The paper compares the two main social policy tools used by society to enhance the welfare of its workers: mandated benefits and tax financed programs. It shows that mandated benefits could involve economic inefficiency (excess burden) identical to that of taxes; and that they often have perverse redistribution effects. According to the literature that followed Lawrence Summers' seminal paper on mandated benefits, mandates are assumed to produce less distortion than tax financed programs. In this paper I stress the fact that a critical assumption behind this idea is that tax-financed programs have a particular design, namely, that participation in them is not limited to employees. The Article goes beyond what is considered to be the classic case in terms of the distortions discussion (mandated health insurance vs. tax financed government provided health care) to situations in which exclusion of non-employees seems plausible and sensible. This Article also goes beyond "traditional" accommodation mandates by looking at several thought provoking cases such as overtime and pension vesting (which turn out to be just like accommodation mandates, but with distributive effects running in the opposite direction potentially). Interestingly, a number of real-world mandates disproportionately target or benefit a particular group (e.g., men) that is a discrete demographic group that could be identified in advance. Nevertheless this type of accommodation mandates differs from those discussed by Christine Jolls's seminal work on Accommodation Mandates in that they are unintended by the policymaker and might redistribute wealth in the opposite direction of what society usually views as desirable. Unlike the mandates that Jolls discussed that could hurt their intended beneficiaries, if restrictions on wage and employment differentials were not binding, these mandates are ones in which, precisely if restrictions on wage and employment differentials bind, groups to whom we would normally want to redistribute (women, lower compensated employees) will be made worse off.
{"title":"The Many Faces of Mandates: Beyond Traditional Accommodation Mandates and Other Classic Cases","authors":"Y. Margalioth","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.462640","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.462640","url":null,"abstract":"The paper compares the two main social policy tools used by society to enhance the welfare of its workers: mandated benefits and tax financed programs. It shows that mandated benefits could involve economic inefficiency (excess burden) identical to that of taxes; and that they often have perverse redistribution effects. According to the literature that followed Lawrence Summers' seminal paper on mandated benefits, mandates are assumed to produce less distortion than tax financed programs. In this paper I stress the fact that a critical assumption behind this idea is that tax-financed programs have a particular design, namely, that participation in them is not limited to employees. The Article goes beyond what is considered to be the classic case in terms of the distortions discussion (mandated health insurance vs. tax financed government provided health care) to situations in which exclusion of non-employees seems plausible and sensible. This Article also goes beyond \"traditional\" accommodation mandates by looking at several thought provoking cases such as overtime and pension vesting (which turn out to be just like accommodation mandates, but with distributive effects running in the opposite direction potentially). Interestingly, a number of real-world mandates disproportionately target or benefit a particular group (e.g., men) that is a discrete demographic group that could be identified in advance. Nevertheless this type of accommodation mandates differs from those discussed by Christine Jolls's seminal work on Accommodation Mandates in that they are unintended by the policymaker and might redistribute wealth in the opposite direction of what society usually views as desirable. Unlike the mandates that Jolls discussed that could hurt their intended beneficiaries, if restrictions on wage and employment differentials were not binding, these mandates are ones in which, precisely if restrictions on wage and employment differentials bind, groups to whom we would normally want to redistribute (women, lower compensated employees) will be made worse off.","PeriodicalId":448271,"journal":{"name":"Employment & Labor Law Abstracts eJournal","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129249481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We estimate the effects of living wage laws on wages of low-wage workers, focusing on the timing of policy, spurious associations, and the type of living wage law passed in a city. Our estimates point to sizable positive wage effects in cities with broad living wage laws that cover employers receiving business assistance from the city. We also explore disemployment effects of living wage laws and find evidence consistent with tradeoffs between wages and employment.
