inter industry wage differentials evidence from sweden and a comparison with the united states inter industry wage differentials evidence from sweden and a comparison with the united states

the public private wage differential in a poor urban economy the occupational structure of wages is generally more compressed in high than in low income countries the role of non market forces in determining the structure of wages is of interest for reasons of allocative efficiency as well as for distributional concerns this paper considers how wage differentials may be generated between the public and private sectors of a developing economy data from a 1971 household survey of the tanzanian urban wage labor force are used to determine the pattern of wage differences across employer groups after standardizing by worker characteristics public sector employees are found to have earned a substantial wage premium over workers employed in the private sector the non market character of these differentials is examined in light of a number of hypotheses on public sector wage determination

an empirical analysis of wage dispersion and efficiency wages the main purpose of this study is to examine inter industry wage differentials in sweden after controlling for individual and job characteristics the results indicate that these differentials are substantial the ranking of the differentials was stable over time while the dispersion of wage premiums fell by 50 per cent during the period 1968 81 a period of strong efforts to reduce wage dispersion in sweden the relation between industry wage premiums and a number of industry characteristics is also examined along with new evidence which is in line with the shirking model hypothesis on the relation between wages and worker control

training and employee mobility in the british private and public sectors the realization of the value of training for employees can take time as the training contributes dynamically to an extended development process this research examines the empirical returns to training in three post training situations when the employee remains in the same job and with the same employer when the employee transfers to a different job but remains with the same employer internal mobility and when the employee moves to a different employer external mobility panel data and fixed effects fe methodology are used to quantify the joint effects of in job training and mobility while minimizing the potentially biasing effect of unobserved ability in a period when public sector employment in britain was contracting sharply the short term returns to training are nonetheless greater in the public sector while the medium term returns for both public sector and private sector employees depend on remaining within sector the general specific training mix institutional influences adverse selection and the concept of transferable training all contribute to interpretation

public sector wages and bureaucratic quality evidence from latin america the purpose of this paper is to present evidence on public private wage differential for a sample of latin american countries and to discuss the relationship between public private wage differentials and bureaucratic quality in the region the paper starts by estimating public private wage differentials for a sample of 17 latin american countries covering 88 percent of the population of the region next the paper looks at the relationship between bureaucratic quality and public private wage differentials and finds that while there is no correlation between average public sector wages and bureaucratic quality there is a positive correlation between bureaucratic quality and the degree

why farmers quit a county level analysis we identify the effects of alternative explanatory variables on the propensity of u s farmers to cease farming with a particular emphasis on understanding the roles of off farm employment and federal farm program payments conventional ordinary least squares analysis using all counties suggests that off farm employment has no statistical effect on the net number of farmers quitting between 1987 and 1997 ceteris paribus a more refined analysis which separates counties losing farmers from those that gained farmers reveals subtle and less clear cut effects of off farm employment and federal program payments on farm exits copyright 2001 oxford university press

off farm work decisions of husbands and wives joint decision making theoretical and econometric models are developed to examine joint wage labor participation and hours decisions of a husband and wife in farm households the econometric model is multiple equation and recursive the specification of the off farm labor supply equation of the husband wife depends on whether his her wife husband does or does not work off the farm and this structure is endogenous the model is fitted to data for iowa farm households the main conclusion is that the off farm labor supply equation of a married individual differs significantly depending on whether his or her spouse also works for a wage copyright 1989 by mit press

a switching regression model for wage determinants in the public and private sectors of a developing country governments in less developed countries face severe budgetary constraints given that public sector employment is a large part of modern sector employment the government wage bill h as come under increased scrutiny the central question is how do gove rnment wages compare with those in the private sector in this paper the authors develop and estimate a model to answer this question an important aspect of this model is the endogenous treatment of sector choice the estimation results full information maximum likelihood sound a strong warning against the use of ordinary least squares est imates that are based on sector specific samples data are from the i vory coast copyright 1988 by mit press

the relative pay of public and private sector employees 1970 1984 this paper provides a more accurate picture of the changes that have taken place in the r elative pay of public and private sector employees than has hitherto been revealed changes in effective hourly rates of pay which abstra ct from changes in both the age and occupation composition of the wor kforce are used as the basis against which movements in the public p rivate sector pay differential are assessed copyright 1987 by oxford university press

the composition of rural employment growth in the new economy this article examines changes in the patterns of occupational employment in urban and rural labor markets in seven southern states between 1970 and 1990 a method is developed for assessing whether occupational employment patterns are becoming more differentiated over time the analysis identifies a process of increasing similarity across all occupational groups between 1970 and 1980 in contrast the 1980 90 period is characterized by increasing rural specialization in operator low skill occupations amid increasing similarity in four of nine inclusive occupational categories these results provide partial support for conjectures regarding greater differentiation of tasks performed in rural and urban labor markets

impact of counter urbanization on size population mix and welfare of an agricultural region the article explains the phenomenon of counter urbanization which has become prominent in most developed countries we develop a model that provides an economic rationalization for the observed willingness of incumbent farmers of a rural region to absorb nonfarmer urban migrants the analytical findings show that counter urbanization increases the region s welfare maximizing population decreases the optimal number of incumbent farmers and increases the per capita welfare the empirical results which are based on data from rural israel demonstrate that while the optimal population of farmers decreases slightly the total optimal population of the region more than triples and farmers per capita welfare almost doubles

