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

the transition to the knowledge economy labor market institutions and income inequality in advanced democracies the transition from fordism to the knowledge economy in the world s advanced democracies was underpinned by the revolution in information and communications technology ict the introduction and rapid diffusion of ict pushed up wages for college educated workers with complementary skills and allowed top managers and ceos to reap greater rewards for their own talents despite these common pressures income inequality did not rise to the same extent everywhere income in the anglo saxon countries remains particularly unequally distributed to shed new light on this puzzle the authors carry out a panel data analysis of eighteen oecd countries between 1970 and 2007 their analysis stands apart from the existing empirical literature by taking a comparative perspective the article examines the extent to which the relationship between the knowledge economy and income inequality is influenced by national labor market institutions the authors find that the expansion of knowledge employment is positively associated with both the 90 10 wage ratio and the income share of the top 1 percent but that these effects are mitigated by the presence of strong labor market institutions such as coordinated wage bargaining strict employment protection legislation high union density and high collective bargaining coverage the authors provide robust evidence against the argument that industrial relations systems are no longer important safeguards of wage solidarity in the knowledge economy

paradoxes of social policy welfare transfers relative poverty and redistribution preferences korpi and palme s 1998 classic the paradox of redistribution and strategies of equality claims that universal social policy better reduces poverty than social policies targeted at the poor this article revisits korpi and palme s classic and in the process explores and informs a set of enduring questions about social policy politics and social equality specifically we investigate the relationships between three dimensions of welfare transfers transfer share the average share of household income from welfare transfers low income targeting and universalism and poverty and preferences for redistribution we analyze rich democracies like korpi and palme but we also generalize to a broader sample of developed and developing countries consistent with korpi and palme we show 1 poverty is negatively associated with transfer share and universalism 2 redistribution preferences are negatively associated with low income targeting and 3 universalism is positively associated with transfer share

the rise of the super rich power resources taxes financial markets and the dynamics of the top 1 percent 1949 to 2008 the income share of the super rich in the united states has grown rapidly since the early 1980s after a period of postwar stability what factors drove this change in this study we investigate the institutional policy and economic shifts that may explain rising income concentration we use single equation error correction models to estimate the long and short run effects of politics policy and economic factors on pretax top income shares between 1949 and 2008 we find that the rise of the super rich is the result of rightward shifts in congress the decline of labor unions lower tax rates on high incomes increased trade openness and asset bubbles in stock and real estate markets

firm size and the nature of innovation within industries the case of process and product r d the effect of firm size on the allocation of r d effort between process and product innovation is examined it is hypothesized that relative to product innovations process innovations are less saleable in disembodied form and spawn less growth this implies that the returns to process r d will depend more on the firm s output at the time it conducts its r d than the returns to product r d incorporating this distinction in a simple model the authors derive and test predictions about how the fraction of r d devoted to process innovation varies with firm size within industries

collective labor rights and income inequality this article examines the relationship between income inequality and collective labor rights conceptualized as workers legal and practical ability to engage in collective activity although worker organization is central to explaining income inequality in industrialized democracies worldwide comparative studies have neglected the role of class based actors i argue that the repression of labor rights reduces the capacity of worker organizations to effectively challenge income inequality through market and political processes in capitalist societies labor rights however are unlikely to have uniform effects across regions this study uses unbalanced panel data for 100 developed and less developed countries from 1985 through 2002 random and fixed effects models find that strong labor rights are tightly linked to lower inequality across a large range of countries including in the global south interactions between regions and labor rights suggest that the broader context in which class based actors a

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

union effects on nonunion wages evidence from panel data on industries and cities the authors test for threat and crowding effects of unions on non union wages at the industry and city levels using panel data on the percent organized and nonunion industry and city wage differentials constructed from current population surveys over the period 1973 89 at the industry level increases in the percent organized were associated with decreases in the nonunion industry wage differential suggesting that crowding effects were the predominant union effect on nonunion industry wage differentials in contrast at the city level increases in the percent organized were associated with increases in the nonunion city wage differential suggesting that threat effects predominated the authors also find evidence of negative cross occupation union effects on nonunion industry wage differentials supporting their hypothesis that the industry level results were partly driven by complementarity between union and nonunion labor

