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This document is an index of articles published in the ILR Review, Volume 77 in 2024. The articles cover a range of topics related to labor and employment, including the size and composition of the independent contractor workforce, the wage premia of refugee immigrants, the impact of manufacturing credentials on earnings, and the use of wearable devices in work processes. Other articles explore issues such as workplace competition, labor market dualization, and the Europeanization of wage policy. The index provides a comprehensive overview of the articles published in this volume, allowing researchers to easily locate and access relevant information. [Extracted from the article]

As temporary employment has become a pervasive feature of modern labor markets, reasons for wage growth have become less well understood. To determine whether these two phenomena are related, the authors investigate whether the dualized structure of labor markets affects macroeconomic developments. Specifically, they incorporate involuntary temporary workers into the standard wage Phillips curve to examine wage growth in 30 European countries for the period 2004–2017. Relying on individual-level data to adjust for a changing employment composition, their findings show, for the first time, that the incidence of involuntary temporary workers has strong negative effects on permanent workers' wage growth, thereby dampening aggregate wage growth. This effect, which the authors name the competition effect, is particularly pronounced in countries where wage bargaining institutions are weak. The findings shed further light on the reasons for the secular slowdown of wage growth after the global financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For almost four decades, Social Security's board of trustees has been reporting--annually and consistently--that (1) the program's income and outgo are out of close actuarial balance, and (2) the trust funds are anticipated to be depleted sometime in the 2030s. Currently, Social Security reform is in hibernation. However, reform is inevitable and one popular idea is to increase the taxable wage base. We discuss this option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the effects of state minimum wage increase on information technology (IT) adoption at the establishment level in the United States. Our results show that treatment establishments on average allocate between $10,328 and $66,808 more per year to their IT budgets during the first 3 years after experiencing significant state minimum wage increases. Additional evidence shows that state minimum wage increases on average lead to an economically small decrease in employment. The estimated employment effect is larger for establishments that have more incentives to automate labor. Our results suggest that establishments adopt technology to countervail increased labor costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the impact of "routinization" on the labor outcomes of displaced workers. We use a rich Brazilian panel dataset and an occupation-task mapping to examine the effect of job displacement in different groups, classified according to their tasks. Our main result is that following a layoff, workers previously employed in routine-intensive occupations suffer a more significant decline in wages and more extended periods of unemployment. As expected, job displacement has a negative and lasting impact on wages. Still, workers in routine-intensive occupations are more impacted than those in non-routine occupations in terms of wages (an increase of one point in the routine-intensity index results in a further decline of 2% in workers' relative wages) and employment. Furthermore, our results indicate that workers in routine-intensive occupations are more likely to change occupations after the shock, and those who do not switch occupational fields suffer a more significant decline in wages. Lastly, even though the loss of employer-specific wage premiums explains 13% of displaced workers' drop in wages, it does not explain routine-intensive workers' more substantial losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors estimate the effects of an increase in the youth minimum wage in the Netherlands on low-paid workers' employment and earnings, using a difference-in-differences approach with detailed administrative data. Findings show that the increase does not have a negative effect on the number of jobs or hours worked, hence raising overall earnings for affected workers. Further, the minimum wage increase has substantial spillover effects, accounting for close to 70% of the average wage increase experienced by workers. While employment grows in fixed-term and temporary help agency contracts, the authors do not find evidence of declines in employment in other types of work arrangements, nor of labor-labor substitution. Labor market outcomes evolve most favorably for full-time incumbent workers who are not enrolled in education and are thus less likely to be transient occupants of minimum wage jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent and detailed data point to a polarization of wages with regard to the distribution of skills, particularly in developed countries over the past three decades, requiring the literature to address modelling approaches focused on automating different types of tasks. In the DTC literature, the technological-knowledge bias leads to an increase in the wage of skilled workers relative to unskilled workers. Motivated by this literature, this paper considers three types of workers (skilled, medium-skilled and unskilled) but retain the economic mechanisms that produce the results. Thus, wage inequality continues to result from the technological-knowledge bias, which, in the face of automation dynamics, reveals that medium-skilled workers are the relatively most penalized, generating wage polarization. Furthermore, as in the directed technical change literature, the relative supply of skilled workers continues to affect the skill premium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Javanese village of Kaliloro, share tenancy in rice cultivation, which was widely predicted to disappear with the Green Revolution, has not declined but expanded since the early 1970s. In this article, building on previous debates on share tenancy, we show how sharecropping has survived and expanded in Kaliloro's generally commoditized agrarian economy. Many share tenancy relationships in Kaliloro link wealthier landowners and landless or near‐landless tenants. But many also occur between households of relatively equal status and between parents and their own children. For both landowners and share tenants, their reasons for reliance on sharecropping over hired labour are complex, going beyond simple comparisons of relative labour costs (to landowners) or labour earnings (to