Thesis (M.Comm.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

Urban microsimulators have been increasingly used to forecast land use, environmental and transportation conditions in cities and are a major tool for stakeholders to analyze the effects of urban policy. Although demographic and residential land use models have been well developed for the majority of these systems, labour market conditions and the forecasting of future jobs have at best been limited to high-level exogenous processes. This thesis aims to develop and implement a truly endogenous job supply and job matching model for use with the Integrated Land Use, Transportation, Environment (ILUTE) modelling system. Jobs within the system are tracked individually at both the occupational and industrial level, and matching occurs within an open market framework in an effort to simulate the true macroeconomic conditions of the real world.

Urban microsimulators have been increasingly used to forecast land use, environmental and transportation conditions in cities and are a major tool for stakeholders to analyze the effects of urban policy. Although demographic and residential land use models have been well developed for the majority of these systems, labour market conditions and the forecasting of future jobs have at best been limited to high-level exogenous processes. This thesis aims to develop and implement a truly endogenous job supply and job matching model for use with the Integrated Land Use, Transportation, Environment (ILUTE) modelling system. Jobs within the system are tracked individually at both the occupational and industrial level, and matching occurs within an open market framework in an effort to simulate the true macroeconomic conditions of the real world.

This thesis is made of five different chapters. Chp 1: OPTIMAL FISCAL AND PUBLIC EXPENDITURE POLICY IN A TWO CLASS ECONOMY This paper deals with optimal taxation and provision of public goods in a two-class economy with non linear income and linear commodity taxes. As far as optimal taxation is concerned, we first show that with two private goods the good complementary with leisure should be taxed more heavily. Second the standard income tax rules are shown to be augmented by considerations for offsetting the distortions created on the commodity markets. As to the provision of public goods we extend recent results for a two class economy with public funds raised entirely by means of a non-linear income tax system. The standard Samuelson rule is modified by two additional terms related to the self selection constraint and to the revenue of indirect taxes. They are both shown to vanish when the agents' utility functions are weakly separable between public and private goods (taken together) and leisure. Chp 2: DIRECT AND INDIRECT TAX EVASION: A SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE The purpose of this selective survey of the literature on both income and commodity tax evasion is to show in which directions, the literature has evolved. Two main approaches are identified for both direct and indirect tax evasion literature. The so-called taxpayer's point of view approach which is basically an exercise of maximization under uncertainty and the so-called tax collector's point of view which is a refinement of the Mirrlees-Stiglitz approach to income taxation and of the Ramsey approach to commodity taxation. The current state of the art is such that both approaches share similar strengths and weaknesses. Chp 3: TAX STRUCTURE, TAX REFORM AND TAX EVASION In this paper we explore whether the shift from an ad valorem tax to a value added tax (which is a prerequisite to join the European Union) improves the "integrity" (number of people in the regular market) and the "efficiency" (total tax revenues) of the tax system. A model of two parallel (black and regular) markets is analyzed. The production in both the black and the regular market is divided in three stages: raw material, intermediate good and final good. Firstly, we prove that if an ad valorem tax is levied, at all stages of the regular market, any, even partial, tax reform towards VAT unequivocally increases integrity (the number of agents). Secondly, we prove that efficiency of the tax system is a direct function of its integrity. Therefore a tax reform from ad valorem to VAT seems justifiable under these two criteria. As a passing result, regular market consumers' welfare is shown to increase. Chp 4. A NOTE ON CORRUPTION, PRODUCTION AND SHORTAGE IN USSR AND RUSSIA Shleifer and Vishny, 1992 argue that privatization increases production and reduces shortage; Komai, 1979 argues that privatization reduces both production and shortage. The transition from USSR to Russia reduced both production and shortage. We argue that this is just the result of the shrinking of the loss-making sector (industrial sector) and the expansion of the profit-making sector (the service sector and namely trade and retailing). We also argue that the validity of Kornai's model is limited to those firms which are overproducing (i.e. more than the profit maximization quantity) and the validity of Shleifer and Vishny's model is limited to those firms which are underproducing. This reconciles two otherwise contradictory papers. Chp 5: LABOUR MARKET REALLOCATION AND RENT-SEEKING IN TRANSITION ECONOMY We present a simple two-sector model of the Russian labour market. Starting from a "full-employment" equilibrium with no search (the USSR), we analyze the path to the new equilibrium with unemployment and search (Russia). The links between the fraction of people searching, the wage differential and the hiring and firing probability of both sectors are investigated. A tentative way to compute these probabilities is proposed starting from recent (91-94) Russian data on unemployment and wages. It is shown that the wage differential across sectors rises with the strengthening of the entry barriers. It is argued that if no action is taken by the Authorities to fight unemployment and to reduce the wage differential across sectors (e.g. relaxing the entry barriers to the most productive sector), the market will react by developing, as an endogenous alternative to unemployment, a third sector which would act as a rent seeking one against the most productive sector. This will increase the outflow of workers from the least productive sector. Finally, it is shown that if the fraction of rent-seeking people attains a critical mass the above-mentioned policies may not be enough to rid the economy of the rent-seeking sector.

