch between skills possessed and skills required the results broadly support the existence of compensating differentials in the german labor market

farmer behavior under risk of failure cudari c department of agricultural and resource economi division of agriculture and natural resources l university of california ut workingpaperno 488 j re v farmer behavior under risk of failure by william e foster and gordon c hausser giannini foundation of agricultural economics uerary cr california agricultural experiment station giannini foundation of agricultural economics october 1990

aggregate impacts of a gift of time lee jungmin kawaguchi daiji hamermesh daniel s december 2011 aggregate impacts of a gift of time reports cambridgenational bureau of economic research nber working paper series 17649 33

the political economy of public research investment and commodity policies in agriculture an empirical study the paper tests a political economy theory of simultaneous government decision making on income redistribution through commodity policies and on public research investment in agriculture we use data from 37 countries on agricultural protection and public agricultural research expenditures pari the empirical results are consistent with the political economy hypotheses the analysis suggest that structural changes in the economy have important effects on the political incentives for governments not only to subsidize or tax farmers but also to invest in public agricultural research furthermore the analysis supports the hypotheses that the impact of such structural changes on government decision making on pari is non linear and conditional on other factors regarding the impact of political institutions the results suggest that more democracy neither leads to more distortionary transfers agricultural protection nor to lower investment in public goods pari

compensation and political feasibility facilitating welfare improving coalitions there is a broad consensus among economists policymakers and informed citizens that free market economies do not preclude many inefficiencies in resource allocation there are many circumstances where policy interventions have the potential to achieve a pareto improvement in the sense of making some people better off without making others worse off the challenge to any particular market oriented society is to design those mechanisms organizations and institutions that identify the limitations of free markets and result in those reforms that seek pareto improved outcomes

are government transfers efficient an alternative test of the efficient redistribution hypothesis the efficient redistribution hypothesis says that no available government policies are pareto superior to observed government policies efficient redistribution from government policy is a central tenet of much recent theoretical and applied political economy literature in this paper limitations of previous attempts to test the efficient redistribution hypothesis are discussed and an alternative test of the efficient redistribution hypothesis that uses vector optimization theory and bootstrap methodology is presented

crop insurance adjusted panel data envelopment analysis efficiency measures the swamy arora panel data envelopment analysis model is presented to estimate crop insurance adjusted eciency based on an alternative two way

a policy preference function for government intervention in the u s wheat market this paper estimates a policy preference function that explains the government s choices of target prices government held wheat stocks and public wheat research funding the policy preference function depends on producers surplus consumers surplus and budget expenditures an important innovation in this paper is the inclusion of interactions between public research expenditures and other public policy variables results indicate that the government places a premium of 25 to 45 on the welfare of wheat producers of relative to budget expenditures while wheat consumers welfare is discounted as much as 50 relative to budget expenditures the purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation of government commodity programs stock accumulations and research expenditures in the u s wheat sector the explanation is based on a policy preference function ppf that depends on producers surplus consumers surplus and budget expenditures it is assumed that target prices reductions in or additions to government stocks and public research expenditures are chosen to maximize the policy preference function the central contribution of the paper is the estimation of a function that is consistent with the observed government interventions in the u s wheat market that is the paper explains the observed target prices government sales and public research expenditures as rational behavior by a government which seeks to maximize the estimated policy preference function the approach in this paper is based on the political interest group theories of peltzman and becker applications of these ideas to agriculture include rausser and freebairn s description of the beef industry gardner s 1985 analysis

efficient redistribution through commodity markets efficiency in redistribution is measured in terms of deadweight loss generated per dollar of economic surplus transferred between consumers and producers of a commodity by means of market intervention the implications of supply and demand elasticities for efficiency in redistribution are examined with special attention to the comparison of production control and deficiency payment programs the results may be used to aid in the evaluation of commodity programs and as a basis for consideration of the hypothesis that observed policies are efficient given the political power of interest groups

social welfare of alternative controlled price policies recent developments in social welfare analysis provide insights into the selection of price policies in the presen t paper a ces social welfare function and a weighted average of utilitarian and leximin rules are used to identify optimal producer prices in an economy where government is the price setter and agents are risk averse the analysis distinguishes between the interests of commercial producers peasant producers consumers and taxpayers a n application to zimbabwe indicates that a maize producer price in the low medium to medium portion of the historical range would be social ly optimal if egalitarian preferences are moderate this outcome is somewhat insensitive to group weighting schemes and to interpersonal utility correspondences copyright 1993 by mit press