share tenants). The landless and near‐landless are well aware of the exploitative nature of share tenancy, but it remains an important component of their pluriactive livelihoods, even in times of rising farm wage rates, mainly to ensure a supply of rice for domestic consumption. For landowners who are too busy, or unable, to manage cultivation themselves, share tenancy remains the most convenient, effective, and risk‐free labour regime, and mechanism of surplus transfer from direct producer to landowner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the COVID-19 epidemic ends in China, it is worth exploring the growth after experiencing the trauma of the epidemic. China has been managing the epidemic for a relatively long time compared to other countries. Many scholars have researched trauma and post-traumatic growth in groups such as doctors and patients. However, little attention has been paid to the post-traumatic growth of ordinary people who experienced the epidemic in the Chinese context and the related influencing factors. Based on the educational system as the research context, this study proposes the effects of proactive personality and social support on PTG in the post-epidemic era through the mediation of meaningfulness of life. To empirically examine the influences of PTG in the post-epidemic era, an online survey of 1210 university students was conducted for data analysis. The analysis results suggest that proactive personality and social support positively influence meaning in life. Proactive personality, social support and meaning in life positively influence post-traumatic growth. Proactive personality and social support social support and proactive personality indirectly influence post-traumatic growth through the mediation of the meaning in life. This research empirically investigated the role of personality, social support, meaning in life, and post-traumatic growth among university students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: South Korea had the highest suicide rates in the OECD and one of the largest (16.4%) increases in the minimum wage in 2018. Prior studies have provided evidence that increases in minimum wage reduce suicide rates in the population, but no study examined the effects of the policy change on individual-level suicidal behaviour. Methods: Our study sample was built using the 2015–2019 waves of the Korean Welfare Panel Survey, a population-representative longitudinal survey. The sample consisted of 5146 participants, including those earning above minimum wage (control) and minimum wage earners (treatment) based on their 2018/19 earnings. The outcome of the study was suicidal ideation, which is an important precursor to other suicidal behaviours, and was captured using self-reported measures. We examined the impact of the 2018 minimum wage hike in Korea on suicidal ideation, using a difference-in-differences design. Results: The minimum wage increase was associated with a 1.6% points reduction (95% CI: -2.8% to -0.5%) in self-reported suicidal ideation. Stronger policy effects were shown among women and older age groups. Conclusions: Our study demonstrates that public policies employing a population-based approach, such as increasing minimum wages, could serve as an effective intervention to mitigate suicidal ideation among low-income workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the diachrony of Latin P-labile verbs (verbs that can be used transitively and intransitively with the preservation of the Patient and without a formal change), availing itself from evidence in medical and veterinary texts from the first to seventh century AD. The first part of the analysis discusses the influence of verbal semantics on the domain of lability in these texts and how lability developed as a diathetic strategy for the anticausative, the causative and the passive in Latin. Special attention is paid to the increase of P-lability as an anticausative strategy and its relation to the mediopassive and reflexive anticausative strategies in Late Latin. The second part of the analysis proposes a new explanation for the increase of P-lability in Latin and discusses the consequences of the development of a semantic-based alignment in Late Latin (the extended accusative) on the syntax and development of P-labile verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the advancement in women's conditions in the past fifty years, women are still the targets of forms of oppression that span from sexual objectification to gender economic inequality, which, among other factors, is linked to challenges that women may face with wage negotiation. Bridging these two research areas, in the present correlational study (N = 552), we took the female target perspective and investigated whether everyday sexualized media consumption may be indirectly linked with Italian women's negotiation intentions in a working scenario (i.e. salary request, negotiation probability, salary raise negotiation). We hypothesized that this association would be mediated by internalization of mainstream beauty ideals, chronic self-objectification, and subsequent lower self-attribution of the fundamental social dimensions of competence, agency, and morality. Path analyses supported the indirect path model on all the negotiation behaviors via self-attribution of competence; a significant indirect path via self-attribution of morality was also found on women's negotiation probability. Implications for gender economic inequality as well as possible interventions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can the Nordic wage-setting model, where social partners decide wages through collective agreements, counteract a growing low-paid sector? This article tests four definitions of low-paid jobs to analyze whether this sector has grown for the period 2005–2020 in Sweden. Despite policy changes pointing towards growth, all definitions show a slight decrease in low-paid jobs over time. The authors argue that the industrial relations system, with the aim of keeping the industry wage increases in check to aid export competitiveness, also sets a uniform level wage that limits low-paid jobs. It is also found that low pay in the Swedish setting is partly a result of working less than full-time or having unstable employment, and service workers and those with low education are becoming increasingly common in this position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During her nomination hearing, Janet Yellen defended the benefits of a higher minimum wage (Question 66 and follow-up). This study analyzes the impact of minimum wage policies on the profitability of sole proprietors by using a dataset of 430 million reported net incomes with the IRS from 2004 to 2018. Three methods are used to examine the relationship between minimum wage increases and net income for sole proprietors: A panel regression framework that includes