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In this paper we analyze changes in the intra-urban spatial distribution of employment across six U.S. and German city regions between 2002 and 2015. Our methodological approach allows for a systematic and spatially consistent comparison of urban spatial structures across the two different countries. The empirical results show major national, regional, and sectoral differences in the spatial distribution of employment. In the German case studies traditional core cities play a more important role for the regional labor market than in the U.S. Only relatively small shares of metropolitan employment are concentrated in subcenters. While employment concentrations are spatially less persistent in the U.S. case study regions, we did not find any evidence of common or country-specific trends toward increased polycentricity or employment dispersal. Changes in the spatial concentration of employment seem to be highly context-specific and influenced by the individual geographic and institutional frameworks of the analyzed metropolitan areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of this article provides an example of how one might incorporate behavioral economics into teaching macroeconomics or labor economics at an undergraduate level. The focus is on two macroeconomic concepts—wage determination and the Phillips curve—and shows that the implications and conclusions of both models differ from their textbook versions, once behavioral aspects are taken into account. In order to do that, the author first presents the standard macroeconomic model in both cases, then stresses situations where homo economicus, i.e., the rationality assumption, does not hold, and finally introduces behavioral economics concepts that explain noted differences. The explanations are intertwined with small classroom experiments that can be part of the lecture and used to make the lecture more interesting and comprehensible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effect of the inefficient allocation of academic individuals in the Israeli labour market in terms of mismatch between their fields of education and occupation – a phenomenon known as horizontal mismatch – on individual wage levels. The average annual income among horizontally mismatched academics was found to be significantly lower than the average annual income among horizontally matched academics. Therefore, one can see how significant the horizontal mismatch phenomenon is with respect to its effect on individuals' expected income throughout their career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of up-to-date data has hindered recent research on China's income and wealth inequality. This article fills this void by bringing current official and private data sources looking at these inequalities. The authors further investigate the underlying structural and sectoral policies causing these disparities. They find that the top 1% income share roughly equals that of the bottom 50%. The personal wealth share going to the top 1% exceeds by 5 times the wealth going to the bottom 50%. Failures in redistributive policies have primarily caused these growing income and wealth gaps. Sectoral and national development policies favoring the real estate industry at the expense of the manufacturing industry have also resulted in large-scale wealth shifts, with Chinese households holding increasing housing assets and residential mortgages. This article shows that Piketty's patrimonial capitalism not only applies to capitalist countries but also extends to China's socialist market economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of the Slovak job retention scheme introduced in 2020 on dismissals and survival of small firms during the COVID-19 pandemic. We exploit exogenous variation in epidemic intensity, measured as new COVID-19 cases within a district per month. We show that the sensitivity of dismissals to the intensifying epidemic among unsupported firms was low, i.e. these firms were relatively unaffected by the shock. In contrast, participation in the job retention scheme reduced the sensitivity of firm dismissals to the intensification of the epidemic, preserving endangered jobs. Supported firms benefited by roughly the same amount, regardless of their management quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vernon M. Briggs, Jr., a prominent economist and advocate for American workers, passed away in 2023 at the age of 86. He dedicated his career to advancing the economic well-being of workers through teaching and research on public policy analysis. Briggs focused on labor economics, rural labor markets, immigration policy, and human resource economics. While his views on immigration policy were controversial, he was respected for his commitment to low-wage workers. Briggs believed in using economics as a tool to improve society and reduce human suffering. [Extracted from the article]

Worker persistence—the ability to focus on a task for long periods of time—is often highlighted as essential to success. However, computers are extraordinarily persistent, particularly for routine, repetitive work. This potentially reduces the value of human persistence in occupations that are computerized. Using a well-defined measure of worker persistence across a nationally-representative 16-year sample of 4,239 individuals, we investigate the extent to which occupations value worker persistence in the presence of computers. We find that the labor market does indeed value persistence. Nonetheless, we find that in routine jobs, the wage premium of human persistence diminishes with the degree of workplace computerization. Yet, this substitution does not occur in non-routine jobs. These findings deepen our understanding of the effect of workplace computerization on the future of work and workers, and they also warrant imlications on government job training programs, organizational talent