Wage Setting in Sweden: An Empirical Test of a Barebones Union Model

ABSTRACT In this paper a simple monopoly union model for the Swedish economy is presented and estimated. Interest is focused on the union's objectives. The results indicate that two popular representations of union objectives — wage bill and rent maximisation — are rejected by the data. Instead, preferences are highly concave in the wage rate, with an estimated degree of relative risk aversion well above unity evaluated at sample means.     

Union Wage Setting,Employment and Investment: a Survey of Theory and Empirical Evidence

Abstract. This paper provides a survey of recent theoretical and empirical research on union wage setting, employment and investment. The basic models of union wage setting and employment are presented in a unified framework. The distinction between insiders and outsiders is introduced as an extension of the basic models. Empirical evidence on union preferences and on the performance of the various models is accessibly ordered. Finally, attention is paid to the effects of strategic behaviour between union and firm on wages, employment and investment.     

An Equilibrium Model of Health Insurance Provision and Wage Determination

We investigate the effect of employer‐provided health insurance on job mobility rates and economic welfare using a search, matching, and bargaining framework. In our model, health insurance coverage decisions are made in a cooperative manner that recognizes the productivity effects of health insurance as well as its nonpecuniary value to the employee. The resulting equilibrium is one in which not all employment matches are covered by health insurance, wages at jobs providing health insurance are larger (in a stochastic sense) than those at jobs without health insurance, and workers at jobs with health insurance are less likely to leave those jobs, even after conditioning on the wage rate. We estimate the model using the 1996 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and find that the employer‐provided health insurance system does not lead to any serious inefficiencies in mobility decisions.     

Worker and Firm Heterogeneity in Wage Growth: An AKM Approach

This paper estimates a wage growth equation containing human capital variables known from the traditional Mincerian wage equation with year, worker and firm fixed effects included as well. The paper thus contributes further to the large empirical literature on unobserved heterogeneity following the work of Abowd, Kramarz, and Margolis [1999; Econometrica 67(2): 251–333]. Our main contribution is to extend the analysis from wage levels to wage growth. The specification enables us to estimate the individual‐specific and firm‐specific fixed effects and their degree of explanation on wage growth. The analysis is conducted using Danish longitudinal matched employer–employee data from 1980 to 2006. We find that the worker fixed effect dominates both the firm fixed effect and the effect of the observed covariates. Worker effects are estimated to explain 7–12 per cent of the variance in wage growth whereas firm effects are estimated to explain 4–10 per cent. We furthermore find a negative correlation between the worker and firm effects, as do nearly all authors examining wage level equations.     

Wage Dispersion and Equilibrium Search Models: Some Evidence from Italy

This paper provides a structural estimation of an equilibrium search model with on‐the‐job search and heterogeneity in firms' productivities using a sample of Italian male workers. Results indicate that arrival rates of offers for workers are higher when unemployed than when employed and firms exploit their monopsony power when setting wages. As a result, workers earn far less than their marginal product. The model is then used to study regional labour market differentials in Italy. Wide variation in frictional transition parameters across areas helps to explain persistent unemployment and wage differentials.     

Appreciative Inquiry and Public Dialogue: An Approach to Community Change

This paper will demonstrate the contribution of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to whole system change in the public and non-profit sectors through elucidation of the theory, method, and examples of the successful application of this approach. Developed in the mid 1980s by David Cooperrider and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University, AI begins with the discovery of the highest achievements, core values, and aspirations embedded in all human systems. It is a methodology that begins a dialogue between individuals, expands to groups and builds to embrace and declare community wide intentions and actions. The theory of social constructionism informs this work asserting that individuals in relationship with one another can and will co-create an effective future when a positive inquiry into the heart and soul of a system, its greatest accomplishments and deepest values, generates new meaning and inspires new possibilities. Deceptively simple, the system is based on a reversal of the expectations, practices, and limitations found in traditional problem solving methodologies and thus represents a significant shift in attitude and language.     

