Download or read book Economic Liberalization and Labor Markets written by Parviz Dabir-Alai and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1998-04-23 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains 11 essays which discuss the impact of economic liberalization on employment and unemployment.

Download or read book Models of Economic Liberalization written by Sebastián Etchemendy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-26 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to explain the variation in the models of economic liberalization across Ibero-America in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and the legacies they produced for the current organization of the political economies. Although the macroeconomics of effective market adjustment evolved in a similar way, the patterns of compensation delivered by neoliberal governments and the type of actors in business and the working class that benefited from them were remarkably different. Etchemendy argues that the most decisive factors that shape adjustment paths are the type of regime and the economic and organizational power with which business and labor emerged from the inward-oriented model. The analysis spans from the origins of state, business and labor industrial actors in the 1930s and 1940s to the politics of compensation under neoliberalism across the Ibero-American world, combined with extensive field work material on Spain, Argentina and Chile.

Download or read book Contagious Capitalism written by Mary Elizabeth Gallagher and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the core assumptions of recent American foreign policy is that China's post-1978 policy of "reform and openness" will lead to political liberalization. This book challenges that assumption and the general relationship between economic liberalization and democratization. Moreover, it analyzes the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) liberalization on Chinese labor politics. Market reforms and increased integration with the global economy have brought about unprecedented economic growth and social change in China during the last quarter of a century. Contagious Capitalism contends that FDI liberalization played several roles in the process of China's reforms. First, it placed competitive pressure on the state sector to produce more efficiently, thus necessitating new labor practices. Second, it allowed difficult and politically sensitive labor reforms to be extended to other parts of the economy. Third, it caused a reformulation of one of the key ideological debates of reforming socialism: the relative importance of public industry. China's growing integration with the global economy through FDI led to a new focus of debate--away from the public vs. private industry dichotomy and toward a nationalist concern for the fate of Chinese industry. In comparing China with other Eastern European and Asian economies, two important considerations come into play, the book argues: China's pattern of ownership diversification and China's mode of integration into the global economy. This book relates these two factors to the success of economic change without political liberalization and addresses the way FDI liberalization has affected relations between workers and the ruling Communist Party. Its conclusion: reform and openness in this context resulted in a strengthened Chinese state, a weakened civil society (especially labor), and a delay in political liberalization.

Download or read book Strong Governments Precarious Workers written by Philip Rathgeb and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-15 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some European welfare states protect unemployed and inadequately employed workers ("outsiders") from economic uncertainty better than others? Philip Rathgeb’s study of labor market policy change in three somewhat-similar small states—Austria, Denmark, and Sweden—explores this fundamental question. He does so by examining the distribution of power between trade unions and political parties, attempting to bridge these two lines of research—trade unions and party politics—that, with few exceptions, have advanced without a mutual exchange. Inclusive trade unions have high political stakes in the protection of outsiders, because they incorporate workers at risk of unemployment into their representational outlook. Yet, the impact of union preferences has declined over time, with a shift in the balance of class power from labor to capital across the Western world. National governments have accordingly prioritized flexibility for employers over the social protection of outsiders. As a result, organized labor can only protect outsiders when governments are reliant on union consent for successful consensus mobilization. When governments have a united majority of seats, on the other hand, they are strong enough to exclude unions. Strong Governments, Precarious Workers calls into question the electoral responsiveness of national governments—and thus political parties—to the social needs of an increasingly numerous group of precarious workers. In the end, Rathgeb concludes that the weaker the government, the stronger the capacity of organized labor to enhance the social protection of precarious workers.

Download or read book Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity written by Kathleen Thelen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines contemporary changes in labor market institutions in the United States, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, focusing on developments in three arenas - industrial relations, vocational education and training, and labor market policy. While confirming a broad, shared liberalizing trend, it finds that there are in fact distinct varieties of liberalization associated with very different distributive outcomes. Most scholarship equates liberal capitalism with inequality and coordinated capitalism with higher levels of social solidarity. However, this study explains why the institutions of coordinated capitalism and egalitarian capitalism coincided and complemented one another in the "Golden Era" of postwar development in the 1950s and 1960s, and why they no longer do so. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this study reveals that the successful defense of the institutions traditionally associated with coordinated capitalism has often been a recipe for increased inequality due to declining coverage and dualization. Conversely, it argues that some forms of labor market liberalization are perfectly compatible with continued high levels of social solidarity and indeed may be necessary to sustain it.

