Differences in wage-determination systems between regular and non-regular employment in a Kaleckian model

In this study, we build a Kaleckian model incorporating institutional differences between the wage determination of regular employment and that of non-regular employment. In our model, three types of wage-bargaining regimes are defined based on how regular workers’ collective wage bargaining affects the real wage rate of non-regular workers. We investigate the stability conditions of the dynamical system under each combination of demand regimes and wage-bargaining regimes. We also conduct comparative static analysis and show that the effects of changes in the parameters are diverse depending on combinations of demand regimes and wage-bargaining regimes.

Comparing Real Wage Rates

A real wage rate is a nominal wage rate divided by the price of a good and is a transparent measure of how much of the good an hour of work buys. It provides an important indicator of the living standards of workers, and also of the productivity of workers. In this paper I set out the conceptual basis for such measures, provide some historical examples, and then provide my own preliminary analysis of a decade long project designed to measure the wages of workers doing the same job in over 60 countries—workers at McDonald's restaurants. The results demonstrate that the wage rates of workers using the same skills and doing the same jobs differ by as much as 10 to 1, and that these gaps declined over the period 2000–2007, but with much less progress since the Great Recession. (JEL C81, C82, D24, J31, N30, O57)

Technological Effects on Wages and Labour: Classical and Neoclassical Ideas

The introduction of new technology may have significant effects on the level of employment and the real wage rate; effects that have received considerable attention even from the economic thinkers of the classical period. This paper aims to analyze and evaluate the various views and arguments of early classical and neoclassical economists concerning the technological effects on wages and employment. On the one hand, the economists of the early decades of the 19th century (mainly between 1800 and 1840) had recognized and analyzed many of the effects of technology on labourers' welfare. On the other hand, early neoclassical theorists of the period between 1890 and 1935 tried to expand on the classical views and to develop their own theoretical arguments, based on new perceptions like the marginal productivity theory. The main conclusion drawn is that most of early classical and neoclassical economists recognized and specified the temporary adverse effects of new technology on labour (e.g. short-run unemployment), but, at the same time, they argued for the beneficial long-run consequences of technological progress on labourers' welfare.

Real Wage Rate And Productivity Relationship In The Declining U.S. Steel Industry

This study examines the relationship between the real wage rate and productivity in the U.S. steel industry in the critical period of 1963-1988. This period witnessed a declining steel output and employment, increasing productivity, and a slight increasing real wage rate. The severity of the decline was felt in the 1980s. The popular explanation focuses on the nominal wage rate relative to productivity (non-nominal value). The study is based on high-frequency monthly data set on output, employment, productivity, wage rate, factor prices, and national unemployment rate. Also control factors are constructed for the steel import protection and non-protection regimes. Some econometric modeling issues are addressed. Recognizing that productivity is stochastic and is potentially an endogenous variable, it is instrumented with a set of productivity-related variables including controls for various steel protection and non-protection regimes. Third, the wage in the industry is modeled as a function of exogenous productivity, price of steel products, national unemployment rate, and real interest rate. Serial correlation characterizes the data, and this is corrected with inter-temporal effect of the real wage rate, and with a differencing model. The main results of the study are threefold.First, OLS and Instrumental Variable (IV) estimates show that productivity is the key variable for explaining the real wage rate. Second, like in the literature, the study finds that heavy and autonomous capitalization has an impact on the rising productivity. Third, the study identifies an inter-temporal high real wage rate as the driving factor for explaining the short run real wage rate.These results are somewhat sensitive across specifications.

Real Wage Rate And Productivity Relationship In The Declining U.S. Steel Industry

This study examines the relationship between the real wage rate and productivity in the U.S. steel industry in the critical period of 1963-1988. This period witnessed a declining steel output and employment, increasing productivity, and a slight increasing real wage rate. The severity of the decline was felt in the 1980s. The popular explanation focuses on the nominal wage rate relative to productivity (non-nominal value). The study is based on high-frequency monthly data set on output, employment, productivity, wage rate, factor prices, and national unemployment rate. Also control factors are constructed for the steel import protection and non-protection regimes. Some econometric modeling issues are addressed. Recognizing that productivity is stochastic and is potentially an endogenous variable, it is instrumented with a set of productivity-related variables including controls for various steel protection and non-protection regimes. Third, the wage in the industry is modeled as a function of exogenous productivity, price of steel products, national unemployment rate, and real interest rate. Serial correlation characterizes the data, and this is corrected with inter-temporal effect of the real wage rate, and with a differencing model. The main results of the study are threefold.First, OLS and Instrumental Variable (IV) estimates show that productivity is the key variable for explaining the real wage rate. Second, like in the literature, the study finds that heavy and autonomous capitalization has an impact on the rising productivity. Third, the study identifies an inter-temporal high real wage rate as the driving factor for explaining the short run real wage rate.These results are somewhat sensitive across specifications.

A Modern Post-Mortem on Böhm's Capital Theory: Its Vital Normative Flaw Shared by Presraffian Mainstream Capital Theory

The Nobel Prize of Piero Sraffa and Joan Robinson that Stockholm never awarded might have pleased at least one of them. Its citation would have included: “Their investigations uncovered a fatal normative flaw in Böhm-Bawerkian and modern mainstream capital theory.”Just prior to Alfred Marshall's 1890 ascendancy as leading world economist, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1851–1914) perhaps wore that crown thanks to his three-volume treatise on the history and fundamentals of interest theories. Böhm (1884, 1889, 1909, 1912) somewhat independently followed in the footsteps of Stanley Jevons (1871) and himself strongly stimulated Knut Wicksell (1893), Irving Fisher (1906, 1907, 1930), and Friedrich Hayek (1931, 1941). Pugnacious and somewhat incoherent, Böhm and his disciples battled cogently the competing school of John Bates Clark (1899) and Frank Knight (1934, 1935a, 1935b), which idealized a permanent scalar capital alleged to be virtually permanent and with a marginal productivity determining its interest rate in much the same way that primary labor's marginal productivity determines its real wage rate and primary land's marginal productivity determines its real rent rate(s). The Clark-Knight paradigm—and, for that matter, Frank Ramsey's 1928 mathematical clone—shares the Böhm-Hayek vital normative flaw.