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A pioneering account of the surging global tide of market power—and how it stifles workers around the worldIn an era of technological progress and easy communication, it might seem reasonable to assume that the world's working people have never had it so good. But wages are stagnant and prices are rising, so that everything from a bottle of beer to a prosthetic hip costs more. Economist Jan Eeckhout shows how this is due to a small number of companies exploiting an unbridled rise in market power—the ability to set prices higher than they could in a properly functioning competitive marketplace. Drawing on his own groundbreaking research and telling the stories of common workers throughout, he demonstrates how market power has suffocated the world of work, and how, without better mechanisms to ensure competition, it could lead to disastrous market corrections and political turmoil.The Profit Paradox describes how, over the past forty years, a handful of companies have reaped most of the rewards of technological advancements—acquiring rivals, securing huge profits, and creating brutally unequal outcomes for workers. Instead of passing on the benefits of better technologies to consumers through lower prices, these “superstar” companies leverage new technologies to charge even higher prices. The consequences are already immense, from unnecessarily high prices for virtually everything, to fewer startups that can compete, to rising inequality and stagnating wages for most workers, to severely limited social mobility.A provocative investigation into how market power hurts average working people, The Profit Paradox also offers concrete solutions for fixing the problem and restoring a healthy economy.

This ILO flagship report gives a unique picture of wage trends globally, by region and at country level. The current edition presents an in-depth empirical analysis of how concurrent crises - the COVID-19 pandemic followed by the cost-of-living crisis - have impacted on wages and purchasing power across countries and regions. For the first time this century, global real wage growth has become negative while real productivity has continued to grow.

A pioneering account of the surging global tide of market power—and how it stifles workers around the worldIn an era of technological progress and easy communication, it might seem reasonable to assume that the world's working people have never had it so good. But wages are stagnant and prices are rising, so that everything from a bottle of beer to a prosthetic hip costs more. Economist Jan Eeckhout shows how this is due to a small number of companies exploiting an unbridled rise in market power—the ability to set prices higher than they could in a properly functioning competitive marketplace. Drawing on his own groundbreaking research and telling the stories of common workers throughout, he demonstrates how market power has suffocated the world of work, and how, without better mechanisms to ensure competition, it could lead to disastrous market corrections and political turmoil.The Profit Paradox describes how, over the past forty years, a handful of companies have reaped most of the rewards of technological advancements—acquiring rivals, securing huge profits, and creating brutally unequal outcomes for workers. Instead of passing on the benefits of better technologies to consumers through lower prices, these “superstar” companies leverage new technologies to charge even higher prices. The consequences are already immense, from unnecessarily high prices for virtually everything, to fewer startups that can compete, to rising inequality and stagnating wages for most workers, to severely limited social mobility.A provocative investigation into how market power hurts average working people, The Profit Paradox also offers concrete solutions for fixing the problem and restoring a healthy economy.

This ILO flagship report examines the evolution of real wages around the world, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The 2020-21 edition analyses the relationship of minimum wages and inequality, as well as the wage impacts of the COVID-19 crisis.

This book is about labor income share, which measures the share of national income paid in wages. The global share of income going towards labor is declining, which suggests a more unequal distribution of income. This has sparked debates about fair distribution of personal incomes among academics and policymakers alike. This book joins the discussion by bringing together recent developments in theoretical and empirical research on labor income share and novel insights on the measurement of the labor income share. The aim of this book is to help design policies to reduce inequality and provide useful knowledge to academics, policymakers from government agencies, policy aides in research institutions and think tanks, and broader audiences from public and private organizations.

Diese Studie rekonstruiert die Entwicklungen der Löhne und Lohnungleichheiten während der Eurokrise aus einer gesamteuropäischen sowie inner- und zwischenstaatlichen Perspektive. Es wird gezeigt, dass die unterschiedlichen betrieblichen als auch arbeitsmarktpolitischen Anpassungenin den Mitgliedsstaaten zu sehr heterogenen Mustern der innerstaatlichen Lohnentwicklungen beigetragen haben. So erfuhren vor allem die osteuropäischen Mitgliedsstaatensowie Deutschland einen deutlichen Anstieg des unteren Lohnniveaus, während es in den südeuropäischen Ländern sowie Großbritannien zu starken Reallohneinbußen gekommen ist, die teilweise durch die veränderte Zusammensetzung der Arbeitnehmerschaft verdeckt werden. Gleichzeitig haben diese Entwicklungen zu einer EU-weiten Konvergenz der Löhne sowie einem Rückgang der zwischenstaatlichen Lohnungleichheiten geführt. Ein zentraler Erklärungsfaktor für diese Trends sind die rechtlich-institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen, die die Auswirkungen der makroökonomischen Schocks auf die Lohn- und Beschäftigungsstrukturen in hohem Maße moderiert haben und die selbst auch zum Gegenstand krisenbedingter Anpassungsprozesse wurden.

