Do affluent countries face an incomes-jobs tradeoff?

"Eine weit verbreitete Ansicht ist, dass in Industrienationen ein Zielkonflikt zwischen Einkommen und Beschäftigung besteht. Demzufolge sind die Löhne in den USA am unteren Ende der Einkommensverteilung im Vergleich zu den mittleren Einkommen sehr niedrig und gesetzliche Arbeitslosenbezüge ausgesprochen gering bemessen. Dies aber stimuliert sowohl die Schaffung neuer Arbeitsplätze als auch die Bereitschaft der Erwerbstätigen, sich mit niedrigen Einkommen zufrieden zu geben. Das Resultat ist eine hohe Beschäftigungs- und eine niedrige Arbeitslosenquote. In vielen westeuropäischen Ländern ist das Niveau der Niedrigeinkommen höher und sind Arbeitslosenbezüge großzügiger. Dies aber hemmt, nach Ansicht vieler, die Entstehung neuer Arbeitsplätze und die Bereitschaft von Arbeitslosen, niedrig bezahlte Arbeit anzunehmen. Das vorliegende Discussion Paper ist eine vergleichende Untersuchung dieser Zielkonflikt-Ansicht auf der Basis von kombinierten Querschnitts- / Zeitreihenanalysen in 14 OECD-Ländern in den 1980er- und 1990er-Jahren. Die Ergebnisse lassen den Schluss zu, dass eine gerechtere Einkommensverteilung und eine höhere Arbeitslosenvergütung ein geringes Beschäftigungswachstum zur Folge haben, sowohl in Bereichen der Wirtschaft mit geringem Produktivitätsausstoß (Dienstleistungssektor) als auch gesamtwirtschaftlich. Gleichwohl sind die Auswirkungen relativ geringfügig. Die Ergebnisse deuten überdies darauf hin, dass es eine Vielzahl von Lösungsmöglichkeiten zur Herstellung beziehungsweise Erhaltung eines ausgewogenen Verhältnisses von Beschäftigung und gerechter Einkommensverteilung gibt." [Autorenreferat]"A commonly-held view suggests that affluent nations face a tradeoff between incomes and jobs. According to this view, in the United States pay for workers at the bottom of the earnings distribution (relative to those in the middle) is very low and government unemployment-related benefits (the “replacement rate”) are stingy, but this facilitates the creation of lots of new jobs and encourages such individuals to take those jobs. The result is a high rate of employment and low unemployment. In much of Western Europe relative pay levels are higher for those at the bottom and benefits are more generous, but this is said to discourage job creation and to reduce the willingness of the unemployed to accept low-wage jobs. The consequence is low employment and high unemployment. I undertake a comparative assessment of this tradeoff view, based on pooled cross-section time-series analyses of 14 OECD countries in the 1980s and 1990s. The findings suggest that greater pay equality and a higher replacement rate do reduce employment growth in low-productivity private-sector service industries and in the economy as a whole. However, these effects are relatively weak. The results point to a variety of viable options for countries wishing to maintain or move toward a desirable combination of jobs and equality." [author's abstract

Quantitative indicators of corporatism: a survey and assessment

"Wenige Modelle der vergleichenden politischen Ökonomie sind über die vergangenen 20 Jahre so eingehend untersucht worden wie das des Korporatismus. In der einschlägigen Literatur spielen dabei quantitative Indikatoren eine zentrale Rolle. Für das vorliegende Discussion Paper sind 42 Indikatoren erhoben und untersucht worden. Ziel war es, sie auf ihre Brauchbarkeit und Verläßlichkeit hin zu überprüfen sowie herauszufinden, wie standfest empirische Untersuchungen über die Auswirkungen des Korporatismus auf makro-ökonomische Leistungsfähigkeit, Einkommensverteilung und -umverteilung sind. Zu den besonders erwähnenswerten Schlußfolgerungen dieses Discussion Papers gehören: (1) Trotz immer noch bestehender Mängel haben sich quantitative Koporatismusmaße in den letzten Jahren als stichhaltig erwiesen. (2) Die Anwendung konstanter Variablen ist nicht mehr sinnvoll. (3) Summarische Korporatismusindikatoren werden zwar oft verwendet, doch ihre Erfinder und Anwender bleiben eine einleuchtende Erklärung schuldig, warum korporatistische Effekte besser durch aggregierte Gesamtmaße als durch sachlich genauere Einzelindikatoren erklärt werden sollten. (4) Alles weist darauf hin, daß einige Aspekte oder Formen des Korporatismus mit Lohnzurückhaltung, niedriger Inflation, höherer Beschäftigung und weitgehender Einkommensgleichheit in den 70er und 80er Jahren korrelieren. Die Ergebnisse variieren jedoch stark, je nachdem, welcher Indikator zugrunde gelegt wurde, und wenig stützt die allgemeine Vermutung, daß der Korporatismus vor allem durch Lohnzurückhaltung die Arbeitslosigkeit mindert." [Autorenreferat]"Corporatism has been one of the most heavily studied concepts in comparative political economy over the past two decades, and quantitative indicators of corporatism have played a central role in the corporatist literature. This paper offers a survey and assessment of 42 such indicators. The principal aims are to provide an inventory of existing indicators, to examine their relative trustworthiness and utility, and to assess the robustness of empirical findings on the effects of corporatism on macroeconomic performance and income distribution and redistribution. Among the more noteworthy conclusions I reach are the following: (1) While quantitative corporatism measures have improved substantially in recent years, substantial gaps remain. (2) There is little justification for continued use of time-invariant measures. (3) Composite corporatism measures are commonplace, yet their creators and users have yet to offer a compelling explication of how corporatist effects are generated in such a way that they are more accurately captured by aggregated indicators than by narrowly-targeted ones. (4) There is fairly strong indication that one or more aspects/types of corporatism were associated with nominal wage restraint, low inflation, low unemployment, and low income inequality during the 1970s and 1980s. However, the results vary markedly depending upon the particular indicator used, and there is little evidence to support the common presumption that corporatism's unemployment-reducing effect occurs via real wage restraint." [author's abstract

