Mothers' postdivorce earnings in the context of welfare policy change

We examined in this study the implications of divorce for mothers' earnings, comparing the 1990s and the 2000s, and illuminating developments in welfare policy for single‐parent families over those two decades. After the welfare reform of 2003, the economic autonomy of single mothers, established through a combination of welfare state‐based benefits and paid labour, was delegitimised, with a turn toward the marketplace. Using a unique data set created for this research by merging Israeli census files for 1995–2008, annual administrative employment records from the National Insurance Institute and the Tax Authority, and data from the Civil Registry of Divorce, we found that most mothers tended to increase their income from paid labor following divorce. However, they did so significantly more prior to the welfare cuts than after the cuts. The results can inform policy discussions about how mothers' postdivorce earnings might be affected by welfare policy shifts.     

Minimum Wage Effects on Labor Market Outcomes under Search,Matching, and Endogenous Contact Rates

Building upon a continuous‐time model of search with Nash bargaining in a stationary environment, we analyze the effect of changes in minimum wages on labor market outcomes and welfare. Although minimum wage increases may or may not lead to increases in unemployment in our model, they can be welfare‐improving to labor market participants on both the supply and demand sides of the labor market. We discuss identification of the model using Current Population Survey data on accepted wages and unemployment durations, and show that by incorporating a limited amount of information from the demand side of the market it is possible to obtain credible and precise estimates of all primitive parameters. We show that the optimal minimum wage in 1996 depends critically on whether or not contact rates can be considered to be exogenous and we note that the limited variation in minimum wages makes testing this assumption problematic.     

同工不同酬: 现实状况、负面效应与政策建议

通过实证分析认为：农业生产领域内同工不同酬的现象长期存在;农业劳动日工价形成机制不合理,加之城乡劳动力市场竞争激烈,结果农业劳动日工价与现实市场劳动力工价差距悬殊,加剧了农业生产领域内同工不同酬的矛盾。最后提出按照实际雇工工价调整现行农业劳动日工价核算标准,建立粮食等主要农产品的目标价格制度等对策,逐步实现农业生产领域同工同酬。     

Work Choices: the low productivity road to an underclass

The passage of the Work Choices Act 2005 serves to eliminate one of the last symbols of fairness in Australian society; the judicially‐determined conciliation and arbitration system and wage‐setting machinery. In this paper we examine the flawed conceptual framework, which underpins the Government's view that reducing the rights and protections of workers will produce superior labour market outcomes. We argue that the principal failure of the Work Choices Act is that it ignores the role of macroeconomic policy in directly addressing the efficiency and equity issues that have been said to motivate its provisions. The Act also ignores the different bargaining power of workers and capital and pays no attention to the serious social repercussions that will flow when labour is treated like a commodity. The imperative to minimise labour costs under Work Choices will spur a race to the bottom and the profusion of insecure, low‐paid, poor‐quality work in an economy characterised by allocative and dynamic inefficiency.     

个人工资、薪金所得税应以家庭为纳税单元

个人所得税法目前已成为与我国国民日常生活密切相关的一部法律,个人所得税也已成为我国税收的主力税种之一。但本次个人所得税法的修订尚没有充分考虑到我国近十几年深化改革所带来的社会环境、税源环境和立法环境的深刻变化,以及这些变化给居民及其家庭在公平税负方面带来的影响。建议个人所得税工资、薪金所得应以家庭作为纳税单元,最大限度地发挥个人所得税在缩小贫富差距、调节社会分配方面的功能。     

Informing employees in small and medium-sized firms about training: Results of a randomized field experiment

We mailed brochures to 10,000 randomly chosen employed German workers who were eligible for a subsidized occupational training program called WeGebAU, informing them about the importance of skills-upgrading training in general and about WeGebAU in particular. Using survey and register data, we estimate effects of the informational brochure on awareness of the program, on take-up of WeGebAU and other training, and on subsequent employment. The brochure more than doubles awareness of the program. There are no effects on WeGebAU take-up, but participation in other (unsubsidized) training increases among employees aged under 45. Short-term labor market outcomes are not affected.     

人工智能技术与劳动力迁出决策——来自全国流动人口动态监测调查的经验证据

以人工智能为核心的新兴技术革命正不断渗透我国劳动力市场，微观劳动力个体面临地区智能化技术冲击时的迁出决策是关乎区域经济高质量发展的重要现实性问题。利用网络爬虫方法获取的城市层面人工智能专利数据，结合2014—2018年全国流动人口动态监测调查数据，实证考察了人工智能技术对劳动力迁出决策的影响。研究结果表明，人工智能技术会显著提高劳动力迁出决策的概率。机制分析表明，人工智能技术会通过减少就业机会和降低工资收入水平两种传导路径引发劳动力迁出决策。进一步分析表明，人工智能技术主要偏向引致中低技能、从事常规性职业、过往迁移时间较短、农业户口和非国有企业劳动力迁出。因此，政府应着力加强劳动力权益保护和再就业，积极开展劳动力职业培训，减少技术性失业诱发的劳动力外流。