all counties, comparing contiguous border county-pairs, and a difference-in-differences approach. We find that minimum wage hikes are associated with a higher net income for sole proprietors, with estimated elasticity between 0.15 and 0.2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provision of sustainability information is a crucial step in raising awareness and promoting sustainability in the residential sector. The effectiveness of this information in increasing interest in sustainability depends on its relevancy and suitability for the intended recipients, namely potential buyers or renters. However, the evaluation of such suitability is impeded due to limited research regarding buyers' and renters' preferences and priorities for sustainability information. A nationwide survey of 410 respondents living in Australia provided the data to understand the sustainability priorities and information preferences of three apartment stakeholders: owner-residents, investors, and renters. The survey investigated how ownership type and demographics influence sustainability priorities as well as the perceived importance of information across three criteria: comfort, cost and consumption, and layout and location. The results show that current and potential apartment buyers and renters place high importance on receiving information pertaining to all three criteria. The comfort criterion was found to be significantly more important across most of the studied ownership and demographic groups. Findings from this study can assist apartment developers and researchers in determining key sustainability information that aligns with the preferences and priorities of the targeted buyers and renters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the relationship between global value chain (GVC) participation, worker‐level routine task intensity (RTI) and wage inequality within countries. Using survey data from 34 countries and instrumenting for GVC participation, we find that higher GVC participation contributes to higher wage inequality in high‐income countries and lower wage inequality in middle‐ and low‐income countries. We distinguish between two opposite‐working channels. First, participation in GVCs directly reduces wage inequality, suppressing wages in offshorable occupations that tend to earn above the country‐specific median, and increasing wages of non‐offshorable occupations. Second, it indirectly widens within‐country wage inequality by increasing the gap in RTI, which is negatively associated with wages, between offshorable and non‐offshorable occupations. The direct effect prevails in most low‐ and middle‐income countries that receive offshored jobs, and the indirect effect prevails in high‐income countries that offshore jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate a modified demand‐and‐distribution system for the 48 contiguous US states and the District of Columbia (DC) employing dynamic spatial panel data for 1980–2019. We allow for endogenous regressors, test for the presence, significance, and magnitude of spatial spillovers, and estimate immediate and cumulative effects on our endogenous variables of interest. Without testing for spatial dependence and spillovers, we estimate that output growth and capacity utilization in the sample US states and DC rise in response to an increase in their own wage share. When we test for spatial dependence and spillovers as required by the state‐level nature of the data, and consider that the functional distribution of income and the level of economic activity are jointly determined, we estimate that a higher state wage share raises output growth in the own state and the neighboring states. Yet the effect of a change in the state wage share on capacity utilization in the own state and the neighboring states is not statistically significant. Meanwhile, a higher state output growth raises the wage share in the own state, but its impact on the wage share in the neighboring states is not statistically significant. A higher state capacity utilization raises the wage share in the own state, yet it reduces the wage share in the neighboring states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flash sintering of ceramic powders is a complex process that involves electric, thermal and mechanical phenomena. Modelling should help to better understand and control it, with a view to producing safe and homogeneous parts. A finite element model that couples all relevant phenomena, including the densification and shrinkage of the sintering material, has been worked out for this purpose. This model is used here to investigate the flash sintering of disk-shaped parts. Particular attention is paid to the appearance and growth of heterogeneities within the part, known as hot spots, which are highly dependent on material and process parameters. Leads are provided for limiting the development of such heterogeneities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global demand for button mushrooms has surged in recent years, driven by their health benefits, creating a significant challenge for the mushroom industry in meeting this increasing demand. The increasing reliance on human labor, which is becoming unsustainable due to labor shortages and rising wage costs, highlights the urgent need for automated harvesting solutions. This review examines the integration of automated systems in button mushroom harvesting, delving into the key components such as robots, mechanisms, machine elements, programming, and algorithms. It offers a thorough analysis of the performance, design, operational mechanisms, and advantages and limitations of robotic systems, comparing the different methods employed in automated harvesting. This paper compares the performance of all the mushroom harvesters, including the commercially available ones with manual harvesting, and identifies their potential and limitations. The commercial harvesters are shown to pick 2000 mushrooms per hour on average, which is similar to how much a skilled worker picks at the same time. However, commercial automation harvesting has a relatively low success rate, high initial cost, high operating cost, and energy consumption, identifying areas for future research and challenges. This paper serves as a valuable resource for researchers and industry professionals striving to advance automated harvesting technology and improve its efficiency in meeting the rising demand for button mushrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the interaction effects of police collective bargaining authorization and police pay on racial differences in police-related fatalities. Using data from Fatal Encounters, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and other publicly available databases, we applied entropy-weighted regressions to a balanced panel of 282 local police departments from 2000 to 2013 in the United States. We found that