management, as well as the redesign of the K-12 curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1960s, the American Economic Association (AEA) began to address the concerns of the marginalized in the profession with the publication of Job Openings for Economists. Women economists, empowered by the mass women's liberation movement at the time, formed a committee within the AEA to press for equal opportunity and greater access to the job market. This committee focused their early efforts on reforming the labor market with one of the key activities being the creation of a job vacancy publication. The consequence of having a job vacancy publication was the establishment of a path whereby newly trained women economists were made aware of opportunities and the existing informal hiring system was gradually relied upon less. Women economists played an important role in the establishment, legitimization, and broader acceptance of a job vacancy publication that helped to further empower women and other marginalized economists. HIGHLIGHTS Women pursued equal opportunity in economics via reforms to employment-search practices. Published vacancies achieved a greater representation of women in the labor market by formalizing aspects of the labor market. The publication of job vacancies was only a first step to creating an inclusive environment for women. Not all marginalized groups saw their path to acceptance within economics paved by labor market reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are skills struggled over in occupations transforming through evolving technologies? This article contributes a feminist labor geography perspective amidst reinvigorated interest in skills. Within economic geography, human capital approaches view skills as resources measurable through quantitative proxies. Such analyses reveal place-based endowments and skills mismatches but, unable to capture lived experience or uneven power relations, overlook how skill facilitates agency for different workers. In contrast, we theorize skill as both processual—constantly unfolding and contested—and a mechanism unevenly empowering workers based on recognition (or lack thereof). Ethnographic research proceeded with workers employed by automotive shops, a context at the forefront of disruptive technologies. Two key roles underpin profitable operations. Technicians, overwhelmingly men, work individually from shop floors, diagnosing problems, repairing, and maintaining vehicles. Customer care staff, predominantly women, work in small teams from reception spaces, managing "car count" and mediating interactions between technicians and customers. In both roles, workers upskill to meet shifting service demands and retain brand-managed expertise. Yet, enduring and newly acquired skills are unevenly recognized and rewarded. Three factors fortified systemic barriers to progression: tasks extended and co-evolved unevenly with multi-skilled working bodies; gender-biased skills recognition favored technicians (skills with cars/deemed scarce) over customer service (skills of interactive translation/deemed replaceable); and workers positioned atop hierarchies refuted co-workers' skills claims within workplaces. For geographers concerned with the quality and fairness of work amidst evolving technological change, we argue that skill unveils the socio-spatial foundations of agency: materializing unevenly and struggled over in everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of the 2014 Social Insurance Law is a key reform of social protection in Vietnam. This article may be the first work quantifying the effects of the law's introduction on family welfare. The propensity score matching combined with the difference-in-differences techniques is used to reduce bias. The study indicates that the generosity of the benefits provided by the law negatively affected the work duration and earnings among couples when only the wife is insured. In contrast, their sick leaves were positively influenced. Concerning spillover effects, wives significantly responded to the change of benefits in terms of work duration and earnings. The study also attempts to identify the mechanism underlying the effects by disaggregating them by family income and couples' ages. The results suggest that low-income couples and young couples are sensitive to the law's introduction. The article integrates knowledge from the fields of labor economics, social welfare, and public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the impact of rural out-migration on the poverty of migrant-sending households by applying the new economics labor migration theory as a theoretical framework, and the multinomial endogenous switching regression as an analytical model in southern Ethiopia. Data were gathered from 415 sample rural households using stratified random sampling in the year 2021. The cost of basic needs approach and the Foster, Greer, and Thorbecke (FGT) method were used to establish the poverty line and create the poverty indices, respectively. The average annual food and non-food poverty lines are Birr 8997.52 and 2249.38 per adult equivalent. The incidence, depth, and severity of general poverty are 39.76, 10.11, and 3.55%, respectively, while the incidence, depth, and severity of food poverty are 34.70, 9.47, and 3.58%, respectively. When compared to other households, households with international migrants have a lower incidence, depth, and severity of poverty. The regression result of the multinomial endogenous switching model showed that international migration increases consumption per adult equivalent of households by 29.8% and is significant at the 1% level. Participation in rural-urban and international migration increases kilocalories per adult equivalent per day by 7.4 and 36.4%, respectively, in migrant-sending rural households. The findings support the new economics labor migration theory's remittance hypothesis. Promoting access to