compensating differentials and self selection an application to lawyers this paper models individual choice between two types of jobs as dependent on the difference in potential earnings and on preferences for nonpecuniary the model leads to simultaneous estimation of earnings and job choice functions in a manner that takes account of self selection of individuals into the sector of highest utility an application to lawyers choosing between private and public interest law casts doubt on the notion that public interest lawyers are accepting substantially lower earnings by virtue of their choice an impression derived from estimation of earnings functions without accounting for self selection the estimation technique also takes proper account of the choice based nature of the sample which appears to be important

assessing the stability of the inter industry wage structure in the face of radical economic reforms we assess the stability of the wage structure in an economy experiencing substantial economic changes we find that the structure of inter industry wage differentials remained remarkably stable in brazil in the face of major shocks

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

international competition and exchange rate shocks a cross country industry analysis of stock returns this article systematically examines the importance of exchange rate movements and industry competition for stock returns common shocks to industries across countries are more important than competitive shocks due to changes in exchange rates weekly exchange rate shocks explain almost nothing of the relative performance of industries using returns measured over longer horizons the importance of exchange rate shocks increases slightly and the importance of industry common shocks increases more substantially both industry and exchange rate shocks are more important for industries that produce internationally traded goods but the importance of these shocks is economically small for these industries as well economists journalists and politicians around the world argue that some of the industries in their country compete vigorously with the same industries in other countries and that exchange rate shocks affect their competitiveness in the united states it is routinely stated that some u s industries compete with japanese industries and that a depreciation of the yen is bad for these u s industries and good for the rival japanese industries if the yen falls trade tensions could intensify between the u s and japan as autos and machinery from japan gain a competitive edge 1 further the exchange rate literature shows that exchange rate shocks lead to persistent deviations from purchasing power parity 2 froot and klemperer 1989 and knetter 1989 1993 among others demonstrate that deviations from purchasing power parity lead to sharp changes in price markups and profit margins for exporters

efficiency wages and industry wage differentials a comparison across methods of pay efficiency wage considerations should be less important for piece rate pay than for time wages therefore if industry wage differentials reflect efficiency wage factors then these pay differences should be less sizable and have less explanatory power for piecework than for timework we test this proposition using wage data for male production workers employed in the swedish metalworking industries in 1985 the data are partitioned into two groups of workers in our preferred sub sample of workers who received pay under both piece rates and time wages our results are uniformly consistent with efficiency wage implications for industry wage differentials for the subsample of workers who received pay under either piece rates or time wages industry wage differentials are of equal importance under either pay scheme these latter results however may also be influenced by unaccounted for sorting of workers and employers across methods of pay overall our examination of industry wage differentials across m

union nonunion wage differentials in the public administration educational and private sectors 1970 1983 over the past thirty years union membership and bargaining activity in the united states has been declining in the private sector and rising in the public sector the authors use two large micro databases to estimate changes in the union wage premium among public administration education and private sector workers for the decade of the 1970s and early 1980s their empirical analysis indicates that the union relative wage effects continue to be lower in the public sector than in the private sector despite the relative gains in public sector union membership and bargaining activities copyright 1987 by mit press

the swedish third way an assessment of the performance and validity of the rehn meidner model the swedish third way an assessment of the performance and validity of the rehn meidner model

does schooling cause growth a number of economists find that growth and schooling are highly correlated across countries a model is examined in which the ability to build on the human capital of one s elders plays an important role in linking growth to schooling the model is calibrated to quantify the strength of the effect of schooling on growth by using evidence from the labor literature on mincerian returns to education the upshot is that the impact of schooling on growth explains less than one third of the empirical cross country relationship the ability of reverse causality to explain this empirical relationship is also investigated

prices technology and farm size in this paper we construct and empirically test a theory of the agricultural firm which explains the long term growth in farm size in the united states typically the u s farm unit is a family enterprise consequently the ratio of the opportunity cost of farm labor to the price of machinery services determines the size of the farm operation by influencing the machine labor ratio applying the model to u s data we explain virtually all of the growth in the machine labor ratio and in farm size over the 1930 70 period by changes in relative factor prices without reference to technological change or economies of scale

public sector wage policy and labor market equilibrium a structural model we develop and estimate a structural model that incorporates a sizable public sector in a labor market with search frictions the wage distribution and the employment rate in the public sector are taken as exogenous policy parameters overall wage distribution and employment rate are determined within the model taking into account the private sector s endogenous response to public sector employment policies job turnover is sector specific and transitions between sectors depend on the worker s decision to accept alternative employment in the same or different sector by comparing the value of employment in the current and prospective jobs the model is estimated on british data by a method of moments we use the model to simulate the impact of various counterfactual public sector wage and employment policies

what has 20 years of public private pay gap literature told us eastern european transitioning vs developed economies this paper surveys the literature on public private sector pay differentials based on 20 years of research in transitioning countries of eastern europe ee and compares the results with estimates obtained from developed market economies the majority of empirical studies from ee economies found evidence of public sector pay penalties during the period of economic transition from a communist to market based economy in developed economies however the average differential is usually around zero or positive the public sector pay inequality reducing effect relative to the private sector is greater in transitioning economies than in developed economies nevertheless there is evidence that the sign of the public sector pay gap as well as the relative public sector pay distribution change with the progress of economic transition towards those usually observed in developed economies different pay setting arrangements between private and public sectors and competition for workers seem to be major arguments for the existence of systematic pay differences between the two sectors

