This paper estimates the effects of outward Foreign Direct Investment (employment in the affiliates abroad) on employment, wages, and the wage share in Austria using panel data for the period of 1996-2005. There is evidence of significant negative effects of FDI on both employment and wages, and consequently on the wage share. The results are not limited to workers in low skilled sectors or blue collar workers. The negative employment effect is primarily due to the rise in the employment in the foreign affiliates in Eastern Euope. The negative wage effects are originating from affiliate employment in both the East and the developed countries in industry, but no effect is found in the total economy. (author´s abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Our aim of this study was to investigate barriers and opportunities for people with mental disorders getting in to the labor market. This from experiences by people whose daily job contains work rehabilitation for this group in particular. On the basis of five qualitative interviews the results showed that prejudices towards people with mental disorders are a barrier for them to get a wage labor. Furthermore the results showed that low self-esteem within the target group and also high educational demands becomes a barrier to a wage labor. The results also showed that to focus on the healthy aspects may serve as an opportunity for people with mental disorders to get in to the labor market and be able to have a paid job. Another opportunity for this particular group consists of getting a subsidized employment. An increased knowledge among employers about the difficulties and strengths people with mental disorders may have to execute a job, can also serve as an opportunity for them to get an employment. / Vi har haft som syfte att undersöka hinder och möjligheter för personer som har ett psykiskt funktionshinder att få tillträde på den reguljära arbetsmarkanden. Detta utifrån upplevelser hos personer vars arbetsroll har inslag av arbetlivssinriktad rehabilitering för vår undersökta målgrupp.  Studien grundade sig på fem stycken kvalitativa intervjuer och resultaten visade på att fördomar som finns mot personer med ett psykiskt funktionshinder kan utgöra ett hinder för dem att få ett lönearbete. Vidare kunde även hinder kopplas till låg självkänsla hos målgruppen samt ökade krav till högre utbildning för att kunna få ett lönearbete. Resultaten visade även på att ha fokus på det friska i sig kan utgöra en möjlighet till lönearbete för personer med ett psykiskt funktionshinder. En annan möjlighet för den här målgruppen utgjordes av att få en anställning med lönebidrag.  En ökad kunskap bland arbetsgivare om vilka svårigheter samt styrkor personer med ett psykiskt funktionshinder kan ha i förhållande till att utföra ett arbete, kan också utgöra en möjlighet för dessa personer att få en anställning.

Do men and women receive different pay-offs, in terms of wage, from cognitive skills in the Swedish labor market? To answer this, the classical Mincer equation is expanded with a variable for cognitive skills (literacy and numeracy) and an interaction term between being a male and cognitive skills to be able to distinguish the actual difference in pay-off. I use data from OECD’s PIAAC survey of adult skills, which provides a unique opportunity to examine gender pay-off differences concerning cognitive skills. The results show that men have a larger pay-off than women once occupation is sufficiently controlled for

This thesis explores the necessary conditions for voluntary wage restraint in advanced industrialized democracies. In particular, it addresses the question of how governments can get union movements to trade their labour market power for non-wage objectives, and how union peak organizations can secure near universal compliance with a voluntary wages policy, notwithstanding the pressures upon individual unions to free ride. Rational choice theory furnishes the initial analytical framework. Within these terms it will be argued that the problem of securing voluntary restraint has the strategic structure of a prisoner's dilemma. In other words, the situation entails an inherent conflict between individual and collective interests. Moreover, this conflict is not merely between the short-term interests of individual unions and those of the whole labour movement, but also between labour (wages) and capital (profit). Given this situation, the thesis will investigate the conditions under which rational, self-interested unions, seeking to maximize some combination of real wage, relative wage and employment objectives, and operating in the context of uncertainty, decentralized bargaining and a significant degree of monopoly power in the labour market, will voluntarily be prepared to restrain their wage demands. Following this exploration, the behavioural assumptions of rational choice theory will be modified to allow for the fact that economic agents are also motivated by various normative commitments, and that these can be sufficient in certain circumstances to overcome the free-rider problem. This new theoretical approach will then be employed in a detailed examination of the Social Contract between the British Labour Government (1974-79) and the Trades Union Congress. It will be concluded that certain moral, political and ideological commitments played a crucial role in the negotiation, implementation and eventual collapse of the Social Contract. It should be noted that this inquiry is based upon published sources and interview data.

