Competitive Labor Market Research Articles

The intelligentsia informed habitus in social distance strategies of Polish migrants in the UK

ABSTRACTAntagonism and conflict within newly resident UK Polish migrants has been typically related to labour market competition. Without denying the relevance of this argument, we argue that explanations of antagonism within the Polish community should also take into account the role of a Polish intelligentsia habitus. This habitus provides a repertoire of available discursive strategies used for interpreting antagonistic and “risk” situations both in Poland and among Poles abroad. It is argued that not only can this intelligentsia habitus critically legitimize intergroup inequalities in status and symbolic power but also may impact on the patterns of a migrant’s integration, linkage to social networks, access to different capital resources, and interactions with the indigenous population.

Ready to go! The next generation of mobile highly skilled workforce in the Russian petroleum industry

This article provides insights into the motivation of future highly skilled workers to become long-distance commuters (LDC) (i.e. fly-in/fly-out [FIFO]/drive-in/drive-out [DIDO]) to remote Arctic and Subarctic petroleum extraction sites. The study draws on a sample of students from long-distance commuter families, who study at the Ufa State Petroleum Technical University (UGNTU) in the Republic of Bashkortostan: a primary LDC sending region in Russia. The study is based on ethnographic qualitative and quantitative research. It shows that LDC shift work is seen as both a socio-economic necessity and a prospering career by half of the respondents. The readiness for long-distance commuting was nearly equal among male and female students. Furthermore, it is an attractive form of gaining a livelihood, especially in rural regions like those in the Republic of Bashkortostan with a competitive labour market and poor socio-economic development. On the other hand, the repeated separation from family, long travel times, inconvenient life in camps as well as health and safety concerns were cited as deterrents for the other half of the respondents. The article highlights disparities between urban and rural areas as well as between those in full-time LDC and those commuting to earn additional income to supplement their regular agricultural work.

The Native-Born Occupational Skill Response to Immigration within Education and Experience Cells

Studies estimating the consequences of immigration on wages paid to native-born workers often reveal small-to-nonexistent effects when using cross city or state variation (the “spatial approach”) but large deleterious effects when using variation across education-by-experience cells (the “national approach”). One mechanism of labor market adjustment emphasized in the spatial approach is that native-born workers respond to immigration by specializing in occupations demanding skills in which they have a comparative advantage, thereby helping to protect themselves from labor market competition and wage losses. This paper examines whether the national approach also identifies this skill response. We find evidence that such a response does occur among workers without college experience. However, regressions using traditional education-by-experience cells do not find skill reallocation consistent with comparative advantage for college-educated natives. This result points to limitations of the education-by-experience cell model.

Group Analytics in Adam Smith’s Work

The link between occupation and character began with David Hume and was extended by Adam Smith in service to their attack on the doctrine of innate national character. A worker’s awareness of the relative approbative rewards to occupation is central to Smith’s competitive labor market equilibrium. When the division of labor is extended by growth, the variance of character increases. With this insight Smith was able to offer a race-blind theory of civilization, something that escaped even Hume. Nineteenth century anthropological focus on the variance of character can be seen as a racialization of Smith’s work.

Race and Retention in a Competitive Labor Market

Between 1994 and 2013, Black head coaches of Division I National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball programs were more likely to be terminated than their White counterparts, adjusting for performance and characteristics of the coach. Controlling for employment at a historically Black college or university, which accounts for approximately a quarter of the Black coaches in our sample, overturns this result. The findings highlight the importance of understanding institutional environments when assessing discrimination in labor market outcomes.

Rights at Work: Fairness in Personal Work Relations and Restorative Labour Market Regulation

