global feminization through flexible labor abstract the emphasis on structural adjustment and labor flexibility in both developing and industrialized economies is rapidly altering the nature of employment women are being substituted for men and many forms of work are being converted into the kinds of jobs traditionally geared to women international data on recent trends in female economic activity reveal that new types of labor data are needed to highlight the mechanisms of control over workers and the actual economic forms of vulnerability to which women are exposed the paper concludes by posing questions that challenge the traditional concerns of donors and policy makers in many developing countries

the gender earnings differential in the russian transition economy using data from the russia longitudinal monitoring survey rlms the first nationally representative household survey in the russian federation the author examines the gender earnings differentia

the gender gap fertility and growth changes in fertility have long been recognized as important correlates of economic growth with the relationship between the level of fertility and the level of income per capita being one of the strongest observable correlations in cross country data this paper examines the linkages between fertility and growth theory the structure of the model is presented in sections on production couples decision making system dynamics and steady state equilibria the first component of the model is that increases in capital per worker raise womens relative wages since capital is more complementary to womens labor input than to mens the second component is that increasing womens relative wages reduces fertility by raising the cost of children more than household income finally lower fertility raises the level of capital per worker a positive feedback loop generates demographic transition a rapid decline in fertility accompanied by accelerated output growth

quality and competition in recent years the practitioner literature in operations management has seen a dramatic surge in articles on quality management it reflects the increased emphasis on quality by u s firms which has been attributed largely to increased competition faced by them the question of how quality is influenced by competitive intensity however has not received much attention either in the practitioner or the academic research literatures the notion of competitive intensity itself has not been defined precisely in this paper we develop formal models of oligopolistic competition to investigate whether equilibrium levels of quality increase as competition intensifies we consider three different competitive settings i asymmetric duopolistic competition where the dominant firm s intrinsic demand potential decreases ii a symmetric duopoly where the firms are precluded from cooperating in setting quality levels and iii symmetric oligopolistic competition where the number of firms increases we find that the relation between equilibrium quality and competitive intensity depends on what is understood by increased competition and in addition the relation is contingent on the values of parameters describing the cost and demand structure for the industry

tax base variability and procyclical fiscal policy in developing countries abstract based on a sample of 56 countries we show that fiscal policy in the g7 countries appears to be acyclical while fiscal policy in developing countries is procyclical i e fiscal policy is expansionary in good times and contractionary in bad times to explain this puzzle we develop an optimal fiscal policy model in which running budget surpluses is costly because they create pressures to increase public spending given this distortion a government that faces large fluctuations in the tax base as is the case for developing countries will find it optimal to run a procyclical fiscal policy

a decomposition method on employment and wage discrimination and its application in urban china 2002 2013 abstract labor market discrimination is an important issue in developing countries where path dependent institutions have been dominant while effective institutional arrangements and policies have been hidden by local customs and culture however the existing applications of classical blinder oaxaca decomposition face criticism for their imprecise understanding of the factors affecting institutional discrimination in labor markets as well as for their lack of power in formulating well targeted anti discrimination policies following oaxaca 1973 we propose a new method to decompose the total discrimination index tdi to analyze employment and wage discrimination in the labor markets of developing countries the tdi is decomposed into the employment discrimination index edi and the wage discrimination index wdi then into the underpayment index to majorities upi and the overpayment index to minorities opi we apply this method to the institutional discrimination against rural migrants in china s urban areas using national representative data from 2002 to 2013 we have found that 1 the tdi increased quickly after china entered the wto then dropped after anti discrimination policies were implemented 2 the tdi is mainly determined by the upi while the tdi s fluctuation is mainly determined by the wdi our method provides insights into the changing composition of employment and wage discrimination and their respective labor market outcomes in developing countries as a result appropriate policy measures may be developed accordingly

price and quality competition the effect of differentiation and vertical integration abstract this paper studies an instance of price and quality competition between firms as seen in the recent internet market consumers purchase a product based on not only its price but also its quality level therefore two firms compete in determining their prices and quality levels to maximize their profits characterizing this competition from a microeconomic viewpoint we consider two possible business strategies that firms can utilize to overcome the competition the differentiation and the vertical integration with another complementary firm we show an interesting result not seen in the well known bertrand price competition not only does the differentiation always increase the firms profits but also it can increase the consumer s welfare in a quality sensitive market we further derive that under some mild conditions the monopolistic vertical integration that excludes the combination purchase with a competitor s product is beneficial for both the integrated firm and its consumers