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

did lower unionization in the united states result in more flexible industries do unions really impede manufacturers output flexibility if so in what ways the authors propose a methodology for quantifying george stigler s concept of output flexibility and for decomposing the effects of unionization on average cost differences between union and non union plants using a recently compiled data set on u s three digit manufacturing industries from 1973 to 1996 they adapt this methodology to simulate the effects of unionization on flexibility and average costs for average size plants simulation results indicate that higher unionization was associated with higher average costs and lower flexibility than low unionization higher average costs appear to have been primarily due to higher fixed costs such as higher benefits

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

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

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

class forces political institutions and state intervention subnational economic development policy in the united states 1971 1990 the united states has experienced a major devolution of social and economic policy responsibilities to the states subnational industrial policies to create jobs and qualitative economic growth are key to this devolution the authors examine the development of these policies in terms of 1 the articulation of class interests 2 state level political institutions 3 prior political legacies 4 underlying production regimes and 5 interactions of strong political institutions and class mobilization an annual pooled cross sectional time series analysis of three state level economic development policies entrepreneurial industrial recruitment and labor market regulation shows that in addition to business power and strong state capacities the political legacies of 1930s welfare policy innovations and mezocorporatist bargaining potential condition the effects of business power

on the estimation of union threat effects some researchers view unions primarily as functioning to increase earnings inequality among the working class while others see them as threatening employers so that they raise wages for unorganized workers and minimize working class inequality threat effects are defined as the tendency for nonunionized employers to respond to the threat of unionization by increasing the earnings and benefits of their workers this paper probes a contextual method for estimating the effects of unionization on the earnings of unorganized workers this method controls for structural characteristics that affect workers earnings and incorporates information about the organizational strength and vitality of specific unions using data from seven manufacturing industries in indianapolis the results suggest that 1 unionized workers earnings positively affect the earnings of unorganized workers in unionized plants 2 unionized workers earnings negatively affect nonunionized workers earnings in nonunionized plants and 3 when plant size is controlled unionized workers earnings have no significant effect on the earnings of nonunionized workers in nonunionized plants these results highlight the complexity and difficulty of estimating the effects of union threat and their importance for understanding earnings inequality in the workplace

job relocation and the racial gap in unemployment in detroit and chicago 1980 to 1990 the spatial mismatch hypothesis argues that residential segregation and job decentralization combine to adversely affect the employment opportunities of minorities while employment is increasingly located outside of central cities residential segregation prevents minorities from moving closer to suburban jobs although this hypothesis has intuitive appeal there is little consensus regarding its empirical validity this study 1 constructs detailed geographic measures of changes in employment opportunities 2 estimates a fixed effects model of changes in the unemployment rate over time and 3 accounts for spatial correlation in the error term neighborhood level employment data from 1980 and 1990 are used to measure changes in the distance to jobs from census tracts in the detroit and chicago metropolitan areas in both cities the decentralization of employment and the loss of manufacturing jobs resulted in substantial changes in the spatial distribution of employment the empirical results indicate that a decline in the spatial proximity to employment is associated with an increase in the unemployment rate for blacks

anti competitive conduct in house r d and growth abstract incumbent firms have two basic possibilities to improve their competitive position in the product market investment in r d and the creation of entry barriers to the disadvantage of potential rivals e g through lobbying activities campaign contributions bribes or the adoption of incompatible technologies this paper proposes a simple oligopoly model which raises the possibility that such anti competitive conduct and r d investment are complementary activities for incumbents consequently an institutional framework or technological possibilities which encourage anti competitive conduct although impeding entry of potential rivals and accentuating standard oligopoly distortions may foster r d based growth and welfare however this outcome is less likely if entrants exert technological spillover effects e g through foreign direct investment stronger protection of intellectual property rights although triggering anti competitive conduct and thereby impeding market entry as well is more likely to foster economic growth

