12 research outputs found
Asian Labour Mobility: New Dimensions and Implications for Development (Invited Lecture)
This paper argues that the rise of organized labour migration
has introduced a new structural feature in the international labour
market. Unlike previous migration for employment flows, where personal
linkages and kinship provided the necessary information about employment
opportunities abroad, the recent migration flows have been organized by
commercially-motivated agents. This new factor in the labour market has
a number of implications which deserve closer attention. First, the
"organization" of migration by these agents contributes to making labour
supply highly elastic during upswings in demand for expatriate labour.
This suggests that considerable adjustments are imposed by the migration
process on the labour markets of labour exporting countries. Second, it
also makes for inelasticity during periods of weakening demand because
of its "stockpiling effect" on labour supply. Hence, it may have the
effect of dampening pressures for contract wage increases during the
periods of rising demand for labour while they probably accentuate the
tendency of wages to decline during the periods of slackening demand.
The point that is also to be emphasized is that these agents are able to
siphon off large proportions of the earnings of migrant workers
indicating that this new structural feature of the labour market may
have some previously overlooked income distribution effects
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Trademark protection: an economic evaluation.
Note:This paper seeks to determine the economic significance of trademark protection. The analysis covers the implications of the trademark law to consumer information, advertising and product differentiation, competitive behaviour and industry structure in the producing and the distributive trades. The author argues that trademark protection is partly responsible for strong barriers to entry of new firms into an industry. Not only does it encourage advertising and other forms of differentiation, it also serves to enforce restrictive arrangements such as exclusive distributorship, market sharing, tying, and resale price maintenance. It is also argued that through the above arrangements, trademark protection influences the structure of the distributive trades, hence their relative bargaining strength vis-a-vis the producers. The study shows further that although a trademark serves as a storehouse of information regarding a product's properties, the proliferation of trademarks may serve to confuse rather than inform the consumers. Finally, no reason has been found for associating “real" (as opposed to "fancied") differentiation with trademark protection