sequential product positioning under differential costs this paper examines the product positioning decisions of firms that enter a market sequentially and that have potentially different cost structures it shows that if the first mover knows the second mover to have a lower production cost it positions away from the most attractive location in the market further the larger the second mover s cost advantage the farther away the first mover positions from the most attractive location the paper also models uncertainty in the first mover s mind about the later entrant s cost structure and shows that an increase in this uncertainty in the sense of mean preserving spread also makes the first mover position farther from the most attractive location in the market overall this paper suggests that unless the first entrant in a market is certain that the later entrant will not have a superior cost structure it may be better off leaving the best position in the market vacant and having a niche or fringe product

cyclicality of taxes and external debt abstractin their work vegh and vuletin have shown that statutory tax rates are acyclical in developed economies and procyclical in developing ones this article extends their analysis by checking the interaction of statutory tax rates with countries external public debt in general we found that the value added tax rates are changed procyclically in both developed and developing countries i e taxes are raised in bad times and reduced in good times however when the external debt is high in the developing countries the procyclicality increases while the opposite result holds for developed economies this pattern occurs mainly in times of recession when the need for loans is the highest although we found that there was a reduction in procyclicality after the 2000s these findings pose a challenge to policy makers who should think of ways of dealing with lack of foreign funds in difficult times

trends in the gender earnings differential in urban china 1988 2004 this paper analyzes changes in the gender earnings gap in urban china over the period 1988 2004 using urban household survey data the mean female male earnings ratio declined from 86 3 to 76 2

fiscal federalism and procyclical spending the cases of argentina and brazil este trabajo estudia las fuentes de la prociclicalidad del gasto para gobiernos subnacionales en argentina y brasil encontramos que los esquemas de coparticipacion de los impuestos explican solo una parte menor de la prociclicalidad de los recursos de las entidades subnacionales siendo la mayor parte explicada por la prociclicalidad de los propios recursos esto es especialmente visible cuando esa prociclicalidad se mide relativa al producto de cada entidad subnacional usando evidencia de corte transversal para distintas jurisdicciones podemos concluir que a su vez la prociclicalidad del gasto resulta de la prociclicalidad de los recursos mediante el llamado voracity effect la conclusion es que el debate sobre la prociclicalidad del gasto de entidades subnacionales debiera concentrarse mucho mas en mejorar los sistemas impositivos locales que en cambiar los regimenes de coparticipacion

intrafirm trade arm s length transfer pricing rule and coordination failure abstract this paper demonstrates that uniform imposition of the arm s length principle on transfer pricing leads to coordination failure among countries in terms of economic welfare if the countries trade products in the form of intrafirm transactions by multinational firms mnfs to highlight this implication we first show that imposition of the arm s length principle on an mnf induces it to transfer a product among subordinate divisions at marginal cost i e the competitive price which is consistent with the purpose of the principle nonetheless if regulators in each country impose the principle on mnfs all of the following economic welfare measures decrease compared with the situation where the principle is not imposed 1 consumer welfare in each of the trading countries 2 profit of each mnf and thus 3 total world economic welfare this result indicates that it is possible that enforcement of the principle has no positive effect at all in the world because economic welfare of all economic agents deteriorates when the principle is imposed a numerical analysis demonstrates that this possibility arises in a broad range of circumstances even including the situation where a giant economic world power and a small underdeveloped country mutually trade products in these circumstances an agreement among trading countries that no country imposes the arm s length principle may encourage pareto improvement of the world economy

export orientation and female share of employment evidence from turkey abstract we investigate the relationship between export orientation and female share of employment in the turkish manufacturing sector during 1983 85 following the onset of export led industrialization policies using plant level data we find that female share of employment in a plant increases with the export to total output ratio of its sector the contribution of the study to the literature is its use of plant level data for a large number of plants enabling us to control for other determinants of female share of employment such as workers skill composition at the plant level

cooperative interconnection settlement among isps through nap abstract this paper studies the settlement problem among internet service providers isps who interconnect with each other through network access point nap a cooperative game framework is adopted for the analysis two commonly adopted allocations i e the non settlement profit allocation and the shapley value based profit allocation are analyzed and compared we check whether these two allocations can encourage isps to interconnect with each other i e in the core of the game and at the same time demonstrate fairness in settlement our results show that the non settlement allocation is not in the core and does not preserve fairness and the shapley value based profit allocation is in the core and demonstrates fairness however the complex structure of shapley value makes it difficult to understand for isps and hard to be implemented at nap especially when isps can only make their pricing decisions independently therefore we propose a characterized profit allocation cpa which is in the core preserves fairness and is easy to interpret we further propose a settlement rule based on cpa which enables the isps to act independently but achieve global optimality we also extend our basic model to incorporate interconnection quality decisions and market competition and show that the proposed settlement rule and its extended form work well in these scenarios numerical experiments confirm that cpa and its corresponding settlement rule can effectively encourage interconnection among isps and motivate isps to expand their networks