resolving the exposure puzzle the many facets of exchange rate exposure theory predicts sizeable exchange rate fx exposure for many firms however empirical research has not documented such exposures to examine this discrepancy we extend prior theoretical results to model a global firm s fx exposure and show empirically that firms pass through part of currency changes to customers and utilize both operational and financial hedges for a typical sample firm pass through and operational hedging each reduce exposure by 10 15 financial hedging with foreign debt and to a lesser extent fx derivatives decreases exposure by about 40 the combination of these factors reduces fx exposures to observed levels

comparing earnings profiles in urban areas of an ldc rural to urban migrants vs native workers abstract we use tanzanian data to test a recently proposed hypothesis that rural to urban migrants have an incentive to supply greater work effort than native urban workers because of the migrants positive probability of returning to the low wage rural areas we treat the choice between public and private sector employment as endogenous and for theoretical and empirical reasons distinguish migrants with access to rural land from those without access our results show that migrants in both sectors face lower initial wage offers than native urban workers but the wage gap is eliminated within a decade or less and thereafter migrants surpass the wage offers of native workers

taxation and the tiebout model the differential effects of head taxes taxes on land rents and property taxes on the theory of state and local public finance is the seminal paper by charles tiebout 1956 tiebout constructed a multijurisdictional model in which independent local governments offer a wide variety of expenditure and tax policies and perfectly mobile consumers reveal their preferences for local public goods through their choice of residential community he argued that under such circumstances local public service provision would be efficient the tiebout model has formed the basis of a vast number of subsequent articles in the state and local public finance literature and has also been very influential in urban and regional economics the efficiency properties of various tiebout type models of local public good provision have been examined and the role of politics in these models has been debated at length in this literature of more direct relevance to this paper however is the fact that although tiebout had little to say directly about taxation simply assuming the existence of head taxes subsequent analyses have used adaptations of this model to examine the effects of local head taxes land taxes and property taxes it is the literature on the efficiency and distributional effects of alternative local taxes that is the subject of this survey 1

wage differentials in brazil theory and evidence the investigation of wage determination and wage differentials in developing countries has concentrated on the effects of human capital and different sources of segmentation associated with institutional arrangements and structural characteristics on earnings in this article we use micro data for brazil for the 1980s and 1990s to test several competitive theories and models with segmentation explained by efficiency wages we find that unmeasured abilities and efficiency wage models seem to play a role in wage determination while compensating differentials and transitory difference theories were found to be irrelevant to wages formation

establishment size public administration and government wage differentials abstract this study presents new and more comprehensive estimates of government wage differentials they improve on previous estimates by including the influence of establishment size and by estimating separate differentials for public administrators and non administrators these improvements result in a more complex set of differentials and a more sophisticated understanding of government wage patterns

the demand for labor market structure an economic approach this paper formulates and estimates a model for the determination of employer and union demand for multiemployer vs single employer bargaining units utility maximizing risk averse firms and unions are both assumed to weigh the impact of each type of bargaining unit on the expected level and variability of profits and wages respectively the model is tested on a 1975 sample of 3 486 individual collective bargaining agreements because either party can generally leave a multiemployer unit without the other party s consent a partially observed bivariate probit model is used to estimate demand for structure it is found that the forgone profits due to a multiemployer unit relative to a single firm unit lower firm demands for this type of unit while forgone wages in a multiemployer unit relative to a single firm unit lower union demand for this type of unit

the public pay gap in britain small differences that don t matter the existing literature on inequality between private and public sectors focuses on cross section differences in earnings levels forward looking agents however care about income and job mobility too which we show are substantially different between the two sectors using data from the bhps we estimate a model of income and employment dynamics allowing for unobserved heterogeneity in the propensity to be employed in eitherjob sector we detect a positive average public premium both in income flows and in the present discounted sum of future income flows we also find that income inequality is lower but more persistent in the public sector there is an ongoing debate as to whether public sector workers experience better or worse pay conditions than their private counterparts a recurring message in the recent literature is that although raw differences can be large most are likely to reflect differences in the composition of the workforce both in terms of observed characteristics such as age and education and in terms of unobserved characteristics nevertheless a look at labour markets in the two sectors suggests that individuals do perceive some differences between the sectors katz and krueger 1991 document the fact that blue collar workers are willing to queue to obtain public sector jobs whereas highlyskilled workers are notoriously hard to recruit and retain in the public sector the focus of most of the literature on public pay gaps is on cross section differences in earnings levels 2 yet the public private differences are arguably equally marked in terms of income mobility income volatility and job loss risk than in terms of mean income levels public sector employers are widely perceived to offer more job security 3 there is also plentiful evidence of relative wage compression in the public sector moreover as we shall point out public sector incomes are substantially more persistent over time than private sector incomes the motivating point of this article is that forward looking agents are likely to care about income and job mobility as well as income levels so that a more general assessment of the existence and magnitude of a public premium should be based on

do farm workers earn less an analysis of the farm labor problem during the four decades extending from 1950 to 1960 the ratio of the farm to nonfarm wage fluctuated between 0 45 and 0 55 we employ the oaxaca technique and the public use microdata sample of the 1990 census to decompose the farm nonfarm wage differential we also use the american chamber of commerce research association accra cost of living data to measure the impact of the farm nonfarm cost of living index on the wage gap first we find that the observed wage gap is reduced by half when nominal wages are deflated by the accra cost of living index second by applying the oaxaca method separately to a subsample of young employees and a subsample of old employees we find that while for the subsample of employees younger than thirty five years the real wage gap practically vanishes the gap for the subsample of employees who are thirty five years of age and over is higher than that of the total sample this finding lends strong support to the hypothesis that between 1950 and 1970 the process of farm out migration was positively selective