By desire or necessity, virtually all of us work for a considerable portion of our lives. Work defines our social status, determines our degrees of health and happiness and underpins our sense of self. The productivity, efficiency and economic significance of the work we do, in aggregate terms, are critical to the prosperity of the societies in which we live. Moreover, fair treatment in our workplaces is an important aspect of our individual well-being and a mark of the civility and decency of our communities. Many of us expect the law to ensure fairness in our work relations; but increasingly, legal arrangements governing labour market regulation are not up to the task. In developed economies, legal rules dealing with rights at work vary dramatically in terms of their institutional context, substantive content and breadth of applicability across varying forms of productive or remunerated personal activity. However, a widespread current concern in many jurisdictions, including Canada, is that “rights at work” often hinge upon a worker’s status as an “employee” in a “standard employment contract” and do not inure to the benefit of those personally performing work for others in a broad range of other legal arrangements, and who are thus left vulnerable to exploitation. In the globalized new economy, legal regulation to support or ensure fairness through domestically legislated rights at work has become increasingly problematic. There has also developed a full blown scholarly crisis about the scope and content of labour and employment law, which has engulfed the global academy in the wake of the collapse of the post-war economic, political and social consensus over the welfare state. Finding ways around the apparent problems is not simple or easy – conceptually, economically, socially or politically. In part, this is because the values which underpin rights at work are contested terrain. But in large measure also, because this context requires a re-conceptualization of worker rights along the full gamut of personal work relations with a commensurate effort to understand how such thinking connects to broader labour market regulation. A myriad of legal structures regulate labour markets which are outside the confines of traditional labour and employment law as understood by most lawyers. That wider playing field is provides the background parameters for this paper. The paper’s purpose is to explore schematically ways to improve the fairness of the legal construction of personal work relations within an integrated, efficient and restorative approach to labour market regulation. Part I sets out the shifting contexts for reflection on rights at work as they have evolved in recent decades. It focuses on changing labour market realities, the collapse of the post-World War II welfare state, the abandonment of the intellectual consensus in which labour and employment law were imbedded, and the new normative tensions over rights at work in the globalized, post-modern economic, social and political environment. It highlights the prevalence of precarious employment, and its attendant devaluation of rights at work and benefits gained through work, as a potential precursor to significant political instability. Part II identifies ways of rethinking fair work relations and improved labour market regulation. It reviews advances in human capability development theory which provide a new normative framework for re-casting work relations and labour market regulation. It outlines the value of a relational understanding of rights in moving beyond the standard employment contract as the primary legal construct for the regulation of personal work relations. It then tackles principles of responsive or restorative regulation as procedural approaches for achieving integrated labour markets which enhance economic competitiveness while respecting fair work relations. Lastly, it contemplates possibilities for stability and social justice through greater rights at and through work, and for competitive but fair labour market regulation. If these ambitions are to be attained, it will involve harnessing both public and private means at national and international levels in the context of deliberative democracy.

Corporate Work Satisfaction: An Empirical Investigation on the Employees of Mobile Phone Companies in Bangladesh

IntroductionThe idea of work satisfaction traditionally has been of great interest to researchers concerned with the problem of work in an industrial society. Many have been interested in job satisfaction which incorporates differences in work ethics and job characteristics in corporate work environment. Involvement of workforce in corporate business sector of Bangladesh is growing since early 1990s (Islam et al., 2000). Open market policies of the government and the huge market volume have eased to attract international giants in telecommunication industry to invest in Bangladesh. Particularly the recent growth of the mobile phone sector is astounding. In fact, telephone was first developed in the mid-1870s (Farley, 2007) and since then, the pace of its improvement is unprecedented. Based on this historical origin, the idea of cell phone appears to be incepted in 1950s and from then on it continues making the revolution in telecommunication industry. Since the last half the 1990s Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries of the world, has become and still continuing as a fertile land of momentous growth of mobile telecommunication organizations. A country with a population of 150 million inhabitants, and continued economic growth, appears to be a highly lucrative market, both for the mobile phone operators and network system manufacturers.A recent market survey conducted by a Swedish research institute reveals Bangladesh to be the biggest potential telecom market in Asia after China and India (see Hasan, 2008). In 2004 and 2005 the cellular phone business grew in Bangladesh at the rate of 100 percent and 137 percent respectively (Ahmed, 2006). Be that as it may, corporate cultural environment as well as keen labor market competitiveness has been forging its seminal shape in Bangladesh that creates huge work scope for educated young people having degree in business administration together with Information Technology (IT) literacy. This competition has paved the smooth niche for the employees to switch the job in order for hunting better opportunities in other similar companies. Employment retention and employee work satisfaction appraisals are, thus, at the hub of the corporate policy concerns in Bangladesh today.Work satisfaction refers to an individual's general attitudes towards her/his employment (Huang, 1999; Ostroff, 1992). Lock (1976) is also succinct in this regard as employees' work satisfaction consists of a pleasurable or positive psychological state resulting from the appraisal of one's work and work experience. However, when people speak of employee attitudes, they often mean employee's work satisfaction (Robbins, 1993). This attitude is, in fact, formed over a period of time as employees acquire in-depth information about the workplace.Employee work satisfaction appraisal is not that much rigorously done in the case of corporate sector in Bangladesh. Yet few attempts are worth noting. Islam and Saha (2001) evaluate job satisfaction of bank officers in Bangladesh. They focus on the relative importance of the factors determining job satisfaction and their impact on the overall job satisfaction. The result shows that salary, efficiency in work, fringe supervision and co-worker relation are the most important factors contributing job satisfaction. Huang (1999) analyzes the job rotation practice that affects employees' attitude towards their works. Using data obtained from twentyone Taiwan's large companies, the author highlights the significant effect of job rotation on employees' work satisfaction and training evaluation. There has been an ample empirical evidence of the proven links between aggregate work satisfaction and organizational productivity. Shipton et al. (2004) investigate the nexus between aggregate work satisfaction and organizational innovation. Based on a sample of manufacturing companies in the UK, the results reveal that aggregate work satisfaction is a significant predictor of subsequent organizational innovation and profitability. …

