Utility Analysis and the Consumption Function: An Interpretation of Cross-Section Data

Multinational enterprises and the global economy

An Analysis of Robert E. Lucas Jr.'s Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?

A Place Called School: Prospects for the Future. By John I. Goodlad. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1984. 396 pp. $18.95

The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. By William Easterly. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001. Pp. xiii + 342. This is an important, controversial, unusual, and accessible book. It has already received a lot of public attention, and it is destined to be an influential and enduring contribution to the development economics literature. The book is important because there is arguably no topic more critical than understanding why so many of the world's poor remain poor, and why a fortunate few countries have "grown out of poverty" in the post-war period. William Easterly has worked for many years in the world's preeminent international development agency (like it or not, that is what the World Bank is). He has been one of the leading intellectual thinkers in the bank, and has published widely in the top economic journals. The book is controversial because it has hit the headlines, with major write-ups in the world's most influential newspapers, including the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. It is written by a World Bank insider who is critical of donors' development efforts, moreover coming at a time when the bank itself is in a state of flux bordering at times on turmoil. The volume is accessible because it exhibits an all-too-rare capacity among economists to write with a wider audience in mind. The author demonstrates an uncanny knack in distilling complex theory and analytics for a general audience. Finally, it is unusual for features noted below, especially its structure and writing style. If the book has two key messages, they are that "people respond to incentives" and that "growth is good for the poor". These might appear awfully obvious to mainstream economists and to the general community in well-managed, fast-growing economies. But it is surprising how widely these messages have been ignored by governments in poor countries and by international development agencies. The book consists of fourteen chapters, all but the last followed by an "Intermezzo", and is organized into four sections. The first and last chapters and these Intermezzi portray the human dimensions of poverty in the Third World. The two substantive sections look at "Panaceas that Failed" and "People Respond to Incentives". The "panaceas" refer to theories and recipes for rapid growth, which in the author's view, have failed to live up to expectations. The first substantial chapter looks at the disappointing record of international development assistance. In aggregate, it is very difficult to discern a statistical relationship which demonstrates that aid has made a difference. Then Easterly switches to the micro, looking at Ghana, a country full of hope on the threshold of independence (and often likened to Malaysia), but whose per capita income is now little different from that of 1950. The author also attacks the "financing gap" literature, which became popular with the Harrod-Domar growth models, and later with the work of Rostow in the 1960s. This "gaps" literature had largely dropped out of academic discourse by 1980, but we are told here that it lived on in international agencies, and was employed to justify aid programmes. While the author's story in these two chapters is a largely negative one, it needs to be emphasized that in countries with sound economic policies -- that is, much of Southeast Asia until recently -- well-run aid programmes can make a difference. Perhaps more could have been made of this point. Continuing this demolition of an "inputs" approach to growth, Easterly revisits "Solow's Surprise: investment is not the key to growth". The proposition that investment alone is no guarantee of growth is, of course, widely accepted in the academic literature, but it, too, has apparently not percolated through some international financial institutions. There is also a useful, sceptical discussion in this chapter of the total factor productivity (TFP) literature, including a recounting of the astounding Young-Krugman allegation that Singapore recorded zero TFP growth for its first twenty years or so of independence. …

The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics

Impact of minimum wage increase on gender wage gap: Case of Poland

This paper is about the real convergence of six Central and Eastern European economies – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia – towards the more advanced EU-15 economies. Our major goal is to analyse empirically which factors have driven growth and convergence in the region in the last two decades. The results of our analysis based on a panel of 26 EU countries in 1997–2014 suggest that the real convergence was driven by both traditional (core) and ‘new growth theory’ growth factors (among other things, by innovation activity and trade). We demonstrate that the post-transition growth model prevailing in the CEE region, based on a large inflow of foreign capital (mainly in the form of FDI) has reached its limits. The CEE countries’ growth and convergence will now be driven mainly by factors affecting structural competitiveness, especially innovation activity, institutional environment and policies (or lack thereof) targeted at diminishing the influence of demographic developments on the labour market outcomes.

Is Central and Eastern Europe converging towards the EU-15?

https://gnpje.sgh.waw.pl/pdf-100946-33017?filename=Zroznicowanie stop.pdf

Zróżnicowanie stóp bezrobocia rejestrowanego w układzie powiatowym w latach 2002-2011

Purpose




The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relation between occupational segregation and the gender wage differences using data on three-digit occupational level of classification. The authors examine whether a statistically significant relation between the share of men in employment and the size of the unexplained part of the gender wage gap exists.




Design/methodology/approach




Traditional Oaxaca (1973) – Blinder (1973) decomposition is performed to examine the differences in the gender wage gaps among minor occupational groups. Two types of reweighted decomposition – based on the parametric estimate of the propensity score and non-parametric proposition presented by Barsky et al. (2002) – are used as the robustness check. The analysis is based on individual data available from Poland.




Findings




The results indicate no strong relation between occupational segregation and the size of unexplained differences in wages. The unexplained wage differences are the smallest in strongly female-dominated and mixed occupations; the highest are observed in male-dominated occupations. However, they are probably to a large extent the result of other, difficult to include in the econometric model, factors rather than the effects of wage discrimination: differences in the psychophysical conditions of men and women, cultural background, tradition or habits. The failure to take them into account may result in over-interpreting the unexplained parts as gender discrimination.




Research limitations/implications




The highest accuracy of the estimated gender wage gap is obtained for the occupational groups with a similar proportion of men and women in employment. In other male- or female-dominated groups, the size of the estimated gender wage gaps depends on the estimation method used.




Practical implications




The results suggest that decreasing the degree of segregation of men and women in different occupations could reduce the wage differences between them, as the wage discrimination in gender balanced occupations is the smallest.




Originality/value




To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few conducted at such a disaggregated level of occupations, and one of few studies focused on Central and Eastern European countries and the first one for Poland.

/pdf/occupational-segregation-and-wage-differences-the-case-of-27jctob5l3.pdf

Occupational segregation and wage differences: the case of Poland

The aim of this article is to analyze the effect of a uniform minimum wage in Poland on youth employment in regional labor markets and to determine in which of the regions the effect is significant. The analyses are based on NUTS2 level in 1999–2012. The results point to a statistically insignificant parameter of minimum wage variable for the whole sample. However, after allowing the minimum wage parameter to vary across regions, we find that the relatively high ratio of minimum to average wages could be the factor limiting youth employment growth in less-developed regions in the southeast of Poland.

/pdf/does-minimum-wage-reduce-youth-employment-on-regional-labour-59x0kevj15.pdf

Does minimum wage reduce youth employment on regional labour markets in Poland

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