{"title":"Detecting Effects of Living Wage Laws","authors":"D. Neumark, Scott J. Adams","doi":"10.1111/1468-232X.00306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-232X.00306","url":null,"abstract":"We estimate the effects of living wage laws on wages of low-wage workers, focusing on the timing of policy, spurious associations, and the type of living wage law passed in a city. Our estimates point to sizable positive wage effects in cities with broad living wage laws that cover employers receiving business assistance from the city. We also explore disemployment effects of living wage laws and find evidence consistent with tradeoffs between wages and employment.","PeriodicalId":448271,"journal":{"name":"Employment & Labor Law Abstracts eJournal","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125390317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
L. Winters, T. Walmsley, Zhen Kun Wang, R. Grynberg
We discuss liberalising the temporary mobility of workers under Mode 4 of the GATS, particularly the movement of medium and low skilled service providers between developing and developed countries. Such mobility potentially offers huge returns: a flow equivalent to three per cent of developed countries? skilled and unskilled work forces would generate an estimated increase in world welfare of over US$150 billion, shared fairly equally between developing and developed countries. The larger part of this emanates from the less-skilled, essentially because losing higher-skilled workers cuts output in developing countries severely. The mass migration of less skilled workers raises fears in developed countries for cultural identity, problems of assimilation and the drain on the public purse. These fears are hardly relevant to temporary movement, however. The biggest economic concern from temporary mobility is its competitive challenge to local less skilled workers. But as populations age and the average levels of training and education rise, developed countries will face an increasing scarcity of less skilled labour. Temporary mobility thus actually offers a strong communality of interest between developing and developed countries. The remainder of the paper looks at the GATS provisions on Mode 4 and the commitments that have been made under it. The paper reviews several official proposals for the Doha talks, including the very detailed one from India, and considers several countries? existing schemes for the temporary movement of foreign workers. Many countries have long had bilateral foreign worker programmes, and some regional agreements provide for liberal and flexible movement. These show what is feasible and how concerns can be overcome. We caution that, to be useful, any WTO agreement must increase mobility, not just bureaucratise it. The paper concludes with some modest and practical proposals. We suggest, inter alia, that licensing firms to arrange the movement of labour is the most promising short-term approach to increasing temporary mobility.
{"title":"Liberalising Temporary Movement of Natural Persons: An Agenda for the Development Round","authors":"L. Winters, T. Walmsley, Zhen Kun Wang, R. Grynberg","doi":"10.1111/1467-9701.00566","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9701.00566","url":null,"abstract":"We discuss liberalising the temporary mobility of workers under Mode 4 of the GATS, particularly the movement of medium and low skilled service providers between developing and developed countries. Such mobility potentially offers huge returns: a flow equivalent to three per cent of developed countries? skilled and unskilled work forces would generate an estimated increase in world welfare of over US$150 billion, shared fairly equally between developing and developed countries. The larger part of this emanates from the less-skilled, essentially because losing higher-skilled workers cuts output in developing countries severely. The mass migration of less skilled workers raises fears in developed countries for cultural identity, problems of assimilation and the drain on the public purse. These fears are hardly relevant to temporary movement, however. The biggest economic concern from temporary mobility is its competitive challenge to local less skilled workers. But as populations age and the average levels of training and education rise, developed countries will face an increasing scarcity of less skilled labour. Temporary mobility thus actually offers a strong communality of interest between developing and developed countries. The remainder of the paper looks at the GATS provisions on Mode 4 and the commitments that have been made under it. The paper reviews several official proposals for the Doha talks, including the very detailed one from India, and considers several countries? existing schemes for the temporary movement of foreign workers. Many countries have long had bilateral foreign worker programmes, and some regional agreements provide for liberal and flexible movement. These show what is feasible and how concerns can be overcome. We caution that, to be useful, any WTO agreement must increase mobility, not just bureaucratise it. The paper concludes with some modest and practical proposals. We suggest, inter alia, that licensing firms to arrange the movement of labour is the most promising short-term approach to increasing temporary mobility.","PeriodicalId":448271,"journal":{"name":"Employment & Labor Law Abstracts eJournal","volume":"122 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123155557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper is an experimental analysis of the role played by workers' expectations in explaining the puzzling long-run persistence of observed discrimination against certain minorities in the labor market. The experiment provides some evidence supporting the theoretical prediction that unequal outcomes may emerge due to disadvantaged workers' wrong expectations of being discriminated against. However, this effect is not long-lasting, since players learn the true state of nature in later stages of the experiment, failing to generate a Self-Confirming Equilibrium driven by wrong beliefs. The strategy method provides additional evidence that expectations matter.
