Endogenous Wage Research Articles

Book Reviews

Laura Alfaro of Harvard University reviews “Foreign Direct Investment: Analysis of Aggregate Flows” by Assaf Razin, Efraim Sadka,. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins “Analyzes the macroeconomics of foreign direct investment (FDI), treating it as a unique form of international capital flow between specific pairs of countries. Discusses FDI and foreign portfolio investment--theory and evidence; foreign versus domestic direct investment--cream-skimming; FDI flows with endogenous domestic wages--heterogeneous firms; country-specific aggregate shocks--the representative firm; an overview of the econometric equations; application to a baseline sample--ordinary least squares, Tobit, and the Heckman selection models; productivity shocks; source and host corporate tax rates; and tax competition and coordination. Razin is Bernard L. Schwartz Chair for the Study of Global Competitive Markets at Tel Aviv University and Friedman Professor of International Economics at Cornell University. Sadka is Henry Kaufman Professor of International Capital Markets at Tel Aviv University. Bibliography; index.”

On Artificial Structural Unemployment and Endogenous Minimum Wage

We construct a novel model of equilibrium unemployment. Specifically, in a dynamic micro based model, we illustrate that rational and profit maximizing firms can choose to pay wages that exceed the market clearing level to restrict competition. Resulting unemployment and above market clearing wages are both shown to be a part of equilibrium and to persist idifinitely. In addition, we provide a new rationale for the prevalence of minimum wage legislation in most economies. In particular, we show that minimum wage regulation can be be universally favored by all producers while being resnted by employees.

Trade, Wages, and Productivity

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity changes. Using Canada-US interregional trade data, we structurally estimate a theory-based gravity equation system featuring endogenous wages and productivity. Given the estimated parameter values, we first decompose border effects'into a pure'border effect, relative and absolute wage effects, and a selection effect. We then quantify the impacts of removing the trade distortions generated by the Canada-US border on regional market aggregates such as wages, productivity, markups, the mass of varieties produced and consumed, as well as welfare. Last, we extend the counterfactual analysis to the firm level by generating productivity distributions and their changes via simulation.

Specific Skilled Labor and the Demand for Social Insurance

The relationship between specific skills and the welfare state is contested. To help resolve the conflict, we present a general model of preferences over social insurance with endogenous wages and investment in specific skills and a variety of exogenous constraints. Our dynamic model underscores the link between wages, skills and unemployment risks. It shows that skill-specificity will not affect preferences for insurance when wages adjust for investment costs and unemployment risks. We validate this part of the model with U.S. data. We then extend the model to show how different conditions, including centralized wage bargaining, capital market imperfections and taxation, affect skill formation and skill-based preferences for social insurance. These extensions provide testable hypothesis about political support for the welfare state. Our model reconciles the disparate empirical findings and demonstrates how they, along with Iversen and Soskice’s seminal results, are special cases of the interaction between labor markets and politics. A final, revised version to appear in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Volume 7, Issue 1, 2012, tentatively titled, On the (Ir)relevnce of Skill Specificity for Social Insurance.

Indirect benefits of infrastructure improvement in the case of an imperfect labor market

We perform a welfare analysis of transport infrastructure improvements in the presence of an imperfect labor market, allowing for endogenous wages and involuntary unemployment. Efficiency wage setting is incorporated in a spatial two-region general equilibrium model, written as a welfare program. In our model, firms set wages above the market clearing level to create an inducement for employees not to shirk. The economy-wide effect (i.e. social welfare or total welfare) consists of the direct effect in transport market and the indirect effect in other markets. We conduct welfare analyses different from the conventional cost–benefit analysis, in which we distinguish between the direct welfare effect based on consumer surplus in the transport market and the indirect welfare effect through changes in regional unemployment, which is captured in the economy-wide effect. In our model, infrastructure improvement may increase unemployment in one region, but overall unemployment levels fall. The indirect welfare effects through decreases in overall unemployment are about 10–20% of the direct welfare effects for most plausible labor market parameters. The indirect welfare effects are larger, the poorer the initial transport infrastructure and the larger the labor market imperfections.