Regional economic disparities are a widely noted characteristic of the Canadian economy. This thesis examines regional disparities in terms of wages and labour productivity in the manufacturing sector. Regional disparities are analysed along three dimensions: provinces, rural/urban areas and industrial structure. Various competing theories are discussed and compared to the findings. Shift-share based decomposition analyses the magnitude and pattern of disparity and controls for industrial structure. Weighted regression is used to combine provincial and rural/urban effects. The findings support theories that emphasize provinces as units of analysis. The rural/urban results gave qualified support to urban theory. Accounting for industrial structure impacted both the rural/urban and provincial results. The regression analysis found the rural/urban dimension was significant; however, industrial structure and provincial effects were more significant. These results suggest industrial location and provincial economic policies can influence regional economic disparities in Canada.

The overriding theme of my dissertation is the use of short-term weather fluctuations to study how people allocate their time across activities. In Chapter 1, a theoretical model is developed to distinguish malfeasant from legitimate forms of employee sickness absenteeism. In this model, individuals' marginal utility of indoor leisure is increasing in their sickness levels, while their marginal utility of outdoor leisure is an increasing function of the interaction of their health and the quality of outdoor weather. In equilibrium, sickness absenteeism occurs at both ends of the sickness distribution -- among the relatively sick and among the most healthy facing the best weather. The positive relation between marginal changes in weather quality and levels of sickness absenteeism in the workplace reflects the substitution of the inframarginal employees who are the least sick away from work activities towards outdoor leisure activities. The model in Chapter 1 suggests an empirical strategy to identify a shirking component in overall reported sickness absenteeism. Not only does this approach avoid attributing entirely legitimate forms of absenteeism to shirking, but unlike previous studies using employee dismissal rates, it is able to distinguish shirking activity whether or not that activity is detected by employers. In order to exploit exogenous weather fluctuations to identify shirking activity, we need a one-dimensional measure of weather “quality”. The primary objective of Chapter 2 is to construct a weather quality index that captures the influence of the weather on workers' preferences for outdoor leisure activity. The weather quality index takes into account the multifaceted nature of weather conditions, and measures how various weather elements -- temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind speed, and cloud cover -- come together to affect the propensity of employees to engage in high-utility outdoor recreational activities. The resulting index provides a ranking of different weather conditions in terms of their outdoor recreational values, which can then be used to capture the incentives of employees to shirk contractual work hours in response to purely exogenous weather changes. Chapter 3 empirically tests the existence of weather-induced substitution between work and outdoor leisure activities and examines how this type of behaviour varies across workers facing different shirking incentives. Linking 12 years of employee data from Canada's monthly Labour Force Survey (LFS), which queries reasons for employees' absences, to weather quality measured using the index constructed in Chapter 2, a clear positive relationship is found between the quality of outside weather conditions and short-term reported sickness absenteeism. Moreover, consistent with a key proposition of the theoretical model in Chapter 1, the empirical relation between weather and sickness absenteeism tends to be larger when existing shirking incentives are low, such as when sick pay is less generous and when probability of getting fired if caught shirking is high. There is, however, little evidence that firms are able to adjust shirking incentives through the payment of efficiency wages. Finally, Chapter 4 examines another type of substitution induced by weather shocks -- the substitution between outdoor and indoor physical activities. The Chapter begins with a theoretical model of the decision to participate in physical activities, which assumes that when adverse weather shocks deter outdoor physical activities, indoor physical activities are the only viable option for individuals to stay physically active. However, because the indoor options are more costly, substituting from outdoor to indoor physical activities is easier for higher-income individuals. This suggests an explanation for the stylized fact that rates of physical activity participation are low among lower socioeconomic groups. Linking time-use data from Canadian General Social Survey with archival weather data, the results of the empirical analysis in this chapter provides evidence of a positive income effect enabling substitution from outdoor to indoor physical activities when outside weather is not conducive for participating in outdoor activities. By exploiting the role that income plays in maintaining physical activity levels when less costly outdoor options are limited, this chapter formally illustrates a credible causal link between people's income levels and their participation in leisure time physical activities and provides direct evidence of this link. The results have important policy implications for promoting physical activities, especially among lower income population.

This thesis aims to provide evidence on the relations between productivity, industrial structure, and labour markets for countries with different characteristics from 1965 to 1999. In order to do so, we first examine manufacturing industry production and trade with respect to both technology orientation and intensity, the impact of structural change on productivity growth, and the existence of convergence in industrial structures. Second, this study investigates the impact of labour market and industrial structures on aggregate productivity in manufacturing. While descriptive analysis of manufacturing industry with regard to technological orientation and intensity shows changing industrial structures in favour of relatively more technology intensive production and exports especially in fast growing countries, decomposition analysis suggests that the impact of structural change on productivity growth is negligible for most of the countries. The factor analysis revealed that although a general structural convergence tendency among countries is not observed, fast growing countries have converged their industrial structure towards those of industrialised countries. Finally, econometric estimation results also showed that while wage flexibility is detrimental to productivity in manufacturing, regulations in labour markets may foster productivity growth.

