Abstract

     Data storage for attendance at a company or agency is usually stored in a local or cloud database. This type of storage has several issues, such as privacy and data integrity, because several parties will fully regulate privacy and data integrity. Therefore, a data storage system is needed that can provide privacy, security, and data integrity to maintain the authenticity of sensitive data. This study wants to develop to implement blockchain technology to store employee attendance data from the HR department in a company. Employee attendance data is taken from the Angular web application integrated with a permissioned blockchain framework called Hyperledger Composer. This study chose Hyperledger Composer because this type of blockchain has a fast validation time. Hyperledger Composer has a Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface (REST API) named composer-rest-server, which allows Hyperledger blockchain to interact with other components. The implementation results show that Hyperledger Composer can be functionally used as data storage for the attendance management and Payroll system. In addition, Hyperledger Composer performance is measured by evaluating block transaction times. The evaluation of the Hyperledger Composer is done in three ways: directly within the Hyperledger Composer, using the Angular web application through the REST API, and using JMeter through the REST API. As a result, testing for making transaction blocks varies from 1 – 17ms on an experiment directly in Hyperledger Composer, 5 – 296ms through the REST API using JMeter tools, and 1 – 4270ms through the Angular Web Application. The result shows that the performance of the REST API produced by the composer-rest-server is recorded faster than Ethereum. With these results, composer-rest-server can handle systems that require fast transaction times, such as voting systems, health monitoring, and the Internet of Things (IoT) application, because the average time to conduct transactions is still under one second. Thus, Hyperledger as attendance data storage can provide privacy and data integrity.

Introduction

     Blockchain is a distributed digital ledger technology that Nowadays, the development and use of technology are developing more rapidly in various fields, one of which is information technology. Information technology is a technology used to get, store, organize, process, and manipulate the amount of data to produce relevant and accurate information. The attendance management and payroll system are some of the information systems on financial activities required in a company or agency. The use of this information system can provide an accurate report of attendance records and payroll. The attendance management and payroll system is a system that processes the attendance information to determine the total salary of each employee. Attendance data is sensitive information that must be maintained for authenticity because it can affect the number of salaries to be paid.

Conclusion

     The blockchain attendance management and payroll system design can be well implemented. All functions of the Hyperledger Composer component and the Angular web application are running properly and according to the design. Hyperledger Composer can communicate with the other components through the REST API provided by the composer-rest-server. The REST API provided by composerrest-server performs well through JMeter with an average transaction time of 198ms and the total time required for 100 transactions of 1.98 seconds compared to Ethereum Blockchain. Blockchain technology can support the attendance and payroll system, so this system has advantages in data security and data integrity.

Abstract

     This paper analyses US payroll share and components across states for the period 1977–2017. Findings include that spatial clustering in payroll shares decreased until the year 2000. States are clustered in low and high productivity groups. We relate this phenomenon to dualism. High labour productivity states featured high payroll shares early on, but now feature low payroll shares. We label this phenomenon decoupling of labour productivity from real wages. A Divisia Decomposition documents that Rust Belt states dominated the decline in US payroll share in the 1980s, whereas more recently large (coastal) states dominated. While we do not explain (potentially different) mechanisms, decoupling is apparent throughout.

Introduction

     The labour share of income is equivalent to the ratio of real wage and labour productivity. Its precipitous decline has led to a growing literature investigating underlying causes, not least since it illuminates interactions between labour incomes and technology. This paper provides novel evidence on the sources of the decline with a focus on spatial dimensions. We decompose the aggregate US payroll share – which excludes income from self-employment from compensation – by states for the period 1977–2017 and analyse its components from several angles. These state payroll shares are driven by the sectoral composition of each state’s economy, and therefore related to geographical factors and agglomeration effects. The former include endowments – a bay facilitating a port and transportation hub; the Bakken Formation facilitating an extractive boom – but the focus of the latter has been on the returns to density. These ideas build on Smith (1776), Marshall (1890) and Krugman (1991, 2011) and have been categorized as related to (1) reduced transportation costs, and improved flows of (2) labour and (3) ideas. More recently, such agglomeration economies have been critically examined in light of the ubiquity of information technology (Ellison et al., 2010; Giuliano et al., 2019; Glaeser & Gottlieb, 2009). The evidence suggests that agglomeration still matters in manufacturing, albeit less today than earlier; and that certain service activities crucially benefit from agglomeration due to (2) and (3). Throughout our analysis, we distinguish between (1) progressive and stagnant sectors and (2) states with (predominantly) progressive or stagnant sectors. In his seminal paper, Baumol (1967, p. 415) defines ‘technologically progressive activities in which innovations, capital accumulation, and economies of large scale all make for a cumulative rise in output per man hour’ (emphasis added).

