Gary S Fields

[Review of the book Jobs and Incomes in a Globalizing World]

Gary S. Fields — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:56:25 PST

[Excerpt] This is a timely book about the labour market effects of globalization – specifically, the effects of globalization on jobs, wages and incomes in industrialized and developing countries. Ajit Ghose defines globalization as “a process of integration of national markets into a global market.” Globalization, he writes, is of such great concern now because of a new development: trade between developed and developing countries in competing products.

[Review of the book Social Security: A Critique of Radical Proposals]

Gary S. Fields — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:56:22 PST

[Excerpt] This book consists of six essays on Social Security. Charles Meyer leads off with a survey of the history of Social Security, its funding problems, and a radical reform proposal by Peter Ferrara to phase out the system. The remaining essays address various features of Social Security.

[Review of the book Beneath the Miracle: Labor Subordination in the New Asian Industrialism]

Gary S. Fields — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:56:19 PST

[Excerpt] Have workers in the newly industrializing countries (NIC's) of Asia benefited from the rapid economic growth in their economies? In this important book, Frederic Deyo contends that "beneath the miracle" of economic growth is the "extreme political subordination and exclusion of workers" in the economic development of Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. He sees the inability of East Asian workers to "influence the political and economic decisions that have shaped their lives" as the "dark underside" of Asian economic growth. The main body of the book is an examination of why this subordination has taken place.

[Review of the book Retirement Income Opportunities in an Aging America: Income Levels and Adequacy]

Gary S. Fields — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:56:16 PST

[Excerpt] The slant of this volume will not appeal to everyone. Consider the following: "During the last twenty years, the elderly's financial status has improved substantially. Today those who are over age 65 receive income from more sources and have greater financial independence than previous generations of elderly. . . . This report concludes that the elderly's income levels and sources will continue to improve during the next twenty years or more" (p. v). But what of the poverty that remains among the elderly, especially single individuals? What of the threat to real social security benefit levels? What of the erosion of unindexed private pension benefits by inflation? What of the omnipresent risk of a financially catastrophic illness or the need for nursing-home care, Medicare and Medicaid benefits notwithstanding? Yes, the elderly on the whole are better off, as the EBRI study tells us, but for large numbers of them, incomes are inadequate by any standard, and few have genuine financial security. The strength of this volume is that it offers enough facts and figures to support these less cheerful interpretations, too. The weakness is that the analytical foundations are vague and implicit.

[Review of the book Technology Choice and Employment Generation by Multinational Corporations in Developing Countries]

Gary S. Fields — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:56:13 PST

[Excerpt] The present volume, by addressing technology choice and employment in multinational enterprises (MNEs), adds to our understanding of the determinants of demand for labor in developing countries. The book synthesizes results from case studies of MNEs in Singapore, Nigeria, Brazil, India, and Kenya, and it does so in such a way that the main conclusions can easily be identified.

[Review of the book Studies of Urban Labour Market Behaviour in Developing Areas]

Gary S. Fields — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:56:10 PST

[Excerpt] In the 1970s social scientists from all disciplines became aware that an understanding of how labor markets function is central to determining who benefits from economic growth. Only a few researchers concerned with the economic development of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, however, have examined labor markets in any serious way. Hence, a compendium entitled Studies of Urban Labour Market Behavior in Developing Areas is particularly welcome.

[Review of the book Bridging the Gap: Four Newly Industrialising Countries and the Changing International Division of Labour]

Gary S. Fields — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:56:07 PST

[Excerpt] The central focus of this book is the labor force in the context of structural change. Its title, "Bridging the Gap," signifies a concern with drawing the NICs closer to the developed world. The author, a senior economist and staff member of the International Labour Organisation, argues that "the experience of these four NICs also holds lessons for OECD countries, as it deals with such now universal issues as the role of government in the promotion of new ventures; how new growth areas can be identified; how foreign investors are attracted; and what the costs and benefits of government intervention are."

