Effects of Labour Mobility: An Analysis of Recent International Development Literature

Successive censuses have shown that the Aboriginal populations of Canada are very mobile with strong tendencies to move to urban areas, but little is known about the consequences of these circular movements on the development of First Nations, the welfare of individual members and their families, and the costs and benefits to their larger communities. This article reviews the large body of literature on the nexus between mobility and development of countries in the developing world with a view to developing insights that may be relevant to the development of First Nation communities. While there are clear differences, the two contexts may be similar enough – in terms of socio-economic well-being, service levels, and institutional barriers to socio-economic development – for such analysis to contribute to understanding the effects of migration on the migrants themselves, their households, and their communities and countries of origin. The experience of developing countries suggest that there are positive gains not only in earnings but also in education and health for those who move internally and more so for those able to move internationally, even if there remain some concerns about negative effects on migrants’ families left behind, especially on the children. What seems clear is that migration plays an important role in family survival strategies. Money migrants send home finance the education of children, enable better health care, and improve housing. They shield migrants’ families against all kinds of “shocks”. However, emigration may reduce the human capital stock (brain drain), thus adversely affecting productivity. The loss of health professionals can set back critical medical services in remote communities, and disrupt formal and informal systems for transferring know-how. These “spill-over effects” or externalities on origin communities can be significant, imposing burdens on those left behind. Finally, the article looks at how diaspora communities have served as sources of information, linkages, or networks with businesses, markets for sovereign bonds, mediums for the transfer of technology and know-how, and a market for tourism

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

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

Labour Shortage Responses in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia: A Review and Evaluation

[Excerpt] Japan and the East Asian tiger economies of Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, (as well as Taiwan) and more recently Malaysia are often touted as the preeminent examples of economies that attained, or have come close to attaining, at different periods of time, the desirable path of high growth, low unemployment, low inflation, that is spread enough to radically reduce absolute poverty in those respective countries. Japan achieved what has been called its post-war economic miracle from 1952 to 1973, allowing it to wipe out poverty in the country. And while its growth has been relatively stagnant for more than a decade now, it is still the world’s second largest economy possessing one of its highest per capita incomes. Korea’s ascension to the ranks of industrialized economies was more recent but quite rapid, occurring from the early 1980s to the present, its run broken only briefly by the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. Estimates of the poverty incidence in Korea differ but typically place it at the low single digits. Singapore began its own climb towards developed-country status immediately after its independence in 1965 and after opening up to foreign investors - over the last four decades it has grown at an average annual rate of better than 8 percent. Hong Kong’s growth began even earlier in the 1950s and 1960s as exporter of textiles, clothes, and toys, although it has moved mainly to financial and trade services since the 1980s – it has grown more than 7 percent per year in the last four decades. Malaysia’s development is the most recent of the five countries, having in fact benefited from foreign direct investments from the earlier developers in the group, particularly Japan and Singapore. The paths taken by the five economies towards industrialization are quite similar, with growth propelled, at least initially, by very robust industrial sectors stimulated by foreign direct investments directed towards exports. There are still disagreements on the ultimate causes of these developments, with some arguing for the large investments in human and physical capital undertaken in these economies, others from the demographic dividend from the baby boom generation, etc. What is not in disagreement, and what has been much discussed recently, is that as a consequence of their development paths, all five economies have faced and will continue to face in the coming decades the problem of labour shortage. There are strong demand and supply forces causing the labour shortage in the five economies. On the demand side, rapid and sustained economic growth required and will likely continue to require a steady increase in the labour force2. Further on the demand side, as a consequence of moving towards more knowledge-based economies, the need for highly-skilled and highly-educated workforce in specific sectors has outstripped what each country can domestically supply. On the supply side, as the economies of the five economies grew, their total fertility rates fell to what is now very much below the replacement level of about two. Furthermore, as per capita income and the standard of living increased in these economies, reservation wages of the domestic workforce have also increased, especially for low-skilled jobs deemed “difficult, dangerous and dirty” or 3-D jobs, thus adding to the supply pressure. The shortage in labour is thus present in the aggregate and for specificjobs or sectors. All five economies have already implemented various responses to the labour shortages they have faced and are anticipating. Drawing from the available literature, this paper will discuss the extent of the labour shortage in these five economies and their past and present responses to it with a view towards evaluating which policies have worked and are likely to work in the future. The paper proceeds as follows: Section 2 discusses the extent of the labour shortage in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. Section 3 outlines a model that is used to frame the labour-shortage issue. Section 4 reviews the responses to labour-shortage in the five economies. Section 5 concludes.pub08_11.pdf: 6784 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020