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Governments in a number of countries have introduced policies to increase the labour force participation of persons with disabilities. Many of these policies have displayed a legislative or compulsory element as in the case of workforce quotas. In 1981 the Australian Government introduced a price strategy in which employers were induced to increase their job offers to the disabled through a system of wage subsidy and workplace modification schemes. The performance of these schemes became an interesting test of the general policy of using market variables to influence what many regard as essentially a social problem. The results achieved in this article indicate that the wage subsidy programme has not been effective nor, given current employer attitudes, is it likely to be in the future.

This paper aims to examine the effects of marginal and general wage subsidies on employment and income distribution.

The paper constructs a theoretical, partial‐equilibrium model of an economy in which a large number of competitive firms produce a homogeneous output good. Involuntary unemployment arises from a too high and rigid wage. By conducting comparative static analyses, the paper evaluates the impact of general and marginal wage subsidies on employment and incomes.

The paper shows that a marginal wage subsidy is a fiscally more efficient instrument for employment creation than a general wage subsidy because it resembles a combination of a general wage subsidy with a profit tax. These favorable effects persist even if between‐firm displacement effects are taken into account.

In line with most of the literature on marginal employment subsidies, attention is restricted to a partial‐equilibrium analysis in which the wage is assumed to be fixed. This helps to sharpen the focus on between‐firm competition, but is perhaps implausible when analyzing a general‐equilibrium setting. The inclusion of endogenous wage setting is bound to provide an interesting area for future research.

If politicians want to implement a wage subsidy scheme that has to be self‐financing, marginal wage subsidies are an effective policy instrument for employment creation. Its downside is an inefficient allocation of labor among firms, because some firms become larger than is necessary.

The paper provides a novel approach to model the between‐firm displacement effects of marginal wage subsidies and derives policy conclusions.

As the contemporary recession has unfolded in the United Kingdom, increasing reliance has been placed by the government on measures of employment subsidisation to contain the accompanying rise in unemployment. Employment subsidy programmes of varying natures have also been introduced in a large number of other Western countries, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Finland, Sweden and Ireland.

This study aims to create a system dynamics simulation model to forecast the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) if some decision-making is executed to reduce the negative of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In particular, this study will focus on SMEs that belong to the furniture industry because the furniture industry is one of the leading industries in Indonesia.

The study develops a system dynamics-based model by using three subsystems, i.e. the “production subsystem,” “demand and revenue subsystem” and “raw material (or wood supply) subsystem.”

The best scenario is the third scenario which increases the capacity to the normal situation and government subsidy during and after the pandemic. This scenario gives the best performance for industry revenue and gross domestic product (GDP). However, for the government, the most significant expenditure occurs in the third scenario. This seems a trade-off for the government whether to save the wooden-based furniture industry by encouraging the industry to continue operating during the pandemic accompanied by high subsidies or limiting the activities of the wooden-based furniture industry to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by providing low subsidies.

First, this study does not try to combine the system dynamics (SD) methodology with the other method or use a multi-methodology since SD has several limitations and the other method may have several advantages compared to SD. Second, the models used in this study do not consider the decline in forest area and quality. Third, the demand for wooden-based furniture is obtained from historical data on domestic and foreign sales and fourth, the model does not include the government budget as a constraint to make any subsidy to help the SMEs.

This study provides essential insights into implementing the policies in the world pandemic situation when SMEs face lockdown policy.

The study revealed that relevant policy scenarios could be built after simulating and analyzing each scenario's effect on SMEs' performance during the pandemic.

This study will enrich the previous study on the impact of the pandemic on SMEs and the dynamic system modeling on SMEs. The previous study discussed the pandemic's impact on SME performance and the impact's analysis in isolation from the dynamic nature of SME owners' decisions or government policy. In this study, the impact generated from the pandemic situation could be different depending on the decision and policies taken by managers from SMEs and the government.

We estimate a dynamic programming model of schooling decisions in which the degree of risk aversion can be inferred from schooling decisions. In our model, individuals are heterogeneous with respect to school and market abilities but homogeneous with respect to the degree of risk aversion. We allow endogenous schooling attainments to affect the level of risk experienced in labor market earnings through wage dispersion and employment rate dispersion. We find a low degree of relative risk aversion (0.93) and the estimates indicate that both wage and employment rate dispersions decrease significantly with schooling attainments. We find that a counterfactual increase in risk aversion will increase schooling attainments. Finally, the low degree of risk aversion implies that an increase in earnings dispersion would have little effect on schooling attainments.

