The Inequality of Pay in Pre-modern Germany, Late 15th Century to 1889

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Pfister

Abstract The study explores relative labour scarcity in a broad range of activities and relates it to the long-run dynamics of structural change, supply and demand of human capital, and the inequality between men and women. It builds on two recent compilations of wage data and complements these with additional information, particularly on wages in agriculture. From the second quarter of the seventeenth century the skill premium was stable; the first phase of industrialization did not lead to a differentiation of the individual return to human capital. Labour demand from the modern sector stabilized real wages of males from the second quarter of the eighteenth century at least and increased them from the mid-1850s onwards. This opened a wedge between the agricultural and the non-agricultural sectors already for considerable time before the beginnings of industrialization. Finally, the modern era saw two phases of labour market segmentation along gender lines, one in the later sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, the other from the 1840s to the 1870s.

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Weihe Wang ◽  
Weixuan Xia

In light of the special roles of the price of gold on the technological and economic development as well as social aspects of human society, it is of great importance and necessity to develop a series of statistical models that, based on sound reflection of the current structure of the gold market, are able to provide valuable references for trends of the gold price. In fact, the gold price is influenced by a variety of economic factors. For forecasting purposes, it is useful to study the short- and long-run effect of direct and indirect economic factors towards the supply and demand of gold and thus the spot price of gold. To this point, this paper focuses on analyzing the individual and mutual impact of influencing factors on the gold price and, simultaneously, providing a short-term forecast of the price of gold based on the relationships with other major macroeconomic variables. While these relationships are modeled with multiple regression, forecasts of individual factors are obtained under multivariate time series models. The forecasting results are found to be accurate in a relative sense, confirming the significant impact of the factors chosen while indicating the validity of the modeling idea applied.


2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakub Growiec

Human capital is embodied in people of different generations whose lifetimes are finite. We show that the finiteness of people's lives precludes human capital accumulation from driving long-run aggregate economic growth unless sufficiently strong externalities from aggregate human capital are introduced. Two possible channels for carrying forward such externalities are (i) knowledge spillovers and (ii) public education spending. Our findings shed new light on the foundations of the Uzawa–Lucas growth model. We also show that the cross-sectional Mincer equation, generated by a linear human capital accumulation equation at the individual level, does not carry forward to aggregate data.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-150
Author(s):  
Natasha Moeen

This paper models the individual-level social capital effect the credit market constraints that reduce the accumulation of costly human capital. Human capital, in turn, improves an individual’s income as well as the bequest that they intend to leave for their children. It also helps reduce inequality across a country. Finally, the model shows that investment in social capital has a negative relationship with the interest rate, so that the initial inherited bequest of every individual affects the output and investment in the short-run, as well as in the long-run.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (102) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Buffie ◽  
Luis-Felipe Zanna ◽  
Christopher Adam ◽  
Lacina Balma ◽  
Dawit Tessema ◽  
...  

We introduce a new suite of macroeconomic models that extend and complement the Debt, Investment, and Growth (DIG) model widely used at the IMF since 2012. The new DIG-Labor models feature segmented labor markets, efficiency wages and open unemployment, and an informal non-agricultural sector. These features allow for a deeper examination of macroeconomic and fiscal policy programs and their impact on labor market outcomes, inequality, and poverty. The paper illustrates the model's properties by analyzing the growth, debt, and distributional consequences of big-push public investment programs with different mixes of investment in human capital and infrastructure. We show that investment in human capital is much more effective than investment in infrastructure in promoting long-run economic development when investments earn their average estimated returns. The decision about how much to invest in human capital versus infrastructure involves, however, an acute intertemporal trade-off. Because investment in education affects labor productivity with a long lag, it takes 15+ years before net national income, the private capital stock, real wages for the poor, and formal sector employment surpass their counterparts in a program that invests mainly in infrastructure. The ranking of alternative investment programs depends on the policymakers' social discount rate and on the weight of distributional objectives in the social welfare function.


2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 534-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.J. Hughes Hallett

The aggregation of sectoral or regional Phillips curves yields an inflation–unemployment trade-off that is not vertical in the long run if there are mismatches between supply and demand in the regional or sectoral labor markets. This remains true even when the individual Phillips curves are all vertical. This result stems from variations in the slope of the individual short-run Phillips curves, rather than from changes to the equilibrium level of unemployment. It implies a role for the management of the distribution of demand over different sectors or regions, in order to minimize the natural rate of unemployment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 115-119
Author(s):  
M. V. SAVINA ◽  
◽  
A. A. STEPANOV ◽  
I.A. STEPANOV ◽  
◽  
...  

