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The primary motive of a minimum wage policy is to provide a wage floor for poorly paid workers and improve their welfare. In Nigeria, real minimum wage declined by 60 per cent between 1974 and 2011, thus reducing the welfare of workers. The wage gap between low skilled and high skilled workers have also widened over the years in favour of the latter. There are concerns that the series of minimum wage increase in Nigeria may not be welfare-enhancing. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study examined the welfare effects of minimum wage increase in Nigeria using a computable general equilibrium model. The model was calibrated using a 2006 Social Accounting Matrix and four sets of scenarios (20, 35, 50 and 140 per cent wage increases), were simulated.

The findings show that employers substituted other labour categories for minimum wage workers. This increases the wage rates of other labour. The consumer price index also increased as firms partly pass-on increased labour cost to consumers. Generally, the simulations show that minimum wage policies worsen the welfare of its intended beneficiaries, due to negative impact on prices and employment.

This study deviates from existing studies on minimum wage in Nigeria, by providing a proper disaggregation of the labour market that represents the Nigerian economy. In this regard, the informal sector was accommodated and the potential impact of the minimum wage on this sector determined. It also adopted the equivalent variation welfare measure which incorporates price and consumption effects in measuring welfare.

Worker welfare and modern slavery within the fashion industry remain a key supply chain challenge for many retailers, consumers, governments and advocacy groups. Yet, despite publicised worker-welfare violations, many fashion retailers continue to post record sales and profits, indicating that consumer concern does not always translate at the cash register. Research has shown that worker welfare is a less salient area of concern for fashion consumers, and the aim of this research is to investigate the reasons why this may be the case.

Due to the exploratory nature of the research, a qualitative methodology was deemed the most appropriate. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with Australian fast-fashion consumers to investigate the underlying reasons worker-welfare violations are less likely to elicit pro-social consumer behavioural change and are a less salient area of concern.

This study found that consumers perceive worker-welfare concerns at both a proximal and cultural distance to themselves, and therefore struggle to connect with the issues associated with modern slavery. Additionally, there was an underlying social consensus that exploitative practices are an accepted part of the fast-fashion supply chain to ensure the continuation of low-cost clothing. Despite an underlying awareness of exploitative practices and acknowledgement that modern slavery is ethically wrong, other consumer values often influenced purchase behaviour and the level of concern expressed towards garment workers.

This is the first study to apply psychological distance in a fast-fashion context to better understand consumer perceptions towards modern slavery. Responding to calls for further research into ethical consumption of apparel, this study develops an in-depth understanding of the reasons why worker welfare is a less salient area of concern for fast-fashion consumers. Extending on current literature, this study qualitatively investigates consumer sentiment towards worker welfare, identifying the greatest barriers to consumers' levels of concern. In addition to a theoretical contribution to the fashion, ethics and business literature, this article provides key insight to guide practice.

In the United States, welfare-to-work workers are under scrutiny from everyone and must defend the program if they want to defend themselves as good workers and good people. I build on past research that has examined how workers manage their emotions to cope with dilemmas in their jobs in a number of settings including hospitals, nursing homes, restaurants, and airplanes.

In this chapter, I draw on data from an in-depth case study of a rural North Carolina (USA) welfare office using data primarily from observations and interviews with 19 welfare-to-work workers.

Within this highly constrained and contradictory work environment, workers recreate and redefine themselves as good workers and good people while simultaneously punishing program participants. To achieve this difficult task, workers manage their emotions through two key strategies, using institutionalized rhetoric and tough love paternalism, to justify their actions toward participants.

I add to the existing literature by examining how welfare-to-work workers cope with the emotional and moral dilemmas of their jobs.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

The rise of fast fashion has changed the face of global fashion. Despite sector growth, critics have questioned the level of obsolescence, encouragement of over-consumption and fast fashion's unsustainable business practices. Specifically, mounting concerns surround the impact on environmental, worker and animal welfare. Accordingly, the aim of this current work is to understand the influence of consumer's values on ethical consumption in a fast-fashion context.