The purpose of this paper is to compare a firm’s net cost and post-apprenticeship benefits of providing apprenticeship training in Austria and Switzerland: two countries with many similarities but some critical institutional differences.

The authors draw on detailed workplace data with information on the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training, as well as on hiring costs for skilled workers from the external labour market. The authors use nearest-neighbour matching models to compare Austrian firms with similar Swiss firms based on observable characteristics.

On average, a Swiss firm generates an annual net benefit of €3,400 from training an apprentice, whereas a firm in Austria incurs net costs of €4,200. The impetus for this difference is largely a higher relative apprentice pay in Austria. However, compared with Swiss firms, Austrian firms generate a higher post-training return by retaining a higher share of apprentices and savings on future hiring costs.

The authors demonstrate that apprenticeship systems can exist under different institutional environments. For countries currently in the process of establishing or expanding apprenticeship systems, the comparative analysis clearly shows that policymakers should consider more than just one country’s particular apprenticeship model.

The authors provide a first comparative analysis between two apprenticeship countries that empirically assesses a firm’s costs and benefits of training during an apprenticeship programme and also provides a monetary value of a particular type of post-training benefits that firms can generate by retaining former apprentices as skilled workers (i.e. savings in future hiring costs for skilled workers).

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically investigate the impact of wage pacts on economic growth.

This paper presents an innovation driven endogenous growth model, where firms and unions bargain over wages.

Finds that the degree of centralization of the bargaining structure plays a crucial rule for economic performance. Central bargaining, which incorporates the leapfrogging externality incorporated in firm‐level bargaining, will yield lower rates of unemployment for a given rate of economic growth. The increase in labor resources will in turn also yield faster growth rates in a corporatist economy. Indeed, when unions focus on issues other than short term wage increases, they may even outperform the non‐unionized economy, as they can internalize the knowledge externality through long‐term wage moderation pacts.

The paper is theoretical with some anecdotal evidence, and lacks thorough empirical testing.

There are strong implications for economic policy, suggesting the promotion of wage pacts. Before implementation, prior empirical conformation of the results is required.

This is the first paper that demonstrates under which conditions unions can promote economic growth and reduce unemployment through long‐term wage pacts.

Examines the compensation method used in state‐owned enterprises in the People′s Republic of China. A questionnaire survey of 504 workers′ attitudes towards compensation practices regarding wages, bonuses, pensions, unemployment compensation and other incentives was conducted. Research results revealed that there was strong agreement among respondents for the ranking of the different forms of compensation practices. The respondents preferred a performance‐based compensation system as opposed to an egalitarian system. These results give some insight into designing a compensation package and the direction for economic reforms in enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how active labour market policy (ALMP) training programmes and hiring subsidies increase or decrease differences in the unemployment risk between lesser and higher educated people during an economic downturn. A focus is put on potential job competition dynamics and cumulative (dis)advantages of the lesser and higher educated.

The paper uses multi-level data. The fifth wave (2010) of the European Social Survey was used and combined with macro-level data on labour market policies of the OECD. The sample consisted of 18,172 observations in 19 countries.

The results show that higher levels of participation and spending on training policies are related to a smaller difference in the unemployment risks of the educational groups. Higher training policy intensity is associated with a lower unemployment risk for the lesser educated and a higher unemployment risk for the higher educated. This implies that the lesser educated are better able to withstand downward pressure from the higher educated, thereby, reducing downward displacement during an economic downturn. Hiring subsidies do not seem to be associated with the impact of education on unemployment.

The paper adds to the discussion on ALMP training and hiring subsidies that are primarily rooted in the human capital theory and signalling theory. Both theories ignore the social context of labour market behaviour. The job competition theory and cumulative (dis)advantage theory add to these theories by focussing on the relative position of individuals and the characteristics that accompany the social position of the individual.

The purpose was to compare the net costs and post-apprenticeship benefits of providing apprenticeship training in Austria and Switzerland: two countries with many similarities but also critical institutional differences.

The authors looked at detailed workplace data about the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training, as well as hiring costs for skilled workers from the external labor market. The authors use nearest-neighbor matching models to compare Austrian and Swiss firms.

The main results showed an Austrian firm makes an average of €4,200 per year net investment per apprentice, whereas a comparable Swiss firm generates a net benefit of €3,400 in the same occupations. The differences in net costs could be explained, the authors said, by the different wage structures in the two countries. However, the situation was complicated by the fact that the relatively high apprentice wage in Austria contributed to the survival of firm-based apprenticeship training.

The authors said their results showed that countries expanding their apprenticeship systems should consider different national practices.