Are College Presidents Like Football Coaches? Evidence From Their Employment Contracts

College presidents and football coaches are frequently criticized by the media over their compensation. In this paper, we argue that these criticisms are unmerited as the markets for both college president and football coaches exhibit properties consistent with a competitive labor market. Both parties’ compensation varies in sensible ways related to size of the programs as well as potential for value creation. Successful college presidents and football coaches can greatly increase the value of their schools well beyond the amount they receive in compensation. For example, a football coach that improves a football program’s win-loss record, will generate significant revenues and a greater numbers of students for the college. We assert that, so long as these higher education executives’ compensation is the result of a competitive labor market, and they do not capture compensation in excess of the incremental value they create, the overall welfare of their universities is increased. To shed light on these issues, we engage in a comprehensive examination and comparison of college president and football coach compensation levels and employment contracts across FBS Division I universities. We find a number of noteworthy results. First, we see large differences in job tenure of these two groups: university presidents stay in their jobs significantly longer than football coaches. Second, we observe that football coaches are paid significantly more and their pay is rising at a much faster rate than college presidents. Third, larger schools pay these top executives much more than their smaller counterparts, especially for football coaches. Finally, top 5 power conference schools pay their coaches far more than the other football conferences. Furthermore, we note significant differences in the structure of the college presidents’ employment contracts compared to football coaches. For example, football coach employment contracts are much more likely to include a fixed term of years than college presidents’ contracts. While the length of the term included in a football coach contract is longer than presidents, their effective job tenure is shorter on average. College presidents are much less likely to have strong language in their contracts that gives their employer the right to terminate them for cause if they engage in serious misconduct. Finally, our analysis shows that college football coaches receive greater severance payments than college presidents if they are terminated without cause. For each of these major findings, we provide a detailed analysis of why they exist and how they can be explained with economic theory.

Bonus Culture: Competitive Pay, Screening, and Multitasking

To analyze the impact of labor market competition on the structure of compensation, we embed multitasking and screening within a Hotelling framework. Competition for talent leads to an escalation of performance pay, shifting effort away from long-term investments, risk management, and cooperation. Efficiency losses can exceed those from a single principal, who dulls incentives to extract rents. As competition intensifies, monopsonistic underincentivization of low-skill agents first decreases and then gives way to growing overincentivization of high-skill ones. Aggregate welfare is thus hill-shaped, while inequality tends to rise monotonically. Bonus caps can help restore balance in incentives but may generate other distortions.

Core Stability and Core Selection in a Decentralized Labor Matching Market

We propose a dynamic model of decentralized many-to-one matching in the context of a competitive labor market. Through wage offers and wage demands, firms compete over workers and workers compete over jobs. Firms make hire-and-fire decisions dependent on the wages of their own workers and on the alternative workers available on the job market. Workers bargain for better jobs; either individually or collectively as unions, adjusting wage demands upward/downward depending on whether they are currently employed/unemployed. We show that such a process is absorbed into the core with probability one in finite time. Moreover, within the core, allocations are selected that are characterized by surplus splitting according to a bargaining solution such that (i) firms and workforce share total revenue according to relative bargaining strengths, and (ii) workers receive equal workforce shares above their individual outside options. These results bridge empirical evidence and provide a rich set of testable predictions.