Conclusion

     This paper investigates the decline of the US labour share by states. We conduct three exercises. First, a spatial Gini index illuminates regional patterns in payroll share changes. A key result is that spatial dependence of payroll shares decreased throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Further, spatial dependence is highest for manufacturing employment shares. The decline in spatial dependence occurs simultaneously with deindustrialization in (spatially clustered) Rust Belt states. Future research could investigate whether these results are robust to further disaggregation.

     Second, uni- and bivariate mixture models indicate that the distribution of labour productivity – but not that of real wages – across states has become increasingly dislocated. Our results support the hypothesis that labour productivity in US states differs in a statistically significant manner. Particularly bivariate mixture model results show that during the last two periods, states with higher labour productivity feature relatively low payroll shares, and vice versa. In the earlier periods, states with high labour productivity featured high payroll shares. This emerging dualism does not feature strong spatial clustering at the level of the state. Nevertheless, results appear consistent with recent literature on agglomeration economies (Ellison et al., 2010; Giuliano et al., 2019; Glaeser & Gottlieb, 2009).

Abstract

     Numerous countries cut payroll taxes in response to COVID-19, including China, which reduced employer contributions by up to 21 percentage points. We use administrative data on more than 800,000 Chinese firms to evaluate payroll tax cuts as a business relief measure. We estimate that the tax cuts cover 31.5% of the decline in business cash flow, but labor informality causes 53% of registered firms-24% of aggregate economic activity-to receive no benefits at all. We quantify the targeting of the policy in terms of how much benefits flow to small firms less able to access external finance and to sectors worse hit by COVID-19. We find that (1) small firms and vulnerable industries are comparatively more labor intensive, which leads to desirable targeting; (2) labor informality worsens, but does not eliminate, targeting by firm size; and (3) labor informality is uncorrelated with the COVID-19 shock, and therefore does not affect targeting by sector.

Policy background

     In the mid- to late-1990s, China adopted a mandatory “pay-as-you-go” pension system, Basic Old Age Insurance (BOAI), for employed persons funded mainly through employer contributions (see Fang and Feng (2018) for a history of pension programs in China). Likewise, in the early 2000s, a medical insurance (MI) program for employed persons was established, also funded by payroll taxes (Huang, 2020). These two programs are the largest components of the SI system. As of 2019, the nationally prescribed employer contribution rate for BOAI and MI was 16 and 8% of wages, respectively. BOAI and MI also require employee-side contributions-8 and 2%-which are recorded in notional individual accounts that are efectively pay-as-you-go.

Discussion and conclusion

     Many advanced economies responded to the COVID economic shock with fscal policies unprecedented in both scale and form. In comparison, China’s response to COVID by way of additional spending and foregone revenue is moderate as a proportion of its GDP and more typical for developing countries.28 Its payroll tax cuts amounted to about 1.68% of 2020 GDP, whereas in the USA the Paycheck Protection Program alone delivered government support equal to 4.55% of 2020 GDP.29 China’s choice of policy instrument was also conservative: instead of launching novel spending programs, it temporarily reduced rates under an existing tax.

Abstract

     We analyze an unbalanced panel of monthly predictions of nonfarm payroll (NFP) changes between January 2008 and December 2020 sourced from Bloomberg. Unsurprisingly, we find that prediction quality varies across economists and we reject the hypothesis of equal predictive ability. In an error decomposition, we find evidence of significantly biased forecasts. Participation rate in the survey is affecting this bias. We find that survey participants under-predict job losses in times of market turmoil while also under-predicting the recovery thereafter, especially during the COVID19 labor shock. For prediction of NFP changes, autoregressive models are outperformed by a deep learning long short-term memory network. However, the consensus forecast yields better forecasts than model-based approaches and are further improved by combining the forecasts of the best performing economists. The COVID19 labor shock is shown to have adverse effects on the prediction performance of economists. However, not all economists are affected equally.

