This research explores Korean disability employment policy and discrimination against people with learning disabilities in the labour market. Breaking with the traditional academic approach to researching disability in Korea, it adopts a social model of disability and involves people with learning disabilities in the research process. Utilising the conceptual frameworks of 'political economy', 'the social model of disability' and 'legal discrimination', it investigates the employment of people with learning disabilities in open employment and sheltered workshops in Korea. Using group interviews with parents of people with learning disabilities and individual interviews with policy makers, sheltered workshops managers, people with learning disabilities and their parents, it focuses on the discriminative characteristics of current Korean disability employment policy, its impact on the participation of people with learning disabilities in the labour market, and their parents' understanding of how this discriminative reality impacts on the employment opportunities available to their offspring. The research findings are discussed in relation to 'direct and indirect legal discrimination' and 'commonality and difference'. The conclusions reached are that the disability employment policy in Korea is characterised by direct and indirect discrimination against people with learning disabilities, and this discriminative reality is not challenged by parents of people with learning disabilities in Korea who take on the responsibility of providing for their offspring's future lives.

This thesis consists of an introduction and two parts. Part I deals with wage and employment determination under labour bargaining, and is formed of chapters 1 and 2. Part II looks at the role of inflation expectations in macroeconomic models, and is divided into chapters 3, 4 and 5. Chapter 1 sets forth and tests a model of labour bargaining in which the firm and the union are only constrained by the other party's available market alternatives if these are credible. Empirical findings, based on a panel of UK manufacturing firms, show some support for the main predictions of the model. Chapter 2 generalizes the theoretical framework developed in the previous chapter and explores its robustness with respect to changes to some of the assumptions. Chapter 3 assesses the literature on the relationship between inflation expectations, wage and price flexibility and variability of output. Expectations of future price changes may have a destabilizing effect on output if expected inflation moves procyclically. Chapter 4 looks at an overlapping wage contract model and derives analytical conditions for output destabilization to occur as wages and prices become more flexible. A new classical specification of the supply side is then considered, and price rigidity is established to be neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for increased output volatility. Chapter 5 analyses a monopolistically competitive framework with synchronized wage setting. Explicit consideration of the expected inflation effect makes employment and output variability more likely to increase with contract length.

The present dissertation evaluates specific labour market policies and investigates individual saving behaviour in economies characterized by search and matching frictions in the labour market. The first chapter investigates the optimality of state provided unemployment insurance in a search theoretic framework with saving and borrowing constraints. The model is solved numerically, since an analytic solution is not possible, and then calibrated using features of the US economy. The results demonstrate that when individuals have access to saving, the importance of unemployment benefits provision diminishes significantly. Ex post heterogeneity among agents, matters however. Individuals that were unlucky not to accumulate enough assets to buffer the unemployment risk, would still prefer to receive non-trivial amounts of state provided benefits during their unemployment spell. The second chapter of the thesis is concerned with the interaction between saving, consumption and search. It starts by documenting that the excess sensitivity of consumption growth to lagged labor income growth conceals a negative sensitivity of consumption growth to lagged unemployment growth. To understand this empirical regularity, we embed search frictions in a heterogeneous agent, precautionary savings model and study the implications for unemployment and consumption dynamics both at the microeconomic and macroeconomic level. The third and final chapter employs a standard search and matching model with no saving, in order to study the effects of firing taxes on the job destruction rate, when probation period - or temporary contract - policies are implemented. It is shown that, contrary to conventional wisdom, firing taxes can amplify the job turnover rate by providing incentives to destroy surviving matches at the end of the probation period. Moreover, low skill workers are shown to be more severely affected while wage inequality across different productivity groups may increase.

Labour mobility is a means by which to allocate human resources efficiently. The movement of labour into areas or states where it can increase individual worth, benefits the aggregate economy. This thesis is an empirical investigation of five aspects of labour mobility in Britain. A recurring theme of this study is the interaction between unemployment and mobility. We utilise information from the British Labour Force Surveys as the basis for our study. Specifically we examine: 1) The impact of unemployment on the inter-regional mobility of labour. We find that unemployment experience, and not regional differentials, increase the likelihood of migration. Further the regional allocation process functions less effectively at higher levels of aggregate unemployment. 2) The job search behaviour of employed workers. We show how worker satisfaction, as principally captured by length of job tenure, plays the largest role in the decision to seek work. The type of search strategy undertaken is partly dependent on the level of local labour demand. 3) The influence of unemployment benefit on job search effort. We demonstrate how benefit receipients search more extensively than others. Benefit claimants have a higher probability of locating a job offer. 4) Labour market transitions. Utilising a specially constructed dataset, we estimate annual probabilities of movement between employment, unemployment and inactivity. Worker heterogeneity is shown to explain the majority of these transitions, 5) Inter-firm mobility. Job-shopping by workers is an essential pre-requisite for eventual long-term, productive job matches. High levels of unemployment are shown to impede the job-shopping process.