land, capital, farm and non-farm employment, irrigation, family planning, and basic public services would improve rural household welfare and reduce the current wave of rural out-migration in Southern Ethiopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a large literature on earnings and income volatility in labor economics, household finance, and macroeconomics. One strand of that literature has studied whether individual earnings volatility has risen or fallen in the United States over the last several decades. There are strong disagreements in the empirical literature on this important question, with some studies showing upward trends, some showing downward trends, and some showing no trends. Some studies have suggested that the differences are the result of using flawed survey data instead of more accurate administrative data. This article summarizes the results of a project attempting to reconcile these findings with four different datasets and six different data series—three survey and three administrative data series, including two which match survey respondent data to their administrative data. Using common specifications, measures of volatility, and other treatments of the data, four of the six data series show a lack of any significant long-term trend in male earnings volatility over the last 20-to-30+ years when differences across the datasets are properly accounted for. A fifth data series (the PSID) shows a positive net trend but small in magnitude. A sixth, administrative, dataset, available only since 1998, shows no net trend 1998–2011 and only a small decline thereafter. Many of the remaining differences across data series can be explained by differences in their cross-sectional distribution of earnings, particularly differences in the size of the lower tail. We conclude that the datasets we have analyzed, which include many of the most important available, show little evidence of any significant trend in male earnings volatility since the mid-1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Survey data indicate that the average salary of full professors in the U.S. and the average starting salary of new college graduates in the U.S. have both grown over each of the past eight years. The positive association between these survey data is intuitively appealing in that if greater demand for education comes as a consequence of higher annual earnings accruing to individuals with more education, then an increase in the starting salaries of new college graduates should lead to an increase in the wages of college and university faculty. This paper is the first to study whether the demand for professors is derived from the demand for higher education. To do so, we model the interactions between the academic labour market and the market for college and university graduates, and we show that, in equilibrium, academic wages are independent of students' earnings. This main characteristic of the equilibrium conditions of our formal model is supported by empirical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ESPINOSA, OSCAR, HERNÁN ENRÍQUEZ, DIEGO ÁVILA, SERGIO BASTO, DANIELA RIVERA, DANIELA LÓPEZ, PAOLA AVELLANEDA, and PAOLA RIVEROS. In Part 1, names of authors appear in capital letters, and titles of articles appear in lower-case letters. I See i OSCAR ESPINOSA. I See i OSCAR ESPINOSA. I See i OSCAR ESPINOSA. [Extracted from the article]

Carleton Parker was involved in investigations of the Industrial Workers of the World relating to the Hop Field Riots in California in 1913, and in an attempt to link economics with psychology in the understanding of labor disputes. In this he was influenced by Thorstein Veblen, William McDougall, and by many other psychologists. The culmination of his work was his paper "Motives in Economic Life" given at the AEA meetings in 1917. Parker's work on "labor psychology" generated great excitement at the time, connected him with many other liberal progressives, and was an influence on early members of the institutionalist group. Unfortunately, Parker died in the 1918 influenza pandemic. His wife, Cornelia Parker, worked to secure his legacy and attempted to carry on his work. She wrote a biography of her late husband, edited his papers, moved to New York to attend The New School and did her own research on the working woman. This paper deals with the lives and work of these two extraordinary people, and the intellectual environment that surrounded them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformation models are a very important tool for applied statisticians and econometricians. In many applications, the dependent variable is transformed so that homogeneity or normal distribution of the error holds. In this article, we analyze transformation models in a high-dimensional setting, where the set of potential covariates is large. We propose an estimator for the transformation parameter and we show that it is asymptotically normally distributed using an orthogonalized moment condition where the nuisance functions depend on the target parameter. In a simulation study, we show that the proposed estimator works well in small samples. A common practice in labor economics is to transform wage with the log-function. In this study, we test if this transformation holds in American Community Survey (ACS) data from the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A course on the economics of sports provides a unique opportunity to the economics department but confronts the instructor with unique challenges. Students in such a class are likely to be more heterogeneous and more likely to enter the class with inappropriate expectations than is the case for a typical upper-level economics elective. The author of this article discusses the problems an instructor in an economics of sports course will encounter and how s/he might overcome them. Particular emphasis is placed on the use of technology in the classroom and on how an economics