Inequality and Labor Market Institutions

Inequality and Labor Market Institutions
Author: Ms.Florence Jaumotte
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2015-07-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1513526901

The SDN examines the role of labor market institutions in the rise of income inequality in advanced economies, alongside other determinants. The evidence strongly indicates that de-unionization is associated with rising top earners’ income shares and less redistribution, while eroding minimum wages are related to increases in overall income inequality. The results, however, also suggest that a lack of representativeness of unions may be associated with higher inequality. These findings do not necessarily constitute a blanket recommendation for higher unionization and minimum wages, as country-specific circumstances and potential trade-offs with other policy objectives need to be considered. Addressing inequality also requires a multipronged approach, which should include taxation reform and curbing excesses associated with financial deregulation.

Labour Markets, Institutions and Inequality

Labour Markets, Institutions and Inequality
Author: Janine Berg
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2015-01-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1784712108

Labour market institutions, including collective bargaining, the regulation of employment contracts and social protection policies, are instrumental for improving the well-being of workers, their families and society. In many countries, these instituti

Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality

Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality
Author: Ms.Era Dabla-Norris
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 39
Release: 2015-06-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1513547437

This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.

Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992

Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992
Author: John Enrico DiNardo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 80
Release: 1995
Genre: Income distribution
ISBN:

This paper presents a semiparametric procedure to analyze the effects of institutional and labor market factors on recent changes in the U.S. distribution of wages. The effects of these factors are estimated by applying kernel density methods to appropriately 'reweighted' samples. The procedure provides a visually clear representation of where in the density of wages these various factors exert the greatest impact. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we find, as in previous research, that de-unionization and supply and demand shocks were important factors in explaining the rise in wage inequality from 1979 to 1988. We find also compelling visual and quantitative evidence that the decline in the real value of the minimum wage explains a substantial proportion of this increase in wage inequality, particularly for women. We conclude that labor market institutions are as important as supply and demand considerations in explaining changes in the U.S. distribution of wages from 1979 to 1988.

Inequality and the Labor Market

Inequality and the Labor Market
Author: Sharon Block
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0815738811

Exploring a new agenda to improve outcomes for American workers As the United States continues to struggle with the impact of the devastating COVID-19 recession, policymakers have an opportunity to redress the competition problems in our labor markets. Making the right policy choices, however, requires a deep understanding of long-term, multidimensional problems. That will be solved only by looking to the failures and unrealized opportunities in anti-trust and labor law. For decades, competition in the U.S. labor market has declined, with the result that American workers have experienced slow wage growth and diminishing job quality. While sluggish productivity growth, rising globalization, and declining union representation are traditionally cited as factors for this historic imbalance in economic power, weak competition in the labor market is increasingly being recognized as a factor as well. This book by noted experts frames the legal and economic consequences of this imbalance and presents a series of urgently needed reforms of both labor and anti-trust laws to improve outcomes for American workers. These include higher wages, safer workplaces, increased ability to report labor violations, greater mobility, more opportunities for workers to build power, and overall better labor protections. Inequality in the Labor Market will interest anyone who cares about building a progressive economic agenda or who has a marked interest in labor policy. It also will appeal to anyone hoping to influence or anticipate the much-needed progressive agenda for the United States. The book's unusual scope provides prescriptions that, as Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz notes in the introduction, map a path for rebalancing power, not just in our economy but in our democracy.

Wage-Led Growth

Wage-Led Growth
Author: Engelbert Stockhammer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2013-12-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1137357932

This volume seeks to go beyond the microeconomic view of wages as a cost having negative consequences on a given firm, to consider the positive macroeconomic dynamics associated with wages as a major component of aggregate demand.

Testing Piketty’s Hypothesis on the Drivers of Income Inequality

Testing Piketty’s Hypothesis on the Drivers of Income Inequality
Author: Carlos Góes
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 27
Release: 2016-08-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1475527691

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century puts forth a logically consistent explanation for changes in income and wealth inequality patterns. However, while rich in data, the book provides no formal empirical testing for its theoretical causal chain. In this paper, I build a set of Panel SVAR models to check if inequality and capital share in the national income move up as the r-g gap grows. Using a sample of 19 advanced economies spanning over 30 years, I find no empirical evidence that dynamics move in the way Piketty suggests. Results are robust to several alternative estimates of r-g.

Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth

Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth
Author: Mr.Jonathan David Ostry
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 30
Release: 2014-02-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1484397657

The Fund has recognized in recent years that one cannot separate issues of economic growth and stability on one hand and equality on the other. Indeed, there is a strong case for considering inequality and an inability to sustain economic growth as two sides of the same coin. Central to the Fund’s mandate is providing advice that will enable members’ economies to grow on a sustained basis. But the Fund has rightly been cautious about recommending the use of redistributive policies given that such policies may themselves undercut economic efficiency and the prospects for sustained growth (the so-called “leaky bucket” hypothesis written about by the famous Yale economist Arthur Okun in the 1970s). This SDN follows up the previous SDN on inequality and growth by focusing on the role of redistribution. It finds that, from the perspective of the best available macroeconomic data, there is not a lot of evidence that redistribution has in fact undercut economic growth (except in extreme cases). One should be careful not to assume therefore—as Okun and others have—that there is a big tradeoff between redistribution and growth. The best available macroeconomic data do not support such a conclusion.

Inequality and Growth

Inequality and Growth
Author: Theo S. Eicher
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2003
Genre: Economic development
ISBN: 0262050692

Essays exploring the relationship between economic growth and inequality and the implications for policy makers.

Innovation and Inequality

Innovation and Inequality
Author: Susan Cozzens
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2014-05-30
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1781951675

Susan Cozzens, Dhanaraj Thakur, and the other co-authors ask how the benefits and costs of emerging technologies are distributed amongst different countries _ some rich and some poor. Examining the case studies of five technologies across eight countri