Theories and practices of neocorporatism

"The modern territoriall state and the capitalist market economy superseded a political-economic order that consisted of a plethora of corporate communities endowed with traditional rights and obligations, such as churches, estates, cities, and guilds. Organized collectivities of all sorts, more or less closely related to the economic division of labour, regulated cooperation and competition among their members and negotiated their relations with each other. While themselves changing under the impact of modernization, they often resisted the rise of territorial bureaucratic rule and the spread of market relations, sometimes well into the twentieth century. But ultimately they proved unable to prevent the victory of the state form of political organization of the self-regulating market as the dominant site of economic exchange. Modern liberalism, both political and economic, in turn aimed at abolishing all forms of intermediary organization that intervene between the individual and the state or the marktet. In the end, however, it failed to eliminate collectivism and had to accomodate itself both political faction and economic cooperation." (excerpt

What happened to the 'Great American Jobs Machine'?

In the 1980s and 1990s the US employment rate increased steadily, and by 2000 it was one of the highest among the rich democratic nations. Since then it has declined both in absolute terms and relative to other countries. We use an in- depth comparison between the United States and the United Kingdom to probe the causes of America's poor recent performance. Contrary to a common narrative, a comparative perspective suggests that the decline in US labour force participa-tion is not confined to the (white) male population; the divergence in the female participation rate is even more pronounced. We do not find evidence that the poor US performance is linked to cyclical patterns, such as the 2008–09 Great Recession; instead, it is a more pervasive, longer- run phenom-enon. The relative decline of US participation rates compared to the UK is attributable to shifts in socio- demographic characteristics, such as education, and to shifts in the impact of those characteris-tics, which have become more adverse to participation

Obama's Rhetoric

This essay assesses the rhetorical achievement of Barack Obama comparing and contrasting it with the style which brought Donald J. Trump to power

Influence of junction angle on three-dimensional flow structure and bed morphology at confluent meander bends during different hydrological conditions

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Recent field and modeling investigations have examined the fluvial dynamics of confluent meander bends where a straight tributary channel enters a meandering river at the apex of a bend with a 90° junction angle. Past work on confluences with asymmetrical and symmetrical planforms has shown that the angle of tributary entry has a strong influence on mutual deflection of confluent flows and the spatial extent of confluence hydrodynamic and morphodynamic features. This paper examines three-dimensional flow structure and bed morphology for incoming flows with high and low momentum-flux ratios at two large, natural confluent meander bends that have different tributary entry angles. At the high-angle (90°) confluent meander bend, mutual deflection of converging flows abruptly turns fluid from the lateral tributary into the downstream channel and flow in the main river is deflected away from the outer bank of the bend by a bar that extends downstream of the junction corner along the inner bank of the tributary. Two counter-rotating helical cells inherited from upstream flow curvature flank the mixing interface, which overlies a central pool. A large influx of sediment to the confluence from a meander cutoff immediately upstream has produced substantial morphologic change during large, tributary-dominant discharge events, resulting in displacement of the pool inward and substantial erosion of the point bar in the main channel. In contrast, flow deflection is less pronounced at the low-angle (36°) confluent meander bend, where the converging flows are nearly parallel to one another upon entering the confluence. A large helical cell imparted from upstream flow curvature in the main river occupies most of the downstream channel for prevailing low momentum-flux ratio conditions and a weak counter-rotating cell forms during infrequent tributary-dominant flow events. Bed morphology remains relatively stable and does not exhibit extensive scour that often occurs at confluences with concordant beds

Hokupa'a-Gemini Discovery of Two Ultracool Companions to the Young Star HD 130948

We report the discovery of two faint ultracool companions to the nearby (d~17.9 pc) young G2V star HD 130948 (HR 5534, HIP 72567) using the Hokupa'a adaptive optics instrument mounted on the Gemini North 8-meter telescope. Both objects have the same common proper motion as the primary star as seen over a 7 month baseline and have near-IR photometric colors that are consistent with an early-L classification. Near-IR spectra taken with the NIRSPEC AO instrument on the Keck II telescope reveal K I lines, FeH, and water bandheads. Based on these spectra, we determine that both objects have spectral type dL2 with an uncertainty of 2 spectral subclasses. The position of the new companions on the H-R diagram in comparison with theoretical models is consistent with the young age of the primary star (<0.8 Gyr) estimated on the basis of X-ray activity, lithium abundance and fast rotation. HD 130948 B and C likely constitute a pair of young contracting brown dwarfs with an orbital period of about 10 years, and will yield dynamical masses for L dwarfs in the near future.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, (13 total pages

The origins of redistributive policy preferences: political socialisation with and without a welfare state

Research on the impact of the macroeconomy on individual-level preferences for redistribution has produced varying results. This paper presents a new theory on the presence of an expansive welfare state during one’s formative years as a source of heterogeneity in the effect that macroeconomic conditions have on individuals’ preferences for redistributive policy. This theory is tested using cohort analysis via the British Social Attitudes surveys (1983–2010), with generations coming of age between the end of World War I and today. Findings confirm that cohorts that were socialised before and after the introduction of the welfare state react differently to economic crises: the former become less supportive of redistribution, while the latter become more supportive. The research sheds light on the long-term shifts of support for the welfare state due to generational replacement