[Review of the book The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia]

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:59:57 PST

[Excerpt] This slim and eminently readable volume presents the 1990 Edwin O. Reischauer lectures delivered by Ezra Vogel, the Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard University and a leading scholar on Asia. In the first chapter Vogel establishes the context for the experiences of the "late late industrializes". Japan and "the Four Little Dragons" (Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan). The next three chapters are devoted to the experiences of Taiwan, Korea, and Hong Kong and Singapore, respectively. The last chapter offers an explanation for the dragons' successes.

[Review of the book Labor Regulation in the Global Economy]

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:59:55 PST

[Excerpt] This is a practical and useful volume on labor standards in today’s highly globalized world. An introduction is followed by ten chapters, some of them general, talking about the ILO or the WTO, and some more specific, focusing on the United States and Europe. The general chapters cover the ILO, corporate codes of conduct, efforts to introduce labor standards into the multilateral trade regime, arguments for and against labor standards in trade, and policy implications. The specific chapters cover U.S. initiatives on child labor, labor standards in the bilateral trade agreements entered into by the United States and the European Union, labor standards among the European Union member countries, and NAFTA.

[Review of the book Urban Labour Market Structure and Job Access in India: A Study of Coimbatore]

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:59:53 PST

[Excerpt] This is a book about "labor status"—what it is, how it works, and how it can be used in labor market analysis. The authors make a convincing case that the labor status approach is indeed a useful one to follow.

[Review of the book Growth With Equity]

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:59:51 PST

[Excerpt] This book, by three nationally respected researchers in the Brookings Institution's Center on Economic Progress and Employment, addresses two problems facing the American economy: anemic productivity improvement and consequent slow economic growth, and growing income inequality. Contrary to their distinguished predecessor at Brookings, the late Arthur Okun, who maintained in a widely cited 1975 book that the twin goals of growth and more equal distribution of income conflict with each other (Arthur M. Okun, Equality and Efficiency: the Big Tradeoff [Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1975]), Baily, Burtless, and Litan argue—correctly, I believe—that growth and equality are compatible goals. "Unless the nation finds better ways to ease the disruptions caused by economic change," they write, "those most at risk from change will seek to block it. The policies that offer the best opportunity to improve the nation's long-term economic performance may never be adopted" (p. 6). However, the right policy package, detailed in the rest of the book, could help the nation achieve both growth and equity objectives.

[Review of the book Successes in Anti-Poverty]

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:59:48 PST

[Excerpt] Michael Lipton has devoted a long career to studying and fighting poverty in the developing world. In this volume he talks about how to make anti-poverty programs work.

[Review of the book Forecasting Retirement Needs and Retirement Wealth]

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:59:45 PST

[Excerpt] This volume enables researchers to learn about some of the latest research findings on specific issues. It is not the place to seek an introduction to current thinking on retirement, pensions, and Social Security—the papers are too narrowly focused for that. But for current or would-he pension specialists, this volume and the larger series of which it is a part are indispensable resources.

[Review of the book Private Pension Policies in Industrialized Countries: A Comparative Analysis]

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:59:43 PST

[Excerpt] John Turner and Noriyasu Watanabe have written numerous articles and books on pensions and employee benefits. In this collaborative effort, they synthesize a great deal of institutional and analytical material on a wide range of countries, including those typically regarded as industrialized (most of the OECD countries are the subjects of case studies and illustrations) and those that would probably be happy to learn that they now fall into that category (in particular, Chile and Argentina). The book is both accessible (there are no equations in sight) and analytical.

[Review of the book International Labour Standards and Economic Interdependence]

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:59:40 PST

[Excerpt] What can be done to raise the living standards of working people around the world? This collection of 29 essays focuses on an issue currently in the air: the setting of international labor standards. Although the writers come from every continent and represent employers, workers, government, and academia, virtually all favor international labor standards. One should perhaps not be too surprised by this agreement, given that the volume is published under the auspices of the International Institute for Labour Studies, a sister organization of the ILO. Things get interesting when the authors stop lamenting how tough conditions are for workers in today's economically interdependent world and start talking specifically about what can and should be done.