The'living wage'is an old idea that has experienced a dramatic resurgence of political popularity in recent years. The underlying logic of the concept is quite clear: it is a wage that provides workers with enough income to live on at some level considered adequate. However, in practice the term has become blurred with that of the'minimum wage'and in its implementation it has lacked a consistent meaning despite being widely used as a campaigning slogan. This short primer traces the origins of the concept of the living wage and seeks to explain the current rise in its fortunes as an economic instrument with a social objective. It examines its impact on labour markets and wage levels, explores how it has been applied, and assesses whether it is an effective measure for raising living standards. It offers a broad-ranging analysis of the debates, policy developments and limitations of wage floors in developed economies and will appeal to a wide readership in economics, public policy and sociology, as well as those working in non-profit and non-governmental organizations.

Economists generally assume that wage differentials among similar workers will only endure when competition in the capital and/or labor market is restricted. In contrast, Howard Botwinick uses a classical Marxist analysis of real capitalist competition to show that substantial patterns of wage disparity can persist despite high levels of competition. Indeed, the author provocatively argues that competition and technical change often militate against wage equalization. In addition to providing the basis for a more unified analysis of race and gender inequality within labor markets, Botwinick's work has important implications for contemporary union strategies. Going against mainstream proponents of labor-management cooperation, the author calls for militant union organization that can once again take wages and working conditions out of capitalist competition.This revised edition was originally published under the same title in 1993 by Princeton University Press.

This book serves as a textbook on labour economics and public policy in labour markets.It also shows how Singapore has been successful in establishing a world class labour market. One attribute of such a labour market is the high purchasing power of wages for the average worker for essentials such as housing, healthcare, quality education for children and retirement consumption, which motivates Singaporeans to work hard. The second attribute is a macro-focused labour union that works closely with the government, and is able to prevent excessive wage increase.

This volume seeks to go beyond the microeconomic view of wages as a cost having negative consequences on a given firm, to consider the positive macroeconomic dynamics associated with wages as a major component of aggregate demand.

La Organización Mundial del Trabajo (OIT) define el término competencia como la capacidad efectiva para llevar a cabo una actividad laboral plenamente identificada. La competencia laboral no es, por consiguiente, una probabilidad de éxito en la ejecución de un trabajo, es una capacidad real y demostrada. Esta obra, dirigida a profesionales, empresarios y estudiantes de Ingeniería Industrial, administración y finanzas, suministra valiosa información acerca de uno de los procesos determinantes en el crecimiento de las organizaciones: la compensación salarial.

There is little doubt that significant income inequality persists across as well as within countries, and that wage differential exists between male and female workers across the industries and within establishments. The differences in earnings not only affect the well-being of the current generation but also have major long-term impacts on health, education and skill formation of future generations. Although an important goal of a country is to improve the well-being of their workers, the ways to achieve this goal may differ. This book presents recent research on labor economics, addressing issues such as gender wage gap, regional wage disparity, inter-and intra-industry wage inequality, the wage effects of immigration and the effects of wage negotiations in organizations. There are three parts in this book. Part A contains five chapters addressing the issue of gender wage gap. Part B contains five chapters on regional studies to show the effects on wage, skill formation and the correlation between public and private sector employments. Part C focuses on wage negotiations in organizations. The book provides several important insights into many contemporary labor market issues.

For firms, the salary issue is extremely important for their business operations and development. In order to investigate this issue and to expand the role of the salary system in business management, the book presents the Consensus Salary Model for modern enterprises and further explores its theoretical foundations, decisive mechanisms and features, and provides a basic framework for designing salary systems for modern enterprises. Finally, the book incorporates empirical research to test the model.

In this tightly argued work William Coleman explores the macroeconomic implications of politically based restraints on competition in labour markets.Through a suite of compact models the author investigates the consequences of the labour force securing the best terms of sale for its labour by means of the electoral mechanism. He concludes that such ‘electorally optimal'labour regulation can explain not only wage rigidity and unemployment, but also wage volatility; episodes of excess demand for labour; the co-existence of an inefficient state sector with an efficient private sector; and the preference for a minimum wage over a universal wage regulation. Finally, the approach can rationalize nominal wage rigidity, and not solely real wage rigidity. In sum, the analysis promises to both complete the Classical explanation of unemployment by predicting when, why and how real wages will be rigid, and at the same time to better secure Keynesian insights by suggesting how money rigidity may be characteristic of electorally optimal labour regulation.The Political Economy of Wages and Unemployment will prove a challenging and stimulating read for academics, students and researchers of economics generally, and more specifically, those with a special interest in macroeconomics and labour economics.

