Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Government policies that promote on-the-job training have different effects when, due to unemployment, workers value job security. In this case, an increase in specific training leads to greater job security and lower wages. The wage result, although perhaps counterintuitive, is supported by, and helps explain, published empirical work. Even with lower wages, training policies may be Pareto-improving or may lower welfare, depending on the elasticity of demand for labor. Training mandates and subsidies to training, because of their differing impacts on job security, have different unemployment and welfare effects; mandates are preferred. If government policy can influence specific training and job security independently, training is never optimally encouraged. Policies that promote general training and policies that promote specific training can both raise employment, but in different ways. Specific training lowers the employment outflow; general training raises the employment inflow.

Government policies that promote on-the-job training have different effects when, due to unemployment, workers value job security. In this case, an increase in specific training leads to greater job security and lower wages. The wage result, although perhaps counterintuitive, is supported by, and helps explain, published empirical work. Even with lower wages, training policies may be Pareto-improving or may lower welfare, depending on the elasticity of demand for labor. Training mandates and subsidies to training, because of their differing impacts on job security, have different unemployment and welfare effects; mandates are preferred. If government policy can influence specific training and job security independently, training is never optimally encouraged. Policies that promote general training and policies that promote specific training can both raise employment, but in different ways. Specific training lowers the employment outflow; general training raises the employment inflow.

Government policies that promote on-the-job training have different effects when, due to unemployment, workers value job security. In this case, an increase in specific training leads to greater job security and lower wages. The wage result, although perhaps counterintuitive, is supported by, and helps explain, published empirical work. Even with lower wages, training policies may be Pareto-improving or may lower welfare, depending on the elasticity of demand for labor. Training mandates and subsidies to training, because of their differing impacts on job security, have different unemployment and welfare effects; mandates are preferred. If government policy can influence specific training and job security independently, training is never optimally encouraged. Policies that promote general training and policies that promote specific training can both raise employment, but in different ways. Specific training lowers the employment outflow; general training raises the employment inflow.

Government policies that promote on-the-job training have different effects when, due to unemployment, workers value job security. In this case, an increase in specific training leads to greater job security and lower wages. The wage result, although perhaps counterintuitive, is supported by, and helps explain, published empirical work. Even with lower wages, training policies may be Pareto-improving or may lower welfare, depending on the elasticity of demand for labor. Training mandates and subsidies to training, because of their differing impacts on job security, have different unemployment and welfare effects; mandates are preferred. If government policy can influence specific training and job security independently, training is never optimally encouraged. Policies that promote general training and policies that promote specific training can both raise employment, but in different ways. Specific training lowers the employment outflow; general training raises the employment inflow.

In April 1867, Fyodor Dostoevsky left Russia for central Europe, in part to celebrate his marriage to Anna Gregorovich Snitkina, the young stenographer who had helped him compose The Gambler the previous fall. While that book freed him from the clutches of the publisher Stellovsky, who had advanced him money in exchange for a lien on his future works, it did not remove the larger financial destitution that threatened the new family, and fear of the debtor's prison clouded Dostoevsky's subsequent four-year sojourn in Europe. Residing first in Berlin and Dresden, he began to entertain thoughts of escaping his financial difficulties through gambling. In May, he traveled briefly to Bad Homburg; later, both he and Anna proceeded to Baden-Baden. Contrary to his hopes, life imitated art, and Dostoevsky was soon as hopelessly beset by the gambling demons as his fictional anti-hero, Alexei, and with as little success. By the end of the summer, he had pawned many of his and Anna's belongings and systematically lost the gifts sent from Russia by friends to bail them out. Finally on August 23, he managed to tear himself away from the tables. Over the next four years, he would gamble sporadically, but never with the same fervor he brought to Baden-Baden that summer. After returning to Russia in 1871, he gave up gambling entirely.

A number of contemporary studies of executive‐legislative relations have suggested that interbranch conflict owes primarily to transient institutional factors such as the relative level of organizational development within the executive or the rise of individual over collective interests within Congress (Aberbach 1990; Dodd 1977). In keeping with this interbranch conflict paradigm Holt (1995) and Smist (1990) conclude that conflict over the control and oversight of covert operations is a phenomenon of the Cold War era which should be seen as a modern manifestation of these same institutional factors (See Holt 1995, 2–3; Smist 1990, 4–19).

Firms may pay efficiency wages to enhance productivity. The conventional presumption is that efficiency wages are inefficiently high because they lead to unemployment that is also inefficiently high; government policies that lower wages raise output. Using a simple and general efficiency wage model, this paper finds a necessary and sufficient condition for the opposite conclusion. If the condition holds, wages are inefficiently low, leading to productivity that is also inefficiently low. It is the high-wage policies that raise output, even if they also lower employment. Published empirical results support the condition. No evidence is found for the conventional presumption.

Firms may pay efficiency wages to enhance productivity. The conventional presumption is that efficiency wages are inefficiently high because they lead to unemployment that is also inefficiently high; government policies that lower wages raise output. Using a simple and general efficiency wage model, this paper finds a necessary and sufficient condition for the opposite conclusion. If the condition holds, wages are inefficiently low, leading to productivity that is also inefficiently low. It is the high-wage policies that raise output, even if they also lower employment. Published empirical results support the condition. No evidence is found for the conventional presumption.

Firms may pay efficiency wages to enhance productivity. The conventional presumption is that efficiency wages are inefficiently high because they lead to unemployment that is also inefficiently high; government policies that lower wages raise output. Using a simple and general efficiency wage model, this paper finds a necessary and sufficient condition for the opposite conclusion. If the condition holds, wages are inefficiently low, leading to productivity that is also inefficiently low. It is the high-wage policies that raise output, even if they also lower employment. Published empirical results support the condition. No evidence is found for the conventional presumption.

Some important effects of government policies on urban labor productivity are absent from Harris and Todaro's popular two-region development model. Revising their model using efficiency wages allows for these effects and for endogenous urban wages, employment, and unemployment. It also reverses many standard Harris–Todaro welfare and policy conclusions. For example, an urban wage increase raises welfare and income in both the urban and rural regions, even though the wage already exceeds the urban market-clearing rate and exceeds the rural wage. Income and welfare also rise with migration into the urban region, even though there are already unemployed workers there.