how working time reduction affects jobs and wages in 1996 by law the maximum standard workweek in portugal was reduced from 44 h to 40 h we find that for workers involved this change reduced the job separation rate and increased hourly wages keeping monthly earnings approximately constant the working hours reduction also affected workers working less than 40 h per week they were more likely to lose their job

welfare costs of sticky wages when effort can respond abstract we examine the impact of wage stickiness when employment has an effort as well as hours dimension despite wages being predetermined the labor market clears through the effort margin consequently welfare costs of wage stickiness are potentially much much smaller

public policy and constitutional prescription in public policy analysis much confusion exists about the roles of explanation and prescription to offer a new perspective a paradigm is developed that gives both theoretical and empirical meaning to the constitutional determination of political preference functions or public sector governance structures current policies are viewed as a rational outcome of a political economic process three relevant spaces are specified result policy instrument and constitutional for the policy instrument space the paradigm provides a framework for generating testable propositions on government behavior while for the constitutional space the framework is prescriptive the collective choice rules of the constitutional space structure the tradeoff between public and special interests

modelling a multi objective allocation problem in a government sponsored entrepreneur development programme abstract typically the vendor allocation problem for a commercial company requires the buyer to allocate business between the selected vendor suppliers to meet its needs at minimum cost taking account of its quality and delivery performance requirements however in a government sponsored entrepreneur development programme the allocation of business cannot only be made dependent on criteria that reflect the current ability of the vendor nor solely on criteria fulfilling the current needs of the buyer it must also consider how it may aid the vendors to improve their business performance in the future and also on how it affects the development of that indigenous industry sector furthermore conditions change from one year to the next so the problem is dynamic over time this paper describes how a combination of goal programming model gp with pre emptive priority ranking of goal constraints with a linear programming model facilitates allocation of businesses to entrepreneurs in particular the subject used in this paper is a malaysia government sponsored entrepreneur development programme for furniture maker which administered by a commercial company an innovative aspect of the work is the use of gp as a modelling rather than a solution technique it is used to convert the conflicting multi objectives that were expressed only in general policy terms to operational terms on which business could be allocated the paper shows how it can be used to try to understand and then formally model how managers use their judgement and experience in a complex multi criteria situation the paper goes on to show that using the formal model leads to more consistency in decision making and an improvement in the achievement of the objectives this is important as several different managers are having to make independent decisions on subsets of the vendors

employment and distributional effects of restricting working time we study the employment and distributional effects of regulating reducing working time in a general equilibrium model with search matching frictions job creation entails fixed costs but existing jobs are subject to diminishing returns we characterize the equilibrium in the de regulated economy where firms and individual workers freely negotiate wages and hours then we consider the effects of a legislation restricting the maximum working time while we let wages respond endogenously employment effects are sensitive to the representation of preferences in our benchmark small reductions in working time starting from the laissez faire equilibrium solution always result in a small increase in the equilibrium employment while larger reductions reduce employment the regulation benefits workers both unemployed and employed even if wages decrease and even in cases where employment falls but reduces profits and output

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

it s a long way from norms to normality the 35 hour week in france the present overview on existing research addresses the double implication of working time standards as legal or contractual norms on the one hand and socially established normality on the oth

contesting time international comparisons of employee control of working time the authors hypothesize that three broad factors affect the degree of workers control over the timing and the total hours of their work the institutional and regulatory environment within the country labor market conditions and management and labor union strategies drawing from their interviews in 2000 with managers public sector policy makers and administrators and union leaders as well as from previous literature they illustrate how these factors actually affected working time and employee control over working time in the united states australia japan germany italy the netherlands and sweden their comparative analysis shows that in some countries employers and labor unions negotiated contracts that increased employee control over working time and provided employers with greater flexibility in others employee control over working time remained unevenly distributed across the occupational spectrum

the nature and causes of unemployment in the federal republic of germany since the seventies an empirical investigation the leading economic problem of our time is the high and persistent level of unemployment as of early 1985 there are no signs that the severity of unemployment will weaken within the near future this paper discusses first some basic developments of labour supply and labour demand in the federal republic of germany frg the composition of the labour supply and the structure of the labour demand for persons and hours worked as well as the dynamics of the unemployment pool the next section reviews very briefly some empirical findings explaining the rise in the nairu where we make the distinction between the no shock and the actual nairu following suggestions put by the organizers of the conference we then elaborate on the employment function in the empirically oriented literature most employment functions use labour services i e total hours worked as the dependent variable thus assuming homogeneity of labour demand with respect to jobs and working hours in the german political arena however the distinction between persons employed and hours worked is particularly important first it figures in the employment aims of labour unions who request reductions in weekly working hours in order to induce higher manning second the distinction arises in the context of overtime work for it has been suggested that the reduction in overtime to standard working hours could create more than 1 million new jobs in germany we present some estimated labour demand functions which take into account these two dimensions of labour demand jobs and hours and which are used to elaborate on the direction and magnitude of the employment effects of reductions in wage costs and increases in overtime premia