of sports class might enable the instructor to raise issues of inclusion/exclusion in a nonthreatening manner. A course on the economics of sports provides a unique opportunity to economics departments. Because of the outsized interest of the American public in sports, an undergraduate course in the economics of sports can be a magnet that attracts students who otherwise might shy away from an upper-level economics course. It is far more likely to attract non-majors than our traditional offerings in labor economics or monetary theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ageing workforces due to low fertility rates and higher life expectancies challenge modern industrialized economies. In order to secure economic welfare and to balance public budgets, governments worldwide implement reforms to increase the retirement age. The trend towards a higher retirement age confronts defense sectors that for centuries have been in search of an age structure characterized by 'youth and vigor'. In this article, we study the economic gains to society when the special retirement age for military personnel in the Norwegian Armed Forces is increased. Combining the literatures on pension, personnel, and military economics, we identify mechanisms crucial to the outcome of a special retirement age reform. Monte Carlo simulation is applied to illustrate the potential impact on the economic net gains of uncertain variables. We find that an increase in the retirement age provides substantial net benefits to society, even under fairly negative assumptions about the consequences for retention, motivation and efforts, and the value of elderly personnel in the Norwegian Armed Forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies computation, estimation, inference, and testing for linearity in threshold regression with a threshold boundary. We first put forward a new algorithm to ease the computation of the threshold boundary, and develop the asymptotics for the least squares estimator in both the fixed-threshold-effect framework and the small-threshold-effect framework. We also show that the inverting-likelihood-ratio method is not suitable to construct confidence sets for the threshold parameters, while the nonparametric posterior interval is still applicable. We then propose a new score-type test to test for the existence of threshold effects. Comparing with the usual Wald-type test, it is computationally less intensive, and its critical values are easier to obtain by the simulation method. Simulation studies corroborate the theoretical results. We finally conduct two empirical applications in labor economics to illustrate the nonconstancy of thresholds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most courses are taught almost exclusively using lecture and, despite gaps in textbook coverage of empirical economics, do not incorporate academic readings. The authors of this article present a "jigsaw literature review" cooperative learning activity to address these shortfalls. The jigsaw guides students through formulating a position by synthesizing key ideas from readings with diverse perspectives on a common topic. The authors provide detailed guidance on conducting the activity in upper-level economics courses, based on their experiences while teaching labor economics, public economics, urban economics, health economics, and econometrics. They argue that their activity provides a meaningful way to integrate recent research, policy topics, and diversity issues while promoting student-student interactions. Sample course materials and additional resources are provided for ease of implementation. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00220485.2021.1963373 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of this article provides a framework for using readings outside of the textbook to increase engagement with topics in labor economics, to aid in the development of research skills, and prepare students to create a scholarly research proposal. The outside readings used in this course are academic journal articles. The students are assigned five articles to read, summarize, and discuss over the semester. Following a scaffolding approach, the repeated activity and feedback from the structured reflections and presentations will provide students a basis to generate a question they are interested in researching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The over-dependence of Malaysian manufacturing on unskilled foreign workers suggests the lack of policy alignment with the needs of the labour market. Despite the use of "price restrictions" (foreign worker levy and minimum wage) to control the demand for foreign labour, there are few indications of policy instruments having influenced the foreign employment growth rate. This article estimates industry-level foreign employment, paying attention to the roles of levy system, recruitment system and minimum wage policy, to provide a perspective on labour market administration. Using a panel data set of manufacturing industries for 1985–2014, upward revisions in the levy over the 1990s were found to be significant deterrents to the growth rates of foreign employment. The increase in levy in 2005 however failed to reduce this growth as it came in direct conflict with the introduction of outsourcing of foreign workers. The article suggests that with better policy co-ordination with supply-side instruments, a levy is a desirable instrument to align immigration with the objective of reducing foreign worker dependency. To appropriately price labour market needs, strict enforcement of levy payments by employers is recommended along with a fine-tuning for the existing levy to make it a multi-tier levy system for Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic created the conditions for a major recession, debates erupted over the structure and funding of unemployment insurance programs. The prior 2008–09 recession had