Suchergebnisse

During the last three decades there has been an almost continuous undermining of the public interest by private interests operating either outside or inside Greek public administration. The result of this infiltration has been a gradual loss of bureaucratic autonomy to pursue the public interest. The web of relationships developed between private interests and the two dominant political parties have eroded both the efficacy of public administration and the dynamism of the private sector as incumbent firms and public (or quasi-public) sector functionaries have been using their power to prevent the birth of new firms and to raid the state coffers. The upshot of these have been the emergence of permanently large budget and current account deficits, which have in turn driven Greece's foreign indebtedness to alarming levels, necessitating the current bailout by the EU/ECB/IMF.

ABSTRACTThe effects of technological change on wage inequality are usually studied under the assumption of exogenous supplies of skilled and unskilled workers. Moreover, in these studies there is no distinction between the stock (number of workers) and the flow (hours of work) dimension of labour services. In the present paper, we construct a model in which hours of work and technological change affect both the (relative) demand and supply of unskilled workers. The labour supply of unskilled workers (numbers of persons) is derived from a model of household labour supply in which households differ regarding the disutility suffered when both household members work. Combining together the (relative) supply and demand parts of the model we are able to establish technological change (either biased or neutral) as a plausible explanation of recent trends in wage inequality.

Governments in developing countries typically collect a significantly higher proportion of their revenue in the form of trade taxes, than their developed country counterparts. This paper provides a political–economic explanation for this phenomenon. A model of trade in vertically differentiated products is used in order to determine the preferences of the households among different ways of raising government revenue. It is shown that the majority of households in poor countries will consume low‐quality, domestically produced varieties of differentiated products and would thus register a preference for the government to rely more on tariff rather than income tax revenue in order to finance its operations.

Governments in developing countries typically collect a significantly higher proportion of their revenue in the form of trade taxes, than their developed country counterparts. This paper provides a political-economic explanation for this phenomenon. A model of trade in vertically differentiated products is used in order to determine the preferences of the households among different ways of raising government revenue. It is shown that the majority of households in poor countries will consume low-quality, domestically produced varieties of differentiated products & would thus register a preference for the government to rely more on tariff rather than income tax revenue in order to finance its operations. 7 Figures, 32 References. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractOne of the most important consequences of the transition in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has been the dismantling of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). It is argued in this paper that the abrupt loss of trading partners for the former CMEA countries and the Newly Independent States (NIS) are partly responsible for the ensuing contraction of output and the emergence of unemployment. A model in which trade is conducted in vertically‐differentiated products is constructed with the implication that the dismantling of 'clearing trade'arrangements among CMEA countries may make unemployment more than just a short‐term phenomenon.

In dem Beitrag wird ein einfaches makroökonomisches Modell konstruiert, in welchem Arbeitslosigkeit mit hohen Löhnen erklärt wird. Das Modell unterscheidet sich von den Leistungslohnmodellen der Literatur dadurch, daß es sich eine makroökonomische Perspektive zu eigen macht, und von den Modellen von Khan und Mookherjee unterscheidet es sich dadurch, daß es keine perfekte Konkurrenz der Produktmärkte voraussetzt. Mehr noch, der Ursprung der Leistungslöhne wird in der Existenz der Kosten der Arbeitskräftemobilität und nicht in den Effekten der Produktivität gesehen, wie es in den Modellen von Khan und Mookherjee der Fall ist. (IAB)

Leading international economists assess the effects of the 2004 expansion of the European Union.In May 2004 the European Union will undergo the largest expansion in its history when ten countries--Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia--become members. The number of new members and their diversity make this "big bang" enlargement particularly challenging. Not only do these countries vary widely in language, culture, and geography, but also their per capita income is less than half that of existing members. EU officials believe that expanded integration will serve the EU's objectives of peace, stability, prosperity, and democracy; but the less abstract questions of costs and benefits of enlargement are more complex.Each of the chapters in this CESifo volume addresses a different aspect of EU expansion. The contributors, all leading international practitioners and scholars, consider such topics as the effect of euro zone expansion on European Central Bank monetary policy making; using the euro as an external anchor for a national currency; worker migration and income differentials; the Swiss experience with immigration policy in a direct democracy framework; detailed sector analysis using a computable general equilibrium model of the world economy; investment and job creation and destruction in incumbent member countries; and the asymmetric effects of enlargement on high- and low-income incumbent countries. Taken together, the chapters provide useful guidance in shaping the EU policies of the future.

We study the distributional implications that follow from the fact that higher-income households tend to consume higher-quality goods. This is done through a two-sector model in which one sector produces vertically differentiated products, whose skill intensity is an increasing function of quality. The skilled-to-unskilled wage ratio is fixed at a level sufficiently low that some unskilled workers remain unemployed. We show that uniform technological progress increases the unemployment rate, and we consider a number of policy responses to alleviate the "plight of the less-skilled". Political economy consequences are emphasized, as we assess each policy's chance of receiving political support. We conclude that a budget-neutral subsidy for the employment of unskilled workers is a viable policy option.

This paper analyzes long run outcomes resulting from adopting a binding minimum wage. The model distinguishes between workers of heterogeneous ability, and capitalists who do all the saving, and it entails – relative to the perfectly competitive benchmark - large output and employment losses (among the lowest-ability workers) from the imposition of moderately binding minimum wages. These effects arise not only because firms respond to the wage increase – relative to the static perfectly competitive benchmark – by moving upwards along a given labour demand curve, but also due to inward shifts of the labour demand curve as savers respond to decreases in the (net of taxes) rate of return on their savings by saving less, thus reducing the economy's steady-state capital stock. Nevertheless, and despite the large, long-run, declines in aggregate output, consumption, and the capital stock implied by this model, MW legislation can be beneficial for large segments of employed workers, as long as they do not have to provide generous welfare support to the low-ability workers that the MW prevents them from finding employment.