Download or read book Labor and Democracy in the Transition to a Market System written by Bertram Silverman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nowhere is the tension attending simultaneous political democratization and economic liberalization more sharply felt than in the realm of labour relations. What is happening in Soviet trade unions today? How will the emerging independent unions respond to anticipated rises in unemployment? What kind of social regulation of the labour market will be appropriate in the future? These papers from a pathbreaking US-Soviet conference on labour issues reveal a considerable diversity of views on questions whose resolution will be essential to social peace in this period of transition. Among the noted contributors are Joseph Berliner, Sam Bowles, Richard Freeman, Leonid Gordon, V.L.Kosmarskii, Alla Nazimova, Michael Piore, Boris Rakitskii, Iurii Volkov, Ben Ward and Tatiana Zaslavskaia.

Download or read book Trade Liberalization and Unemployment written by Pierre-Richard Agénor and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1995-02 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the effect of trade reform on wages and unemployment in a two-sector, three-good economy in which labor is imperfectly mobile across sectors. Wages in the export sector are set so as to minimize turnover costs. The analysis shows that a reduction in tariffs, coupled with an adjustment in lump-sum taxes to equilibrate the government budget, lowers wages in all production sectors in the short and the medium run but has an ambiguous effect on unemployment. Although employment and production of exportables expand in the medium run, the unemployment rate may rise or fall depending on whether the elasticity of wages in the export sector with respect to wages in the nontraded goods sector is lower or greater than unity. Potentially adverse effects may be mitigated in the long run, however, as a result of induced shifts in the structure of production activities.

Download or read book Strong Governments Precarious Workers written by Philip Rathgeb and published by ILR Press. This book was released on 2018-12-15 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some European welfare states protect unemployed and inadequately employed workers ("outsiders") from economic uncertainty better than others? Philip Rathgeb’s study of labor market policy change in three somewhat-similar small states—Austria, Denmark, and Sweden—explores this fundamental question. He does so by examining the distribution of power between trade unions and political parties, attempting to bridge these two lines of research—trade unions and party politics—that, with few exceptions, have advanced without a mutual exchange. Inclusive trade unions have high political stakes in the protection of outsiders, because they incorporate workers at risk of unemployment into their representational outlook. Yet, the impact of union preferences has declined over time, with a shift in the balance of class power from labor to capital across the Western world. National governments have accordingly prioritized flexibility for employers over the social protection of outsiders. As a result, organized labor can only protect outsiders when governments are reliant on union consent for successful consensus mobilization. When governments have a united majority of seats, on the other hand, they are strong enough to exclude unions. Strong Governments, Precarious Workers calls into question the electoral responsiveness of national governments—and thus political parties—to the social needs of an increasingly numerous group of precarious workers. In the end, Rathgeb concludes that the weaker the government, the stronger the capacity of organized labor to enhance the social protection of precarious workers.

Download or read book Liberalization and Entrepreneurship written by Branko Milanović and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 1989 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book starts from the premise that economic liberalization - reduced state interference in economic life - is the common element in the current trend towards privatization and deregulation in the West and economic reform and restructuring in the East. In popular parlance, "privatization" and "perestroika" are its watchwords, Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev its heralds. But the specific character of the liberalization will be determined by the social characteristics of different societies. In order to study the reform process in the two systems, it is necessary to dispose of a general conceptual framework capable of embracing both a (predominantly) market economy and a (predominantly) centrally planned economy. The key objective of this work is to provide such a unified framework, and on that basis to analyze the policy conflicts that dominated both systems in the 1980s and the prospects for further change in the years ahead.