Unemployment, Imperfect Risk Sharing, and the Monetary Business Cycle

This paper examines the impact of unemployment insurance on the propagation of monetary disturbances in a staggered price model of the business cycle. To motivate a role for risk sharing behavior, I construct a quantitative equilibrium model that gives prominence to an efficiency-wage theory of unemployment based on imperfectly observable labor effort. Dynamic simulations reveal that under a full insurance arrangement, staggered price-setting is incapable of generating persistent real effects of a monetary shock. Introducing partial insurance, however, bolsters the amount of endogenous wage rigidity present in the model, enriching the propagation mechanism. Positive real persistence appears in versions of the model that exclude capital accumulation as well as in versions that do not.

Unemployment, Imperfect Risk Sharing, and the Monetary Business Cycle

This paper examines the impact of unemployment insurance on the propagation of monetary disturbances in a staggered price model of the business cycle. To motivate a role for risk sharing behavior, I construct a quantitative equilibrium model that gives prominence to an e‐ciency-wage theory of unemployment based on imperfectly observable labor efiort. Dynamic simulations reveal that under a full insurance arrangement, staggered price-setting is incapable of generating persistent real efiects of a monetary shock. Introducing partial insurance, however, bolsters the amount of endogenous wage rigidity present in the model, enriching the propagation mechanism. Positive real persistence appears in versions of the model that exclude capital accumulation as well as in versions that do not.

Growth and Unemployment in an Olg Economy with Public Pensions

This paper develops an overlapping generations (OLG) model including (i) a productive externality as an engine of endogenous growth and (ii) wage setting by trade unions as the cause of unemployment. Within this framework, the paper considers growth and unemployment affected by public pensions under the following two types of pension system: the proportionate pension system where only the contributors, i.e., the employed, receive pensions, and the lump-sum pension system where both the employed and the unemployed receive pensions. It is shown that public pensions create a trade-off between growth and employment in the former system, whereas they produce no trade-off in the latter.

Trade, Wages, and Productivity

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity changes. Using Canada-US interregional trade data, we structurally estimate a theory-based gravity equation system featuring endogenous wages and productivity. Given the estimated parameter values, we first decompose border effects into a pure border effect, relative and absolute wage effects, and a selection effect. We then quantify the impacts of removing the trade distortions generated by the Canada-US border on regional market aggregates such as wages, productivity, markups, the mass of varieties produced and consumed, as well as welfare. Last, we extend the counterfactual analysis to the firm level by generating productivity distributions and their changes via simulation.

Individual Transitions from Temporary to Permanent Job: What Consequences about Wage Diffences in France?

The paper investigates individual transitions from a temporary job (CDD) to a permanent job (CDI) in France. We present the transition from a temporary job to a permanent one as a simple tournament mechanism where promotion to CDI is based on a productivity norm. The equilibrium properties of the model show that wages differences between temporary jobs and permanent ones are positively correlated with uncertainty during tournament. This particular property is tested on the French Labour Survey 1990-2002, using an endogenous switching wage model to control for the contract type selection rule. A Neuman-Oaxaca decomposition method is used to identify the relative contribution of observables and unobservables in wage differentials. Using firm size as a proxy for uncertainty we compare the differential wage decomposition between large firm tournament and small firm tournament. Our results show that, in small firms, the characteristics which contribute to the selection tend to reduce the wage dispersion between CDI and CDD by 9,3%. These results do not reject the equilibrium property of the model according to which more uncertainty during tournament reduces players' incentives and would be compensated by an increased wage gap between promoted and not promoted.