collective bargaining authorization is not directly associated with police-caused deaths. However, results indicate that higher median salaries for city police officers directly and meaningfully contribute to fewer people killed by police actions. When considering interactive effects, our findings suggest that police unionization offsets the life-saving benefits of higher relative pay, leading to more Black citizens dying from police intervention as salaries increase in agencies with collective bargaining authorization. Our findings demonstrate authorities should consider the potentially fatal and inequitable consequences for citizens during collective bargaining and salary-setting negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent post-Keynesian debate on conflict inflation revolves around plausible magnitudes of the parameters of the standard model. We assess this debate by examining the economic meaning of the 'bargaining' and 'indexation' parameters, and proposing a reinterpretation in which the bargaining power is reflected in the relative frequency of wage and price increases in a period. Inflation then depends on the size of the inconsistent distributive claims and the absolute frequency of wage and price increases. Distribution depends on the relative frequency of such increases. From the latter we derive the real wage and profit resistance parameters, which determine the structural degree of inflation inertia. By adding the employment rate as a determinant of the desired real wage, we get a conflict-augmented Phillips curve. We show how different assumptions on the real resistance parameters affect the shape of the Phillips curve and the distributive outcomes in different conflict inflation models. A NAIRU occurs only when there is both full real wage and real profit resistance. Conflict generates inflation (not acceleration) with less extreme assumptions. The old-type conflict-augmented Phillips curve, with income distribution depending on the relative frequency of wage and price adjustments, is the most plausible case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extensive high-speed rail (HSR) network in China has significantly enhanced regional population mobility, yet its impact on the well-being of migrant workers remains underexplored. Utilizing data from the China Migrant Dynamic Survey (CMDS) from 2014 to 2018, this study investigates the influence of HSR on wage premiums for migrant workers and identifies the factors driving these premiums using the non-parametric nearest neighbor matching method. The findings reveal that HSR confers a significant wage premium of 13.1% for migrant workers in cities with HSR infrastructure compared to cities without it. This wage premium effect is particularly pronounced in less developed western China and in cities with larger populations and a higher proportion of tertiary sector economy. The study finds a 10.54% increase in wage premiums for intra-province migrant workers due to HSR, while the effect remains negligible for inter-province migrant workers. Moreover, the wage premium effect is stronger for higher-skilled labor and for migrant workers aged 16 to 45. It is particularly significant for professionals, administrative staff, and workers in the service industry. The HSR wage premium effect is multifaceted, exhibiting both level and growth effects, with the latter intensifying over time after HSR introduction. Overall, the findings suggest that HSR deployment positively influences migrant worker wages by enhancing travel convenience, improving market access, fostering knowledge spillovers, and facilitating industry transfers. However, these impacts vary by location, skill level, and industry. • The study reveals a 13.1% wage premium for migrant workers in cities with HSR infrastructure. • HSR's wage premium effect is the strongest in western China, larger cities, and those with a higher tertiary sector economy. • Intra-province migrants gain a 10.54% wage premium from HSR; inter-province workers see minimal effects. • Higher-skilled labor and workers aged 16-45 benefit most, especially in professional and service roles. • HSR's impact on wages grows over time, driven by better travel, market access, knowledge spillovers, and industry shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how individual states raise revenue to pay for elementary-secondary education spending following school finance reforms (SFRs). We identify states that increased and sustained education expenditures after reform, search for legislative statutes that appropriated more education spending, and assess how policymakers funded the SFRs. Our results show that state legislatures increase investments in education by increasing tax revenue streams, such as sales and excise taxes, and by taking over property tax collections. Considering these results, we discuss that increased state investment in education should be accompanied by a policy mechanism to distribute state aid equitably to districts. Moreover, policymakers should consider local voters' preferences when implementing SFR policies, as tax increases may reduce local fiscal effort for education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government Decision no. 598/2024 for establishing the gross minimum basic salary per country guaranteed in payment increased, starting from July 1, 2024, the gross minimum basic salary per country guaranteed in payment. For the gross minimum wage per country guaranteed in payment of 3.700 lei, no additional act is concluded, the employer does not negotiate the minimum wage with the employee as long as it is regulated in a normative act. At the same time, the employer does not need the employee's consent, but only states by decision that the minimum wage has changed. However, the tax-free benefit increases by 50% - 300 non-taxable lei from the value of the minimum gross salary. In the construction sector, we are still talking about the highest gross minimum salary in Romania: 4.582 lei. The method of establishing the minimum gross salary per country will change in the next period, in the context of the appearance of European Directive no. 2.041/2022, which should be transposed into national legislation by November 15, 2024. Practically, the value of the minimum wage will no longer be established following negotiations between the Government and representatives of trade unions and employers, within the Tripartite National Council, as before, but in the basis of a clear calculation mechanism. The gross minimum wage per country guaranteed in payment will be updated annually depending on the purchasing power, the general level of wages and their distribution, the growth rate of wages and labor productivity at the national level. The adequacy of this minimum income requires that the salary is not less than 50% of the average gross salary earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the