Download or read book Labour Regimes and Liberalization written by Björn Beckman and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays investigates how structural adjustment and economic liberalisation have impacted upon labour regimes - e.g., trade unions; and upon state and civil society relations, and processes of democratisation. The studies resulted from a conference hosted by the Institute of Development Studies, University of Zimbabwe, in co-operation with the Department of Political Science, University of Stockholm. Cases and responses of the seven African countries in attendance - Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe - are documented. Examples include: liberalisation and the case of Senegalese industrial relations; trade unions and capacity building in the Nigerian textile industry; the labour exodus in a liberalising South Africa; and authoritarianism and trade unions in Egypt.

Download or read book Business and Human Rights written by Karen E. Bravo and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the business and human rights agenda developed under the auspices of the United Nations, nowhere are human persons recognized as beings endowed with agency - the power to act on their own behalf. Instead, they are acted upon by state or corporate entities. This Chapter calls for the addition of labor liberalization to the United Nations' business and human rights agenda. Labor liberalization is both an avenue for facilitating the agency of human persons, and a potential bridge between trade liberalization and human rights.After a long drawn out and often contested process, under the auspices of the UN, the project of business and human rights has won the support of the major players - states, transnational corporate entities, and stakeholder NGOs. However, the work of Special Representative John Ruggie, resting on the pillars of state duty to protect, business' responsibility to respect, and the provision of access to remedy by victims, maintains a view of labor, in its individual and collective capacity, as a passive object to be acted upon. Pursuant to this paradigm, labor rights implementation and protection spring from nationality and domicile, not simply from the existence and recognition of the human person.A necessary precondition to the meaningful recognition, implementation, and enforcement of the reinvigorated business and human rights agenda is the synchronization of economic calculus with implementation of human rights obligations. This entails liberalization of labor from the nation state constraints to which it is subject. Labor is hindered in its ability to operate in the global sphere, with a consequent negative impact on its ability to engage fully in the transposition and enforcement of the labor rights espoused in the core internationally recognized human rights. Global competition and collaboration between and among labor and capital are more likely sources of the implementation of a business and human (labor) rights agenda than is reliance on current global labor standards, and the protect, respect, and remedy framework. The liberalization of labor will allow human labor providers to compete and collaborate with capital on the global stage.

Download or read book Employment and Wage Effects of Trade Liberalization written by Ana Revenga and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1999 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: October 1995 Cuts in Mexico's tariff levels were associated with a slight decline in employment in Mexico and with increases in average wages (perhaps reflecting improved productivity in the reformed industries and a shift toward the use of more skilled workers). The wages and employment of skilled production workers were significantly more responsive to changes in protection levels than those of nonproduction workers. In 1985, after decades of an import-substitution industrial strategy, Mexico initiated a radical liberalization of its external sector. Between 1985 and 1988, import licensing requirements were scaled back to a quarter of earlier levels, reference prices were removed, and tariff rates on most products were substantially reduced. By 1989, Mexico was one of the most open economies in the developing world. Adjusting to trade liberalization required the reallocation of resources between sectors and entailed substantial dislocation of workers. Revenga analyzes how Mexico's trade liberalization (1985 - 87) affected employment and wages in industry, focusing on how it affected average employment and earnings rather than on the link between trade and relative wages. She examines the tradeoff between wage and employment adjustment, identifies which labor groups benefited more from liberalization, and tries to associate changes in employment and wages directly with measures of change in trade protection, rather than link them to changes in imports and exports (which is more common). She finds that reductions in quota coverage and tariff levels are associated with moderate reductions in firm-level employment. A 10-point reduction in tariff levels (between 1985 and 1990) is associated with a 2- to 3-percent decline in employment in Mexico. Changes in quota coverage appear to have no discernible effect on wages, but reductions in tariff levels are associated with increases in average wages. This seems to reflect improved productivity in the reformed industries, which may be related to a shift toward the use of more skilled workers. There seems to have been a slight shift in the skill mix in favor of nonproduction workers. This was paralleled by a sharper increase in the wage differential between skilled and unskilled workers. The wages and employment of skilled production workers were significantly more responsive to changes in protection levels than those of nonproduction workers -- perhaps partly because production workers were more heavily concentrated in the industries in which protection levels were greatly reduced. This paper -- a product of the Country Operations Division 1, Latin America and the Caribbean, Country Department II -- was prepared for the World Bank labor markets workshop held in July 1994.