{"title":"Discrimination and Workers' Expectations: Experimental Evidence","authors":"Antonio Filippin","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.434581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.434581","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is an experimental analysis of the role played by workers' expectations in explaining the puzzling long-run persistence of observed discrimination against certain minorities in the labor market. The experiment provides some evidence supporting the theoretical prediction that unequal outcomes may emerge due to disadvantaged workers' wrong expectations of being discriminated against. However, this effect is not long-lasting, since players learn the true state of nature in later stages of the experiment, failing to generate a Self-Confirming Equilibrium driven by wrong beliefs. The strategy method provides additional evidence that expectations matter.","PeriodicalId":448271,"journal":{"name":"Employment & Labor Law Abstracts eJournal","volume":"121 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125983764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Privacy raises particularly difficult and important questions in the employment context. Employees and employers have competing interests in disclosing and preventing disclosure of information. Maximizing the value of a firm often requires that confidential business information be widely disseminated within the firm, but not disclosed outside the firm. At the same time, excessive protection of the employers' information could reduce employees' mobility and the flow of valuable information in society. Employers, in turn, need information about employees in order to evaluate them for hiring and to monitor them while they are employed. But employees also may have an interest in keeping some information private to protect their personal space or to hide shirking or other bad acts that are detrimental to the firm. Appropriately balancing employers', employees' and society's interests in workplace privacy contributes to social wealth by encouraging efficient employment relationships. This requires sensitivity to the unique characteristics of the economic activity that gives rise to the specific organizational form chosen by a given firm. In some cases, the optimal solution to this problem can involve employment contracts that allow intrusions into an employee's privacy, and restrictions on an employee's freedom, including restrictions that extend beyond the employees tenure at the firm. To be sure, employees may prefer ex post not to be bound by restrictions on employment or disclosure and not to be monitored by the employer. But employees are better off ex ante to the extent that they share in the value of efficient arrangements through higher compensation. On the other hand, contractual restrictions on the dissemination of employer information or on employee mobility may benefit both employees and employers but reduce social wealth because of their negative effects on development of intellectual property and competition. However, regulation of these contracts may impose more costs than benefits. For example, restricting protection of employer information can inhibit firms from disseminating confidential business information to employees and, in turn, force revision of relationships with employees. Protecting the privacy of employees' information can inhibit monitoring of employees and force employers to resort to non-agency-type relationships. This paper is both normative and positive. It shows why contracts regarding these issues should be enforced. It also shows that the contracts are enforced despite seemingly mandatory state rules preventing enforcement. The key to understanding the positive analysis is to see the enforcement issue in the interstate context, where both employers and employees are free to choose the states in which they live, contract, and sue.
{"title":"Privacy and Firms","authors":"Bruce H. Kobayashi, Larry E. Ribstein","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.369121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.369121","url":null,"abstract":"Privacy raises particularly difficult and important questions in the employment context. Employees and employers have competing interests in disclosing and preventing disclosure of information. Maximizing the value of a firm often requires that confidential business information be widely disseminated within the firm, but not disclosed outside the firm. At the same time, excessive protection of the employers' information could reduce employees' mobility and the flow of valuable information in society. Employers, in turn, need information about employees in order to evaluate them for hiring and to monitor them while they are employed. But employees also may have an interest in keeping some information private to protect their personal space or to hide shirking or other bad acts that are detrimental to the firm. Appropriately balancing employers', employees' and society's interests in workplace privacy contributes to social wealth by encouraging efficient employment relationships. This requires sensitivity to the unique characteristics of the economic activity that gives rise to the specific organizational form chosen by a given firm. In some cases, the optimal solution to this problem can involve employment contracts that allow intrusions into an employee's privacy, and restrictions on an employee's freedom, including restrictions that extend beyond the employees tenure at the firm. To be sure, employees may prefer ex post not to be bound by restrictions on employment or disclosure and not to be monitored by the employer. But employees are better off ex ante to the extent that they share in the value of efficient arrangements through higher compensation. On the other hand, contractual restrictions on the dissemination of employer information or on employee mobility may benefit both employees and employers but reduce social wealth because of their negative effects on development of intellectual property and competition. However, regulation of these contracts may impose more costs than benefits. For example, restricting protection of employer information can inhibit