El segundo en una serie de informes de la OIT sobre la evolución de los salarios, este “Informe Mundial sobre Salarios 2010/2011. Políticas salariales en tiempos de crisis” revisa las tendencias salariales a nivel mundial y regional durante los años de la crisis económica y financiera de 2008 y 2009.

As global flows of goods, capital, information, and people accelerate competitive pressure on businesses throughout the industrialized world, firms have responded by reorganizing work in a variety of efforts to improve efficiency and cut costs. In the United States, where minimum wages are low, unions are weak, and immigrants are numerous, this has often lead to declining wages, increased job insecurity, and deteriorating working conditions for workers with little bargaining power in the lower tiers of the labor market. Low-Wage Work in the Wealthy World builds on an earlier Russell Sage Foundation study (Low-Wage America) to compare the plight of low-wage workers in the United States to five European countries—Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom—where wage supports, worker protections, and social benefits have generally been stronger. By examining low-wage jobs in systematic case studies across five industries, this groundbreaking international study goes well beyond standard statistics to reveal national differences in the quality of low-wage work and the well being of low-wage workers. The United States has a high percentage of low-wage workers—nearly three times more than Denmark and twice more than France. Since the early 1990s, however, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany have all seen substantial increases in low-wage jobs. While these jobs often entail much the same drudgery in Europe and the United States, quality of life for low-wage workers varies substantially across countries. The authors focus their analysis on the'inclusiveness'of each country's industrial relations system, including national collective bargaining agreements and minimum-wage laws, and the generosity of social benefits such as health insurance, pensions, family leave, and paid vacation time—which together sustain a significantly higher quality of life for low-wage workers in some countries. Investigating conditions in retail sales, hospitals, food processing, hotels, and call centers, the book's industry case studies shed new light on how national institutions influence the way employers organize work and shape the quality of low-wage jobs. A telling example: in the United States and several European nations, wages and working conditions of front-line workers in meat processing plants are deteriorating as large retailers put severe pressure on prices, and firms respond by employing low-wage immigrant labor. But in Denmark, where unions are strong, and, to a lesser extent, in France, where the statutory minimum wage is high, the low-wage path is blocked, and firms have opted instead to invest more heavily in automation to raise productivity, improve product quality, and sustain higher wages. However, as Low-Wage Work in the Wealthy World also shows, the European nations'higher level of inclusiveness is increasingly at risk.'Exit options,'both formal and informal, have emerged to give employers ways around national wage supports and collectively bargained agreements. For some jobs, such as room cleaners in hotels, stronger labor relations systems in Europe have not had much impact on the quality of work. Low-Wage Work in the Wealthy World offers an analysis of low-wage work in Europe and the United States based on concrete, detailed, and systematic contrasts. Its revealing case studies not only provide a human context but also vividly remind us that the quality and incidence of low-wage work is more a matter of national choice than economic necessity and that government policies and business practices have inevitable consequences for the quality of workers'lives. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Case Studies of Job Quality in Advanced Economies

Labor is the most important of the three traditional factors of production (land, labor and capital), accounting for some 75% of the GDP. It is therefore important to focus on issues of labor economics. In this book the approach taken will be that of the free market philosophy of libertarianism, the perspective that allows the maximum of freedom, consistent with the responsibility of all to respect the equal rights of all others.The position of this book on unions is unique outside of the libertarian movement, and this is indicative of its analysis of several other issues, such as minimum wages. For scholars on the left, it is almost true that unions can do no wrong (for Marxists, they do not do enough, but that is another story). Their role is to raise wages for the workingman, and this task is almost unstintingly applauded. Conservatives, on the other hand, oppose unions root and branch (except for their support of foreign wars, which is also another story). To this end they support a welter of regulations, designed to reduce their power: limitations of check offs, forced secret ballots, etc.For libertarians, the analysis depends, intimately, on whether or not these are voluntary organizations. If they are, there is no more justification for imposing secret ballots on them than to do so for the chess or garden club. If they are not, they should not be weakened by restrictions, but, rather, banned, and their leaders imprisoned.