globalization and the gender wage gap there are several theoretical reasons why globalization will have a narrowing as well as widening effect on the gender wage gap but little is known about the actual impact except for a number of country studies the author provides a cross country study of the impact of globalization on the occupational gender wage gap based on the rarely used but most far ranging survey of wages around the world the international labour organization s october inquiry this annual survey was started in 1924 and contains a wealth of information on wages and the gender wage gap for the period 1983 99 there is information on the gender wage gap in 161 narrowly defined occupations in more than 80 countries around the world the author finds the following i the occupational gender wage gap appears to be narrowing with increases in gdp per capita ii there is a significantly narrowing impact of trade and foreign direct investment fdi net inflows on the occupational gender wage gap for low skill occupations both in poorer and richer countries and for high skill occupations in richer countries iii there is no evidence of a narrowing impact of trade but there is evidence of a widening impact of fdi net inflows on the high skill occupational gender wage gap in poorer countries iv wage setting institutions have a strong impact on the occupational gender wage gap in richer countries

a note on price and quality competition between asymmetric firms abstract this paper analyzes the impact of asymmetry between firms on the outcome of price and quality competition from a microeconomic viewpoint consumers purchase a product based on not only its price but also its quality level therefore two firms compete in determining their prices and quality levels to maximize their profits the asymmetry arises from the difference in consumers loyalty to each firm that asymmetry then determines a character of differentiation between firms our purpose is to show how asymmetry influences competition under varying consumers price and quality sensitivity in doing so we extend earlier work in the area of price and quality competition we show that in both the moderately quality sensitive and price sensitive markets higher consumers sensitivity as well as lower consumers loyalty to any firm leads to intense competition resulting in a decrease of both firms equilibrium profits on the other hand in highly quality sensitive market asymmetry compels the smaller firm to change its competitive strategy in general this is more beneficial to the larger firm as the smaller firm s profit tends to decline in the worst case the smaller firm is driven out of business under equilibrium

trade institution quality and income inequality summary we examine the effect of trade on income inequality in small developing countries we use two well accepted trade cost variables for identification one is based on baltic dry index and another is commodities price index our main finding is that trade leads to a significant reduction increase in income inequality in autocracies democracies to explain such different effects we provide supporting evidence that autocracies export more primary commodities and may follow the stolper samuelson theorem in ho framework while democracies active in manufacturing outsourcing may follow feenstra and hanson 1996 task model

modeling the effects of trade on women at work and at home abstract foreign trade affects women s wages and jobs their household work and their leisure this paper develops a model which covers not only all the sectors of the market economy but also social reproduction and leisure activities for women and men separately the model which in other respects is a standard cge computable general equilibrium model is applied to a simplified set of data for bangladesh its use is illustrated by simulating the gendered effects of changes in trade policies and capital flows

anticipatory sorting and gender segregation in temporary employment we examine the roots of gender segregation in the screening process by using a longitudinal data set of candidates considered for temporary projects at a staffing firm and following their progress through the hiring pipeline theories invoked to explain gender segregation across jobs traditionally rely on firm specific human capital and expectations of future commitment to explain this phenomenon these do not apply in this setting yet we find that the staffing firm is more likely to shortlist women for low paid projects and less likely to do so for high paid ones these effects are due to women being considered for different projects than men and associated at least partially to the level of competition within vacancies although client companies also exhibit some gender sorting behavior in the later steps of the hiring process they are more likely to prefer women and less likely to sort them into lower paid projects our findings are consistent with anticipatory gender sorting mechanisms by which first screeners generate segregation when narrowing down the pool of candidates for later decision makers we discuss the implications of this case for theories of gender stratification and workplace inequality especially in mediated labor markets this paper was accepted by jesper sorensen organizations

growth in women s relative wages and in inequality among men one phenomenon or two although increased wage inequality among men during the past three decades has received more attention the growth in women s wages has been equally remarkable in fact by one measure of inequality the ninth decile median ratio the proportional growth in inequality has moved in exact proportion with the female male wage ratio it is suggested that both result from expansion in the value of brains relative to brawn there is no way of knowing the full story of growth in women s relative wages and it is important not to dismiss the import of changing career patterns as is evident in the panel data increasing labor market participation must be important so too are the implications that follow the movement of women from the home to the job

