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We investigate how firing notification procedures influence wage growth. Using a sample of 33 countries over the period 2006–2015, we show that administrative requirements in cases of dismissal have a positive and significant effect on wage growth. The result is robust even after controlling for the endogeneity of the firing notification restrictions, the involvement of third parties in the wage bargaining process, the minimum wage, the firms' training policy, and the composition of employment. These findings suggest that firing notification procedures foster the growth of wages by increasing the bargaining power of incumbent workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extra-low minimum wage for US restaurant workers has remained unchanged for over 30 years. Periodic campaigns have brought this wage, and its connection to the perpetuation of inequality and exploitative work, to public attention, but these campaigns have met resistance from both employers and restaurant workers. This article draws on a workplace ethnography in a restaurant front-of-house, and in-depth interviews with tipped food service workers, to examine the tipped labour process and begin to answer a central question: why would any workers oppose a wage increase? It argues that the constituting of tips as a formal wage created for workers a two-employer problem, wherein customers assume the role of secondary, unregulated, employers in the workplace. Ultimately, the tipped wage poses a longer-term strategic obstacle for workers in their position relative to management and ability to organize to shape the terms and conditions of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of health on wages of Australian workers, with a focus on gender differences and the role of macroeconomic conditions in the effects. Design/methodology/approach: The first 15 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey are used to estimate a wage model that accounts for the endogeneity of health, unobserved heterogeneity and sample selection bias. Findings: The results show that, after accounting for the endogeneity of health, unobserved heterogeneity and sample selection bias, better health increases wages for Australian male workers, but not for female workers. The results also show that accounting for the endogeneity of health, unobserved heterogeneity and potential sample selection bias is important in estimating the effects of health on wages. In particular, a simple ordinary least squares estimator would underestimate the effect of health on wages for males, while overestimate it for females, and simply addressing the endogeneity of health using instrumental variables could overestimate the effect for both genders. It is also found that the effects of health on wages fall under depressed macroeconomic conditions, perhaps due to reduced job mobility and increased presentism during a recession. Originality/value: This study adds to the international literature on the effects of health on wages by providing empirical evidence from Australia. The model applied to estimate the effects takes advantage of a panel dataset to address the bias resulting potentially from all the sources of the endogeneity of health, unobserved heterogeneity and sample selection. The results indeed show that failing to address these issues would substantially bias the estimated effects of health on wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to investigate the asymmetric impact of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) on employees' wages via consumer prices in 15 major oil-exporting countries from sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1996-2017 using the panel threshold regression model. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology used in this article was built on non-linear panel threshold regression models developed by Hansen (1996, 1999) threshold regression. The authors first tested for the existence of threshold-effect in ERPT and wage nexus using 1,000 bootstrap replications and 400 grid searches to obtain an optimal threshold. We also estimated that asymmetric ERPT on employees' wages reacts differently when the inflation-threshold exceeds beyond a 15.12% threshold level. Findings: Our findings showed that asymmetric ERPT is incomplete and indicates that an increase by one standard deviation in real exchange rate causes a decline in employees' wages by 2.69%. Research limitations/implications: The policy implications of our results are drawn from the significant threshold estimates. However, a significant threshold value of 15.12 is an inflation-threshold estimates that split our 330 observations into the lower (upper) regimes. Further, an inflation rate beyond the threshold value is likely to have an asymmetric ERPT on employees' wages in the 15 major oil-exporting sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Practical implications: The practical implication of the study is when ERPT exceeds the threshold, the effect of real exchange rate variations is passed on to employees' wages. It is widely believed that labor productivity increase with increased minimum wages. Nevertheless, there is contention as regards the effects on employment and poverty. As rising goods prices make the minimum wage increased homogeneous of degree zero. Social implications: Considerable increased ERPT on imported goods reduces employees' wages purchasing ability from import-dependent countries through import prices. Once it has documented, this also reduces welfare via deteriorations of marginal propensity to consume (MPC) and marginal propensity to savings (MPS). Originality/value: This article integrates labor purchasing power into the analysis of ERPT using non-linear dynamic panel heterogeneous threshold regression. It extends the Hansen (1996, 1999) dynamic panel threshold models to exchange rate pass-through in SSA economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of minimum wages on employment and wages in China. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses the difference-in-difference methodology to estimate the employment and wage impacts of the minimum wage increase in 2003 – a year when substantial minimum wage increases occurred in some provinces (treatment provinces) but not in others (comparison provinces). The analysis is restricted to the eastern region so as to make comparisons across relatively homogeneous and contiguous provinces with large numbers of women and rural migrant workers in urban areas – the target groups for minimum wages. Findings – The study finds that overall, minimum wages in China do have an adverse employment effect but the effect is statistically insignificant and quantitatively inconsequential. The adverse employment effects are generally larger in the more market-driven sectors, in the low-wage sector of retail and wholesale trade and restaurants, and for women; however even these effects are extremely small. Minimum wages also had no impact on aggregate wages. These estimates appear consistent with many of those based on this methodology which tends to find no substantial adverse employment effect from minimum wages. Practical implications – Good news: minimum wages do not seem to have any substantial adverse employment effect in China. Bad news: this could simply reflect the fact that they are not enforced. Originality/value – This is one of the few studies of effect of minimum wages in China in English, and using a difference-in-difference methodology as first employed by Card. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]