already decimated many state unemployment programs, and along with major shifts in the workforce (including the gig economy), major policy questions surrounded the structure and funding of this state-national program. Stimulus efforts in early 2020 provided some temporary relief, but offered no permanent structural change on par with this shift in the workforce. As these programs end and no definitive structural changes are in sight, a number of think tanks including the Economic Policy Institute and the Century Foundation are advocating for major changes in unemployment insurance. Using the Commons ethical ideal type framework, this article explores the basic foundations of the employment relationship in a historical context and whether it has changed in a way that directly impacts the policy of unemployment insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of a reduction in compensation on individual sales performance over time. Sales performance data over a two-year time period were obtained for individuals who remained with their organization after experiencing a reduction in compensation. Using labor economic theory, this study examines how negative compensation changes affect performance and whether individuals' pay levels affect their reactions to a negative change in pay. To examine these questions, the study uses an interrupted time series with a nonequivalent no-treatment control group method of design. In addition, an alternative panel specification is used for verification. Data on 292 sales individuals are analyzed. The results show that in response to a reduction in compensation, individuals at high pay levels change their effort less than individuals at lower pay levels. The practical implications of these findings provide important insights into contingencies that affect the outcomes of pay-for-performance sales programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the contingent and contentious processes through which debt is created to finance major infrastructure projects. I contend that practices aimed at structuring credit relations into debt-financed projects often have important, unexpected, and underrecognized implications on the ground. My argument is illustrated through an analysis of the cascading impacts resulting from the making of a China–Lao sovereign debt agreement to fund the trans-Laos railway, an infrastructure project that is part of the broader Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The failure of the government to deliver the promised credit on time had multiscalar financial ramifications. Chinese enterprises that had been contracted to implement the railway were coerced into funding construction themselves, and the ensuing financial turmoil exacerbated the exploitative conditions experienced by construction laborers. As Lao laborers sought to resist exploitation in the form of delayed and denied wage payments, they were gradually substituted by their more vulnerable Chinese counterparts. Dynamics in the making of BRI-induced Lao sovereign debt therefore rendered some perceived beneficiaries of the interstate financial arrangement, such as Chinese enterprises and workers, its victims. I argue that the contradictory realities of this high-profile financial deal demonstrate the need for more grounded inquiries into the politics of sovereign debt making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between English language skills and earnings among workers in urban China using micro-data from the 2015 China General Social Survey. Using OLS and 2SLS regressions, we find that there are positive economic returns to English language skills (both listening and speaking) among workers in urban China. We also find that there is considerable heterogeneity in the returns to English skills. There is a relationship of complementarity between language and other human capital such as working experience. But only limited evidence with respect to the complementarity between language and education has been found in our setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the seventeenth century and the early decades of the eighteenth, there occurred a conceptual reversal regarding the relationship between land and labour as agents of production of wealth. Authors of the seventeenth century attributed to labour – as "form" and "father" – a fundamental role in producing wealth, and they considered land as "matter" and "mother", while Physiocrats attributed reproductive capacity only to land, and viewed labour as either mere support of nature or "sterile" transformative activity. These conceptions about the formation of wealth emerged not only from theoretical analyses but also from metaphors which had an important role in providing preliminary conceptual frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacturing technologies, appropriately implemented, provide competitive advantage to manufacturers. The use of manufacturing technologies across countries is difficult to compare. One such comparison has been provided in the literature with a study of US and Japanese practices in advanced manufacturing technology use using a common questionnaire. The present study compares the use of 17 different technologies in similar industries in the USA (n = 1025) and UK (n = 166) using a common questionnaire. Largely, there are remarkable similarities between the two countries. This may partly correlate with the heavy traffic in foreign direct investment between the two nations. Notable differences are (1) across-the-board, US manufacturers are ahead of the UK firms in computerized integration with units inside and outside manufacturing organizations; (2) US manufacturers show higher labour productivity, which is consistent with macro-economic data, and (3) more UK manufacturers report the use of soft technologies such as just-in-time, total quality manufacturing and manufacturing cells. Hypotheses for future investigation