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

the central government private sector wage differential since ehrenberg and schwarz 1986 there has been a plethora of articles investigating the relationship between public and private sector wages this article examines part of this post 1986 literature by reviewing articles that examine central government private sector wage differentials in sum most articles find that there is a premium paid to central government workers although the premium has declined in recent years in developing countries however the differential is usually negative women and minorities tend to do better in the public sector relative to their private sector counterparts the evidence on union premiums between sectors is mixed although the premium tends to be higher in the private sector however public sector union workers do not do much better than private sector union members the magnitude of all of the wage differentials discussed are sensitive to the estimation technique and data source used the most common explanation for the public sector wage premium is economic rent accruing to government workers although the public sector wage determination literature suggests that the differential is due to returns to political and vote producing activities not relevant in the private sector

examining equality between public and private sector wage distributions i introduction institutional political and economic factors all contribute to the determination of public sector wages for example the public sector is almost the only place in many advanced economies where unions continue to have a significant presence and an influential voice in setting wages and conditions of work political factors such as desiring to be a good employer may also influence the public sector wage structure as a good employer governments may offer low skilled workers higher rates of pay than they might get in the private sector on the other hand the public sector may be adverse to paying very skilled workers high rates of pay if the public does not like to see public sector workers earning too much economic factors such as spending and tax receipt limits can also affect the wage structure in the public sector all of these factors could make the public sector labor market be less efficient than that of the private sector from an economic perspective if government workers are paid more than private sector workers ceteris paribus then taxes are being wasted if private sector workers are paid more than government workers governments cannot recruit and retain appropriately skilled and productive workers to make the wage structures comparable many countries use surveys to ascertain the prevailing earnings levels for jobs in the private sector that are similar to public sector jobs however as fogel and lewin 1974 and gregory 1990 point out these survey methods are fraught with biases that may affect comparability of wages indeed there is little empirical evidence that wages between the two sectors are equal bender 1998 and gregory and borland 1999 survey the current literature on public private wage differentials and report that most studies find that central governments pay more on average compared to the private sector even after controlling for differences in the productive characteristics of workers furthermore as elliott et al 1999 find comparability in pay is currently important in the debates over public sector pay reform particularly in europe the institutional and political factors outlined above are waning in importance and economic considerations are seemingly coming to the fore because of perceptions of the overpayment of public sector workers and the desire to cut government wage bills politicians in these countries are devising policies to align average rates of pay by slowing the relative rate of public sector wage growth the policies should be different however if wage distributions are not the same indeed there is some evidence that the distributions differ as found in the double imbalance concept articulated by schager 1993 katz and krueger 1993 and elliott and duffus 1996 this imbalance is characterized by public sector workers at the lower end of the occupational hierarchy receiving the largest wage premia and workers at the upper end earning less than their private sector counterparts if the distributions are incomparable ceteris paribus mandating equal average rates of pay growth will not ensure comparability policies aimed at realigning wage structures at the ends of the distribution should then be followed to promote comparability this article compares public and private sector wage distributions and examines the extent to which focusing exclusively on differences in mean wages obscures the true nature of the wage relativities data from the british social change and economic life initiative sceli are employed to investigate comparability this data set is well suited for a comparability study given the range of personal and job characteristics that control for differences in public and private sector jobs moreover the data were collected in 1986 before substantial reform of public sector pay in the united kingdom reviewed in bender and elliott 1999 this offers a test to see if the reform policies were appropriate to promote wage comparability

union wage differentials in the public and private sectors a simultaneous equations specification the paper attempts to integrate new approaches to estimating union wage effects with the analysis of public private sector wage differentials estimates of the union differential in both public and private sectors allowing for the endogeneity of union status are presented the hypothesis that the recently measured rents to public sector employment primarily reflect the recent increase in unionization in that sector is examined and receives considerable empirical support there was evidence of positive selection into the union sector especially for private sector workers union status appears to be strongly influenced by the expected wage gain from joining the union sector

are low skill public sector workers really overpaid a quasi differenced panel data analysis public private sectoral wage differentials have been studied extensively using quantile regression techniques these typically find large public sector premiums at the bottom of the wage distribution this may imply that low skill workers are overpaid prompting concerns over efficiency we note several other potential explanations for this result and explicitly test whether the premium varies with skill using australian data we use a quasi differenced generalized method of moments gmm panel data model which has not been previously applied to this topic internationally unlike other available methods this technique identifies sectoral differences in returns to unobserved skill it also facilitates a decomposition of the wage gap into components explained by differences in returns to all observed and unobserved skills and by differences in their stock we find no evidence to suggest that the premium varies with skill one interpretation is that the compressed wage profile of the public sector ind