hours of work and the fair labor standards act a study of retail and wholesale trade 1938 1950 when the fair labor standards act was first implemented a 5 reduction in the length of the standard workweek reduced by at least 18 the proportion of men and women working more than 40 hours per week this analysis based on monthly time series data from 1935 41 bls surveys and individual level data from the 1940 and 1950 censuses shows that the act s impact was larger in the south where the proportion of men and women working over 40 hours fell by 23 and 43 respectively than in the north because of much lower pre act wages in the south than in the north the minimum wage provisions of the act were much more binding in the south southern employers were less able than northern employers to adjust straight time wages in response to the act s overtime provisions

testing the effectiveness of the french work sharing reform a forecasting approach the macroeconomic impact of the french work sharing reform of 2000 a reduction of standard working hours in combination with wage subsidies is analysed using a vector error correction model vecm for several labour market variables as well as inflation and output out of sample forecasts for 2000 2001 are produced a comparison of these forecasts which serve as a benchmark simulation without structural shifts to the realized values with shifts suggests significant beneficial employment effects of the policy mix other shifts were absent and thus cannot explain the outcome output productivity hourly labour costs and inflation are only transitorily affected or not at all

the politics of underinvestment in agricultural research this paper develops a political economy framework that determines the factors causing underinvestment in public research expenditures governments are unable to fully compensate for unequal income distribution effects of research because of either their inability to make credible commitments or ofdeadweight costs associated with compensation

working time regulation in france from 1996 to 2012 france which is often seen as an unusual country with a rigid 35 hour working week has experienced massive changes in its regulation of working time in recent decades including a progressive removal of 35 hour working week laws these changes have affected and continue to affect workplace organisation working conditions job creation productivity and wages the 35 hour working week policy represents a reduction in working time as well as a complex package that restructured french labour law and that opened up a great deal of space for social bargaining this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of working time regulation and its political roots it discusses the studies evaluating the 35 hour working week and examines some of the basic consequences of reversing this policy since 2002 it also highlights unexplored lines of research on this topic

protectionism versus risk in screening for invasive species abstract i examine the extent to which enforcement of a biosecurity import restriction us border inspections for foreign pests and diseases is used as a protectionist trade barrier the parameters of a structural model of border inspection are estimated using a detailed dataset documenting the outcome of us agricultural border inspections i find that inspections are conducted in a manner that places an implied welfare weight on domestic producers relative to consumers ranging from 1 to 1 63 i also find evidence that the inspection agency takes terms of trade into account when inspecting agricultural imports these results suggest that border inspections are used as a protectionist non tariff barrier

effects of reduction in working hours on a model with job creation and job destruction this article shows how with certain modifications to a standard real business cycle rbc model and with certain qualified responses in the short and long term a policy of reduction in the number of working hours can have positive effects on activity and employment the modifications required to bring about these results include specification of the working day existence of the creation and destruction of employment and differentiation between inactivity and unemployment results reveal that any measures taken to reduce the number of working hours must take into consideration the productivity levels of working hours to thus ensure that the consequences of such a policy are positive not only for employment but also in all other macroeconomic variables

work sharing during the great depression did the president s reemployment agreement promote reemployment the president s reemployment agreement pra of 1933 directed firms to reduce workweeks during the great depression so existing jobs could be spread into additional employment opportunities similar work sharing policies have recently been implemented across europe in hopes of reducing unemployment i find that ceteris paribus the work sharing aspects of the pra created nearly 2 5 million new employment opportunities in around four months however the programme also required firms to raise hourly wage rates offsetting close to half of these gains furthermore most of the remaining employment gains were wiped out after cartel oriented industry specific codes of fair competition supplanted the pra

public policies pressure groups and dead weight costs abstract this paper presents a model of competition among special interest groups for political influence each active group exerts pressure to affect its taxes and subsidies where activities of different groups are related by the equality between total tax collections and total tax subsidies the dead weight costs and benefits of taxes and subsidies play a major role in our model an increase in the dead weight cost of taxation encourages pressure by taxpayers while an increase in the dead weight costs of subsidies discourages pressure by recipients various applications of the analysis are discussed