This book includes a series of papers that mainly discuss the proposition of "double middle-income traps." It analyzes various perspectives of middle-income groups of Russia and China including employment, education, consumption, mobility, social insurance, social values and identity, social and political participation. This book further indicates that the expansion of middle-income groups plays an important role in promoting mass consumption, maintaining continuous and stable economic growth, and overcoming the double middle-income traps. The middle class and middle-income group generally owns higher economic capital and cultural capital and is proved to be the main strength in expanding consumption by many empirical studies. However, the middle class and middle-income group has currently encountered hindrance to upward mobility, life quality, social security and class identity, which prevent the expansion of the middle-income group and improvement of social structure. Through comparing the middle-income groups of these two countries, this book gives us a panoramic view of their social and economic condition. Successfully combining theory and concrete practical guidelines, the book offers a valuable resource for all those active in this dynamic field. The book is important for students, scholars, researchers and professionals in economic and social science fields.

Should trade unions passively respond to turbulent changes in industrial relations or can they innovate and set their own agenda? In the face of technological, economic, political and cultural change, trade unions across Europe face a genuine threat to their past achievements and their future capacity to act and shape industrial relations.In The Challenges to Trade Unions in Europe , a group of prominent authors examines the unions' strategic policies in seven European member states and at the European Union level, as well as their responses to the globalization of economic competition. Using theoretical and historical analysis as well as up-to-date empirical research, they examine the successes of trade unions and their capacity to innovate in order to remain strategic actors in the industrial relations arena. In particular, the authors examine trade union policies responding to topical issues such as training, sustainable growth, flexibility, decentralization, deregulation and neo-liberal state policies. The Challenges to Trade Unions in Europe explores responses to the main economic, managerial, political and socio-cultural features of the transformation process facing trade unions in Europe. It will be welcomed by researchers and students interested in industrial relations, personnel management, and the social and economic implications of European integration.

This book examines the effectiveness of trade and non-trade policies to combat the menace of child labour. Although it has decreased on the global scale in recent years, child labour still remains high, particularly in the developing countries. Keeping in mind the estimated extent of child labour in different regions around the globe, the book offers a detailed critical review of both theoretical and empirical literature on the topic as well as the policies to reduce the incidence of child labour. It also develops a general equilibrium model to demonstrate the possible effects of growth-promoting, non-trade policies, as opposed to direct trade policies, on child labour employment mitigation. The book argues that of the non-trade policies, the introduction of compulsory education appears to be an effective instrument for curtailing the child labour problem when families receive targeted subsidies for sending their children to school. It also shows that appropriately designed and targeted education subsidies can reduce the incidence of child labour and that social protection measures, such as subsidies on school enrolment, also tend to have a positive impact. The book not only opens up research topics for academicians but is also a valuable resource for policy makers.

How far can efficiency be pursued without sacrificing equity? Do fiscal changes designed to improve incentives necessarily lead to greater inequality of incomes? Does the profitability of 'big business' really reflect economies of scale and scope or is it also a reflection of market power? In addressing these and other key questions, a group of internationally acclaimed economists demonstrates why issues of concentration and inequality in economic life are moving to the top of the political agenda in the 1990s. Drawing upon the pioneering work of Peter Hart, this volume reflects the range of his influence from theoretical examinations of measures of industrial concentration and income inequality, to detailed empirical explorations of changes in concentration over time. The volume includes essays on, among other issues, the Hart measure of income mobility, income distribution in Eastern Europe, the UK state pension scheme, trends in the concentration of UK manufacturing in the 1980s, the EC Merger Control Regulation, corporate research and development strategies and corporate technological specialization in international industries. Industrial Concentration and Economic Inequality will be particularly relevant for government policy makers, social analysts and economists concerned with income distribution and industrial policy.