the effects of public sector hiring and compensation policies on the egyptian labor market this article examines the combined impact of the employment guarantee for graduates and public sector compensation policies on the egyptian labor market besides contributing to an unsustainable rate of growth in the government labor force these policies have encouraged queuing for government jobs contributed to high graduate unemployment rates and reduced the employment of graduates in the private sector despite substantial wage erosion in the public sector in recent years government wages when appropriately corrected for observed heterogeneity and sample selection are on a par with or higher than private sector wages especially for graduates when combined with the more desirable nonwage aspects of government jobs these compensation levels explain the attractiveness of public sector employment to graduates government pay scales are especially advantageous to female secondary school graduates who appear to face considerable discrimination in the private sector

estimation of the us federal job queue in the presence of an endogenous union queue past research on the federal sector job queue fails to incorporate the important role of unioniz ation we estimate a two stage bivariate probit in which the willingness of a worker to queue for a union job enters the estimation of the federal queue we demonstrate that the failture to implement our approach may lead to the inappropriate conclusion that there does not exist a federal queue in the us labour market we identify the characteristics that lead workers to seek employment in the federal sector and as a byproduct also provide independent confirm ation of the presence of a queue for union jobs ability in bivariate probit models to examine job queues abowd and farber 1982 use poirier s technique and find evidence of a queue of workers waiting for union jobs they estimate separate equations determining which character istics make a worker more likely to enter the queue and which characteristics make a worker more likely to be chosen from the queue indeed farber 1983 leigh 1985 and heywood 1990 have all reaffirmed the existence of a union queue under varying degrees of partial observability recently venti 1987 krueger 1988 and heywood and mohanty 1990 have examined whether or not a queue exists for federal government jobs while this research confirms the existence of a federal queue it fails to incorporate the earlier research indicating the presence of a union queue indeed none of the authors controls for any dimension of unionization in the federal queue esti mates this failure is problematic for several related reasons first heywood and mohanty 1994 demonstrate that statistical confirmation of a federal job queue is highly sensitive to specification particularly the inclusion or exclusion of specific variables 2 second the federal sector is far more heavily unionized than the private sector see freeman 1986 1988 ichniowski 1988 and reder 1988 thus if the earlier research is correct and workers do queue for union

rural population decline in the 1980s impacts of farm structure and federal farm programs federal farm program benefits accrue disproportionately to large scale farm operators and continue largely because of the political influence of their beneficiaries some writers argue that these payments stem the movement of labor out of agriculture ultimately reducing the pace of rural depopulation here a theoretical model linking farm program payments to population loss is presented and empirically estimated for the years 1980 90 larger farm program payments as a share of total cash marketing receipts were associated with greater population losses from rural counties this result holds after controlling for other economic variables affecting population migration from rural areas

a reexamination of the federal private wage differential in the united states the federal private wage differential is reexamined with recent data using specifications similar to those used in three previous studies i find that the federal private wage differential has narrowed since the 1974 79 period analyzed in those studies in addition i discover that wage differentials based on specifications used in the literature are biased upward because the previous studies did not control for detailed occupational and locational characteristics of workers corrected point estimates of the wage gap are much smaller than previous estimates in the literature differences in the gap across demographic groups occupations and locations are also discussed

exchange rate exposure abstract in this paper we examine the relationship between exchange rate movements and firm value we estimate the exchange rate exposure of publicly listed firms in a sample of eight non us industrialized and emerging markets we find that exchange rate movements do matter for a significant fraction of firms though which firms are affected and the direction of exposure depends on the specific exchange rate and varies over time suggesting that firms dynamically adjust their behavior in response to exchange rate risk exposure is correlated with firm size multinational status foreign sales international assets and competitiveness and trade at the industry level

local economic conditions and wage labor decisions of farm and rural nonfarm couples effects of geographical differences in local economic conditions on wage labor demand and wage labor participation decisions of rural couples are examined for current population survey households 1978 82 wage premiums are shown to exist for localities anticipating labor demand growth higher unemployment rates larger share of employment in services and higher costs of living these effects are stronger for males than females effects of local economic conditions on the probability of wage work are consistent with expected market wage and reservation wage effects and for farm households the probability of wage work increases when expected farm output prices decline or the wage increases

public private sector wage gap by gender in egypt evidence from quantile regression on panel data 1998 2018 abstract this paper estimates the public formal private wage gap in egypt using egypt labor market panel survey for the 20 year period of 1998 2018 for men and women separately we estimate the public formal private sector wage gap with wage equations including a public sector indicator both at the mean and at different quantiles of the conditional wage distribution using the panel feature of the data we also address the endogenous employment and the sector of employment selection issue and find a persistent public wage penalty for the males and public wage premium for the females except at the top even after controlling for the observable and the time invariant unobservable characteristics we further examine the public wage gap over time and in different sub samples by potential experience skill levels and regions generally the results are consistent with a decrease in the public wage gap for both men and women over the period considered we further provide evidence on the quality of workers we find that the public sector fails to attract better quality men throughout the conditional wage distribution while it manages to attract better quality women in the lower parts of the conditional wage distribution but not at the top all on the basis of time invariant unobservable attributes these results indicate concern for the efficient provision of public services