firms from disseminating confidential business information to employees and, in turn, force revision of relationships with employees. Protecting the privacy of employees' information can inhibit monitoring of employees and force employers to resort to non-agency-type relationships. This paper is both normative and positive. It shows why contracts regarding these issues should be enforced. It also shows that the contracts are enforced despite seemingly mandatory state rules preventing enforcement. The key to understanding the positive analysis is to see the enforcement issue in the interstate context, where both employers and employees are free to choose the states in which they live, contract, and sue.","PeriodicalId":448271,"journal":{"name":"Employment & Labor Law Abstracts eJournal","volume":"99 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132209002","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Whether mandated employee benefit policies are efficient, depends on the ratio of aggregate value attached by employees to the benefit, compared to the aggregate employer cost of providing the benefit. The higher the aggregate value/cost ratio is, the stronger is the justification for implementing the policy. High value/cost ratios are indicative of the existence of market failures in the voluntary provision of the benefit. Mandated benefits, efficient or not, do not entail employer-employee redistributive outcomes. The fact that no employment rate changes can be traced following the enforcement of a mandate program is usually indicative of full employer cost shifting. Policy makers treat the magnitude of cost shifting, as a proxy of the value workers place on the benefit, disregarding the fact that full cost shifting can also result from the inelasticity of labor supply. When inelasticity of labor supply is responsible for full shifting of the costs of the mandate, workers are simply carrying the dead weight cost of the mandate. From an intra-employee perspective, it seems that the public is mainly concerned whether mandates are increasing the unemployment rate. This is true of the minimum wage discourse and the discussions pertaining to the prospects of mandatory employer-provided health insurance. Again, it is assumed that if employment rates are unharmed, the mandate is efficient and equitable since employees are financing the cost of the benefit through decreased wages (health insurance) or increased productivity (minimum wage). The fact that employers do not respond to mandates by decreasing total demand for labor, does not out rule intra-employee redistribution. Mandated benefit schemes, similar to voluntary benefit schemes, reinforce dual labor market practices, in which exempt employees are financing to some extent the costs of providing the benefit to covered employees. This structure of cross-subsidy is efficient from the employer's perspective. It raises productivity and commitment on the part of internal workers. However, it increases compensation disparity between internal and external labor market employees.
{"title":"Cross-Employee Redistribution Effects of Mandated Employee Benefits","authors":"Sharon Rabin-Margalioth","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.334081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.334081","url":null,"abstract":"Whether mandated employee benefit policies are efficient, depends on the ratio of aggregate value attached by employees to the benefit, compared to the aggregate employer cost of providing the benefit. The higher the aggregate value/cost ratio is, the stronger is the justification for implementing the policy. High value/cost ratios are indicative of the existence of market failures in the voluntary provision of the benefit. Mandated benefits, efficient or not, do not entail employer-employee redistributive outcomes. The fact that no employment rate changes can be traced following the enforcement of a mandate program is usually indicative of full employer cost shifting. Policy makers treat the magnitude of cost shifting, as a proxy of the value workers place on the benefit, disregarding the fact that full cost shifting can also result from the inelasticity of labor supply. When inelasticity of labor supply is responsible for full shifting of the costs of the mandate, workers are simply carrying the dead weight cost of the mandate. From an intra-employee perspective, it seems that the public is mainly concerned whether mandates are increasing the unemployment rate. This is true of the minimum wage discourse and the discussions pertaining to the prospects of mandatory employer-provided health insurance. Again, it is assumed that if employment rates are unharmed, the mandate is efficient and equitable since employees are financing the cost of the benefit through decreased wages (health insurance) or increased productivity (minimum wage). The fact that employers do not respond to mandates by decreasing total demand for labor, does not out rule intra-employee redistribution. Mandated benefit schemes, similar to voluntary benefit schemes, reinforce dual labor market practices, in which exempt employees are financing to some extent the costs of providing the benefit to covered employees. This structure of cross-subsidy is efficient from the employer's perspective. It raises productivity and commitment on the part of internal workers. However, it increases compensation disparity between internal and external labor market employees.","PeriodicalId":448271,"journal":{"name":"Employment & Labor Law Abstracts eJournal","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126493161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
People are likely to obtain utility not only from actual outcomes, but also from the conditions which lead to these outcomes. This paper empirically tests the notion of procedural utility for the context of work relationships. Using a large survey among British workers, we find substantial procedural effects on the utility workers derive from their pay. Utility from pay is not only strongly influenced by economic outcomes (the pay levels workers get for given inputs), but also by the way pay is determined. The findings are robust to a series of alternative explanations.