are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the American Institute for Conservation is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper reports evidence on the decomposition of a gender academic achievement gap (GAAP) at the university level by type of college from a unique environment, where the majority of an undergraduate student population shares similar socio-economic and demographic backgrounds and attends the largest and only public university in the country. Results show that between 37% and 45% of the GAAP is due to gender differentials in observable characteristics, and between 55% and 63% is due to the differential in the rates at which productivity-related characteristics are converted into academic achievement. In humanities, the GAAP is a strong reflection of students' performance at the high school level, whereas at scientific colleges it is also explained by the differentials in the returns to their respective abilities, and by the returns to their behavioral attitudes towards university education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how the radical extension of the period of parental leave, from eighteen to thirty-six months, that occurred in Germany in 1992 affected the nature of tasks women performed in their workplaces. The results of the analysis – which used a difference-in-differences method – suggests that this reform had a significant impact on the type of tasks carried out at work by women in the former West Germany. The study finds that after the reform was introduced, the women affected by it performed roles involving significantly less creative and more codifiable tasks than they had done previously. This analysis adds a new dimension to the discussion of the impact of maternity leave legislation on labor market outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Global Sport Management is the property of the Global Alliance of Marketing & Management Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It is well-known that donors give considerably more foreign aid to former colonies than to countries lacking past colonial ties. Unfortunately, we know relatively little about why this is the case. For one, there is almost never a theoretical justification for the inclusion of colonial history in statistical models. For the other, the only explicitly made rationale by Bueno de Mesquita and Smith (2009) actually predicts an interpretational problem: colonial history not only increases a former colony's saliency to the donor, but also has left deep marks on recipients' social and political institutions today. Both aspects shape how much aid a donor transfers to the recipient. This leaves ambiguous the meaning of the routinely found positive, sizable, and significant coefficient of colonial history on aid flows. We solve the inferential quandary by using a decomposition approach from labor econometrics. Our results show that about 75–100% of the colony effect on foreign aid stems from the greater saliency that donors give to policy concessions from former colonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do central banks in Eastern European countries react asymmetrically and in a nonlinear fashion to changes in inflation and output? We address this question by expanding the standard Taylor reaction function for the four inflation-targeting countries Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. We do so by taking explicitly inflation rates below or above target and output below or above potential, the so-called state of the economy, into account. The results reveal that there are indeed substantial asymmetries in the reaction function of the Czech, Polish, and Romanian central banks, which are only evident when the combination of inflation and output thresholds is explicitly modeled in one estimation equation. For these three central banks, nonlinearities in the inflation and output response also could be verified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers nonparametric and semiparametric estimation and inference of the effects of a covariate, either discrete or continuous, on the conditional distribution of a response outcome. It also proposes various uniform tests following estimation. This type of analysis is useful in situations where the econometrician or policy-maker is interested in knowing the effect of a variable or policy on the whole distribution of the response outcome conditional on covariates and is not willing to make parametric functional form assumptions. Monte Carlo experiments show that the proposed estimators and tests are well-behaved in small samples. The empirical section studies the effect of minimum wage hikes on household labor earnings. It is found that the minimum wage has a heterogenous impact on household earnings in the U.S. and that small hikes in the minimum wage are more effective in improving the household earnings distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to articles published within the issue is presented, including one by Donatella Alessandrini on the current condition of financialized cognitive labor economies, another by Isabell Lorey on the vulnerability of the neoliberal landscape of precarity, and one by Davide Tarizzo which argues that neoliberalism is not an economic doctrine or principle.

Most aggregate planning models utilize a constant productivity factor through-out the planning horizon. Recently new work has been done to incorporate changing productivity factors into aggregate planning models; however, some of these models have certain limitations and unrealistic assumptions. The objective of this paper is to present an overview of the slate of the art in combining aggregate planning models with learning curve productivity considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning curves of operators performing industrial operations vary according to the characteristics of the operator and the characteristics of the operation being performed.