rise in overall earnings inequality from 1996 to 2018 is accounted for by rising between-industry dispersion. The contribution of industries is right-skewed with the top 10 percent of four-digit NAICS industries dominating. The top 10 percent are clustered in high-paying high-tech and low-paying retail sectors. In the top industries, high-wage workers are increasingly sorted to high-wage industries with rising industry premia. In the bottom industries, low-wage workers are increasingly sorted into lowwage industries, with rising employment and falling industry wage premia. (JEL J23, J24, J31, L25, M52) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the economic outlook for the UK, predicting a slowdown in growth over the next few years due to fiscal policy tightening. Despite a strong recovery in the first half of 2024, consumer spending is expected to play a larger role in the future. Real wage growth is anticipated to remain strong, supporting household spending power. The government's fiscal policy decisions and monetary policy adjustments will significantly influence economic growth in the coming years. [Extracted from the article]

We propose a two-step procedure to estimate a heterogeneous dynamic panel data model with interactive fixed effects. We establish the asymptotic properties of the estimators and show that the final estimator is oracle efficient. We also propose a specification test for the null hypothesis of homogeneous slopes and study the asymptotic properties of the test statistic under both local and global alternatives. Simulations demonstrate the fine performance of the estimator and test statistic. The new estimation and inference methods are applied to study the heterogeneous effects of minimum wage on employment across different counties in the United States. Our dynamic model suggests that the changes of employment range from about–1% to 1% when the minimum wage increases by 1%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the changes of gender wage gap in urban and rural areas and examines the effect of wage structure and unobserved characteristics on the gap by using the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) survey in 2013 and 2018. We document a significant increase of the gender wage gap in both areas as well as among rural‐to‐urban migrants. By applying Katz and Murphy's supply‐demand framework, we find that the demand has shifted toward younger, more educated workers, and the demand for male workers is higher than that for female workers during the time. The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition of gender wage gap suggests that factors, such as occupation, parenthood status, and industry, have contributed to the expansion of wage gap. Furthermore, the Juhn–Murphy–Pierce decomposition of the change in gender wage gap implies that the expansion is owing to rising discrimination against females and gender‐specific factors such as observed and unobserved characteristics that have performed unfavorably for females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study estimates the long‐term effect of parenthood on labor market outcomes and explores the variations within this effect by gender and education. We use the event study method to track changes in a range of labor market outcomes from 3 years before to 8 years after the first birth, with a sample of 556 married women and 528 married men from the Korea Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS). We find that women experience an immediate drop in wages following birth, whereas men experience continuous wage growth even before birth. The decline in women's wages arises largely from their withdrawal from the labor market, while the increase in men's wages could be explained by a positive selection bias among fathers. In addition, mothers' wage trajectories do not vary significantly by education level, whereas other labor market outcomes show discernible trends. These patterns are the opposite of those observed for men. The findings indicate that severe gender inequality in the Korean labor market lowers the wages of mothers, regardless of their education, while the wages of fathers are more likely to be affected by education. Based on the findings, we make policy suggestions for improving the work‐family balance for all genders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article estimates the effect of immigration into an occupation on the wages of natives working in other, better-paid occupations. Using Annual Population Survey data from the UK we rank occupations by the Standard Occupation Classification provided by the ONS and find that increases in the migrant/native ratio raise average wages of natives working in the next higher ranked occupation by around 0.332%. Our findings have important implications for policy and public discourse. They suggest that debates over the economic impacts of migration often ignore the potential spill-over benefits that a migrant can bring to the outcomes for native workers elsewhere in the wage distribution, particularly in lower wage occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the core objectives of unions is to raise the wages of the lowest paid. Utilizing a panel of individual‐matched employee–employer data covering the Norwegian private sector in the period 2000–2014, I investigate how workplace union density is related to individual low‐pay risk. By exploiting changes in tax deductions for union members in Norway as a source of exogenous variation, a negative effect of increased union density on low‐pay risk is identified within jobs. The results further suggest that the effect of local bargaining power on individual low‐pay probability is larger among immigrants than among natives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How common are wage–price spirals, and what has happened in their aftermath? We construct a new historical database of wage–price spirals—identified as episodes with consumer price inflation and average nominal wage growth rising jointly for at least a year—going back to the 1960s for a large sample of advanced economies. We find that only about a quarter of such episodes were followed by sustained accelerations in wages and prices. Instead, nominal wage growth and inflation tended to stabilize at a higher level on average, and then gradually revert, with real wage growth broadly unchanged. A decomposition of average wage dynamics during wage–price spiral episodes using a wage Phillips curve suggests that nominal wage growth normally stabilizes at levels consistent with observed inflation and labour market tightness. After historical episodes exhibiting rising inflation, falling real wages, and tightening labour markets—similar to what was observed in the early post‐COVID‐19 recovery in 2021—inflation tended to decline and nominal wage growth to rise, allowing real wages to gradually catch up. Our