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Macroeconomic Studies of Labor Market

Paper Session

Friday, Jan. 5, 2018 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM

Loews Philadelphia, Congress A
Hosted By: Union for Radical Political Economics
  • Chair: Armağan Gezici, Keene State College

Macroeconomic Stabilization: The Case of Labor Market Policy

Ibrahim Tahri
,
New School

Abstract

I investigate in this paper important macroeconomic feedback channels involving the dynamic interaction of the labor market, goods market and the monetary and financial sector. For instance, the investment behavior of firms can create feedback chains that can be of destabilizing nature, hence investment is a crucial link in the macrodynamic interaction of markets and sectors. I employ a disequilibrium model of monetary growth, the Keynes-Metzler-Goodwin (KMG) model with a portfolio approach to its three asset markets (money, bonds, and equities) of a hypothetically closed economy. After defining the extensive form of the model, I derive the 18 dimensional intensive form model which is then analyzed via subsystems. By means of a numerical simulation, I study what potentials the labor market can have in stabilizing unstable macroeconomics. Finally, a general purpose of this research is to show that applied integrated macro-economic dynamic systems can have interesting attractors and transitory dynamics, that are attained when locally explosive scenarios are converted into bounded dynamics by adding extrinsic nonlinearities.

The Gender Dynamics of Employment and Distribution in a Globalizing World

Stephanie Seguino
,
University of Vermont
Elissa Braunstein
,
Colorado State University

Abstract

Some of the gains in employment for women, in both developed and developing countries, have come as men’s employment has declined, rendering the shift in women’s work roles gender conflictive. For growth to be inclusive, gains for women should not come at the expense of men. At the same time, there is evidence of defeminization of industrial employment in the context of premature deindustrialization in developing countries. This paper explores these contradictory trends, and presents results from an econometric analysis of the determinants gender job segregation for a set of developing countries for the period 1990 to 2010. In particular, we explore the effects of structural change, including the rising capital-labor ratio, as well as other determinants of labor supply and demand. Additionally, we econometrically estimate the impact of gender job segregation on the labor share of income. Results are suggestion of “crowding” of women into lower quality jobs, and exclusion from high-quality jobs as the capital-labor ratio rises. We also find that greater gender job segregation has a negative impact on the labor share of income.

The Character and Extent of Bondaged Labor in the Globalization Economy

John McDermott
,
State University of New York

Abstract

My research argues that bondaged forms of labor make up a major component of the “globalization” labor force in the so-called developing countries, very likely of a majority of such workers, I suspect a very one-sided majority. Bondaging effects mark the situation of large numbers of, most notably, Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic and of Malaysia workers in Thailand. These workers are permanent residents – often of several generations – of the Dominican Republic and Thailand, respectively, but are denied all citizen rights there. They are, in effect, ‘stateless persons’ who have no standing to sue, protest, bargain, etc. over the all-too common desperate working and wage conditions. And have no protections against employer-inspired violence. A not dissimilar status is imposed on workers within the “enterprise zones” of Central America which exclude not only tariffs and taxes but, more significant for workers, the operations of the national labor laws in the respective countries. Here, whatever the national labor codes – and ILO conventions -- the employer is free to act unilaterally.
Discussant(s)
Armağan Gezici
,
Keene State College
Sergio Cámara Izquierdo
,
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco
JEL Classifications
  • E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy
  • J1 - Demographic Economics