Wages, productivity, and work intensity in the Great Depression

We show that U.S. manufacturing wages during the Great Depression were importantlydetermined by forces on firms' intensive margins. Short-run changes in work intensity and the longer-term goal of restoring full potential productivity combined to influence real wage growth. By contrast, the external effects of unemployment and replacement rates had much less impact. Empirical work is undertaken against the background of an efficient bargaining model that embraces employment, hours of work and work intensity

Wages, Productivity and Work Intensity in the Great Depression

We show that U.S. manufacturing wages during the Great Depression were importantly determined by forces on firms' intensive margins. Short-run changes in work intensity and the longer-term goal of restoring full potential productivity combined to influence real wage growth. By contrast, the external effects of unemployment and replacement rates had much less impact. Empirical work is undertaken against the background of an efficient bargaining model that embraces employment, hours of work and work intensity.

Short-Time Work: The German Answer to the Great Recession

Short-time work was the "German answer" to the economic crisis. The number of short-time workers strongly increased in the recession and peaked at more than 1.5 million. Without the extensive use of short-time work, unemployment would have risen by approximately twice as much as it actually did. Short-time work has certainly contributed to the mild response of the German labor market to the crisis, but this is likely due to the country-specific context. Although the crisis has been overcome and employment is strongly expanding, modified regulations governing short-time work are still in place. This leads to undesired side effects.labor market policy, partially unemployed workers, short-time work compensation, economic crisis

The Great Work of the Age!

Southern Institutes, or an inquiry into the origin and early prevalence of slavery and the slave trade, by G.S. Sawyer, of the Bar of Louisianahttps://dh.howard.edu/og_slavery/1122/thumbnail.jp

Short-Time Work Benefits Revisited: Some Lessons from the Great Recession

The Great Recession triggered a resurgence of short-time work (STW) throughout the OECD. Several countries introduced from scratch STW or significantly expanded the scope of the programmes already in place. In some countries like Italy, Japan and Germany between 2.5 and 5 per cent of the workforce participated in short-time work schemes at the trough of the recession. In this paper we analyse the rationale for short time work benefits and their effects on labour adjustment from both a cross-country and a time-series perspective. We find that STW actually contributed to reduce job losses during the Great Recession. However, the number of jobs saved, according to our macroeconomic estimates, is smaller than the full-time equivalents jobs involved by these programmes, pointing in some cases to sizeable deadweight costs. Other institutions, like plant-level bargaining over hours, wages and employment levels may be more effective than STW in encouraging adjustment along the intensive margins in presence of temporary shocks. Our results also suggest that STW cannot be readily extended to countries having much different institutional configurations as the demand for STW is very much affected by other institutions such as employment protection legislation and the degree of centralization of collective bargaining. The micro evidence from firm-level data in Germany is more encouraging as to the effectiveness of STW, pointing to rather moderate deadweight losses. We interpret this result as due to specific design features of the German STW that could make it more effective in addressing the moral hazard problems related to reliance on subsidised hour reductions. The German Kurzarbeit scheme is indeed discouraging 100 per cent hours reductions and is experience-rated.intensive margin, short-time

The Impact of Work-Related Training on Employee Earnings: Evidence from Great Britain.

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey for the years 1998-2005, this study estimates the impact of work-related training on earnings levels. Different measures for general and specific training are constructed from available information. The analysis diverges from the standard fixed effects framework for earnings determination modelling and presents evidence in support of the predictions of the standard human capital theory with regards to training sponsoring using a random effects formulation for the earnings equation suggested by Nijman and Verbeek (1992) for controlling for attrition bias in unbalanced panels

Whither Poverty in Great Britain and the United States? The Determinants of Changing Poverty and Whether Work Will Work

We provide a comparison of poverty levels in Britain and the US based on a set of common definitions. We then ask what factors û demographic, economic, or policy û account for the observed changes in poverty in the two nations and what role could policy play in reducing poverty? We find that the forces influencing poverty differ between nations and across absolute and relative poverty measures. Demographic and wage change is a dominant force in both nations. Government benefits reduced relative and absolute poverty considerably in Britain over this period but had little impact in the US. However, policy changes may have significantly increased work in the US, particularly among single parents, whereas in Britain they may have had the reverse effect. The UK government has committed itself to reducing child poverty by half over the next 10 years and to its abolition within 20 years. We conclude that any purely work-based strategy, which doesn't tackle demographics and wage dispersion, may not have a dramatic effect on relative poverty.

Temporary Agency Work and the Great Recession

We investigate with German data how the use of temporary agency work has helped establishments to manage the economic and financial crisis in 2008/09. We examine the (regular) workforce development, use of short-time work, and business performance of establishments that made differential use of temporary agency work prior to the crisis. Overall, our results suggest that establishments with a greater use of temporary agency work coped better with the sharp decline in demand and made less frequent use of government-sponsored short-time work schemes

Visions of Utopia: The Great Work Begins

In contemporary works, dystopian and apocalyptic texts are not inherently pessimistic; instead, utopian idealism, predicated on hope for a better world, manifests itself in a return to the past. For instance, dystopian and apocalyptic works often condemn industrialized societies that foment poverty, corruption, and ecological distress. Rather, the texts idealize smaller communities that practice agrarianism and hunting and gathering. This shift in societal models reflects a romanticized version of a simpler life. By integrating aspects from the past into the future, societies return to a more economically, socially, and ecologically balanced state. As articulated in “Rural URBAN Eutopias,” “[u]topian propositions usually represent non-existent, ideal, imaginary or even romantic places of the past . . . Common among these places are remembered atmospheres of harmony, peacefulness and well-being, and experiments in social order” (Tabb 1). In this vein, authors create societies that construct the traditional idealized past as superior to the present. However, traditional is relative. As times change, so do interpretations of the past. Given that the past constantly expands, what constitutes tradition constantly expands as well. Now, utopia manifests itself in apocalyptic and dystopian texts; however, the impulse to envision a better condition remains consistent in a return to the glorified past. In the following chapters, I examine apocalyptic and dystopian texts, focusing on hope for the future especially in relation to the past. To add perspective, I also assess a counter narrative—Station Eleven for apocalyptic and Never Let Me Go for dystopian—at the end of each chapter that challenges genre expectations. In doing so, I hope to further emphasize the inherent relativity of utopian visions and of the idealized past