a switching regression model of public private sector wage differentials in peru 1985 86 this article examines the combined impact of the employment guarantee for graduates and public sector compensation policies on the egyptian labor market besides contributing to an unsustainable rate of growth in the government labor force these

the exchange rate exposure of u s multinationals this article examines the exposure of u s multinationals to foreign currency risk evidence is presented that the relationship between stock returns and exchange rates differs systematically across multinationals given these results the study focuses on the determinants of exchange rate exposure the comovements between stock returns and the value of the dollar is found to be positively related to the percentage of foreign operations of u s multinationals copyright 1990 by the university of chicago

central government versus private sector wages and cognitive skills evidence using endogenous switching regression the importance of estimation techniques that allow for nonrandom selection of workers into the public and private sectors has been established in the theoretical and empirical literature a separate body of work has explored the contribution of cognitive and other basic skills to earnings this article brings together these two strands of empirical literature using adult literacy and lifeskills all survey data for norway and bermuda in the case of norway results from both ordinary least squares ols and a switching regression model agree that cognitive skills are rewarded more in the public sector and that in both sectors the main effect is the direct effect of skills on earnings in the case of bermuda however switching regression estimates are substantially different with respect to the how skills affect earnings furthermore controlling for cognitive skills changes the nature of selection and hence the estimates of sector wage differentials

modeling sovereign yield spreads a case study of russian debt we construct a model for pricing sovereign debt that accounts for the risks of both default and restructuring and allows for compensation for illiquidity using a new and relatively efficient method we estimate the model using russian dollar denominated bonds we consider the determinants of the russian yield spread the yield differential across different russian bonds and the implications for market integration relative liquidity relative expected recovery rates and implied expectations of different default scenarios this paper develops a model of the termstructure of credit spreads on sovereign bonds that accommodates i default or repudiation the sovereign announces that it will stop making payments on its debt ii restructuring or renegotiation the sovereign and the lenders agree to reduce or postpone the remaining payments and iii a regime switch such as a change of government or the default of another sovereign bond that changes the perceived risk of future defaults we build on the framework of duffie and singleton 1999 showing that cash flows promised by a sovereign bond can be discounted using a default adjusted short termdiscount rate that reflects the m ean arrival rate and associated losses in market value upon arrival of each of the aforementioned types of credit events since a sovereign credit event is often not a liquidation event the model allows for continued trading and pricing of a sovereign instrument through credit events possibly after writedowns in face value or cash distributions to creditors on credit event dates additionally we accommodate the possibility that bonds issued by the same sovereign of exactly the same type but possibly of different maturities may be priced in the market using different discount factors reasons for this may include i bond covenants may not include cross default clauses that would force upon the default of one bond the simultaneous default of other bonds of the same type but of a different maturity for various strategic reasons related to internal

public and private sector wages of male workers in germany we analyze several statistical assumptions used in empirical models on public private sector wage structures based on data for germany which contain a large range of background variables usually not available in other studies we investigate the sensitivity of results to various specification and identification assumptions the standard switching regression model is extended to allow for endogeneity of education level experience and hours worked these extensions lead to considerably different parameter estimates we compare conditional and unconditional wage differentials between the public and the private sector for the various specifications these differentials are sensitive to identification assumptions but robust across specifications which do and do not allow for endogeneity of education experience and hours worked

a theory of migration as a response to occupational stigma a theory is developed of labor migration that is prompted by a desire to avoid social humiliation in a general equilibrium framework it is shown that as long as migration can reduce humiliation sufficiently migration will occur even between two identical economies migration increases the number of individuals who choose to perform degrading jobs and consequently migration lowers the price of the good produced in the sector that is associated with low social status moreover the greater an individual s aversion to performing degrading jobs the more likely it is that he will experience a welfare gain when the economy opens up

the economy of high wages an agency problem latitude with respect to the effort they supply and monitoring of effort and output is costly in this paper we examine the agency problem that arises in these circumstances the agent employee is assumed to maximize expected utility which depends on wages and effort a bad we assume that output is a deterministic function of effort that either effort or output can be accurately monitored and that monitoring is costly the firm s problem is to select a level of monitoring and a compensation package that will minimize the cost of obtaining a desired level of effort given the cost of monitoring the agent s preferences and the agent s opportunity cost of accepting employment with the firm his labour supply constraint the firm chooses a compensation scheme from the set in which compensation is contingent on effort if the agent is monitored and is equal to a standard

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

do firms hedge in response to tax incentives there are two tax incentives for corporations to hedge to increase debt capacity and interest tax deductions and to reduce expected tax liability if the tax function is convex we test whether these incentives affect the extent of corporate hedging with derivatives using an explicit measure of tax function convexity we find no evidence that firms hedge in response to tax convexity our analysis does however indicate that firms hedge to increase debt capacity with increased tax benefits averaging 1 1 percent of firm value our results also indicate that firms hedge because of expected financial distress costs and firm size an increasing number of corporations use financial derivatives each year the international swaps and derivatives association reports that the notional value of outstanding otc swap contracts increased from 11 3 trillion in 1994 to more than 60 trillion by mid 2000 http 00www isda org this is interesting because financial theory tells us that corporate risk management enhances value only in the presence of costly market imperfections a number of empirical studies examine derivative holdings to identify which of the proposed theoretical incentives and imperfections lead to corporate hedging our paper adds to the hedging literature by testing whether corporations respond to two tax related incentives to hedge the incentive to reduce volatility thereby increasing debt capacity and the tax benefits of debt and the incentive to reduce expected tax liabilities by reducing the volatility of taxable income we also use a refined dependent variable to measure net

