Demand For Unskilled Labor Research Articles

Economy-wide Impacts of India–UAE CEPA: A CGE Analysis

The present study investigates the potential trade effects of tariff liberalisation under India–United Arab Emirates (UAE) Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) using general equilibrium analysis. The study specifically examines output, employment, exports and welfare effects of India–UAE CEPA in computable general equilibrium (CGE) framework using the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model and database version 10. The study indicates output gains in manufacturing sector for both countries and an increase in demand for unskilled labour in India. The study argues that the CEPA will result in an increase in global exports of all commodity groups for both India and UAE and a substantial gain in bilateral exports of both countries. The present study suggests that deeper integration through tariff reduction on imports under India–UAE CEPA will be welfare enhancing for both India and UAE. Overall results show that there is a lot of untapped potential to bring the welfare gains for both trading partners. Given the present schedule of tariff reduction of CEPA, a win–win scenario will emerge for both partners in short as well as long run. Finally, the study cautioned about the implications of sensitive list for trade effects and protection from misuse of rules of origin in the CEPA. JEL Codes: F1, F13, F14, F15, F17

Migration of population in Sverdlovsk oblast: problems and solutions

In the context of the necessity to implement the national goals, one of the important areas of activity is support of positive demographic processes, promotion of population growth in the country, including through resettlement and migration of residents of other countries. This is relevant not only at the country level, but also at the regional level, each of which has features that must be considered when forming demographic policy. The article analyzes the effectiveness of the program to promote migration and resettlement of compatriots from other countries to Sverdlovsk oblast. Its advantages and limitations are highlighted, its effectiveness is considered on the example of immigrants from several CIS countries: Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan. It is shown that despite the formal fulfillment of the objectives of the program (more than 28 thousand foreigners arrived in Sverdlovsk oblast within 9 years), some meaningful moments were missed, the selection of migrants based on the occupations in demand in the labor market of the region was not fully carry out. There are presented the directions of improving the program for the medium term, which are connected with new approaches to raising the quality of program implementation in Sverdlovsk oblast. It is shown that it is necessary to formalize and improve the mechanism for attracting foreign labor to the region using notification quotas, organized recruitment, modification of selection criteria for the point system, development of the material base and linguistic community for an accelerated adaptation. Analysis showed that promotion of resettlement is necessary with relation to professionals in relevant areas of activity (doctors, teachers), while the demand for unskilled labor is satisfied by migrants.

PECULARITIES OF TRANSITION OF YOUNG PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES TO ADULT LIFE

During globalization process and development of technology the labor market is changing significantly and the demand for unskilled labor is decreasing. The integration of people with disabilities into society through such processes is even more complicated. The peculiarities of and risk factors and barriers to transition of young people with disabilities to adult life with specific attention to their career education and preparation for professional career presented by different researcher groups including Lithuanian examples are analyzed in the article. The critical review method and analysis of scientific literature are used.

Urban Wage Behaviour and Food Price Inflation in Ethiopia

Theoretically, increases in food prices could benefit the poor by increasing the demand for unskilled labour, and hence their wages. This paper tests this hypothesis in urban Ethiopia. We exploit a unique panel of monthly price and wage data from 111 urban markets to first construct welfare-relevant measures of real wages, before employing various panel estimators to formally test wage-food price integration. We find moderate rates of long-run adjustment to increases in food prices, but that adjustment is very slow. This implies highly adverse short-run welfare impacts of higher food prices on the urban poor.

Effect of Ban on Exports Containing Child Labour in a Dynamic Model in Presence of Imperfect Monitoring

We build up a simple overlapping generations’ model where parents derive utility from their children’s education and use this framework to understand and analyze the implications of a ban on exports with child labour content. Since perfect monitoring seems unrealistic, we develop a model with imperfect monitoring. The export industry is competitive and therefore zero-profit condition holds. The country under consideration is assumed to be a small open economy and therefore faces a fairly elastic demand. Then, a ban on child labour imposed by the importing countries will increase the cost of employing child labour and will discourage the producers in that sector to use child labour. The final effect on the incidence of child labour will however depend on whether the aggregate supply of unskilled labour by child workers in the pre-ban equilibrium situation is greater or less than the demand for unskilled labour in the import-competing sector.