Capitalism With a Human Face is a carefully edited selection of Samuel Brittan's most important recent essays. It covers topics ranging from utilitarianism and the ethics of self-interest, to the principles of macroeconomic policy and how to price people into work without throwing them into poverty. The book will be controversial, for the individualistic ethic, which it is so fashionable to attack, is not merely defended but celebrated. This collection will be of special interest both to readers of Samuel Brittan's articles who would like a more extended treatment and those new to his work. A notable feature is a specially written introduction explaining how the author came to take up political economy and how he arrived at the positions elaborated in this book.

The impact of technical change on employment is investigated in this important new book which offers a critical appraisal of how far current economic analysis and theory can deal with this key policy issue.The Economics of Technology and Employment addresses the impact of technical change on employment from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. After an analytical discussion of theoretical propositions and models put forward by classical and contemporary economists, Dr Vivarelli develops a model to examine the extent to which worker displacement due to technical progress can be offset by compensatory market forces. This model is tested using Italian and US aggregate time-series data. The theoretical discussion and empirical results are combined to demonstrate that the employment impact of labour saving technologies can only be partially counter-balanced by market forces and so economic policy measures could be necessary. This important and innovative volume will be welcomed by economists and policymakers as a major contribution to our theoretical understanding of employment, industrial innovation and technical change.

This book investigates how paid care work and employment are being transformed by policies of social care individualisation in the context of new gig economies of care. Drawing on a case study of the creation of a new individualised care market under Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme the book provides important insights into possible futures for social care employment where care is treated as an individual consumer service. Bringing together sociological, political science and socio-legal approaches the book demonstrates how, in individualised care markets and with ineffective labour laws, risks of business and employment are devolved to frontline care workers. The book argues for an urgent re-evaluation of current policy approaches to care and for new regulatory approaches to protect workers in diverse forms of employment.

This important book goes beyond generalizations and takes a hard-headed look at the real strengths and weaknesses of Keynesian demand management and supply side economics.Keynesianism has failed to reconcile high levels of competitiveness with full employment. This was confirmed in the 1980s by the performance of the UK, the US and West Germany. Sweeping de-regulation has not proved to be an adequate solution. The book shows how effective supply conditions could supplement Keynesian demand management to achieve sustainable levels of high employment. The measures advocated include a system of industrial relations which allows high wages and job security in return for acceptance of a high pace of technological and organizational change; the promotion of skill development as well as intra-firm training programmes; the formation and encouragement of co-operation between different regions. It is argued that the supportive institutions, coupled with effective demand policies would succeed in marrying high employment with internationally competitive production.

For every person who reads this text on the printed page, many more will read it on a computer screen or mobile device. It's a situation that we increasingly take for granted in our digital era, and while it is indicative of the novelty of twenty-first-century capitalism, it is also the key to understanding its driving force: the relentless impulse to commodify our lives in every aspect. Ursula Huws ties together disparate economic, cultural, and political phenomena of the last few decades to form a provocative narrative about the shape of the global capitalist economy at present. She examines the way that advanced information and communications technology has opened up new fields of capital accumulation: in culture and the arts, in the privatization of public services, and in the commodification of human sociality by way of mobile devices and social networking. These trends are in turn accompanied by the dramatic restructuring of work arrangements, opening the way for new contradictions and new forms of labor solidarity and struggle around the planet. Labor in the Global Digital Economy is a forceful critique of our dizzying contemporary moment, one that goes beyond notions of mere connectedness or free-flowing information to illuminate the entrenched mechanisms of exploitation and control at the core of capitalism.

Learning in labour markets is a key feature concerning how labour markets operate. This research reviews discusses classic and important recent contributions by leading scholars concerning how firms learn about worker abilities and other worker attributes. Topics covered include; theory of symmetric learning, evidence of symmetric learning and evidence from asymmetric learning. This research review will serve as a valuable resource for scholars, libraries, and graduate students.

Studies in Human Capital, the first volume of Jacob Mincer's essays to be published in this series, assesses the impact of education and job training on wage growth. It offers an authoritative study of the effects of human capital investments on labor turnover and the impact of technological change on human capital formation.Jacob Mincer's research reveals a rare combination of imaginative empirical analysis guided by a command of theory. His work and professional style have set the standard for empirical economics, especially in the field of labor economics where he has made major contributions to the understanding of the determinants of earnings. This is the first of two volumes containing carefully edited selections of professor Mincer's most important essays, some of which are published here for the first time. Introductions to each volume provide overviews of the interconnections of the topics discussed, their conceptual coherence and empirical significance. Studies in Labor Supply, the second volume of Professor Mincer's essays, is also available as part of this series.