foreign currency denominated debt an empirical examination we examine the determinants of debt issuance in 10 major currencies by large u s firms using the fraction of foreign subsidiaries and tests exploiting the disaggregated nature of our data we find strong evidence that firms issue foreign currency debt to hedge their exposure both at the aggregate and the individual currency levels we also find some evidence that firms choose currencies in which information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors is low we find no evidence that tax arbitrage liquidity of underlying debt markets or legal regimes influence the decision to issue debt in foreign currency

migration fixed costs and location specific amenities a hazard analysis for a panel of males this article presents econometric estimates of the adult working age male hazard function of interstate migration fitted to data obtained from migration decisions of adult males over a twenty year period the results show a strong negative effect of the real wage difference between origin and destination and of fixed costs associated with a move on the hazard rate of interstate migration farmers and other self employed males and males who have school age children have unusually low hazard rates of interstate migration although a high crime rate is shown to increase the real wage it also has a separate positive effect on the hazard of migration

rural population growth 1950 1990 the roles of human capital industry structure and government policy human capital raises rural incomes but this effect is swamped by higher returns to human capital in urban markets this leads to brain drain from rural areas populations grow more rapidly in rural counties that have a diversified employment base farm population grows faster or declines more slowly in counties with relatively high farm income and nonfarm populations grow faster in counties with relatively high nonfarm income however higher farm incomes lead to slower nonfarm population growth and vice versa rural county government services financed by local taxes or debt have neutral or negative effects on population growth rural population in the united states increased 53 between 1900 and 1990 this increase is concentrated in the nonfarm rural sector where population has grown to three times its turn of the century level nevertheless there exists a concern that rural areas are threatened by population declines that will gradually erode the ability of communities to provide public services necessary for their citizens eventually the fear is that these communities will become too small to be selfsustaining and will disappear one might ask why these concerns exist in the face of slowly rising rural populations one reason is that the overall rural population increase masks a huge migration of labor off the farm the rural farm population has fallen to one tenth its 1900 level if a strong farm economy is necessary to sustain rural communities then the farm population decline is a threat to the future viability of rural communities on the other hand off farm employment opportunities are increasingly important to the

an analysis of public and private sector wages allowing for endogenous choices of both government and union status a general selection model is estimated in which workers select across four labor markets private nonunion private union public nonunion and public union evidence is found of positive selection bias in the private nonunion sector and of negative selection bias in the public union sector union wage differentials in the public and private sectors as well as public private wage differentials are then calculated two different types of wage differentials are contrasted we discuss when it is appropriate to use each type of differential

the payment of public sector workers in the uk reconciliation with north american findings abstract in common with recent north american evidence the highest wage premiums for uk public sector workers are found in the lower tail of the wage distribution evidence of public sector underpayment at the opposite extreme of the earnings spectrum is also apparent

the effects of tax competition when politicians create rents to buy political support abstract we set up a probabilistic voting model to explore the hypothesis that tax competition improves public sector efficiency and social welfare in the absence of tax base mobility distortions in the political process induce vote maximising politicians to create rents to public sector employees allowing tax base mobility may be welfare enhancing up to a point because the ensuing tax competition will reduce rents however if tax competition is carried too far it will reduce welfare by causing an underprovision of public goods starting from an equilibrium where tax competition has eliminated all rents a coordinated rise in capital taxation will always be welfare improving for plausible parameter values it will even be welfare enhancing to carry tax coordination beyond the point where rents to public sector workers start to emerge

pass through and exposure firms differ in the extent to which they pass through changes in exchange rates into foreign currency prices and in their exposure to exchange rates the responsiveness of their profits to changes in exchange rates because pricing affects profitability a firm s pass through and exposure should be related this paper develops models of exporting firms under imperfect competition to study these related phenomena from these models we derive the optimal pass through decisions and the resulting exchange rate exposure the models are estimated on eight japanese export industries using both the price data pass through and financial data for exposure exchange rates can have a major inf luence on the pricing behavior and profitability of exporting and importing firms firms differ in the extent to which they pass through the change in exchange rates into the prices they charge in foreign markets they also differ in their exposure to exchange rates the responsiveness of their profits to changes in exchange rates previous papers have studied either pass through or exposure but none has studied these two phenomena together yet because pricing directly affects profitability the exposure of a firm s profits to exchange rates should be governed by many of the same firm and industry characteristics that determine pricing behavior this paper develops models of firm and industry behavior that are used to study these closely related phenomena together it also provides estimates of pass through and exposure behavior using data from japanese export industries to examine pass through behavior and exchange rate exposure we model a firm with sales to a foreign export market this exporting firm competes with a foreign firm in that export market the costs of the exporting firm are based primarily in the local domestic currency while the foreign firm

data watch the world bank s living standards measurement study household surveys since 1985 the world bank has been collecting household survey data in developing countries that provide a rich source of information for assessing household welfare understanding household behavior and evaluating the impact of government policies this article describes these household surveys known as living standards measurement study lsms surveys and explains how to obtain their data lsms surveys have been implemented in over twenty developing countries and have been used to analyze poverty labor markets health and education pricing policies determinants of school performance savings and consumption smoothing health and nutrition policies and gender and fertility issues