Labour-market competition, recession and anti-immigrant sentiments in Europe: occupational and environmental drivers of competitive threat

Research on attitudes towards immigration has overemphasized the subjective dimension of threat, while the objective bases of native-immigrant competition remained largely under-studied. I investigate the impact of both occupational and environmental sources of economic competition on attitudes towards immigration in Europe. Drawing on social stratification and labour economics theory, I discuss three dimensions of the occupation affecting exposure to competition: (i) skill specialization; (ii) monitoring costs; and (iii) the mix of manual versus communicational skills. Environmental correlates are tested by estimating the net change in anti-immigrant sentiments experienced during the first dip of the Great Recession, and by connecting this change to (i) country differences in the intensity of GDP contraction and (ii) prior growth in foreign-born shares. Applying two-step multi-level regression to a pool of the 2004 and the 2010 rounds of the European Social Survey, I find evidence consistent with both occupational and environmental sources of competitive threat.

Who gains from capital market integration? Tax competition between unionized and non‐unionized countries

AbstractThe welfare effects of capital market integration are examined under a model of tax competition with two asymmetric countries. The asymmetry is expressed through the labour market: one country has a perfect labour market whereas the other country's labour market is unionized. Our results indicate that the welfare effects of capital market integration differ depending on whether governments are active or passive in attracting capital. In the absence of active governments, capital market integration benefits the country with a competitive labour market whereas it harms the unionized country. Capital market integration benefits both countries if governments are active and compete for mobile capital using taxes/subsidies.

Development of independent creative activity of future technology teachers during design and technological activities

Independent learning activities of the students of higher agricultural educational institutions are an integral part of the overall educational process aimed at training highly educated, competitive labor market specialist of agricultural production. It is one of the major problems of educational work of the higher agricultural educational institutions, because it is an assistance factor of motivation promotion of the students to independent acquisition of professional knowledge and development of their creative activity in the design and technological activities in out-of-school time

Democracy, equal citizenship, and education

Two appealing principles of educational distribution – equality and sufficiency – are comparatively assessed. The initial point of comparison is the distribution of civic educational goods. One reason to favor equality in educational distribution rather than sufficiency is the elimination of undeserved positional advantage in access to labor markets. But civic educational aims of the kind that sustain equal citizenship do not have positional value. Furthermore, such aims intersect with those that augment labor market competitiveness. That seems to pose a dilemma: within the intersection of aims, we have moral grounds to eliminate unfair positional advantage in access to labor markets but also reason to forgo such efforts as repugnant to the civic goods that education properly confers. The dilemma is escaped if positional inequality is not addressed through equalization of educational opportunity but by pursuing what Lesley Jacobs calls ‘stakes fairness’ in the distribution of social goods that are now too tightly tied to competitive success in labor markets.

When sojourners return: Employment opportunities and challenges facing high-skilled Chinese returnees

Focusing on the increasingly large numbers of Chinese students undertaking postgraduate programs overseas, this paper examines how international higher education shapes their subsequent career development in China. The specific focus is on their employment status, the impact of Australian higher education, and the challenges they experience upon returning home. A leading Australian university was chosen as the case study, and a mixed research method was adopted. By analyzing questionnaire and interview data, the paper argues that holding an international qualification is no longer adequate for employment success in China’s competitive labor market; rather, different forms of intellectual capital need to be consolidated and utilized. Unlike the previous generation of returnees who gained prestigious positions and made changes to China’s development immediately upon their return, the research finds that the current generation of sojourners faces a different and more complex set of opportunities and challenges. Although the majority of such graduates still retain an advantage in China’s crowded graduate labor market, the context is much more competitive.

Asymmetric Technology Diffusion, Nominal Wage Rigidity, and the “New Normal” in China

This paper is based on a growth model that is consistent with salient features of the recent “New Normal” growth experience in China: slowdown of growth rate, low level of inflation and unemployment, decreasing returns on capital investment, extensive reallocation among agriculture, manufacturing and modern service sectors, rising share of consumption, improvement of wealth distribution, and reduced foreign surplus. The building blocks of the theory are asymmetric technology diffusions from FDI firms among various sectors and nominal wage rigidity in the labor market. Due to the asymmetric technology diffusion among different sectors, manufacturing firms enjoy a more rapid productivity progress via the process of learning by doing in a processing on order economy. Thus manufacturing sectors serve as the engine in the past years’ economic growth in China. Through the competition in labor market, trends of wage equalization drive the migration of residents from agriculture to manufacturing and modern service sectors. Moreover, with a larger share of processing on order firms, China tends to further enlarge her foreign surplus in a faster pace. However, the result of this paper shows that since the exchange rate reform on July 21st 2005, RMB has appreciated accumulatively by 35%, combined with the wage rigidity in labor market, FDI firms in manufacturing sectors face an increasing level of cost in terms of increasing wage expenditure. Incumbent low profitable firms exit and potential entrants with new technology no more settle down. Thus, rapid productivity progress ceases in manufacturing sector. Not only the growth rate slows down, but also large number of unemployed population reallocates back to modern service and agriculture sectors. Dwindling share of manufacturing sectors reduced the foreign surplus by the drops of processing on order infra-firm trade of FDI firms.