Unemployment Insurance and the Uninsured

Under federal-state law workers who quit a job are not entitled to receive unemployment insurance benefits. To show how the existence of the uninsured affects wages and employment, I extend an equilibrium search model to account for two types of unemployed workers: those who are currently receiving unemployment benefits and for whom an increase in unemployment benefits reduces the incentive to work, and those who are currently not insured. For these, work provides an added value in the form of future eligibility, and an increase in unemployment benefits increases their willingness to work. Incorporating both types into a search model permits me to solve analytically for the endogenous wage dispersion and insurance rate in the economy. I show that, in general equilibrium when firms adjust their job creation margin, the wage dispersion is reduced and the overall effect of benefits can be signed: higher unemployment benefits increase average wages and decrease the vacancy-to-unemployment ratio.

Unemployment Insurance and the Uninsured

Under federal-state law workers who quit a job are not entitled to receive unemployment insurance benefits. To show how the existence of the uninsured affects wages and employment, I extend an equilibrium search model to account for two types of unemployed workers: those who are currently receiving unemployment benefits and for whom an increase in unemployment benefits reduces the incentive to work, and those who are currently not insured. For these, work provides an added value in the form of future eligibility, and an increase in unemployment benefits increases their willingness to work. Incorporating both types into a search model permits me to solve analytically for the endogenous wage dispersion and insurance rate in the economy. I show that, in general equilibrium when firms adjust their job creation margin, the wage dispersion is reduced and the overall effect of benefits can be signed: higher unemployment benefits increase average wages and decrease the vacancy-to-unemployment ratio.

Toward a Non-Equilibrium Unemployment Theory

This paper presents a non-equilibrium, agent-based model of workers and firms, with on-the-job searching, endogenous entrepreneurial decisions and endogenous wage and income determination. Workers and firms are heterogeneous, and learn their strategy in the labor market. The model is able to reproduce a number of stylized facts generally accepted in labor economics and industrial organization, such as the Wage, Beveridge and Okun curve, and the skewness of wage, income and firm size distribution. Most interestingly, important stylized facts such as a negatively sloped Wage Curve and a constant returns to scale matching function emerge only out-of-equilibrium, during the adjustment processes toward the stationary state. Thus, from a theoretical point of view the model suggests that taking these stylized facts as building blocks of equilibrium models might be misleading. The results stress two additional points. From a methodological point of view, the use of non-equilibrium computational models allows for a more comprehensive investigation of the labor market, by considering the endogenous character of many relevant variables. From an empirical point of view, the joint determination of all aggregate relationships and their dependence on the equilibrium or non-equilibrium state of the system suggest to move from the investigation of empirical regularities in isolation one from the other to a joint analysis.

La mise en place d'un fonds de réserve des retraites améliore-t-elle le bien être ?

Nous analysons les effets de la mise en place d’un fonds de réserve pour les retraites par répartition avant que ne survienne un vieillissement consistant en un allongement de la durée de vie. Nous nous plaçons soit en économie ouverte avec parfaite mobilité du capital, soit en économie fermée avec capital, salaire et taux d’intérêt endogènes. Nous montrons que, en l’absence d’imperfection, le bien être est accru dans tous les cas, que la générosité du régime de retraite soit maintenue ou que la pression fiscale reste stable, sauf s’il y a altruisme intergénérationnel.

Toward a Non-Equilibrium Unemployment Theory

This paper presents a non-equilibrium, agent-based model of workers and firms, with on-the-job searching, endogenous entrepreneurial decisions and endogenous wage and income determination. Workers and firms are heterogeneous, and learn their strategy in the labor market. The model is able to reproduce a number of stylized facts generally accepted in labor economics and industrial organization, such as the Wage, Beveridge and Okun curve, and the skewness of wage, income and firm size distribution. Most interestingly, important stylized facts such as a negatively sloped Wage Curve and a constant returns to scale matching function emerge only out-of-equilibrium, during the adjustment processes toward the stationary state. Thus, from a theoretical point of view the model suggests that taking these stylized facts as building blocks of equilibrium models might be misleading. The results stress two additional points. From a methodological point of view, the use of non-equilibrium computational models allows for a more comprehensive investigation of the labor market, by considering the endogenous character of many relevant variables. From an empirical point of view, the joint determination of all aggregate relationships and their dependence on the equilibrium or non-equilibrium state of the system suggest to move from the investigation of empirical regularities in isolation one from the other to a joint analysis.