findings suggest that an acceleration of nominal wages against a backdrop of rising inflation does not necessarily signal that a persistent wage–price spiral dynamic is taking hold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specialisation and gender theories offer competing hypotheses of whether men's and women's wages rise or fall based on the couple's division of household unpaid and paid labour, and how effects differ across the wage distribution. We test division effects by analysing British panel data using unconditional quantile regression with individual fixed effects, controlling for own hours in housework and employment. We find only high-wage men's wages were significantly greater when their partners specialised in routine housework, and when they were the sole breadwinner. Conversely, low- and high-wage partnered women incurred significant wage penalties as their share of housework exceeded their partners'. Wages for low-wage men and median- and high-wage women also decreased as their share of household employment increased. We conclude only elite partnered men benefit from specialisation. Everyone else is either better off or no worse off with equitable household divisions of paid and unpaid work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) affected the wage gap between high and low-paid workers within Mexico, considering internal migration. In low-skilled, labor-abundant developing countries, trade liberalization should theoretically increase the wages of low-skilled workers, decreasing income inequality. However, anecdotal evidence indicates that NAFTA increased the gap between rich and poor in Mexico, and empirical evidence is mixed (Hirte et al. 2020; Brülhart 2011; Bosch and Manacorda 2010; Nicita 2009; Chiquiar 2008; Hanson 2007; Gonzalez-Rivas 2007). Because trade may affect wages differently across regions within the country, accurate measures of wage effects must incorporate internal migration; otherwise, apparent wage convergence or divergence might only reflect a geographic resorting of workers. We evaluate wage changes by considering rural-to-urban migration. We first find a slight decrease in both internal and external migration in the years after NAFTA. Then, we find that all male workers see a wage reduction from trade openness, although the harm of high-wage workers almost doubled that of their counterparts with low wages. NAFTA also mitigated some of the wage differentials between the North and South. In summary, trade liberalization has reduced wage differentials among working-age men in urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to large pay disparities caused by rising CEO compensation and stagnant employee pay, US financial regulators have taken several initiatives to mobilise shareholders. However, the ability of these initiatives to enhance shareholder engagement and reduce excessive CEO compensation has been questioned. Using a large sample of 1594 non‐financial firms from the Russell 3000 index over 2013–2019, we disentangle the complex role that shareholder engagement towards CEO‐to‐worker pay disparities plays on CEO compensation. We find that higher CEO‐to‐worker pay disparities increase shareholder dissent say on pay votes and that, paradoxically, shareholder dissent say on pay votes increase CEO compensation. Furthermore, we provide evidence that shareholder engagement mediates the relationship between CEO‐to‐worker pay disparities and CEO compensation through their say on pay votes. Our findings are consistent with the relative deprivation theory as shareholders react to large pay disparities to avoid the negative consequences of a feeling of deprivation on employees. They are also in line with the agency theory, as shareholder reactions to large CEO‐to‐worker pay disparities trigger reactions from the remuneration committee to better align CEO pay with their interests. Overall, our findings support the existence of a shareholder engagement channel driven by social comparison mechanisms and agency responses. This study has important implications for regulators by unpacking the usefulness of these regulatory initiatives to shareholders and also documenting their unintended consequences on CEO compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gradual integration of digital technology into traditional Chinese villages has triggered a shift in income distribution from labor to capital, posing challenges to the wage growth of employed peasants. Based on the theory of empowerment, this paper explores the mechanisms of credit availability and talent loss in the interplay between digital capabilities and wage augmentation among employed peasants. This study empirically examines or validates the mechanism of digital capabilities on wage growth for employed peasants through the entropy weight method, the OLS linear model, the mediation effect model, and propensity score matching while using survey data from 490 farmer entrepreneurs as samples. The findings are as follows. (1) The digital capabilities of farmer entrepreneurs have a significant positive impact on the wage growth of employed peasants, and this result remains robust after a series of robustness checks. In terms of hierarchical effects, digital foundational capabilities > digital application capabilities > digital innovation capabilities. (2) Credit availability and talent loss mediate the relationship between digital capabilities and wage growth for employed peasants. (3) The digital capabilities of farmer entrepreneurs who are young, highly educated, and have a low family-dependency ratio exert a more pronounced influence on the wage growth of employed peasants. Additionally, lower policy uncertainty enhances the effect of digital capabilities on wage growth for employed peasants. The study uncovers the empowerment mechanism of digital advancements embedded during the entrepreneurial journey, enriches research on digital capabilities and common prosperity, and provides a feasible path for governments to formulate reasonable entrepreneurship and digital promotion policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the potential secondary impacts of raising the minimum wage in a jurisdiction on the efficiency of its foster care placement system. We employ the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) restricted‐access dataset representing all children in the US foster care system for the years 2000–21. We calculate placement efficiency as the number of yearly moves experienced by a child in the foster care system, with a decrease in the number of placements interpreted as benefitting children both psychologically and behaviourally. This increase in stability benefits the foster parents and corresponds to a smaller financial strain on the public. After including various controls and state‐year fixed effects, our Tobit and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) analyses