Japan is a country strongly associated with strong, long-term relationships, whether they be located within kin- groups, local communities or large industrial enterprises. Yet Japan also has a long tradition of people who have been excluded from these relationships, whether voluntarily (hermits, mendicant monks, etc.) or compulsorily (outcasts etc.). This thesis deals with a contemporary category of people who operate largely outside the certainties of long-term relationships: day labourers. Whereas Japanese industry has become famous for 'life-time employment', my subjects often work under contracts for just one day. Most of them are also excluded from family and mainstream community life, living singly in doya-gai -- small urban districts with cheap hotels which resemble the American skid-row. These districts center on a casual labour market (yoseba), divided between a formal sector (public casual labour exchanges) and an informal sector (jobs negotiated on the street with recruiters often affiliated with yakuza gangs). Fieldwork (1993-5) was conducted mainly in Kotobuki, the Yokohama doya-gai, with brief field-trips to similar districts in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kitakyushu and Fukuoka. Most of my informants were Japanese nationals, though Koreans and Filipinos are also briefly discussed. The thesis describes the lives and attitudes of day labourers, and the social organization of the very distinctive districts which they inhabit. Based on participant observation, backed up by historical analysis and cross-cultural comparison, the thesis considers the role of these 'men of uncertainty' in a society which craves certainty. In economic terms, that role is to enable the construction and longshoring industries to adjust to fluctuating demand and changing weather conditions while maintaining a stable core workforce. But day labourers, like other stigmatized minorities, have a parallel cultural role, as an "internal other" in the formation of mainstream Japanese people's identity.

Working hours has become, besides unemployment, the most important labour market issue in the European Union (EU) and other European countries during the 1990s. The aim of the thesis is to discuss, analyse and evaluate how the issue of working hours legislation is resolved in Finland, a Finland that differs significantly from previous decades. The main concepts in the thesis are corporatism and corporate pluralism, both underlining consensual policy making. The thesis focuses mainly on a third level of consensus, labelled policy consensus. The overall research question is what an in-depth sectoral analysis of working hours legislation can tell us about labour market policy making in Finland in the 1990s. The empirical material is based on both official and unofficial material from the decision making processes, complemented by interviews with the major participants. Although the main focus is on Finland, comparisons with Sweden and the United Kingdom are made. The result of the analysis is that the development of working hours legislation, and Finnish labour market policy making overall in the 1990s, is characterised by one-dimensionality. The one-dimensional politics brings with it some side effects, the most important being an intolerance of dissensus and opposition in the name of consensus. The consensus politics in Finland are therefore no more than a rule by the more powerful. The normative justification of the inclusion of main economic interest groups in terms of their knowledge of the issues is questionable, since knowledge has become overshadowed by power. The use of the corporatist concept if also inappropriate when it comes to Finnish labour market policy making, since it is debatable whether labour market policy making in Finland has adhered to any distinct forms of the concept.