does membership payoff for covered workers a distributional analysis of the free rider problem this paper examines the union membership wage premium among private sector employees covered by collective bargaining agreements using current population survey data for 2000 2003 the author not only estimates the conditional mean wage premium the metric on which most previous research has focused but also employs recently developed instrumental quantile regression techniques to estimate the wage effect of membership across the wage distribution members enjoyed on average a wage premium of 9 over comparable covered nonmembers further analyses find no evidence that this mean premium is explained either by unobserved differences or by measurement error the author also finds that a narrow focus on the mean impact partially masks heterogeneity in the impact across the distribution notably membership wage effects were considerably more pronounced for low wage earners than for high wage earners

labor market institutions and wage inequality the authors investigate how labor market institutions such as unemployment insurance unions firing regulations and minimum wages have affected the evolution of wage inequality among male workers results of estimations using data on institutions in eleven oecd countries indicate that changes in labor market institutions can account for much of the change in wage inequality between 1973 and 1998 factors found to have been negatively associated with male wage inequality are union density the strictness of employment protection law unemployment benefit duration unemployment benefit generosity and the size of the minimum wage over the 26 year period institutional changes were associated with a 23 reduction in male wage inequality in france where minimum wages increased and employment protection became stricter but with an increase of up to 11 in the united states and united kingdom where unions became less powerful and in the united states minimum wages fell

vested interests in a positive theory of stagnation and growth we study a positive theory of stagnation and growth aimed at understanding the large variations in growth outcomes across actual economies the theory points to the fundamental role played by vested interests in determining policies which are key to the growth process some agents seek to prevent the adoption of new technologies we develop a model of technology adoption and show how technological innovation may sow the seeds of its own destruction in particular we find that the equilibrium is characterized by a long cycle of stagnation and growth over this cycle incumbents are phased out of the economy will new innovation occur in formalizing our theory we make a methodological contribution by characterizing dynamic voting equilibria when voters must forecast the effects of different current policies on future prices and policy outcomes

life course risks mobility regimes and mobility consequences a comparison of sweden germany and the united states1 the analysis of intergenerational mobility has primarily used measures of social position that are functions of an individual s occupation occupation based models of social mobility however have limitations that arguably have grown in recent decades meta analysis of available evidence for sweden western germany and the united states concerning occupational mobility household income mobility job displacement union dissolution and poverty dynamics shows the limitations of the individual level occupation based career trajectory approach to life course mobility this article develops an alternative formulation at the household level which focuses on cross national variation in the extent to which societal institutions influence the rate of events with the potential to change a household s life conditions via the manipulation of incentives for mobility generating events and the extent to which they mitigate the consequences of these events through social insurance the combination of these institut

determinants of relative poverty in advanced capitalist democracies using relative poverty measures based on micro level data from the luxembourg income study in conjunction with pooled time series data for 14 advanced capitalist democracies between 1970 and 1997 the authors analyze separately the rate of pretax transfer poverty and the reduction in poverty achieved by systems of taxes and transfers socioeconomic factors including de industrialization and unemployment largely explain pre tax transfer poverty rates of the working age population in these advanced capitalist democracies the extent of redistribution measured as poverty reduction via taxes and transfers is explained directly by welfare state generosity and constitutional structure number of veto points and the strength of the political left both in unions and in government

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

remittances and working poverty abstractthis article shows that the level and the predictability of remittances reduce working poverty in receiving economies through their effects on labour market dynamics it takes advantage of the new cross country dataset ilo kilm 7th edition containing information on the share of individuals working for less than us 2 per day to identify the main impacts the article proposes a novel approach to deal with the endogeneity of remittances and migration in addition the results are robust to the possible error in measuring working poverty to the potential attrition bias and to the presence of various control variables