The Redistributive Effects of Debtor Protection Laws

A debtor-friendly bankruptcy regime limits the amount of assets creditors can seize from distressed individuals. In response, creditors may redistribute credit towards richer and more able individuals. We show that increasing the amount of asset protection in bankruptcy (exemptions) leads to higher income inequality in the state. Using geographic variation in banking market structure and variation in capital needs across industries, we show that the increase in income inequality is mediated by a credit market channel. We analyze different population groups and find that the increase in inequality is driven by a growing income gap between unskilled and skilled individuals that affects both self-employed and wage workers. We also find a drop in the employment rate and in the relative wage of unskilled workers. Our results indicate that the redistribution of credit leads to an imbalance in economic opportunities among entrepreneurs that reduces the aggregate demand for unskilled labor.

Dispossession, exploitation or employment? Youth livelihoods and extractive industry investment in Sierra Leone

The impacts that increased transnational extractive industry investments are having on local populations in natural resource-rich regions of sub-Saharan Africa are diverse, far-reaching and complex. A surge of recent investment has been variously met by resistance and rejection, by acquiescence combined with demands for better labour conditions, and outright acceptance in anticipation of gainful employment. Drawing on recent field-based research carried out in diamondiferous Kono District in Sierra Leone, this paper critically explores these contrasting responses to mining activities, by focusing on how youth perceive and respond to extractive industry expansion. The analysis is particularly salient in the case of Sierra Leone, as Kono's prime alluvial diamond areas are becoming ‘mined out’, and artisanal and small-scale operations are being replaced by more capital intensive modes of mechanized extraction. In an environment where the demand for unskilled labour is diminishing, and young people are facing pressing livelihood needs in an employment-constrained economy, youth are playing important roles in rights-based mobilizations around mining. The paper aims to broaden understanding of youth perceptions of mining investment, and illuminate the various factors underlying a diverse range of responses to the expansion of extractive industries. It concludes by reflecting on how youth perceptions of extractive industry expansion may also be influencing the ways in which mining companies understand and fashion their business and social responsibility strategies.

South African Tax Incentives To Alleviate Unemployment: Lessons From United States Of America Approaches

A quarter of the labour force in South Africa is currently unemployed with the majority of the unemployed being unskilled youth. One of the major causes seems to be the commanding power of trades union resulting in a high minimum wage for unskilled workers, which results in a reduction in the demand for unskilled labour. To reduce the current unemployment rate in South Africa, policy decisions should be focused on youth employment with emphasis on skills development. Policy should also stimulate growth of small, medium and micro enterprises in order to stimulate job creation. A literature review indicates that current tax incentives in South Africa do not incentivise employers to hire unskilled youth labour, and are not applied on a wide enough scale to significantly impact the overall unemployment statistics. The proposed youth wage subsidy will increase the demand for unskilled labour by reducing the cost of labour. However, to have the desired impact, the participation rate must be high. The proposed subsidy was analysed against the successes and failures of subsidies implemented in the USA. It was found that many of the flaws identified in the USA have been avoided.Based on the above, the recommendation is that the proposed youth wage subsidy is plausible in a South African context and should be implemented. The main concern is that newly employed youth would replace workers who do not meet the qualifications of the subsidy. This would have to be taken into account by policy makers.