Income Taxation, Endogenous Factor Prices and Production Efficiency

In an analysis of a two-type income tax model with endogenous wages, this paper shows that production efficiency is violated in the optimum with (i) non-linear and (ii) linear income taxation if and only if a distortionary tax schedule is implemented. These findings complement earlier results of the literature. In passing, it is also shown that optima with non-linear redistributive income taxation cannot be identified with the redistributive regime if the assumption of endogenous wages is taken seriously.

Public Versus Private Production Decisions: Redistribution and the Size of the Public Sector

We analyze the decision rules governing public employment policy, capital allocation between private and public sector, and the size of the public sector in a two-type and two-sector optimal nonlinear income-tax model with endogenous wages. The government can reduce wage inequality in the private sector by employing more unskilled workers and fewer skilled workers than is necessary to minimize cost at the prevailing gross wage rate and, if skilled labor and capital are complementary, by favoring public-sector capital accumulation. Therefore, production efficiency holds neither in public employment decision nor in capital allocation. The effects of public employment and investment on income inequality increase when the size of the public sector increases. The optimal size of the public sector is also shown to be relatively large when public employment and investments reduce wage inequality. These results help explain the growth in the public-sector size and why a larger government does not necessarily hamper growth.

Endogenous wage bargaining institutions in oligopolistic sectors

This paper explores the endogenous emergence of wage bargaining institutions in a union-oligopoly framework. Technological asymmetries among firms are shown to be the driving force for the emergence of alternative wage bargaining centralization structures that are observable in real life. As wage deals at the sector-level obtain the consensus of all unions and the efficient firms, a regulator has an incentive to authorize those deals by activating/establishing a Minimum Sectoral Wage Institution(MSWI). If productivity differences are high enough, wage setting above the established wage floor may subsequently occur in efficient firms. Otherwise, a completely centralized wage bargaining structure emerges and the sector-level wage deal is simply confirmed as the firms’ wage rate. If, however, productivity asymmetries are rather insignificant, firms and unions have conflicting interests and a completely decentralized wage bargaining regime prevails in equilibrium.

Another Look at Wage Distortion in a Developing Dual Economy

The paper focuses on an endogenous wage distortion in a developing dual economy where an efficiency wage in the urban sector triggers rural‐urban migration. Because of the endogenous nature of the distortion, this migration reduces the severity of distortion by creating more jobs and reducing the actual wage differential between the sectors. These results are in sharp contrast to the outcomes of an exogenous wage distortion (minimum wage) where rural‐urban migration increases the severity of unemployment and calls for costly policy mechanisms that might be either politically or economically difficult to implement. Furthermore, in contrast to the case of an exogenous distortion, interregional migration with endogenous wage distortion increases urban industrial output and structural transformation works its way into the development process. This structural transformation is maintained even when this dual economy engages in the production of non‐traded goods. Although this paper does not engage in policy ranking to bring in zero unemployment equilibrium, it shows that it is possible to achieve socially desirable level of migration by influencing detection rate of shirking or disutility of work effort instead of using costly distributive parameters such as taxes and subsidies.

Optimal Redistributive Policy with Endogenous Wages

Using the self-selection framework developed by Stiglitz (1982, 1987) and Stern (1982), the paper reconsiders the issue of the desirability of public provision of private goods in a simple two-class economy where wages are endogenous and the policymaker has access to what is commonly known as the mixed tax system, i.e., the tax structure consisting of a nonlinear income tax plus a set of linear commodity taxes.