{"title":"Do Workers Enjoy Procedural Utility?","authors":"Matthias Benz, A. Stutzer","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.336581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.336581","url":null,"abstract":"People are likely to obtain utility not only from actual outcomes, but also from the conditions which lead to these outcomes. This paper empirically tests the notion of procedural utility for the context of work relationships. Using a large survey among British workers, we find substantial procedural effects on the utility workers derive from their pay. Utility from pay is not only strongly influenced by economic outcomes (the pay levels workers get for given inputs), but also by the way pay is determined. The findings are robust to a series of alternative explanations.","PeriodicalId":448271,"journal":{"name":"Employment & Labor Law Abstracts eJournal","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121131373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EU legislation mandating European Works Councils (EWCs) was enacted in 1994. Although much descriptive information on the content of EWC agreements exists, little is known of the determinants and impact of these new institutional arrangements. In the present treatment, we exploit a question on EWC status in the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey to provide the first econometric investigation of the determinants of (largely) voluntary transnational councils and their potential effect on establishment performance and employee attitudes. Many of the sharper criticisms of EWCs are not substantiated in the data, even if the benefits appear muted.
{"title":"What Do We Know About the New European Works Councils? Some Preliminary Evidence from Britain","authors":"J. Addison, C. Belfield","doi":"10.1111/1467-9485.00240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9485.00240","url":null,"abstract":"EU legislation mandating European Works Councils (EWCs) was enacted in 1994. Although much descriptive information on the content of EWC agreements exists, little is known of the determinants and impact of these new institutional arrangements. In the present treatment, we exploit a question on EWC status in the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey to provide the first econometric investigation of the determinants of (largely) voluntary transnational councils and their potential effect on establishment performance and employee attitudes. Many of the sharper criticisms of EWCs are not substantiated in the data, even if the benefits appear muted.","PeriodicalId":448271,"journal":{"name":"Employment & Labor Law Abstracts eJournal","volume":"139 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128878792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Developments in regulation theory have generated a wide-ranging literature aimed at making regulation more effective. A general dissatisfaction with 'command and control' regulation by the state has led to an upsurge in interest in the possibilities for corporate self-regulation. This article examines the ramifications for international labour regulation of a recent proposal, the 'Ratcheting Labor Standards' (RLS) thesis of American academics Charles Sabel, Dara O'Rourke and Archon Fung. The traditional conception of international labour regulation as embodied in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) is used as a basis for the analysis of RLS. The authors of the RLS thesis argue that their proposal charts a third way between the polar extremes of inflexible, fixed-rule regulation and a certain form of deregulation. The article concludes that the RLS proposal has much in common with proposals for business self-regulation, and that, taken as a whole, it has radical elements that are close to the deregulatory pole. This conclusion is based on a number of fundamental assumptions which appear to be implicit in the RLS thesis: first, that the transnational realm is a regulatory void, secondly, that the domestic sphere (in developing states) is ungoverned, and thirdly, that the appropriate subject of regulation is the multinational firm. Each of these assumptions represents a profound challenge to the legitimacy of the ILO, its multilevel system of regulation and its traditional philosophies of regulation.