the effects of sensitization and habituation in durable goods markets abstract we develop a model to study the impact of changes in price sensitivity on the firm as it introduces multiple generations of a durable product where unit costs are a convex function of quality we incorporate the psychological processes of sensitization and habituation into a model of discretionary purchasing of replacement products motivated by past experience when price sensitivity decreases with each purchase sensitization the myopic firm offers a higher quality product at a much higher price with each generation when price sensitivity increases with each purchase habituation the myopic firm engages in price skimming when sensitization is followed by habituation the myopic firm eventually provides higher quality than the market is willing to pay for leading to a steep drop off in sales and profits the actions of the forward looking firm depend on the discount rate a firm with a low discount rate builds its customer base before offering a higher quality and higher priced product in contrast a firm with a high discount rate quickly increases price and quality following the same path to falling profits of the myopic firm these results provide insight into the firm and consumer behaviors underlying the phenomenon of performance oversupply identified in the innovation literature

viewpoint male female wage differentials how can that be abstract the paper outlines the main empirical procedures that are used to document the male female wage differential and the extent to which it reflects discrimination it then discusses the evidence on male female wage differentials their existence the extent to which they reflect discrimination their changes over time and the factors that influence the gap particular attention is paid to more recent studies that control for a wider range of conventionally unobserved factors theoretical perspectives are then outlined focusing on the issue of how discriminatory wage differentials can survive given the forces of competition the impacts of policy initiatives are also discussed

globalization and gender wage inequality in china summary this paper uses an enterprise population level dataset to investigate the link between globalization and gender inequality in the chinese labor market we find that foreign and exporting firms employ more female workers than domestic nonexporters foreign participation and export orientation within the same region and industry significantly encourage female employment and reduce the gender wage gap furthermore we show that while a large gender wage gap exists for foreign and exporting firms it mainly reflects the difference in gender productivity gender wage discrimination is observed only among private nonexporting firms overall our results highlight the importance of globalization in encouraging female employment and reducing gender discrimination

does foreign investment liberalisation enhance women s economic status micro evidence from urban china this paper analyses the effects of inward foreign direct investment fdi on female earnings and women s economic status in households using chinese urban household survey data from 1997 to 2008 the identification exploits the substantial relaxation of foreign investment regulations immediately after china s accession to the wto in 2002 the difference in differences estimation results show that fdi liberalisation has improved women s economic status significantly by increasing female earnings in sectors more exposed to fdi further analyses indicate that foreign investment liberalisation facilitates the promotion of female employees in their career ladders and increases their skill premium which are two important channels through which women enhance their economic independence

north south trade and female labour in manufacturing an asymmetry a simple method of measuring the impact of north south trade on the female intensity of manufacturing is applied to data for developed and developing countries the results confirm that growth of exports has increased the relative demand for female labour in the south however there does not appear to have been a general counterpart reduction in the relative demand for female labour in northern manufacturing even among blue collar workers there are several possible reasons for the apparent conflict between these findings and other evidence that in northern manufacturing females have been disproportionately displaced by trade with the south

swimming upstream trends in the gender wage differential in the 1980s using michigan panel study of income dynamics data for 1979 and 1988 we analyze how a falling gender wage gap occurred despite changes in wage structure unfavorable to low wage workers the decrease is traced to gender specific factors which more than counterbalanced changes in measured and unmeasured prices working against women supply shifts net of demand were unfavorable for women generally and hurt high skilled more than middle and low skilled women by analyzing wages we find support for the notion of a gender twist in supply and demand having its largest negative effect on high skilled women

the effects of structural change and economic liberalisation on gender wage differentials in south korea and taiwan this paper investigates the sources of divergent trends in gender wage differentials in two important newly industrialised economies nies south korean and taiwan as these economies have entered the post industrial phase of development gender wage differentials in taiwan s manufacturing sector have widened while in korea they have narrowed decomposition analysis is used to broadly identify sources of change in gender wage differentials multivariate regression analysis is relied on to differentiate the impact on the gender wage gap of 1 macro levels policies 2 institutional factors and 3 shifts in labour demand and supply in addition to the predictable effects of several standard supply side variables in taiwan physical capital mobility is found to have contributed to a wider gender earnings gap women s greater concentration in industries where capital is mobile may explain this result the effects of capital mobility in korea appears to differ which may be due to the dissimilar characters of outward fdi from that country copyright 2000 by oxford university press