In this paper a method is developed to enable prediction of a specific learning curve of the function Y =c+a(1-exp - b(t-1)) for a specific operator performing a specific operation. This specific curve is based on certain measurements of the operator and certain measurements of the operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within labour economics, returns to education is an area of focused research. Moreover, amongst studies looking at emerging economies, China is the most widely studied economy. While there is a general consensus that returns to education are positive, studies use various datasets and methodologies and consequently present varying estimates of returns to education. We perform a meta-analysis of these estimates of the returns to education in China, addressing issues of heterogeneity in the existing literature and examining whether variations in reported estimates can be explained by study characteristics such as dataset and estimation methods, among others. The meta-regression results show that variations in reported estimates can be accounted for by study characteristics such as data source, estimation method and sample period, among others. The results support the college premium hypothesis and reveal that the returns to education for college graduates are higher than those for other (lower) levels of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines hotels' labour productivity growth over the period of financial crisis. We decompose hotels' labour productivity into three components: technological change, technological catch-up (efficiency improvement/convergence) and capital deepening. Specifically, we apply our analysis over a sample of 820 Spanish hotels from Balearic and Canary Islands distinguishing three different stages during the crisis period. The results suggest that average terms hotels' labour productivity was resistant to the financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from young ages, children and youth are dealing with adult problems such as poverty and food security. For this reason, children and youth enter the labour market earlier than expected, compromising their scholastic performance and future earnings if they drop out of school. This study profiles the children and youth of South Africa who are engaged in labour market activities using a nationally representative cross-sectional survey. The characteristics of this sub-population are shown, as well as the types of work, remuneration and co-activities are investigated. Most of the children and youth engaged in labour activities are not in school, and many are working as street vendors. Also, the likelihood of engaging in labour activity is high if there is no father in the household. Steps need to be taken to keep children in school and not working in the informal economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on capitalism process in contemporary labor society. Topics discussed include social aspects of modes of employ labor; concepts of labor performances and working hours; and impact of social and political values on labor. It also mentions economic values for labor and concept of division of labors.

The article offers information on capitalism process in contemporary labor society. Topics discussed include social aspects of modes of employ labor; concepts of labor performances and working hours; and impact of social and political values on labor. It also mentions economic values for labor and concept of division of labors.

Textbooks are an important subject for the study of science in general and economics in particular. In this paper, we analyse at the process of the acceptance of human capital theory through its inclusion in economics textbooks by looking at two specialized fields to which this theory became highly influential: labour economics and the economics of education. The analysis will compare the patterns of the dissemination of these new theoretical developments in a more consolidated field and in an emergent field of economics research with a particular focus in the early stages of that dissemination process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural changes, i.e. long-run changes in the agriculture-manufacturing-services-structure, are a key property of growth and development processes with massive impacts on economy and society and are part of actual debates regarding policy in developing and developed economies. While traditional literature has attempted to explain structural changes by using autarkic models, recent literature has emphasised the importance of deriving theories of structural change using open economy settings. We elaborate on the impacts of intermediate trade on sector structure. In particular, we study how import of intermediate products, which is increasingly feasible due to improvements in transport technology and political integration, affects sector structure in a multi-sector growth model with capital accumulation. This topic has not been studied in the previous literature on structural change in open economies, despite the fact that intermediate imports and capital accumulation are central aspects of modern developing and developed economies. We show that the impacts of intermediate trade on sector structure depend on three factors: productivity gains from trade, specialisation in international trade and development stage. Depending on the constellation of these factors, intermediate trade may accelerate, decelerate or have no effect on structural change. Thus, the effects of intermediate trade may vary strongly across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human capital is an important construct in a variety of fields spanning from micro scholarship in psychology to macro scholarship in economics. Within the various disciplinary perspectives, research focuses on slightly different aspects and levels of human capital within organizations, which may give opportunities for integration. The current paper aims to increase knowledge about human capital within organizations by integrating two streams of research which focus directly on human capital, but have approached human capital in different ways: strategic human capital (SHC), and strategic HRM. We describe both SHC and strategic HRM research streams and propose areas of integration, and directions for future research on human capital in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]