This book brings together two leading researchers in the field to provide a comprehensive overview of the shadow economy from a global perspective. Reviewing the advantages and disadvantages of different ways of measuring the informal sector, the authors evaluate its size and key determinants across the world. Williams and Schneider clearly establish the persistence and prevalence of the shadow economy, analysing the narrowness of existing policy approaches and explaining how these fail to address the key factors for its existence and may even exacerbate the problem. Proposing an alternative way forward, the authors argue that little headway will ever be made in reducing the shadow economy until there are changes not only to the character of formal institutions but also informal institutions (the values, beliefs and norms of citizens) through the introduction of macro-level structural changes. This timely, cutting-edge review of the global shadow economy and how it can be measured and tackled is an invaluable resource for postgraduate students, researchers and policy-makers, particularly those with a interest in tax evasion and informal labour.

In a time of changing technology and cultural shifts, it is difficult to measure some aspects of the workforce. Education and the American Workforce brings together a comprehensive collection of employment and education information from federal statistical agencies. The Census Bureau is the leading source of quality data about the nation's people and economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the principal federal agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the economy. Together, these agencies produce a wealth of information about the American workforce. This book includes information about the jobs that people hold, the occupations that they pursue, the industries where they work, and the education levels that people have attained. In addition to tables, each section also includes relevant figures and highlights of notable data. Some examples of interesting data found inside Education and the American Workforce include: *With no formal educational requirement and a median salary of $22,680, 4.5 million people are employed as retail salespersons, the most of any single occupation. Cashiers and food preparation/serving workers account for another 3.5 million each. There are 2.9 million registered nurses, the most numerous of occupations that require a bachelor's degree. *The biggest numeric decline is expected for Postal Service mail carriers, dropping by about 78,000 in ten years. When combined with other Postal Service occupations-such as clerks, sorters, postmasters, and others-a decline of 140,000 jobs is expected for the Postal Service. *Among the 75 largest counties, Bronx County, NY had the highest number of residents age 25 and over with less than a high school diploma at 29.4 percent while Montgomery County, PA had the lowest percentage at 6.2 percent. *Meanwhile, New York County, NY and Fairfax County, VA had the highest percentage of residents with a bachelor's degree or higher at 59.9 percent followed by Montgomery County, MD at 57.9 percent among the 75 largest counties. Nationally, between 2011 and 2015, 29.8 percent of the population had a bachelor's degree or higher.

This book offers a new interpretation of the Employment Act of 1946. It argues that in addition to Keynesian economics, the idea of a living wage was also part of the background leading up to the Employment Act. The Act mandated that the president prepare an Economic Report on the state of the economy and how to improve it, and the idea of a living wage was an essential issue in those Economic Reports for over two decades. The author argues that macroeconomic policy in the USA consisted of a dual approach of using a living wage to increase consumption with higher wages, and fiscal policy to create jobs and higher levels of consumption, therefore forming a hybrid system of redistributive economics. An important read for scholars of economic history, this book explores Roosevelt's role in the debates over the Employment Act in the 1940s, and underlines how Truman's Fair Deal, Kennedy's New Frontier and Johnson's Great Society all had the ultimate goal of a living wage, despite their variations of its definition and name.

Regulatory reform in the late 1970s and early 1980s vastly transformed the labor market for transportation workers. Most research in this area focuses on the effect of deregulation on the earnings of nonmanagement company workers in airline, trucking and rail. Deregulation of transportation industries, though, has had a broader effect on workers. For instance, deregulation also influences workers hours worked per week, working conditions, worker safety, and a host of other labor issues. Deregulation might also influence the earnings of managers and self-employed workers in transportation industries. Examining these issues is valuable because such analysis provides a more complete assessment of labor market changes following the shift to a more market oriented business environment.