Download or read book Trade Liberalization and Intersectoral Labor Movements written by Jessica Seddon Wallack and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Globalization and the Perceptions of American Workers written by Kenneth F. Scheve and published by Peterson Institute. This book was released on 2001 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using evidence from public opinion polls Scheve (political science, Yale U.) and Slaughter (economics, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire) discuss the attitudes of American workers towards globalization, concluding that there is a strong division in attitude based on education and skill levels, with less-skilled workers seeing globalization as a threat. The authors delineate globalization and their analysis in purely economic terms as they discuss the public opinion evidence on US opposition to globalization, various economic models to interpret the differences in opinion of the surveys, the larger context of recent US labor-market pressures and how these affect worker preferences. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Transborder Labor Liberalization and Social Contracts written by Karen E. Bravo and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The failure of states to liberalize labor as part of the multilateral trade liberalization project stands in stark contradiction to the liberalization of other fundamental economic inputs, thus undermining the vision for a globalized world. The disjuncture and disequilibrium between international trade law and domestic immigration law foster illegal movement across borders and result in the vulnerability of human would-be mobile labor providers to trafficking and other forms of exploitation. As a result, the transnational labor market is characterized by the illegality and temporariness that is assigned by states to mobile and would-be mobile human providers of labor. Yet, the globalized transnational economy demands and stimulates the movement of labor from one domestic economy to another. Domestic social contracts, to the extent that they exist, are subject to the pressures of transnational economic forces that have altered, fundamentally, the existing contracts between, for example, labor and capital. Concepts of distributive justice require democratization of access to the benefits of trade liberalization. To the extent that individual nation-states' domestic laws demand that labor be rendered immobile and/or that mobile human labor providers be punished for transgressing the laws created to ensure their immobility, labor is denied full access to the benefits of trade liberalization. To create a rights-protective equilibrium in the transnational labor market, I contend that the economic nature of humans -- our economic roles in the global economic system -- must be more fully recognized. That recognition will require that human labor providers must have the right to easily enter and exit individual domestic labor markets in response to economic stimuli. I propose that the path to the framing, implementation, and enforcement of a global social contract that protects labor is to liberalize labor from some of the nation-state constraints to which the transborder labor market is subject.

Download or read book Informal Labor Formal Politics and Dignified Discontent in India written by Rina Agarwala and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-08 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1980s, the world's governments have decreased state welfare and thus increased the number of unprotected 'informal' or 'precarious' workers. As a result, more and more workers do not receive secure wages or benefits from either employers or the state. This book offers a fresh and provocative look into the alternative social movements informal workers in India are launching. It also offers a unique analysis of the conditions under which these movements succeed or fail. Drawing from 300 interviews with informal workers, government officials and union leaders, Rina Agarwala argues that Indian informal workers are using their power as voters to demand welfare benefits from the state, rather than demanding traditional work benefits from employers. In addition, they are organizing at the neighborhood level, rather than the shop floor, and appealing to 'citizenship', rather than labor rights.

Download or read book Structural Reforms and Labor Reallocation A Cross Country Analysis written by Khalid ElFayoumi and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2018-03-19 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Institutional and market frictions impose costs on the reallocation of labor from low to high productivity sectors, leading to suboptimal allocations and a loss in aggregate labor productivity. Using cross-country sector-level data, we use a dynamic panel error correction model to compute the speed of sectoral labor adjustment, as well as the contribution of structural reforms in governance, labor and product markets, trade and openness, and the financial sector to lowering the costs of labor reallocation. We find that, on average, sectoral employment shares converge towards equilibrium allocations, closing about 13.7 percent of labor productivity gaps each year; this speed of labor adjustment varies across sectors and income groups. On structural reforms, we find a significant association between more efficient labor reallocation and financial market liberalization, less bureaucracy, strong judicial and regulatory environment, trade liberalization, better education and more flexible labor and product markets.