Understanding the Initial Career Decisions of Hospitality Management Graduates in Sri Lanka

Hospitality and tourism encounters a thriving protagonist in the Sri Lankan economy for last few years and human resource development has been identified as a foremost prerequisite in the momentous expansion of the sector. There is currently a severe dearth of employees in the hotel sector in relation to catering the authorities’ targets. Tertiary academic stakeholders are currently crossing the threshold to fulfil the essentials fabricating graduates in Hospitality and Tourism Management. Yet, very less number of bachelor holders are working in the hotel industry as a paradigm. Initial career decision is a deciding factor in order to recruit and retain desirable and devoted employee in today’s competitive labor market. The study investigates the initial career decisions of hospitality management graduates of Sri Lanka. Sample was undertaken with most recent graduating cluster who are ready to start their career after the four years special bachelor degree in the field of Hospitality Management from the national universities of Sri Lanka. Graduates’ career prospects were identified by means of variouse dimensions utilizing a structured questionnaire and graduates were asked to rate each. Many hospitality management graduates have inadequate knowledge and unrealistic perceptions of the working conditions in the industry upon the commencement. By discovering interests and prospects of the recruitment pool, employers will be able to gain competitive advantages and develop successful human resource strategies knowing what graduates looking for. Meantime, Territory academic stakeholders would cultivate sustaining protocols to produce graduates who are physically and mentally fit with the industry careers.

The Labor Market Consequences of Refugee Supply Shocks

The continuing inflow of hundreds of thousands of refugees into many European countries has ignited much political controversy and raised questions that require a fuller understanding of the determinants and consequences of refugee supply shocks. This paper revisits four historical refugee shocks to document their labor market impact. Specifically, we examine: The influx of Marielitos into Miami in 1980; the influx of French repatriates and Algerian nationals into France at the end of the Algerian Independence War in 1962; the influx of Jewish emigres into Israel after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s; and the exodus of refugees from the former Yugoslavia during the long series of Balkan wars between 1991 and 2001. We use a common empirical approach, derived from factor demand theory, and publicly available data to measure the impact of these shocks. Despite the differences in the political forces that motivated the various flows, and in economic conditions across receiving countries, the evidence reveals a common thread that confirms key insights of the canonical model of a competitive labor market: Exogenous supply shocks adversely affect the labor market opportunities of competing natives in the receiving countries, and often have a favorable impact on complementary workers. In short, refugee flows can have large distributional consequences.

Wage Policies, Employment, and Redistributive Efficiency

I analyze whether wage policies - like minimum wages and wage subsidies - can add value to an optimal non-linear earnings tax scheme in a perfectly competitive labour market. Jobs in the labour market differ along two margins: intensity (labour effort) and duration (labour hours). Three key results follow. First, even though minimum wages destroy low performance jobs, they increase employment if the minimum wage is binding, but not too high. Second, minimum wages - and wage and labour controls more generally - can enhance redistributive efficiency. The underlying mechanism is their potential to deter mimicking and thus to relax the self-selection constraints in the optimal income tax problem. Third, wage and labour controls become superfluous if a wage-contingent earnings tax scheme - a tax scheme that depends non-linearly on earnings and wages - can be optimally set. Instead, wage and labour subsidies can be optimal in a wage-contingent tax scheme.

Money Held for the Talent War: Labor Market Competition and Firm Cash Holdings

I study the extent to which corporate cash holdings are determined by talent competition. By exploring natural experiments regarding the reform of state non-compete laws to capture exogenous variation in labor market competition, I show that sudden enforcement of non-competes reduced cash-to-assets ratios of firms most likely to fight for talent by 23% to 49%. This result is generalizable across states and over time, implying a nontrivial role of talent war in shaping the secular trend of cash in Silicon Valley where non-competes are proscribed. These findings illuminate practical relevance of incomplete labor contracting to the modern U.S. cash hoards.