Toward Greater Global Equity

People around the world do not have the same chances to live, learn, work, and participate in society’s activities, because these opportunities are greatly influenced by circumstances beyond their control, including their country of birth. Global equity is worth pursuing for its own sake and for greater global prosperity. Concrete changes in global policies and global governance are needed to bring about greater equity: better aid to help poor countries make up for limited endowments, more space for legal migration of unskilled workers, more open trade (particularly for agricultural goods), less restrictive protection of intellectual property rights, and reforms in global governance.

Protecting the poor from macroeconomic shocks

Many developing countries faced macroeconomic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s. The impact of the shocks on welfare depended on the nature of the shock, on initial household and community conditions, and on policy responses. To avoid severe and lasting losses to poor and vulnerable groups, governments and civil society need to be prepared for a flexible response well ahead of the crisis. A key component of a flexibly responsive system is an effective permanent safety net, which will typically combine a work-fare program with targeted transfers and credit. Once a crisis has happened, several things should be done: 1) Macroeconomic policies should aim to achieve stabilization goals at the least cost to the poor. Typically, a temporary reduction in aggregate demand is inevitable but as soon as a sustainable external balance has been reached and inflationary pressures have been contained, macroeconomic policy should be eased (interest rates reduced and efficient public spending restored, to help offset the worst effects of the recession on the poor). A fiscal stimulus directed at labor-intensiveactivities (such as building rural roads) can combine the benefits of growth with those of income support for poor groups, for example. 2) Key areas of public spending should be protected, especially investments in health care, education, rural infrastructure, urban sanitation, and micro-finance. 3) Efforts should be made to preserve the social fabric and build social capital. 4) Sound information should be generated on the welfare impacts of the crisis.Labor Policies,Public Health Promotion,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Health Economics&Finance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Poverty Assessment,Economic Theory&Research

The Effects of Human Resource Management Practices on Productivity

Increasingly, firms are considering the adoption of new work practices, such as problem-solving teams, enhanced communication with workers, employment security, flexibility in job assignments, training workers for multiple jobs, and greater reliance on incentive pay. This paper provides empirical evidence to address the question: do these human resource management practices improve worker productivity? For this study, we constructed our own data base through personal site visits to 26 steel plants which contained one specific steelmaking process, and collected longitudinal data with precise measures on productivity, work practices, and the technology in these production lines. The empirical results consistently support the following conclusion: the adoption of a coherent system of these new work practices, including work teams, flexible job assignments, employment security, training in multiple jobs, and extensive reliance on incentive pay, produces substantially higher levels of productivity than do more 'traditional' approaches involving narrow job definitions, strict work rules, and hourly pay with close supervision. In contrast, adopting individual work practice innovations in isolation has no effect on productivity. We interpret this evidence as support for recent theoretical models which stress the importance of complementarities among a firm's work practices.

Spatial dimensions of income inequality in Nepal

This paper investigates spatial dimensions of income inequality in Nepal using unit record data from the Living Standards Measurement (LSM) survey of 1995/96. The Gini, Atkinson and generalized entropy indices are used to measure income inequality. The results reveal that per capita income inequality in Nepal is quite high. The decomposition analyses based on ecological and geographical groupings reveal that the contribution of between-region inequality component to aggregate income inequality is less than 10 per cent. Since the poor regions have aligned with social and political conflicts, the policies to reduce inter-regional income inequality should be given far higher priority than what the statistical decomposition analyses suggest. The geographical sub-division is more salient than the ecological sub-division for the understanding of inequality. The growth of income in all the geographical rural regions, except the Eastern Terai, should reduce aggregate income disparity in Nepal

The Effects of Human Resource Management Practices on Productivity: A Study of Steel Finishing Lines.

The authors investigate the productivity effects of innovative employment practices using data from a sample of thirty-six homogeneous steel production lines owned by seventeen companies. The productivity regressions demonstrate that lines using a set of innovative work practices, which include incentive pay, teams, flexible job assignments, employment security, and training, achieve substantially higher levels of productivity than do lines with the more traditional approach, which includes narrow job definitions, strict work rules, and hourly pay with close supervision. Their results are consistent with recent theoretical models which stress the importance of complementarities among work practices. Copyright 1997 by American Economic Association.