Trading in Humans: A New Haven Perspective

Human trafficking is the third largest criminal industry after the drug trade and arms dealing, and it is also one of the fastest growing international crimes. Its victims are exploited in sex trafficking in large urban areas, vacation and tourist spots, near military bases; in labour trafficking fuelled by the demand for unskilled labour, present in seasonal agriculture, tourism, construction, fisheries and domestic servitude. This modern-day slavery is an affront to the dignity of the human being and a violation of core human rights. It is also a crime against the state that undermines labour relations, health, safety and security of every country it touches as a source of victims, place of transit or final destination. Concerted efforts locally and globally are necessary to combat it. Through the lens of the New Haven School of Thought, also known as Policy-Oriented Jurisprudence, this article analyses the problem of trafficking in human beings, presents the decisions made to address it, and develops recommendations to improve solutions.

Labour Market Restructuring and South Africa's Rural Homeland Communitiesin the 1980s

ABSTRACT Given South Africa's history, rural communities in the periphery have always been the poorest of the poor with a long-run dependence on migrant remittances. In the 1980s there were vigorous debates about the importance of agricultural activities yet these analyses assumed that the nature of the interaction between these rural communities and the broader structures of South Africa's economy remained tied to long-range, unskilled migrant labour. While there was an expansion of migrant labour to the gold mines in the 1970s, there were other changes taking place in the South African labour market too. There was a capital deepening process within the manufacturing, mining and agriculture sectors leading to an increasing demand for skilled and some categories of semi-skilled labour and a sharply decreasing demand for unskilled labour. In addition, there was some spatial restructuring of South African industry and ‘self-governing’ or even ‘independence’ homelands spawned large public bureaucracies. Using empirical evidence from the 1980s this paper shows that these changes led to increasing participation of rural communities in regional and local labour markets. There was increased wage labour and weekly commuting and a number of these jobs were semi-skilled. These developments changed the nature of inequality and socioeconomic differentiation within rural communities. Those who were able to make adjustments to take advantage of restructured labour markets were notably better off relative to those who were not in a position to do this.

The effect of working time and labor force participation on unemployment: A new argument in an old debate

Abstract This paper introduces a new argument into the theoretical literature on labor market effects of changes in working hours and labor force participation. We advance a general equilibrium model in which increased labor supply reduces unskilled unemployment via consumer demand: longer work hours and higher labor force participation imply higher incomes and less (leisure) time. In consequence, home production is reduced in favor of outsourcing domestic tasks to the market, shifting consumer demand toward unskill-intensive goods. Relative demand for unskilled labor rises and unemployment falls. Finally, we provide empirical support for the basic mechanisms of our model for Germany.

Technology and the Demand for Unskilled Labor After the Economic Crisis

Technology and the Demand for Unskilled Labor After the Economic Crisis

Industrial Policy, FDI and Employment: Still ‘Missing a Strategy’

This paper contrasts the effects of trade, inward FDI and technological development upon the demand for skilled and unskilled workers in the UK. By focussing on industry level data panel data on smaller firms, the paper also contrasts these effects with those generated by large scale domestic investment. The analysis is placed within the broader context of shifts in British industrial policy, which has seen significant shifts from sectoral to horizontal measures and towards stressing the importance of SMEs, clusters and new technology, all delivered at the regional scale. This, however, is contrasted with continued elements of British and EU regional policy which have emphasised the attraction of inward investment in order to alleviate regional unemployment. The results suggest that such policies are not naturally compatible; that while both trade and FDI benefit skilled workers, they have adverse effects on the demand for unskilled labour in the UK. At the very least this suggests the need for a range of policies to tackle various targets (including in this case unemployment and social inclusion) and the need to integrate these into a coherent industrial strategy at various levels of governance, whether regional and/or national. This has important implications for the form of any ‘new’ industrial policy.

International Outsourcing and the Skill Structure of Labour Demand in the United Kingdom

This article investigates empirically the link between international outsourcing and the skill structure of labour demand in the UK. It is the first detailed study of this issue for the UK. Outsourcing is calculated using import‐use matrices of input‐output tables for manufacturing industries for the period 1982 to 1996. Estimating a system of variable factor demands, our main results show that international outsourcing has had a strong negative impact on the demand for unskilled labour. Hence, international outsourcing is an important component in explanations of the changing skill structure of manufacturing industries in the UK.