The thesis considers the process of adjustment in the supply side of the economy, discussing factors which might influence (nominal and real) wage and price responsiveness, and investigating these empirically using data for the UK. This contributes to the analysis of the macroeconomic consequences of supply side inflexibilities, and policy implications are drawn out. Two themes recur throughout the thesis. The first is an emphasis on the institutional detail of the supply side which suggests reasonable sources of adjustment costs and explanations for rigidities. The second is an emphasis on disaggregation in the analysis. It is argued that the interactions and interdependencies between sectors of the economy play a central role in determining the responsiveness of the supply side to shocks. In order to investigate these ideas, the empirical work makes use of data available at the industrial level. Econometric analysis of the variability of wage growth across industrial sectors and of the frequency of wage negotiations over time provides clear evidence that the speed of adjustment of nominal wages is influenced systematically by supply side conditions. Comparison of price responsiveness across industries in the UK demonstrates that the extent of product market competition is an important determinant of the speed of price adjustment A model of the UK supply side is also described, modelling employment, price, wage and output determination in each of 38 industrial sectors plus their interactions. The model provides insights on the theoretical debate on supply side behaviour, and, through simulation methods, shows the importance of inter-sectoral feedbacks in the determination of the speed and direction of adjustment in wages and prices in the face of shocks. In particular, the simulations emphasise the role of expectation formation in supply side adjustment, illustrate the presence of unemployment hysteresis, and highlight the structural implications of wage and price rigidities.

The well-known "law of supply and demand" says that an increase in the price of a commodity leads to a decrease in the aggregate demand for this commodity and an increase in aggregate supply. There is, however, no theoretical foundation for this "law". Empirical evidence, on the other hand, should be interpreted with care. If one estimates the parameters of certain functional forms for demand and supply functions, then the results may simply be consequences of the parametric assumptions made in estimation. The first chapter of the thesis discusses the implications of the assumption of profit and utility maximisation for the properties of demand and supply functions. It explains why economic rationality on the microlevel does not, in general, lead to macroeconomic regularities and suggests replacing the consumption sector of the neoclassical equilibrium model by a large population of individually small consumers. Such a population will be explored in the second chapter. The chapter is a direct outgrowth of a basic contribution by W. Hildenbrand: "On the Law of Demand", Econometrica 1983. In W. Hildenbrand's model the market demand function is defined by integrating an individual demand function with respect to an exogenously given income distribution. We build into the model an individual labour supply function and then compare the matrix of aggregate income effects studied by W. Hildenbrand with that obtained by integrating the individual demand function with respect to a distribution of wage rates. The empirical part of the thesis analyses the labour supply and earnings data in the U.K. Family Expenditure Survey 1970-85. Using non- parametric smoothing methods, the elasticity of labour supply with respect to the wage rate is estimated for several groups of workers. The estimations for full-time workers confirm the famous "downward sloping" labour supply function. The estimated elasticities for the entire population of workers for the years 1970-85 have the mean value 0.2 and the standard deviation 0.02.

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This thesis examines the labour supply of older workers, their movement into retirement, and any movement out of retirement and back into work. In particular the labour force participation, labour supply and wage elasticity and other income elasticity of work hours are estimated for older workers and compared to younger workers. The thesis goes on to look at the movement into retirement for older workers as a whole by examining cohorts by gender, wave and age. The thesis also presents a descriptive and quantitative • examination of the changes in income and happiness that occur as an individual retires. Finally the thesis examines the reasons why an individual may return to work from v . retirement. The results of the findings suggest: that younger workers are significantly more responsive to wage and household income changes than older workers; that there are gradual movements into retirement for workers as a whole but sudden movements into retirement for individuals; that there are significant changes in income and happiness as individuals retire that depend on certain traits; and that life satisfaction is significantly affected by an individual's pre-retirement wage and whether they retire late or not. There is also an important role for pensions both in terms of the fall in income as an individual retires and in the probability that a retiree will return to work.

No description available.

No description available.