the determinants of the migration of labor out of agriculture in the united states 1940 85 the flow of labor out of production agriculture is analyzed using a two sector model of occupational choice a migration equation is specified and tested empirically using aggregate data for the united states the economic determinants of the migration of all farm workers and farm operators are established farm labor is found to be responsive to changes in the returns to agricultural labor relative to nonfarm labor returns given this responsiveness policies intended to increase farm income will affect the level of agricultural employment

a model of the natural rate of unemployment since the publication of edmund phelps volume the new macroeconomics has treated the labor market as a dynamic process of rational search by unemployed workers for available vacancies wages are viewed as at least potentially flexible though free contracting between workers and firms may lead to fixed wages in the short run imperfect information is a crucial element of the theory for it implies both a need for contracting and a need for rational search rather than simple market clearing in each period a positive rate of frictional unemployment may exist in equilibrium denoted as the natural rate this unemployment is due to the frictions in the search process and imperfections in information rather than to any deficiency in aggregate demand milton friedman defined the natural rate as the level that would be ground out by the walrasian system of general equilibrium equations provided there is embedded in them the actual structural characteristics of the labor and commodity markets including market imperfections stochastic variability in demands and supplies the cost of gathering information about job vacancies and labor availabilities the costs of mobility and so on p 8 this paper reexamines the micro foundations of the natural rate in a model of labor market equilibrium in which turnover flows and imperfect information are explicitly considered workers may quit their current jobs to enter the unemployment pool in order to search among available vacancies for a more preferred position firms economize on turnover by an appropriate wage policy

credit risk spreads in local and foreign currencies governments corporations and even small firms raise and denominate capital in different currencies we examine the micro level factors that should be considered by a borrower when structuring debt denominated in various currencies this paper will show how the currency composition of debt affects the cost of debt through the interaction with the risk of company s assets we look at the currency mismatch in the firm and analyze its credit spread within a merton s type model with bankruptcy we show that foreign currency borrowing is cheaper when the exchange rate is positively correlated with the return on the company s assets the determining factor is not just whether a given company is an exporter or importer but rather the statistical correlation between the rate of return on the firm s assets and changes in the exchange rate

public private wage differentials in haiti do public servants earn a rent abstract this study uses a newly collected data set on haiti where data are very limited to assess how individuals are selected into the public vs private sectors and to estimate public private sector wage differentials the central question is whether or not public servants are earning a rent the estimation procedure is an extension of heckman s 1979 sample selection technique to the case where two selection rules generate the sample the procedure first estimates by bivariate probit analysis the probability of employment in the public or private sector and then for those in the public sector the probability of employment in the state owned enterprises soes vs public administration wage functions are then estimated for all three sectors using the inverse mills ratios from reduced form probits selectivity bias is found to exist in one sector soes correction for this bias in the wage equations lowers the wage differentials between the soe and the private sector and the soe and public administration as is clearly demonstrated by the oaxaca decomposition of these estimated mean differentials nevertheless the corrected findings still indicate that the public sector especially the soes earn a sizable rent

excessive dollar debt financial development and underinsurance we propose that the limited financial development of emerging markets is a significant factor behind the large share of dollar denominated external debt present in these markets we show that when financial constraints affect borrowing and lending between domestic agents agents undervalue insuring against an exchange rate depreciation since more of this insurance is present when external debt is denominated in domestic currency rather than in dollars this result implies that domestic agents choose excessive dollar debt we also show that limited financial development reduces the incentives for foreign lenders to enter emerging markets the retarded entry reinforces the underinsurance problem

employment stability and the role of sectoral dominance in rural economies rural development has received renewed attention particularly in the west where there are opportunities for enhancing tourism in communities once reliant on extractive resources the historical focus of rural development has been on economic growth with little concern about the sustainability or socioeconomic impacts of such growth this study analyzes and discusses the employment dynamics of rural economies with varying employment bases to illustrate some possible impacts of targeting specific employment sectors as part of a rural economic development strategy the empirical research focuses on the rural counties of utah where the trade and service sectors associated with increased tourism and retirement communities have been rapidly expanding throughout the past two decades

determinants of income growth in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan labor markets this article analyzes determinants of growth across labor markets in the united states using a production function approach based on four inputs labor manufacturing investment human capital investment and public capital investment we find little role for public capital investment in growth but that manufacturing investment spurred growth in nonmetropolitan areas in contrast to metropolitan areas we also find that human capital investment mattered more for metropolitan areas than for nonmetropolitan areas further the presence of more colleges and universities more household amenities and lower tax rates are all found to have encouraged human capital accumulation in u s labor markets copyright 2008 oxford university press

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

sectoral shifts and interindustry wage differentials the observed differences in wages across industries may arise from a lack of worker mobility particularly among experienced workers allowing the effects of industry shocks to persist for some time although young workers arbitrage wage shocks they will have little effect on the dispersion of experienced workers wages if young and old workers are poor substitutes in production this explanation is investigated using the five censuses of population between 1940 and 1980 the evidence strongly suggests that differences in pay are not temporary phenomena the data provide some support for the role of human capital and ability