Migration,Frictional Unemployment,and Welfare‐Improving Labor Policies*

Abstract. Studies have suggested that there exists job search and recruiting friction in urban areas. This paper constructs a two‐sector (rural and urban) model involving this factor and investigates how it affects migration and what the optimal policies should be. An analysis shows that frictional urban unemployment brings about intersector wage differentials and that an economy almost always has distortion in the absence of government intervention. Tax and subsidy policies that remove the distortion are explored. Setting urban wages appropriately is also shown to attain the optimum. Finally, we explore the criterion to judge whether changing urban wages as a policy, such as the minimum wage law, enhances social welfare.     

论德意志帝国政府对劳工问题的调节

德意志帝国时期,快速工业化进程使得劳工问题日渐突出,德意志帝国政府采取"立法"与"行政"手段对劳工问题进行了全面调节,形成了比较系统的劳工问题调节机制。德意志帝国对劳工问题的调节,缓解了社会矛盾,对德国经济、政治、社会的整体协调发展产生了持久而深刻的影响。     

Solidarity™: Student Activism,Affective Labor,and the Fair Trade Campaign in the United States

Abstract: Ethical labeling campaigns have become a central means for diffusing and negotiating conflicts between social movements and market actors. Fair Trade was a pioneering ethical label and, by many accounts, a success. For nearly a decade, United Students for Fair Trade (USFT) activists worked to build the reputation of the Fair Trade Certified (FTC) label, but in Fall 2011 they withdrew their support and urged ethical consumers to do the same. This paper is an urgent reflection on USFT's trajectory from guerrilla marketing to boycotting FTC products. While their actions may appear shortsighted and contradictory, their decision to withdraw support from the FTC label has roots in a long struggle for control of Fair Trade. We argue that their actions signal a new stage in consumer action, as activists lose faith in the legitimacy of ethical labels and instead target the agencies that own the ethical brandscape.     

Investigating Empire: Humanitarians,Reform and the Commission of Eastern Inquiry

In the wake of the Napoleonic wars, British debates about colonial rule and, in particular, the treatment of subject peoples brought practical, financial and religious concerns together. As a means of addressing these problems, the British government despatched a series of travelling commissions to survey and reform the governance of its empire. British-based humanitarians and abolitionists drew on anxieties about the corrupting influence of empire on metropolitan society to press for commissions as vectors of imperial probity; their colonial counterparts harnessed the commissions' authority to inform and persuade a metropolitan audience of the need for specific colonial reforms. This article explores humanitarian attempts to influence colonial and imperial policy by considering the Commission of Eastern Inquiry, appointed in 1822 to investigate successively the Cape Colony, Mauritius and Ceylon. The Commission's history underscores links between networks of metropolitan and colonial humanitarians, and between anti-slavery activists and supporters of indigenous rights.     

英国农村剩余劳动力转移问题的历史考察

英国农村剩余劳动力转移的方式历史悠久,英国政府在解决农业剩余劳动力转移的过程中,自觉或不自觉地采取了国家干预的做法,摸索出从惩罚、济民、移民,到“济身”、创造就业机会和福利国家的一套做法,成功地解决了英国农村剩余劳动力转移问题。在第二次世界大战后,为了进一步提高农业生产力,以适应经济全球化的发展,英国又主动积极地创造剩余劳动力,使他们向工业和其他非农业部门转移。尽管在实践中遇到不少困难,并且付出了极高的代价,但是英国较好地解决了农村劳动力向城市转移的问题,为经济的发展铺平了道路。     

Regional Labor Market Dynamics, Housing, and Migration

Abstract.  This study explores the impact of plant‐level labor market dynamics and housing markets on gross migration flows. The internal and the external reorganizations of regional labor markets are shown to be related. An increase in internal turnover of jobs and workers in regional labor markets is found to increase net‐migration. This effect arises mainly from a reduction in out‐migration. Housing markets constitute constraints for migration. In particular, an increase in regional housing prices and a large share of owner‐occupancy housing discourages net‐migration to a region by reducing in‐migration. In contrast, the out‐migration rate remains largely unaffected by housing markets.