Before the collapse of Soviet Communism, China’s movement toward market capitalism, and India’s decision to undertake market reforms and enter the global trading system, the global economy encompassed roughly half of the world’s population comprising the advanced Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and some parts of A...

I thank Allan Mendelowitz and Matt Slaughter for helpful comments. All opinions and errors are mine. 1 In this paper I survey the effects of international trade and other influences on the US labor market. First, I examine the move toward globalization and its various manifestations. Second, I trace out the main labor market changes that have occurred over the last two or three decades – declin...

the purpose of this study is to investigate the factors affecting the manufacturing industry wage among selected developing countries based on new economic geography theory. more specifically, we use a panel data model to study the spatial structure of wages in 136 countries for the period 1998-2007. the results indicate that this theory provides a good description of the spatial structure of w...

Suicide is a well-known public health problem in the United States. Macroeconomic conditions, among many other factors, because of their impacts on psychological well-being of individuals, are thought to be linked to suicide attempts. However, previous research on the relationship between suicide rates and macroeconomic conditions, especially that of labor market conditions, has resulted into a...

This product is part of the RAND Labor and Population working paper series. RAND working papers are intended to share researchers' latest findings and to solicit informal peer review. They have been approved for circulation by RAND Labor and Population but have not been formally edited or peer reviewed. Unless otherwise indicated, working papers can be quoted and cited without permission of the...

How does labor market competitiveness frame the impact of greater labor productivity and lower inequality on poverty? Specifically, does greater competitiveness increase the impact of higher labor productivity and lower inequality on poverty reduction? In a simple model, we show that there is complementarity between competitiveness and productivity – the greater is one, the larger is the impact...

This chapter provides an overview of recent changes in the income support system for lowincome families in the State of California, and describes some of the associated changes in the labor market outcomes of women. Although much attention has focused on federally-initiated welfare reform associated with the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), signific...

1467 Models of statistical discrimination often imply that black Americans—or others suffering from discrimination—invest less in themselves than otherwise comparable whites do, because blacks receive a lower return from investment in human capital than whites. The critical assumption underlying these models is that the market receives imperfect information about productivity and no direct info...

Previous comparative studies describing the transition from school to work and national patterns of labor market entry have often had to simplify the complex transition processes involved. For example, the first job after education is not easy to define if a person returns to education. In addition, most of this research has concentrated on national patterns shaped by the experiences of the maj...