The article highlights the problems of the impact of "digitalization" of society on the formation and transformation of human capital, and above all, the development of new competencies, knowledge and skills. The main components of human capital in the modern era, the features of the formal and informal educational process are clarified and disclosed. The necessity of minimizing the precariat class is proved. The main directions of qualitative improvement of human capital adequate to the challenges of the digital age and globalization are defined.


Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge

If, as Chapter 12 argues, much of Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking remains stable even as he undertakes the novel conspiratorial resistance, what is new in his resistance thinking in the third phase? What receives new theological elaboration is the resistance activity of the individual, which in the first two phases was overshadowed by the resistance role played by the church. Indeed, as this chapter shows, Bonhoeffer’s conspiratorial activity is associated with what he calls free responsible action (type 6), and this is the action of the individual, not the church, in the exercise of vocation. As such, the conspiratorial activity is most closely related to the previously developed type 1 resistance, which includes individual vocational action in response to state injustice. But the conspiratorial activity differs from type 1 resistance as individual vocational action in the extreme situation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordana Djurovic ◽  
Vasilije Djurovic ◽  
Martin M. Bojaj

Abstract This study examines, diagnoses, and assesses appropriate macroeconomic policy responses of the Montenegrin Government to the outbreak of COVID-19. The model econometrically measures the macroeconomic costs using a Bayesian VARX Litterman/Minessota prior to the pandemic disease in terms of demand and supply loss due to illness and closed activities and their effects on GDP growth in various pandemic scenarios. We explore five economic scenarios—shocks—using the available data from January 2006 to December 2019, following real out-of-sample forecasts generated from January 2020 to December 2020. Sensitivity scenarios spanning January 2020 to June 2020 from ± 10 to ± 60% were analyzed. We observed what happens to the supply and demand sides, namely, GDP, tourism, capital stock, human capital, health expenditures, economic freedom, and unemployment. The results show a toll on the GDP, tourism, unemployment, capital stock, and especially human capital for 2020. The recommended policy measures are public finance spending initiatives focused on securing employment and keeping highly qualified staff in Montenegrin companies. Considering all uncertainties, the rebound of the Montenegrin economy could take a few years to reach pre-COVID 19 output levels.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgina Tsagas ◽  
Charlotte Villiers

AbstractCalls are repeatedly made on corporations to respond to the challenges facing the planet from a sustainable development perspective and governments take solace in the idea that corporations' transparency on their corporate activity in relation to sustainability through voluntary reporting is adequately addressing the problem. In practice, however, reporting is failing to deliver truly sustainable results. The article considers the following questions: how does the varied reporting landscape in the field of non-financial reporting impede the objectives of fostering corporations' sustainable practices and which initiative, among the options available, may best meet the sustainability objectives after a decluttering of the landscape takes place?The article argues that the varied corporate reporting landscape constitutes a key obstacle to fostering sustainable corporate behaviour, insofar as the flexible and please all approach followed in the context of corporate sustainability reporting offers little to no real incentive to companies to behave more sustainably and ultimately pleases none in the long run. The case made is that “less is more” in non-financial reporting initiatives and hence the article calls for a revision of key aspects of the European Non-Financial Reporting Directive, which, as is argued, is more likely to achieve the furtherance of sustainable corporate behaviour. Although the different reporting requirements offer the benefits of focussing on different corporate goals and activities, targeting different audiences and allowing for a level of flexibility that respects the individual risks to sustainability associated with each industry, the end result is a landscape that lacks overall consistency and comparability of measurements and accountabilities, making accountability more, rather than less, difficult to achieve.The article acknowledges the existence of several variances relating to the notion of sustainability per se, which continues to remain a contested concept and variances between companies and industries in relation to how each is operating sustainably or unsustainably respectively. Such variances have so far inhibited the legislator from easily outlining through tailored legislation the individual risks to global sustainability in an all-encompassing manner. The end product is a chaotic system of financial reporting, CSR reporting, non-financial reporting and integrated reporting and little progress to increase comparability and credibility in order for companies to be held accountable and to behave in ways that do not harm the planet. A “clean up” of the varied initiatives in the terrain of non-financial reporting is recommended.


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