Die Bekämpfung von Korruption in Unternehmen und Behörden ist eine der aktuellen, großen Herausforderungen für Politik und Wirtschaft. Welche Parameter beeinflussen die individuelle Entscheidung eines Angestellten oder Amtsträgers Vorteile anzunehmen und wie beeinflussen sie sie? Die Abhandlung untersucht den komplexen Zusammenhang zwischen Löhnen und Korruption anhand verschiedener Modelle. Der Lohn-Korruptions-Zusammenhang wird anhand eines Modells von Luis A. Sosa untersucht, und es wird gezeigt, dass in Abhängigkeit von den Annahmen über das Risikoverhalten und einen Einkommens- oder Arbeitsplatzverlust nach einer Verurteilung, eine Erhöhung der Löhne eine Senkung, Steigerung oder gar keine Veränderung des Korruptionsausmaßes zur Folge haben kann. Durch Gegenüberstellung und Kombination des Ansatzes von Sosa mit anderen Ansätzen werden die Ursachen für die zum Teil ambivalenten Ergebnisse identifiziert. Es wird gezeigt, dass ein Modell mit exogen gegebenem Korruptionsertrag ein anderes Ergebnis erzeugt, als ein Modell mit endogenem Korruptionsertrag, und dass - abhängig von verschiedenen Annahmen über Strafe, Entdeckungswahrscheinlichkeit und'Folge- und Nebenkosten'einer Korruptionstat, sowie zum Risikoverhalten - der Zusammenhang zwischen Lohn und Korruption keinesfalls eindeutig ist.

The first in a new series of ILO reports focusing on wage developments, this volume reviews major trends in the level and distribution of wages around the world since 1995.

This volume contains thirteen new and original chapters on topics relating to worker well-being. It deals directly with how economic institutions affect individual and family earnings distributions. Topics covered include job training, worker and firm mobility, unions, collective bargaining, minimum wages, unemployment insurance and schooling. Among the questions answered are: To what extent do greater work hours of women mitigate the widening of the family earnings distribution? To what extent does the decline in unionization widen the distribution of earnings? To what extent do computers expand the earnings distribution? To what extent does the Russian wage distribution change if one accounted for wage arrears? To what extent does business relocation bring about job creation and job destruction? To what extent does maternal education increase children's education? To what extent do job skills matter for low-income workers? And finally, why do minimum wage increases often fail to lead to increases in unemployment? There are thirteen new and original chapters containing research on aspects of worker well-being. Each chapter is written by experts in the field.

This volume challenges the view that unemployment is exclusively determined by structural characteristics of the labour market and the social benefit system. Macroeconomic policies and investment in capital stock are included in the analysis and are shown to have a major role to play.

This volume comprises 12 chapters, each accounting for a particular aspect of worker well-being. Among the issues addressed are: employee compensation, job loss, disability, health, gender, education, contract negotiation, and macroeconomic labor policy. The volume provides answers to a number of important questions. For example, why do smaller, newer companies better match CEO pay to profits than old, established corporations? Which demographic groups are most prone to job losses? What does marital status have to do with the glass ceiling? Does retiring from work increase one's mental health? Does domestic violence drive women to work more? Do higher educational subsidies lead to more schooling than larger educational rates of return? In short, the volume addresses a number of important policy-related research issues on worker well-being facing labor economists today.

This volume contains 15 essays devoted to a number of multifaceted issues regarding how public policy affects worker well-being. Of the 15 chapters, the first two are the more general, dealing with overall earnings distribution and overall changes in welfare policy. The remaining chapters examine specific aspects of human welfare. They cover: fertility, disability, minimum wage, pension wealth, human capital investment, migration, health, and earnings. The book culminates with four chapters relating to gender and the family. Ultimately, determining who works, how much is earned, and how these earnings get distributed define the components of individual and social welfare. The topics covered in this volume shed light on these questions.

Title from eBook title screen (viewed on July 14, 2004).

This book explores the micro-foundations and the macro-implications of the design of labour contracts.

How do workers fare in a continually changing labor market? This volume contains fifteen original scientific papers each examining how socio-economic changes affect worker wellbeing. Among the findings are: most increases in female labor force participation occur among women with high husbands'earnings, dispelling the myth that shrinking husbands'relative earnings cause women's work activities to rise; increased globalization equalizes pay between but expands pay within corporate establishments; high quality colleges widen the earnings distribution for top earners but only negligibly affect earnings for low wage earners; mathematical success depends on school quality more so than verbal learning; and adult daughters who visit ailing parents daily in a nursing home decrease their annual labor supply by about 1,000 hours implying a welfare loss of 180,000 dollars. Findings are: physical and/or sexual abuse appear to afflict over 30 per cent of the population leading to a 15 per cent drop in employment probability and a 32 per cent loss in wages; and, training workers in an entirely new occupation raises an employee's wage growth while training workers in the same occupation decreases their wage growth, at least during the Russian economy's recent transition.