"Transportation Labor Issues and Regulatory Reform" adds to the debate on deregulation s influence on transportation labor markets by presenting empirical evidence on an array of labor market outcomes in transportation industries. Contributions to this volume are categorized by their analysis on worker safety, working conditions and employment opportunities, and by their analysis on managerial and self-employed earnings"

Rapid changes within the modern business landscape have created new demands for human resources management. With a different set of challenges to face, human resources managers must implement novel approaches to improve policy effectiveness. Strategic Labor Relations Management in Modern Organizations is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on emerging human resource practices in relation to labor management, featuring innovative methods to remain competitive in the global business arena. Focusing on critical analyses and real-world applications, this book is ideally designed for professionals, upper-level students, managers, and researchers actively involved in human resources settings.

Cai Fang has led Chinese and international understanding of the links between Chinese population and economic development over the past two decades. He has defined relationships that have been centrally important to structural change in China, with immense implications for the rest of the world. This book brings together the wisdom from decades of research at the frontiers of knowledge. It is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand today's world economy.' - Ross Garnaut, University of Melbourne, Australia'Cai Fang's book, China's Economic Growth Prospects, is masterful. This is a book only he could write. Dr Cai takes decades of theory and observations on the world's experience in growth and development, explains it in fully digestible terms and then applies it in a nuanced and understandable way to the reality of what happened, and what is happening, in China. It is a book that is full of hope; it is a book fraught with warnings. It is the only book I know of that truly captures today's China.' - Scott Rozelle, Senior Fellow, Stanford University, US China has grown rapidly since the reform initiation of the 1970s. China's Economic Growth Prospects narrates the contribution of demographic transition to recent economic growth in China, and provides suggestions for ways in which it can sustain growth over the next few decades. The expert author provides reasons for the economic slowdown since the second decade of the twenty-first century; explores the challenges facing China's long-term sustainability of growth with the disappearance of demographic dividend; and proposes policy suggestions. He concludes that, in order to avoid the middle-income trap, economic growth in China must transform from an inputs-driven pattern, to a productivity-driven pattern. Academics, researchers and students of economics and business, particularly those specialising in China, will find this book to be a useful resource. Investment bankers, journalists, politicians and policy makers will find the discussions of past experience and the future potential of the Chinese economy to be of interest.

This book presents selected papers from the 23rd Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES) Conference, held in Madrid, Spain. While the theoretical and empirical papers presented cover diverse areas of economics and finance in different geographic regions, the main focus is on the latest research concerning international trade, public economics, and regional studies. The book also includes studies on the economics of innovation, inequality and tourism.

From cartoons to boardrooms comes the statement, "It's not personal. It's just business."
Just a Job? Communication, Ethics, and Professional Life offers a provocative perspective on ethics at work. The book questions the notions that doing ethics at work has to be work, and that work is somehow a sphere where a different set of rules applies. This problematic line between work and life runs through the ways we commonly talk about ethics, from our personal relationships to the domains of work, including the organization, the profession, and the market. Talk about ethics is far more than "just talk," and this book shows how and why it matters.
Drawing from the fields of communication and rhetoric, the authors show how the very framing of ethics--even before we approach specific decisions--limits the potential roles of ethics in our work lives and the pursuit of happiness, and treats it as something that is meaningful only at special moments such as when faced with dilemmas, or as the last chapter in a business book. Separating ethics from life, we put it beyond our daily reach.
The authors argue against ethical myopia limited to spectacular scandals or comprehensive professional codes. Instead, they propose a master reframe of ethics based on a new take on virtue ethics, including Aristotle's practical ideal of eudaimonia or flourishing, which tells new stories about the ordinary as well as extraordinary aspects of professional integrity and success. By reframing ethics as not special, they elevate it to its rightful position in work and personal life.
Generously illustrated with examples and ideas from scholarly as well as popular sources, this book asks us to reconsider the meaning of and path toward the "good life."