International Outsourcing and the Skill Structure of Labour Demand in the United Kingdom

This paper investigates empirically the link between international outsourcing and the skill structure of labour demand in the United Kingdom. It is the first detailed study of this issue for the UK. Outsourcing is calculated using import-use matrices of input-output tables for manufacturing industries for the period 1982 to 1996. Estimating a system of variable factor demands, our main results show that international outsourcing has had a strong negative impact on the demand for unskilled labour. Hence, international outsourcing is an important component in explanations of the changing skill structure of manufacturing industries in the United Kingdom.

Curvature Conditions and Substitution Pattern Among Capital, Materials and Heterogeneous Labour

This study deals with the determinants of factor demand in 27 industries of the manufactoring sector during the period 1978 to 1990. Using a quadratic cost function, six production factors are distinguished: capital, energy, three types of labour and intermediate materials. A parametric test of the concavity of the cost function in prices is provided and price elasticities are compared when curvature conditions are imposed or not. The results show, firstly, that in general estimates do not appear very sensitive to imposing theoretical restrictions implied by optimising behaviour. Secondly, demand for unskilled labour is relatively elastic to wage increases compared to the higher skill levels. Third, the substitutability is stronger between unskilled and medium skilled labour than any other pairs of inputs.

Perspektiven für mehr Jobs in Deutschland

Abstract There is no simple solution to the German unemployment dilemma. Neither too high wages, nor unionized central bargaining, nor the evidence of the effects of the welfare state deliver a simple explanation. The East German experience confirms this view. A solution needs to combine flexibility with economic growth. More flexible product markets could help to generate the higher demand for unskilled labour that is so badly needed.

The Decline in Demand for Unskilled Labor: An Empirical Analysis Method and its Application to France

The decline in the unskilled share of French employment is chiefly due to the slackness of domestic demand for those industries with the highest proportion of unskilled workers. The spread of computers has not been particularly conducive to substitution between skilled and unskilled labor. We test and accept the hypothesis of technical-progress neutrality within French industries. The mechanisms that generate inequality do not appear to be the same in France and in the United States. The source of inequality isn't so much technical progress per se as its interaction with the institutions that regulate the labor market.

Trade and Labour Markets: Vertical and Regional Differentiation in Italy

The labour market misfortunes of the less skilled and rapid growth of international trade in manufactured goods with less advanced countries are linked by the paradoxical observation that trade theorists are in the forefront of those denying the importance of trade in income distribution. This paper analyses this conclusion by stressing the importance of vertical differentiation of trade flows and regional differentiation of skills in order to identify labour market effects of trade integration. Vertical and regional differentiation in trade and labour markets are analysed for a country, Italy, where these two elements seem to play a crucial role. The results show a likely displacement effect on unskilled labour due to trade flows with less advanced countries. Given the characteristics of Italian trade and labour markets, a stronger trade-induced displacement effect on demand for unskilled labour takes place in the North of the country. Thus the vertical differentiation in Italian intra-industry trade is a warning against understating the effect of trade on labour markets if product heterogeneity is not adequately considered. The regional differentiation of skill intensity is another warning against understating the effect of trade on labour markets whenever cross-sectoral effects and the change in relative specialization are not adequately considered.

A framework for analyzing the political support for active labor market policy

We develop a general equilibrium analysis of the impact of active labor market policy on unemployment, wages and the welfare of the employed. This framework is used to assess the political support in favour of such policies and to relate it to the working of such policies and other parameters characterizing the economic environment. The main finding is that if the employed have little exposure to unemployment and if the demand for unskilled labour is inelastic, then there may be political support for policies which actually raise the equilibrium level of total unemployment.