In the present investigation, factors related to prospective applicants impressions of an organisation at the pre-interview stage of the recruitment process, and how these perceptions influence decisions to pursue an organisation for possible employment were explored. A heightened understanding of these factors is of relevance to organisations in the current labour market environment, and is of critical importance when considering that recruitment in the pre-interview stages remains under-researched and lacking in a strong theoretical foundation. To address this weakness in the recruitment research the present investigation will integrate two disparate areas of literature - recruitment and marketing - within the theoretical context of Fishbein and Ajzen's (1975) theory of reasoned action. The theory of reasoned action is well tested in the social psychology arena and provides a sound theoretical platform to underpin the relationships applicable to this investigation. In applying the marketing literature to the recruitment context, the concept of brand image is specifically utilised. Additionally, a problem that plagues much of the recruitment research is the heavy reliance on college and university students as a source of research data. The present study responds to this issue by sourcing data from a population of active job seekers submitting applications for advertised job vacancies at a large, Queensland-based higher education institution. A total of three hundred and fifty-one survey responses were obtained. The measures included perceptions of organisational image, attraction, and application intentions. The results indicated that there is support for the assertion that positive image perceptions held by applicants towards an employing organisation will lead to attraction to the organisation and active pursuit behaviour. Within this framework, it is evident that the 'impression management' capability of organisations in the contemporary business environment may hold the key to sustained competitive advantage in the critical search for qualified talent.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Gendered labour market inequalities are a key area of feminist enquiry. Current approaches to theorising labour market inequalities usually conceive agentic social action and existing social structures as opposing forces, rather than as highly complex interwoven levels of social reality, which together constitute and reconstitute labour market inequalities over time. Further, these analyses tend to privilege either the social construction of gender or the different material circumstances of women’s lives in their accounts, inadequately addressing interfaces between ‘gender’ and the ‘material’. This study attempts to integrate these facets and levels of social reality more closely, offering an alternative account of how gendered labour market inequalities may be shored up or destablised over time. It builds on innovative work outside the field of labour market studies to do so. While the key existing accounts of labour market inequalities offer quite diverse explanations for these inequalities, gendered marital power relations and child-raising responsibilities, along with gendered patterns of participation in, and outcomes from, education and paid work are prominent features of them all. To acknowledge this prior research and some of its insights, analysis of the ‘transitions’ young women are currently making in these domains is a central feature of this study. In doing so, I acknowledge the wealth of research and debate on the late modern fracturing of youth to ‘adult’ transitions, and the future social changes these imply. I further suggest that disruptions and continuities in the forms of education, work, parenting and relationships that young Australian women aspire to, along with shifts in the timing and form of these transitions, have important potential implications for the maintenance or destabilisation of existing broader labour market inequalities over time. The alternative account offered here is developed by drawing on data gathered through a mixed methods study design, incorporating qualitative interviews and survey responses from groups of high SES and low SES young Australian women. Young women’s accounts of their aspirations for parenting, partnering, education and work, are treated using discursive analysis of the interview texts and comparison of these findings with descriptive statistics generated from the survey results. Theoretically, this analysis is guided by feminist poststructuralist notions of discourse, subject positioning and subjectivity. However, these poststructuralist concepts are reconciled with a notion of socio-cultural capital as a resource, developed to allow a ‘materialist’ edge in the empirical analyses. Additionally, insights from complexity thought provide a means for this study to conceive of the relationships between macro social structures and micro social processes as co-producing the labour market inequalities that the study addresses. The thesis of this study is that the social construction of gender, the material circumstances of women’s lives, and their agentic negotiations with these, are critical and interactive features of an adequate account of the processes through which labour market inequalities are shored up or destabilised over time. I suggest that the synthesised theoretical framework developed and presented here may be highly effective for this task. The contribution of the study is therefore fourfold. Firstly, it provides a snapshot of the transitions young Australian women with different material circumstances are making into relationships and parenting, education and work. Secondly, it offers novel insights into the processes through which labour market inequalities may be maintained or not. Thirdly, it offers an integrated account of the interplay between discursive/cultural and material/economic social forces in producing these inequalities. Finally, it augments existing scholarship by introducing an innovative theoretical synthesis to the study of labour market inequalities.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-114). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Within Saskatchewan, Aboriginal labour market integration has been consistently low, especially in comparison to non-Aboriginal peoples. In 2007, the Government of Saskatchewan created a Labour Market Commission to view labour market trends and challenges, with a focus on improving Aboriginal labour market integration. In 2009, the Commission developed an aggressive policy initiative called the 2009 Saskatchewan Labour Market Strategy. One of the main objectives of the policy was increasing Aboriginal labour market integration in Saskatchewan. The Commission spanned across two different governments, beginning under the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party government and ending under the Saskatchewan Party government. Despite being well received by a majority of invested stakeholders, the Saskatchewan Party government did not implement the 2009 Saskatchewan Labour Market Strategy, and the Commission was subsequently disbanded. It is the objective of the thesis to explore the evolution of the 2009 Saskatchewan Labour Market Strategy to examine why the issue of Aboriginal labour market integration gained traction, how policy makers intended to address it and why this Strategy was ultimately not implemented. John Kingdon’s policy stream theory will provide the theoretical framework for the analysis. Kingdon’s policy stream theory suggests policy development flows through three distinct streams: the problem stream, the policy proposal stream and the political stream. The thesis will use these streams to examine the development of the Strategy and conclude that Aboriginal integration was focused on for economic reasons, rather than solely improving overall quality of life, and that the Strategy was rejected by the Saskatchewan Party government on partisan grounds.