In Folge der Osterweiterung der europäischen Union (EU) und der steigenden Arbeitsmarktintegration zwischen den EU15 und den neuen Mitgliedsstaaten ist die Lohnfindung in Mittel- und Osteuropa zu einem Schwerpunkt der europäischer Wirtschaftspolitik geworden. Zugleich wird das optimale Wechselkursregime für mittel- und osteuropäische Staaten kontrovers diskutiert. Die Dissertation befasst sich mit der Fragestellung, welche Wechselkursstrategie in Mittel- und Osteuropa vorzuziehen ist, um zum einen den Lohnfindungsprozess zu optimieren und zum anderen den Anpassungsprozess (Konvergenzprozess) an europäische Lohnstandards zu beschleunigen. Diese kumulierte Arbeit besteht aus vier unabhängigen Fachaufsätzen. Zuerst wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche Wechselkursstrategie einen optimalen Rahmen für die Lohnsetzung während des Aufholprozesses mittel- und osteuropäischer Staaten ermöglicht (Kapitel zwei). Im Kapitel drei wird die Rolle der Geldpolitik in Bezug auf die Lohnfindung in Staaten mit flexiblen Wechselkursen untersucht. Die Evaluierung der Prognosefähigkeit alternativer Konjunkturindikatoren für die Euro Zone sowie deren Implikationen für den Lohnverhandlungsprozess in Mittel-und Osteuropa ist Gegenstand der Analyse in Kapitel vier. Im fünften Kapitel wird der Rolle der Lohnpolitik auf Leistungsbilanz(un)gleichgewichte in Mittel- und Osteuropa nachgegangen. / After the Eastern enlargement of the European Union (EU) and increasing participation of labor between the EU15 and the new member states, wage determination in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has become a key issue in European economic policy making. At the same time there are controversial discussions regarding the appropriate exchange rate regime for the CEE countries. In this thesis it is examined which exchange rate strategy provides a more favorable framework for wage setting in CEE and leads to faster wage convergence in Europe. This thesis has four parts. First, it is analyzed which exchange rate strategy provides a more favorable framework for wage setting during the economic catch-up process of CEE (section two). Second, the role of monetary policy in wage determination in countries with flexible exchange rate regimes is examined in section three. Third, the predictive power of different euro area business cycle indicators is analyzed in section four. Fourth, the impact of wage determination on the balance of payments in CEE is scrutinized (section five).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-122). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / x, 122 leaves, bound 29 cm

A lo largo de los ultimos diez años los economistas hemos reconocido que en muchos casos las decisiones individuales se ven afectadas por las decisiones, los comportamientos las preferencias de otros agentes no solamente atraves del mercado sino tambien directamente por imitacion o aprendimiento, por el desarrollo de reglas sociales compartidas, por la difusion de informacion. Muchos estudios han estudiado estos mecanismos en varios contextos. Entre otros destacan la educacion, el mercado laboral, la criminalidad, las habitudines sanitarias. La relevancia de estos efectos de neighborhood es positiva y normativa a la vez. Por un lado, su existencia contribuye a la comprension de la extrema variabilidad de algunos fenomenos economicos entre grupos de individuos aparentemente homogeneos. Por otro lado, su existencia es una componente fundamental para el desarollo de intervenciones eficientes por parte del policy maker. Los estudios de la tesis analizan estos efectos en el contexto de las decisiones esscolares y en el mercado laboral. En el primer capitulo se muestra como la decision y el exito en completar la educacion segundaria por parte de los varones adolescentes afecta positivamente la de las mujeres de la misma edad residentes en las mismas ciudades. La muestra campionaria utilizada permite conlcuir que la correlacion entre los exitos de los varones y de las mujeres corresponde de hecho a una relacion causal entre las dos variables. Se concluye que cualquier intervencion que consiga aumentar la probabilidad de completar los estudios segundarios de los varones del uno por ciento tendrà como consequencia tambien un aumento de la probabilidad de las mujeres adolescentes de completar estos estudios entre 0.6 y 0.7 por ciento. En el segundo capitulo se evaluan los efectos sobre la durada del paro de pertenecer a un grupo social mas amplio.