[Review of the book Personnel Economics]

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:59:37 PST

[Excerpt] What is personnel economics? Despite its name (non-economists may be put off by the use of the word “personnel,” which was left behind by what is now called human resource management about a quarter century ago), personnel economics deals with issues of fundamental importance in the workplace. As the editors explain in the introduction, “The literature is distinguished from other parts of labour economics primarily by its focus on problems that are central to business.” Thus, personnel economics is economics, it is that part of economics that deals with workplace issues, and it is firmly grounded in labor economics. Whether you call it personnel economics, workplace economics, an economic approach to human resource management, or something else, the field is breaking exciting new ground, asking questions that simply were not asked when I and others of my academic generation were learning labor economics.

[Review of the book Resources, Values and Development]

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:46:20 PST

[Excerpt] Sen will not let us forget that development economics is a branch of social science. I expect that he will contribute as much to it in the future as he has in the past. For those wishing to join in the study of these issues, Resources, Values and Development would be an excellent place to start.

Who Benefits from Economic Development? - A Reexamination of Brazilian Growth in the 1960's

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:46:17 PST

[Excerpt] The purpose of this paper is to reexamine one of these two challenges, namely, the distributional impact of Brazilian economic growth during the 1960's. My results lead to a quite different interpretation from the conventional one. I will show that the poor in Brazil did participate in the rapid economic growth of the decade. Estimates presented below indicate that average real incomes among families defined as poor by Brazilian standards increased by as much as 60 percent while the comparable figure for nonpoor families is around 25 percent. However, since nonpoor families receive incomes which are much greater than those of poor families, the bulk of the growth of national income over the decade was received by families whose incomes placed them above the official poverty standard. Thus, it would be incorrect to say either that 1) in achieving a high rate of economic growth in Brazil the rich got absolutely richer while the poor got absolutely poorer, or 2) the incomes of poor families increased more slowly (percentagewise) than those of nonpoor families. These and other findings are presented below in Section II, and some of the reasons for the observed changes are discussed in Section III.

In assessing the distributional consequences of Brazilian economic growth, this study explicitly adopts an absolute poverty approach. In so doing, it is at odds with the bulk of the economic development literature, which while urging a poverty focus, has long relied on measures of relative income inequality and Lorenz curves. Thus, this paper does not merely offer "one more measure"; it is, rather, the use of a different type of measure that causes the divergent results. The paper concludes in Section IV by reviewing the principal findings and exploring some further questions of more general applicability raised by the Brazilian debate.

[Review of the book Income Distribution in Less Developed Countries]

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:46:14 PST

[Excerpt] This book by R. M. Sundrum, a professor at the Australian National University and former director of the World Bank, is a compilation of issues, ideas, and data on income distribution in less developed countries (LDCs). Each chapter or section has something meaningful to say, and for this reason the book bears careful study. However, no overarching theme or approach is apparent, so the reader is likely to come away with numerous small lessons about distribution and development but few larger conclusions.

Place-to-Place Migration: Some New Evidence

Gary S. Fields — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:46:09 PST

[Excerpt] This paper presents new evidence on the determinants of place-to-place migration in the United States. For understanding the causes of differential migration rates into and out of labor markets, knowledge of place-to-place migration functions is of interest for a number of reasons. Given a thorough understanding of gross place-to-place flows, one can proceed to calculate net flows; the reverse, of course, is not possible. There are also other advantages of place-to-place studies: parallelism to microeconomic behavior, opportunity to investigate specific 'origin-destination match-ups, recognition of the number and location of alternative opportunities for persons residing in different origins, and exploration of possible asymmetries.

Following a large body of economic literature, the analytical approach adopted regards migration as a form of human investment. Economic variables used in the empirical-work exhibit effects in the hypothesized direction and explain up to two-thirds of the variance in intermetropolitan migration rates. However, this high degree of explanatory power is achieved only for certain functional specifications involving particular independent variables. Thus, the empirical results confirm the usefulness of the human investment approach to place-to-place migration, but they show too that the economic factors used as explanatory variables must be carefully specified and measured.