监管理论的发展产生了广泛的文献，旨在使监管更有效。对国家“命令和控制”式监管的普遍不满，导致人们对企业自我监管的可能性产生了浓厚的兴趣。本文考察了美国学者Charles Sabel、Dara O' rourke和Archon Fung最近提出的“棘轮劳工标准”(Ratcheting Labor Standards, RLS)论文对国际劳工法规的影响。国际劳工组织(ILO)所体现的国际劳工法规的传统概念被用作分析劳动合同法的基础。RLS论文的作者认为，他们的建议在僵化的、固定规则的监管和某种形式的放松管制这两个极端之间描绘了第三条道路。文章的结论是，RLS提案与商业自我监管提案有很多共同之处，而且，作为一个整体，它具有接近放松监管极点的激进元素。这一结论是基于一些基本假设，这些假设似乎隐含在RLS的论点中:首先，跨国领域是一个监管空白;其次，国内领域(在发展中国家)是不受治理的;第三，适当的监管主体是跨国公司。这些假设中的每一个都对劳工组织的合法性、其多层次的监管体系及其传统的监管理念构成了深刻的挑战。
{"title":"The Sound of One Hand Clapping? The 'Ratcheting Labour Standards' Proposal and International Labour Law","authors":"J. Murray","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.308261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.308261","url":null,"abstract":"Developments in regulation theory have generated a wide-ranging literature aimed at making regulation more effective. A general dissatisfaction with 'command and control' regulation by the state has led to an upsurge in interest in the possibilities for corporate self-regulation. This article examines the ramifications for international labour regulation of a recent proposal, the 'Ratcheting Labor Standards' (RLS) thesis of American academics Charles Sabel, Dara O'Rourke and Archon Fung. The traditional conception of international labour regulation as embodied in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) is used as a basis for the analysis of RLS. The authors of the RLS thesis argue that their proposal charts a third way between the polar extremes of inflexible, fixed-rule regulation and a certain form of deregulation. The article concludes that the RLS proposal has much in common with proposals for business self-regulation, and that, taken as a whole, it has radical elements that are close to the deregulatory pole. This conclusion is based on a number of fundamental assumptions which appear to be implicit in the RLS thesis: first, that the transnational realm is a regulatory void, secondly, that the domestic sphere (in developing states) is ungoverned, and thirdly, that the appropriate subject of regulation is the multinational firm. Each of these assumptions represents a profound challenge to the legitimacy of the ILO, its multilevel system of regulation and its traditional philosophies of regulation.","PeriodicalId":448271,"journal":{"name":"Employment & Labor Law Abstracts eJournal","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126216625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The current debate over cost-benefit concerns in agencies' evaluations of government regulations is not so much whether to consider costs and benefits at all but rather what belongs in the estimated costs and benefits themselves. Overlaid is the long-standing concern that the distribution of costs and benefits needs some consideration in policy evaluations. In a recent article in the University of Chicago Law Review, Robert Frank and Cass Sunstein proposed a relatively simple method for adding distributional concerns to policy evaluation that enlarges the typically constructed estimates of the individual's willingness to pay for safer jobs or safer products. One might pay more for safety if it were the result of a government regulation that mandated greater safety across-the-board. The reason, Frank and Sunstein argue, for enlarging current estimates is that someone who takes a safer job or buys a safer product gives up wages or pays a higher price, which then moves him or her down in the ladder of income left over to buy other things. Alternatively, a worker who is given a safer job via a government regulation has no relative income consequences because all affected workers have lower pay. We show that when considering the core of the Frank and Sunstein proposal carefully one concludes that current regulatory evaluations should be left alone because there is no reason to believe that relative positional effects are important either to personal decisions in general or to currently constructed cost-benefit calculations of government regulations in particular. One of the practical problems with trying to consider relative position of income and consumption when estimating willingness to pay is that there is no unique way to ascertain from a statistical model the person's actual social reference group. A researcher must specify ex ante a reference group and then net out the behavioral effects of a possibly incorrectly attributed reference group's behavior on the individual. There is no well-established result from survey data for a typical person's economic reference group. Moreover, the econometric literature generally finds that reference group or social interaction effects are small and easily ignored, perhaps because the relative positional effects of workplace or product safety offset possible reference group effects on residual income (income net of the implicit cost of the extra product or job safety). It is also the case that Frank and Sunstein's recommended increase in the value of willingness to pay for safety used in current regulatory evaluations is already considered. Regulatory evaluations often include a pessimistic and an optimistic value of likely benefits, and Frank and Sunstein's suggested revised value of willingness to pay is still below the optimistic case that carefully formulated cost-benefit studies use. It is easy to show that almost doubling the estimated value of a statistical life would have an inconsequential effect on