This book focuses on the struggle by Latin Americans to open and maintain Chicano/a Studies programs in institutions of higher education in California. It raises critical questions for social theory about multicultural democracy, dealing with topics such as immigration, affirmative action and civil rights. Mora explains the links between this social movement and the needs of the Chicano/a people, the changes taking place in higher education, and the trends in the overall ethnic-nationalist movements in the U.S. where Latinos have been playing an increasingly leading role.

The economic crisis of 2007/2008 has prompted much debate as to what caused it and what remedies may be implemented in order to regain a healthy economy. This book addresses these issues through the lens of capitalism with a focus on labour economics, arguing that capitalism, and the employment of young people and migrants, may be a suitable antidote to the ongoing political crises in Europe that are taking place as a result of the financial crisis. Using economic history and the history of economic thought to inform debate, Is Capitalism Still Progressive?: A Historical Approach will be of interest to policy makers (especially in emerging countries), students and researchers interested in exploring the pros and cons, and persistence, of the capitalist system.

This book presents a selection of contributions on the timely topic of structural reforms in Western economies, written by experts from central banks, the International Monetary Fund, and leading universities. It includes latest research on the impacts of structural reforms on the market economy, especially on the labor market, and investigates the results of collective bargaining in theory and practice. The book also comprises case studies of structural reforms. A literature survey on the topic serves as a valuable source for further research. The book is written by and targeted at both academics and policy makers.

Using a wealth of previously misread or neglected documentation, Grier demonstrates that children and adolescents were a major preoccupation of settlers in the mining and agricultural sectors, of domestic service, and of officials whose task it was to provide conditions favorable to the accumulation of capital. By doing so, she uncovers how the youngest workers resisted attempts to control their mobility and labor. Young workers and migrants employed passive and active forms of resistance to assert or maintain their autonomy from patriarchy, capital, and the state. In addition to being the first historical treatment of child labor and the construction of childhood in African studies, this book is one of the few studies of child labor that represents children as active agents in the construction of their own childhood. Grier begins with children and work in the precolonial economy and with preexisting tensions between generations and genders as the basis for understanding why the young of Zimbabwe fled to urban areas during the early colonial period. The theme of resistance or agency continues as child migrants confronted the financial resources of settlers in mining and agriculture, and in the state whose task it was to establish and maintain the conditions for capital accumulation. Whether they were employed in the wage labor force or lived by their wits in town, boys and, as the colonial period unfolded, an increasing number of girls, presented a threat to the reproduction of the settler economic, social, and political order. Grier prepares the reader for the subsequent salience of African children as anti-apartheid activists, guerrillas, child soldiers, bandits, and street children.

The in-depth analyses presented in this book have a dual focus: (1) Social mechanisms through which the gender wage gap, gender inequality in the attainment of managerial positions, and gender segregation of occupations are generated in Japan; and (2) Assessments of the effects of firms' gender-egalitarian personnel policies and work-life balance promotion policies on the gender wage gap and the firms' productivity. In addition, this work reviews and discusses various economic and sociological theories of gender inequality and gender discrimination and considers their consistencies and inconsistencies with the results of the analysis of Japanese data. Furthermore, the book critically reviews and discusses the historical development of the Japanese employment system by juxtaposing rational and cultural explanations. This book is an English translation by the author of a book he first published in Japanese in 2017. The original Japanese-language edition received two major book awards in Japan. One was The Nikkei Economic Book Culture Award, which is given every year by the Nikkei Newspaper Company and the Japan Economic Research Center to a few best books on economy and society. The other was The Showa University's Women's Culture Research Award, which is bestowed annually on a single book of research that promotes gender equality. Kazuo Yamaguchi is the Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago.

This book empirically investigates the changes in labor market structure accompanying the labor market reform in China by focusing on the labor market segmentation problems from the 1980s to 2013. The book also aims to examine the effect of labor policy reforms on individual, household and enterprise behavior, including the causes and consequences of labor market reform in China, particularly the influences of labor policy reforms on labor market performance. Offering valuable insights into the changing structure of the Chinese economy, this book will be of interest to scholars, activists, and economists.