An online survey was designed to collect responses relating to personal values and ethical concerns towards animal and worker welfare issues, as well as environmental concerns. A total of 350 US-based fast-fashion consumers completed the survey via Amazon MTurk. Factor analyses and structural equation modelling were used to analyse and test a theoretically hypothesised model.

This study found that self-transcendence values and openness to change values have a positive impact on consumers' levels of ethical concern towards animal welfare, the environment and worker welfare concerns within the fashion industry. Furthermore, a consumer's level of concern towards animal welfare and the environment positively influences a consumer's likeliness to purchase ethically marketed fast fashion.

This is the first study to investigate the role of consumer values and their influence on ethical concerns within the fashion industry and the impact of these concerns on intentions to purchase ethically marketed fast fashion. Responding to calls for further research into ethical consumption of apparel, this study includes all elements of ethical consumption identified, including animal welfare. This study identifies ethical areas of concern salient amongst fast-fashion consumers and provides a deeper understanding of the values impacting the level of ethical concerns surrounding animal welfare, the environment and worker welfare.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the food delivery sector to boom as people continue to rely on services provided by online catering platforms (OCPs). However, because of the nature of sharing economy employment, gig workers’ contributions went largely ignored until intervention from institutional governance. This study aims to explore the impacts of labor market transformation after the Chinese Government issued guidance to promote gig workers’ welfare as a focal case.

Focus groups and the Delphi technique were used to explore associated impacts on OCPs and gig workers based on governance theory.

Results show that institutional governance negatively affected OCPs’ operating cost structure but sustained gig workers’ welfare. The dual effects of market mechanism and institutional governance in the sharing economy are needed to be balanced for labor market transformation.

Long-term equilibrium can be fulfilled, given the growing food-related demand for the market mechanism. Social reciprocity is expected to be realized through institutional governance for gig workers’ welfare.

This study suggests that moving from market governance to stakeholder governance, as mediated by state governance, could transform gig workers’ labor structure in the gig economy. This study presents an integrated governance theory to enhance the epistemology of institutional governance.

The association between income distribution and measures of health has been well established such that societies with smaller income differences between rich and poor people have increased longevity (Wilkinson, 1996). While more egalitarian societies tend to have better health, in most developed societies people lower down the social scale have death rates two to four times higher than those nearer the top. Inequities in income distribution and the consequent disparities in health status are particularly problematic for many women, including single mothers, older women, and women of colour. The feminization of poverty is the rapidly increasing proportion of women in the adult poverty population (Doyal, 1995; Fraser, 1987).

Both labour groups and the national press frequently justify demands for protection against industrial adjustment on the grounds that it leads to the destruction of communities and traditional ways of life, with a devastating effect on welfare. To justify this claim in the context of a Ricardian open‐economy model requires quite strong restrictions on worker preferences, but a plausible case can be made. Presents a model based on the attachment of workers to their socio‐cultural environment, and suggests some policy options for redressing trade‐induced inequities.

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically examine the effects of outward FDI on domestic aggregate productivity and welfare.

This paper develops a North-South general equilibrium model in which firms' technology adoption and workers’ skill-technology matching are endogenous. Technologically heterogeneous firms in the North make explicit delocalization decisions to the South through FDI and heterogeneous workers endogenously sort into different technologies according to their respective comparative advantages.

This paper highlights how globalization-induced technology-upgrading mechanisms of firms and workers increase aggregate productivity and welfare, though at the cost of increased income inequalities. The model shows also that the same technological shock (favoring high-tech firms) leads to different results in closed and open economy: both technology up- and downgrading occur in closed economy, while technology upgrading prevails in open economy.

By modeling and exploring the technology-skill links in a North-South setting, this paper provides richer predictions on the implications of outward FDI. In particular, the model highlights that the initial openness degree of the economy matters: the more open the country initially, the more technology upgrading as globalization proceeds, leading to higher aggregate productivity and welfare gains.