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Paulo de Andrade Jacinto, Eduardo Pontual Ribeiro and Tulio Cravo
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate skilled labor demand determinants in Brazil, considering alternatives explanations: changes in relative wages, non-homothetic technology…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate skilled labor demand determinants in Brazil, considering alternatives explanations: changes in relative wages, non-homothetic technology output growth and skill-biased technical change.
Design/methodology/approach
This study relies on a rich and unique matched employer-employee data set for manufacturing sector, from 1996 to 2003. The analysis considers a translog functional form labor demand system estimated using seemingly unrelated regression and instrumental variables to control for possible measurement errors and wages and output endogeneity.
Findings
The demand function estimates suggest that: labor demand underlying technology is non-homothetic, research and development investment is biased toward skilled workers, the non-homothetic technology is not skill biased so output changes contributed positively for skilled labor increase, relative wages played a significant role and international trade has little explanatory power explaining labor demand shifts.
Originality/value
This is the first paper that considers alternative explanations for the increase in the demand of skilled workers for manufacturing in Brazil simultaneously: changes in relative wages, output changes with non-homothetic technology, skill-biased technical change and, to a lesser extent, international trade. The study challenges current empirical evidence that considers trade and trade liberalization as the main factor explaining labor demand shifts.
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Baumol has argued that problems experienced by cities in providing metropolitan services might be the product of an uneven growth process. Slow productivity growth sectors, he…
Abstract
Baumol has argued that problems experienced by cities in providing metropolitan services might be the product of an uneven growth process. Slow productivity growth sectors, he argues, could experience increased real costs and, unless demand for their service is highly inelastic, their outputs could decline severely. Looks at these issues in a framework which allows explicitly both for demand, for examination of the sources of productivity growth, and for substitution between productive factors. This extended framework allows for verification and extension of Baumol’s results. For instance, it is found that with uneven growth the relative price of the non‐progressive sector’s output will rise if that good is normal.
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Xu Tian, Fujin Yi and Xiaohua Yu
The purpose of this paper is to investigate Chinese farmers’ adaptation behavior in the context of the rising cost of labor in agriculture. As the cost of labor increases, farmers…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate Chinese farmers’ adaptation behavior in the context of the rising cost of labor in agriculture. As the cost of labor increases, farmers will either reallocate their budget to different inputs or change the structure of agricultural production to maximize profit.
Design/methodology/approach
The Rural Fixed Point Observation data set between 2004 and 2010 is employed in the empirical analysis of this study. Both the compensated and uncompensated demand elasticities with respect to wages are estimated by adopting the translog cost function and the profit function.
Findings
The results show that labor input will drop down significantly as a response to rising wages. Land, fertilizer and intermediate inputs are net complements of labor, whereas machinery appears to be net substitute for labor. In addition, the authors also separate the expansion effect from the substitution effect and find that farmers will shift to grain production with intensive use of fertilizer and from wheat and corn to rice as a response to the rising cost of labor.
Originality/value
This study adopts the classical household model to incorporate various adaptation behaviors of farmers into one framework and decomposes the total effect of the rising cost of labor on input demand into an expansion effect and a substitution effect, which provides a better understanding of farmers’ adaptation behavior.
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