Decentralized Public Sector Wage Determination: Wage Curve and Wage Comparison for Norwegian Teachers in the Pre‐WW2 Period

The recent trend towards decentralization of European public sector wage determination relaxes some of the central administered wage setting mechanisms developed in the post‐WW2 period. This paper discusses teacher wage determination in Norway in 1905–39, a period with a highly decentralized public sector wage formation. Separate wage equations for urban and rural areas are estimated. I find that the responsiveness to unemployment of the urban wage was of the same magnitude as in the post‐WW2 period private sector wage formation. In addition, the internal teacher labour market and local economic conditions influence the wage level. The rural wage mainly followed the urban wage.     

Testing a Model of Trade Union Behaviour: An Application of a Multivariate Cointegration Analysis to UK Aggregate Wage Data

ABSTRACT The first part of the paper considers a behavioural model of trade unionism. Wages and employment are characterized as the outcome of a process by which the union maximizes an objective function containing wages and employment as arguments, and is constrained by a trade-off between these two variables as represented by the firm's labour demand function. In the second part, the model's equilibrium predictions for wages are estimated in the framework of a multivariate error correction model and tested for cointegration with data from Britain's manufacturing sector from 1967 to 1986.     

UK Wage Inequality: An Industry and Regional Perspective

Abstract. This paper looks at male wage inequality in the UK across industries and regions over a 15 year period. After controlling for the heterogeneity of productivity characteristics across the population, that part of wage inequality which cannot be explained by observable worker characteristics is examined. This is undertaken at both the industry and regional level to assess the key themes dominant in the literature capable of explaining within‐group wage inequality, namely: technology; globalization; female participation; immigration; shifts in the supply of relative education across cohorts; and falling unionization.     

包容性增长政策分析的研究方法和现状:可计算一般均衡模型微观模拟技术研究述评

伴随着可计算一般均衡模型、微观模拟技术的发展和包容性增长政策的实施,可计算一般均衡模型微观模拟技术(Computable General Equilibrium Micro-Simulation Approach,CGE-MSA)作为一项宏观微观政策分析工具已逐渐显示出巨大的应用价值。CGE-MSA基于国民经济社会核算矩阵和微观住户数据,综合CGE模型在宏观一般均衡分析中的优势和微观模拟技术在微观异质性主体分析中的优势,目前已在收入分配、贫困、劳动力市场改革、贸易自由化等领域取得了较多的研究成果。通过定位CGE-MSA在包容性增长政策分析中的研究地位,厘清CGE-MSA的不同分析方法、相关的重要问题及其在包容性增长政策分析中的应用,本文给出了以可计算一般均衡微观模拟技术为主的关于包容性增长政策分析的研究方法和现状的一个文献述评,这对进一步深化包容性增长领域的相关研究,促进中国经济包容性增长和实现和谐社会都具有重要的参考价值。     

Testing for Independence of Wage Drift and Minimum Contractual Wage: An Empirical Investigation Using Italian Aggregate Time Series

A theoretical two-stage bargaining model for wage drift and minimum contractual wage is discussed and its implication in terms of Granger-causality between the two variables is tested by using Italian aggregate time series. Empirical evidence suggests rejecting the independence of the two series. This result has, in turn, implications for policy analysis. Our findings seem to indicate the appropriateness of a policy oriented towards decentralized wage setting.     

Knowledge Spillovers and Wage Inequality: An Empirical Analysis of Dutch Manufacturing

The introduction of new technologies and technical change is associated mainly with high‐skilled and high‐wage workers. In addition, many studies have found a positive correlation between the introduction of new technologies and technical change and skill upgrading. In these studies no attention has been paid to spillovers from one sector to the other. In this paper we not only use measures of technical change but also knowledge spillovers to explain wage inequality in Dutch manufacturing in the period 1986–95. Using this more elaborate measure of technical change, our findings are twofold. First, we confirm that workers employed in knowledge‐intensive manufacturing sectors receive a higher wage than workers in less knowledge‐intensive sectors. Secondly, the wages paid to high‐skilled workers relative to low‐skilled workers in knowledge‐intensive sectors are higher than those in less knowledge‐intensive sectors. However, the coefficients using the elaborate measure of technological advancement are much lower and sometimes even insignificant. This suggests a premium for high‐skilled labour in sectors both applying and developing technology. But the wage premium is highest in technology‐developing sectors, as suggested by the measures used in previous studies.     

