Global wage trends and wage policy developments in selected countries - Wage policies, productivity growth and employment

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.ILO_GlobalWageTrendsandWagePolicyDevelopments.pdf: 1077 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

The building blocks of a resource-based theory of business start-ups

Firm dynamics are commonly explained through learning processes by evolutionary economics and resource-based theories of the firm. The literature, however, also highlights the methodological difficulty to unpack learning. With the support of cognitive-behavioural theories of learning and the use of a multi-method approach, this study investigates the evolution of business start- ups and interactions between markets, institutions and learning strategies. In retrospective interviews, entrepreneurs-founders of 43 Brazilian start-ups reconstructed the storyline of the first three to five years of their firms, focussing on critical learning episodes. Analyses of the narratives resulted in 207 critical learning episodes, based on the analytical framework, empirical content, expert evaluation and the literature. These episodes were clustered in five categories. Quantitative descriptive analysis showed the cross-cutting dynamics of these episodes. Then, relationships between episodes were investigated through grounded theory principles. Results showed that the key linking factor between episodes is the resource-base of each episode, which generated five typical pathways. The final step identified the properties of these pathways. It is argued that the iteration between qualitative and quantitative methods was crucial to unpack the relationships described. This study provides a viable methodology and a comprehensive framework to investigate the evolution of business start-ups, contributing to the literature on organizational learning, entrepreneurship, and theory of the firm

Supply versus use designs of environmental extensions in input–output analysis: Conceptual and empirical implications for the case of energy

Input–output analysis is one of the central methodological pillars of industrial ecology. However,the literature that discusses different structures of environmental extensions (EEs), that is, thescope of physical flows and their attribution to sectors in the monetary input–output table (MIOT),remains fragmented. This article investigates the conceptual and empirical implications of apply-ing two different but frequently used designs of EEs, using the case of energy accounting, whereone represents energy supply while the other energy use in the economy. We derive both exten-sions from an official energy supply–use dataset and apply them to the same single-region input–output (SRIO) model of Austria, thereby isolating the effect that stems from the decision for theextension design. We also crosscheck the SRIO results with energy footprints from the g lobalmulti-regional input–output (GMRIO) dataset EXIOBASE. Our results show that the ranking offootprints of final demand categories (e.g., household and export) is sensitive to the extensiondesign and that product-level results can vary by several orders of magnitude. The GMRIO-basedcomparison further reveals that for a few countries the supply-extension result can be twice thesize of the use-extension footprint (e.g., Australia and Norway). We propose a graph approachto provide a generalized framework to disclosing the design of EEs. We discuss the conceptualdifferences between the two extension designs by applying analogies to hybrid life-cycle assess-ment and conclude that our findings are relevant for monitoring of energy efficiency and emissionreduction targets and corporate footprint accounting

(Re)Construction Site of German Historical National Accounts:German Agricultural Employment, Production and Labour Productivity

This paper focuses on agricultural performance in 1936 as part of a comprehensive project to (re)construct a new and reliable benchmark for revising German historical national accounts. The new estimates presented here confirm the poor agricultural performance of Germany compared with other developed economies. The new figures are even significantly lower than Hoffmann´s estimates: In particular, this is shown for key variables like gross and net value added and labour productivity. The benchmark year of 1936 is considered to be representative of the inter-war years. Consequently, once again my statement is confirmed that one should keep away from Hoffmann´s figures when discussing any aspect of economic failure of the Weimar Republic or economic recovery after Hitler came to power