find that increased minimum wages are significantly associated with lower levels of placement disruption. We take this as promising initial descriptive evidence for the secondary effects of the minimum wage on reducing the financial burden, and increasing the placement efficiency, of the foster care system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the effect of minority co-ethnic employment on income? While the business organizations literature argues diversity allows for knowledge accumulation, optimal labour allocation, and efficient interactions, absent is any consideration of language – e.g. language competency or language ideology. We argue when co-ethnic minorities work together, this shared language allows for bounded trust to develop; it also ensures there are preference similarities – factors that can increase firm productivity and individual wages. Using survey data of minority Hungarians in three Central and Eastern European countries (Romania, Slovakia, and Serbia), we find (1) diversity has no positive effect on income; and in fact, (2) co-ethnic employment increases wages in Southern Slovakia and Vojvodina. Additionally, we confirm that co-ethnic employment is not happening simply because of demographics. Instead, with one exception, the proportion of Hungarians in the workplace is significantly higher than in the areas where these jobs are located – suggesting a strategic behaviour by minority Hungarians. The implication is not that we endorse homogeneous workplaces per se, but that we remain cognizant of how asymmetric linguistic competencies and the underlying linguistic ideologies can shape power hierarchies – thereby limiting the benefits of diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, organized labour has played a significant role in advocating for minimum wage increases. In this paper, we investigate the effects of minimum wage increases on union membership among individuals in minimum wage intensive industries. We find no evidence of a change in union membership among high-skilled workers in these industries. Consistent with a 'free-riding' hypothesis, we find evidence that minimum wage increases predict declines in union membership among low-skilled workers in these industries. These workers are the minimum wage's most direct beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractUsing China’s Annual Survey of Industrial Firms (ASIF) and the China Customs Database (CCD) from 2000 to 2013, this study explores the impact of adopting industrial robots on the employment in Chinese manufacturing firms. We find a positive association between the adoption of industrial robots and the employment scale of China’s manufacturing enterprises. We also find evidence that the positive association is more pronounced in capital-intensive industries, non-state-owned firms, and firms in coastal areas. Mechanism test indicates that ‘scale expansion effects’ and ‘productivity effects’ are the main channels through which industrial robots promote employment growth. Further analysis indicates that the adoption of industrial robots did not have obvious industry spillover effects. Additionally, other labor market results demonstrate that the adoption of industrial robots significantly increases the average wage level of enterprises while decreasing their labor share. This study provides micro-level evidence revealing the impact of adopting industrial robots on employment in developing countries. It also provides important policy implications for countries worldwide seeking to promote automated production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between national growth models and voters’ economic preferences. We theorise that centre-left voters are cross-pressured between a demand for higher wages and concerns about competitiveness, but the impact varies by growth model: the more a country is export-led, the more the competitiveness motive is internalised, moderating worker demands for wage increases. As a result, we expect a convergence in preferences between centre-left and centre-right voters as the reliance on export-led growth increases. We corroborate these claims through three sets of empirical analyses: a cross-sectional analysis of individual wage dissatisfaction in nineteen Western countries, a panel analysis of wage dissatisfaction in a typical export-led (Germany) and a typical consumption-led economy (UK), and an analysis of preferences for export-led growth in these two countries. Our findings contribute to the emerging literature on the politics of growth models and the waning of economic conflict in advanced capitalist democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The constant voltage strategy (CVS) is more suitable for the small-capacity dc microgrid applications to form the dc bus voltage because it can eliminate the steady voltage deviation. However, its dynamic performance is slowed down by the integrator in the voltage loop and negatively influenced by the load steps. Some advanced methods have been conducted in the literature. However, their principle is to increase the system bandwidth, which is limited because the bandwidth is generally designed about one-tenth of the switching frequency and cannot be increased infinitely. This work pays efforts to increase the gain within the system bandwidth to accelerate the transient response and simultaneously eliminate the influence of the integrator. Therefore, the non-integrator disturbance observer-based (NIDOB) strategy is proposed in this work, and it can feed the load current into the current reference to replace the output of the integrator. Compared to the traditional and non-integrator directly-feedforward (NIDF) strategy, it has a better dynamic performance. Compared to the bandwidth-increased strategy, it does not introduce more noise. The theoretical analysis and experimental results prove its advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The level of detail, coverage, accuracy, completeness and time range of personnel expenditure data available in the transversal payroll system used by South African national and provincial government departments, PERSAL, offers opportunities for wage bill analysis that is not possible with the more common and well-known approaches of using either highly summarised tabled data, reported data or survey data. This paper describes a methodology that was developed to extract trends in the wage bill and personnel numbers. The key drivers of total wage bill growth have been identified as personnel growth and salary growth and this paper demonstrates how to disaggregate total growth into these two key drivers. The full-time equivalent is proposed as a measure for annual headcounts, as it provides an accurate summary. Appropriate stratification when analysing the impact of remuneration policies is highlighted. The structuring of payroll data as employees' career trajectories