An Evaluation of the Consultant Workshop Model in a Human Service Setting

The purpose of the present study was to document and evaluate an application of the consultant-workshop model commonly employed by Organizational Behavior Management consultants. The consultation took place in a nonprofit human service setting that delivers behavioral services to children diagnosed with autism and their families. Workshop attendees were 13 senior therapists each of whom oversaw six to eight instructor therapists who provided behavioral services to clients. The training took place three years prior to this evaluation across five months and four workshop sessions. Participants learned to pinpoint, measure, diagnose, and intervene and then they presented their project at the last workshop and these projects were documented. When possible, follow-up information was gathered to determine the extent to which this approach facilitated maintenance of the projects and generalization to other opportunities for performance improvement. Results indicated that projects were, in general, very effective. At follow-up, some components of the projects remained in place and limited evidence indicated that the performance improvements maintained or generalized. Based on the findings, recommendations for improving the workshop model are provided.     

Intergenerational Transfers,and Public Pensions in a Non Altuistic Setting: a Public Choice Model

The paper presents a model based on non‐altruistic individuals, where middle aged and old individuals influence the decisions about public social security system. This is an alternative or a complement to private intergenerational transfers. Fertility is endogenous, as children are seen as an assets in the process of transferring resources to old age by the network of intergenerational intrafamily transfers. Expectations about the Government social security budget balance play a crucial role. We also present some empirical estimates of the fertility and pension ‘demand’ function for some developed countries. It emerges that both can be treated as endogenous, and the results are coherent with the theory.     

Incentives,Contracts, and Markets: A General Equilibrium Theory of Firms1

This paper takes steps toward integrating firm theory in the spirit of Alchian and Demsetz (1972) and Grossman and Hart (1986), contract theory in the spirit of Holmstrom (1979), and general equilibrium theory in the spirit of Arrow and Debreu (1954) and McKenzie (1959). In the model presented here, the set of firms that form and the contractual arrangements that appear, the assignments of agents to firms, the prices faced by firms for inputs and outputs, and the incentives to agents are all determined endogenously at equilibrium. Agents choose consumption—but they also choose which firms to join, which roles to occupy in those firms, and which actions to take in those roles. Agents interact anonymously with the (large) market, but strategically within the (small) firms they join. The model accommodates moral hazard, adverse selection, signaling, and insurance. Equilibria may be Pareto ranked.     

Network Embeddedness in Exploration and Exploitation of Joint R&D Projects: A Structural Approach

This paper analyses how network embeddedness affects the exploration and exploitation of R&D project performance. By developing joint projects, partners and projects are linked to one another and form a network that generates social capital. We examine how the location, which determines the access to information and knowledge within a network of relationships, affects the performance of projects. We consider this question in the setup of exploration and exploitation projects, using a database built from an EU framework. We find that each of the structural embeddedness dimensions (degree, betweenness and eigenvector centrality) have a different impact on the exploration and exploitation project performance. Our empirical analysis extends to project management literature and social capital theory, by including the effect that the acquisition of external knowledge has on the performance of the project.     

A New Look at the Public Wage Premium in Italy: The Role of Schooling Endogeneity

This paper uses a sample of male workers to estimate public and private wage structures and the public wage premium for Italy. Results from a model with endogenous sector and schooling suggest that public employees have on average lower unobserved wage potentials in both sectors than private employees, but work in the sector where they benefit from a comparative wage advantage. Schooling is positively correlated with wages in both sectors, and controlling for that is crucial to get more reliable estimates and predictions. The associated average unconditional public wage premium is 12 per cent. The net premium is 9 per cent, but not statistically significant.     

面向大规模定制的产品族功能性评价与选择方法

针对大规模定制生产模式下产品多样性和低复杂性的矛盾,系统地研究了一种大规模定制产品族的功能性评价与选择方法。分别以功能域的类功能需求(GFR)和物理域的类设计参数(GDP)对大规模定制产品族进行了描述,并基于公理设计理论建立了GFR和GDP之间的映射关系。提出了产品族功能的定制度的概念和计算方法,建立了基于定制度的定制功能的评价和选择方法。