目前关于各机构在评估政府法规时所考虑的成本效益问题的争论，与其说是要不要考虑成本和效益，不如说是成本和效益本身应该包含什么。长期存在的一个问题是，在政策评价中需要对成本和收益的分配进行一些考虑。在《芝加哥大学法律评论》(University of Chicago Law Review)最近发表的一篇文章中，罗伯特•弗兰克(Robert Frank)和卡斯•桑斯坦(Cass Sunstein)提出了一种相对简单的方法，将分配问题添加到政策评估中，从而扩大了对个人愿意为更安全的工作或更安全的产品买单的典型构建估计。如果这是政府规定全面提高安全性的结果，人们可能会为安全付出更多的钱。弗兰克和桑斯坦认为，扩大当前估计的原因是，从事一份更安全的工作或购买更安全产品的人放弃了工资或支付了更高的价格，这使得他或她在剩余收入阶梯上的地位下降，从而购买了其他东西。另一种情况是，一个工人通过政府规定获得了一份更安全的工作，他的相对收入不会受到影响，因为所有受影响的工人的工资都较低。我们表明，当仔细考虑弗兰克和桑斯坦提案的核心时，我们得出的结论是，当前的监管评估应该被单独考虑，因为没有理由相信相对位置效应对一般的个人决策或目前构建的政府监管的成本效益计算是重要的。在估计支付意愿时，试图考虑收入和消费的相对地位，其中一个实际问题是，没有一种独特的方法可以从统计模型中确定一个人的实际社会参照群体。研究人员必须事先指定参照组，然后排除可能被错误归因于参照组的行为对个体的行为影响。对于一个典型的人的经济参照组，调查数据并没有一个完善的结果。此外，计量经济学文献普遍发现，参考群体或社会互动效应很小，很容易被忽略，这可能是因为工作场所或产品安全的相对位置效应抵消了可能的参考群体对剩余收入的影响(收入减去额外产品或工作安全的隐性成本)。此外，弗兰克和桑斯坦提出的在当前监管评估中增加安全性支付意愿的建议也已被考虑在内。监管评估通常包括可能收益的悲观值和乐观值，弗兰克和桑斯坦建议的支付意愿修正值仍然低于仔细制定成本收益研究使用的乐观情况。很容易证明，将统计寿命的估计价值几乎翻倍，将对一系列广泛监管政策的经济可取性产生无关紧要的影响。最后，我们认为，在监管评估领域可以做出的最重要的改进是，相关机构更多地遵守通常被认为是精心完成的成本效益研究的框架，以及机构在推荐法规时更多地实际使用适当完成的成本效益研究。
{"title":"Cost-Benefit Analysis: Why Relative Economic Position Does Not Matter","authors":"T. Kniesner, W. Viscusi","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.305180","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.305180","url":null,"abstract":"The current debate over cost-benefit concerns in agencies' evaluations of government regulations is not so much whether to consider costs and benefits at all but rather what belongs in the estimated costs and benefits themselves. Overlaid is the long-standing concern that the distribution of costs and benefits needs some consideration in policy evaluations. In a recent article in the University of Chicago Law Review, Robert Frank and Cass Sunstein proposed a relatively simple method for adding distributional concerns to policy evaluation that enlarges the typically constructed estimates of the individual's willingness to pay for safer jobs or safer products. One might pay more for safety if it were the result of a government regulation that mandated greater safety across-the-board. The reason, Frank and Sunstein argue, for enlarging current estimates is that someone who takes a safer job or buys a safer product gives up wages or pays a higher price, which then moves him or her down in the ladder of income left over to buy other things. Alternatively, a worker who is given a safer job via a government regulation has no relative income consequences because all affected workers have lower pay. We show that when considering the core of the Frank and Sunstein proposal carefully one concludes that current regulatory evaluations should be left alone because there is no reason to believe that relative positional effects are important either to personal decisions in general or to currently constructed cost-benefit calculations of government regulations in particular. One of the practical problems with trying to consider relative position of income and consumption when estimating willingness to pay is that there is no unique way to ascertain from a statistical model the person's actual social reference group. A researcher must specify ex ante a reference group and then net out the behavioral effects of a possibly incorrectly attributed reference group's behavior on the individual. There is no well-established result from survey data for a typical person's economic reference group. Moreover, the econometric literature generally finds that reference group or social interaction effects are small and easily ignored, perhaps because the relative positional effects of workplace or product safety offset possible reference group effects on residual income (income net of the implicit cost of the extra product or job safety). It is also the case that Frank and Sunstein's recommended increase in the value of willingness to pay for safety used in current regulatory evaluations is already considered. Regulatory evaluations often include a pessimistic and an optimistic value of likely benefits, and Frank and Sunstein's suggested revised value of willingness to pay is still below the optimistic case that carefully formulated cost-benefit studies use. It is easy to show that almost doubling the estimated value of a statistical life would have an inconsequential effect on ","PeriodicalId":448271,"journal":{"name":"Employment & Labor Law Abstracts eJournal","volume":"100 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117258136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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