enables the analysis of changes at the personal level, adding insight to into personnel movements and improvements in salaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers are paying increasing attention to the strongly negatively charged heteropolysaccharides in cells, in the extracellular matrix or in the cell wall. Examples of such molecules are glycosaminoglycans (e.g., heparin, heparan sulphate). It is well known from the literature that heparin and its derivatives have anti-inflammatory, angiogenic, metastatic and growth factor inhibitory activity. Herein, we present the efficient synthesis of six non-glycosaminoglycan (Glc-GlcA-Glc-sequenced) and one heparin-related (GlcN-GlcA-Glc-sequenced) trisaccharides with various functional group patterns. The anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and cell growth-inhibitory/cytotoxic effects of the synthesized compounds were tested. Among the investigated molecules, we have found some derivatives with a promising anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Task semantics can be expressed by a set of input-output examples or a piece of textual instruction. Conventional machine learning approaches for natural language processing (NLP) mainly rely on the availability of large-scale sets of task-specific examples. Two issues arise: First, collecting task-specific labeled examples does not apply to scenarios where tasks may be too complicated or costly to annotate, or the system is required to handle a new task immediately; second, this is not user-friendly since end-users are probably more willing to provide task description rather than a set of examples before using the system. Therefore, the community is paying increasing interest in a new supervision-seeking paradigm for NLP: learning to follow task instructions, that is, instruction following. Despite its impressive progress, there are some unsolved research equations that the community struggles with. This survey tries to summarize and provide insights into the current research on instruction following, particularly, by answering the following questions: (i) What is task instruction, and what instruction types exist? (ii) How should we model instructions? (iii) What are popular instruction following datasets and evaluation metrics? (iv) What factors influence and explain the instructions' performance? (v) What challenges remain in instruction following? To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive survey about instruction following. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic recrystallisation (DRX) is one of the fundamental phenomena in materials science, significantly impacting the microstructure and mechanical properties of components subjected to large plastic deformations. Experimental research on that topic carried out for a wide range of new metallic materials is often supported by computational materials science. A direct consideration and detailed understanding of this phenomenon are possible with a class of full-field numerical models based on the cellular automata (CA) method. However, the classical CA approach is based on a regular, fixed computational space and has limitations in capturing large deformations of the computational domain. Therefore, the main goal of the work is to develop and implement an alternative solution to overcome this limitation. The proposed solution is based on coupling the finite element (FE) method with the random cellular automata (RCA) approach. Such a model can directly consider the influence of geometrical changes in microstructure during large plastic deformation on recrystallisation progress. Details of the developed RCA DRX model assumptions and coupling issues with FE mesh are discussed. Particular attention is also paid to increasing model efficiency and robustness studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Education Journal Review article discusses the challenges of teacher recruitment, training, and retention in England. The report highlights the persistent issue of teacher shortages and the impact on pupil outcomes. It emphasizes the need for financial incentives, such as bursaries and competitive salaries, to attract and retain teachers. The article also addresses alternative routes into teaching, the importance of training and professional development, subject-specific teacher shortages, flexibility and workload concerns, and the impact of pupil behavior on teacher retention. The report provides recommendations for improving these areas and calls for increased support and resources from the Department of Education. [Extracted from the article]

Scholars of Vietnam have studied different forms of labour resistance such as wildcat strikes, petitions, complaints, work stoppages, and boycotts, with which workers demand higher wages and pensions, overall better working conditions, and the implementation of workers' rights. This article pays attention to the small, yet not negligible group of dissident labour activists, who are subjected to much harsher state repression compared to labour resistance in and around the workplace. This article asks: What makes dissident labour activism a (real or perceived) threat to the state? A common and widely accepted explanation refers to the nature of the demands of dissidents, which includes independent trade unions, democratisation, and regime change. This article digs deeper and finds that dissident labour activists function as agents of an emerging epistemological third space, which permits the revitalisation of hidden knowledges about labour rights, the reclamation of the silenced idea of independent trade unions and the co-existence of critique of the status quo and imagination of an alternative future, which together threaten to endanger the Communist Party of Vietnam's political legitimacy and, by implication, capital utilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study conducts a systemic comparison of minimum wage decision-making in Korea and Taiwan. It demonstrates that Korea's big-business-dominated economy builds confrontational labour–business relations to be exploited by political parties, resulting in partisan decisions on the minimum wage, to a greater extent than Taiwan's more mixed economy. A large social divide based on the economic structure translates into a substantial partisan difference in minimum wage policies, when endorsed by the unique features of the minimum wage issue and carried out through the agents of the tripartite commission. As seen from the outcomes, a marked difference exists between Korea and Taiwan: Korea shows a dramatic fluctuation in annual minimum-wage increases, whereas Taiwan's increases remain stable across different governments. Korean governments actively respond to their core constituencies, whether labour or business, while Taiwan governments seek to strike a balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]