J23 - Labor DemandReturn

We investigate how increases in minimum wage affect various firm-level characteristics. We study firm-level data from Poland, where the minimum wage experienced a large and persistent increase in 2008 and 2009. We show that firms which were more exposed to the minimum wage increase faced higher increases in total labour costs and larger reductions in profitability. Intuitively, higher total labour costs driven by higher minimum wages directly reduce firm profits in the absence of price adjustments. We also show that the sharp increases in the minimum wage increased capital and decreased overall labour productivity and employment. The impact of policy is statistically significant only on capital.

Work incentives are closely related to production performance. This paper presents evidence that the value added of a firm increases when relative labour wage rises, or the level of unemployment increases. Both circumstances imply evidence in favour of the efficiency wage model. This theory is consistent with the views of many managers and personal administrators, who tend to ascribe primary importance to wage setting as an incentive to increase effort. We use a micro panel data set of Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 2004-2009 to simultaneously estimate a stochastic frontier of a firm's value added and the inefficiency determinants. The data source is published in the Spanish Industrial Survey on Business Strategies (Encuesta sobre Estrategias Empresariales, ESEE) collected by the Fundación SEPI.

Knowledge of employers' requirements on competencies of job applicants is highly important in the process of human capital accumulation. This paper focuses on the general competencies since they can be applied in a wide range of jobs or tasks and increase an individual's employability. First, employers' requirements on general competencies are identified and described on the basis of 3,822 job advertisements published online. Second, the econometric analysis is used in order to test hypothesis whether examined demand for general competencies is really general or if it differs significantly with respect to required education and firm characteristics. The results of our probit regressions proved that the requirements on examined general skills significantly differ according to the education required and some categories of NACE and ownership of the firms.

Because of growing awareness of financial needs for public pensions, attention has been focused on privatisation of the pension systems. While the privatisation of pension funds can encourage development of capital markets in New Member States, equity investment in transition economies is even more volatile than in the ""old"" capitalist countries. Privatised pension system coincides with investment risks, higher administrative costs, and inability of private markets to provide retirees with affordable, indexed and certain annuities. Namely, private sector may not provide enough investment projects to efficiently absorb mandated pension savings and the expected pension income is subject to a number of risks: poor and volatile investment returns, longevity, and inflation eroding the purchasing power of pensions. Indeed, the PAYG system appears to be the only viable system to perform well in terms of risk and volatility of returns.