Introduction

     Nonfarm payroll (NFP) figures and monthly changes thereof are important and immediate indicators of the development of the economy in the U.S., particularly the labor market itself. Published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on a monthly basis, nonfarm payroll represents the number of payroll jobs and its month-to-month changes. The NFP covers most of the non-agricultural industry contributing roughly 80% of the GDP. As such, the monthly development in the labor market is an important precursor to the development and publication of other macroeconomic variables. Monthly NFP releases cause short- and medium term reactions to stock, bond, and FX markets which is documented in literature (Fleming, Remolona, 1999, Dungey, McKenzie, Smith, 2009, Dungey, Hvozdyk, 2012). The released numbers are perceived with a signaling effect, in particular when released numbers exceed or fall short of (market) expectations. Measuring and correctly quantifying these expectations—as for any micro- or macroeconomic variable—are of relevance in view of their impact and more importantly, their economic implications.

Concluding remarks

     We analyze an unbalanced panel of nonfarm payroll predictions from January 2008 to December 2020 from 181 forecasters. Based on the framework of Davies and Lahiri (1995), we decompose the forecasting error of each forecaster into three components, of which two are further studied. Firstly, we focus on the temporal shock component that affects all forecasters equally per forecasting period. These shocks, a general over- or under-prediction of all forecasters for a particular month represents a news effect where an under-prediction of job increases is considered a positive shock and vice versa. From these estimated shocks, we find that the sample of predicting economists under-estimate job losses in times of prolonged market turmoil. In addition, recovery phases are under-predicted as well, leading to positive shocks.

     In general, we find that the mean predictions are rather stable, causing the shock estimate to alternate regularly. Secondly, we focus on the individual bias, which describes a systematic over- or under-prediction of a particular forecaster. We find the bias of several forecasters to be statistically significant. More importantly, we find that with increasing participation rate, the individual bias is decreasing, yielding a lower prediction error. This indicates that economists that regularly make predictions are incorporating differing information sets than those with very few predictions. If we decompose the forecast errors based on a more precise measure for job market figures, the most recent publication, we observe a downward shift and a generally negative bias, underlining a tendency to under-predict true or more precise values of NFP changes. This suggests that forecasters make limited use of subsequent revisions of NFP changes and their focus remains on the initial and preliminary numbers. In view of the applied framework, we find that the impact of these revisions affects the temporal shock to a lesser extent than the individual bias.

Abstract

     Despite the unambiguous predictions of the canonical model of a competitive labor market, empirical studies of the labor market effects of payroll taxation provide conflicting evidence. We estimate the labor market impacts of payroll taxation in Singapore, the country with the most competitive and flexible labor market among the countries investigated in the literature. By exploiting the sharp reduction in payroll tax rate when workers turn 60, we find that the reduced payroll tax rate in Singapore has a large effect on wages without changes in employment. Our meta-analysis shows consistent evidence that varying degrees of labor market competitiveness across places and time could explain the mixed results in the literature. Our findings corroborate the prediction of the canonical model that the welfare costs of social insurance programs financed by payroll taxes can be small in a competitive labor market.

Introduction

     Most social insurance programs, such as old-age pension and health, disability, and unemployment insurance, are financed by payroll taxes (or social security contributions). These payroll taxes often account for more than 30% of workers’ labor income and about a quarter of the total tax revenue of OECD member countries (Saez et al., 2019). Although social insurance programs play an important role in improving social welfare, the payroll taxes levied to finance those programs can distort the labor market.

     In the canonical model of a competitive labor market, workers have an incentive to increase (decrease) their labor supply depending on how they value their social insurance benefits when the payroll tax rate increases (decreases). Thus, employers’ additional labor costs due to higher payroll taxes can be shifted to workers through reduced wage payments. If workers regard the payroll taxes borne by their employers as their social insurance benefits, the incidence of payroll taxes will fall solely on workers’ wages. This leaves employment or work hours unchanged, thereby minimizing deadweight loss in the labor market (Summers, 1989).

     Several empirical studies have tested Summers’ (1989) insights into the labor market impacts of payroll taxes to finance worker benefits across various countries and time periods and found mixed results. One possible explanation to reconcile the mixed findings in the literature is discrepancies in labor market institutions between the real world and the theoretical model. Although the canonical payroll tax incidence model assumes a perfectly competitive labor market, competitiveness in an actual labor market varies across countries, demographic groups, and time periods.

Conclusion

     Despite clear predictions under the canonical model of a competitive labor market, existing empirical studies have provided mixed evidence on how much a payroll tax change is shifted to workers’ wages. One possible explanation for this discrepancy is the heterogeneity in labor market flexibility across countries and time. To better understand the role of market flexibility or competitiveness, we investigate the labor market impact of payroll taxation in Singapore, where the labor market is considered more competitive and flexible than in any other country investigated in the literature. We document that saved labor costs via the reduced payroll tax rate largely shifts to workers’ wages. The estimated pass-through rate in Singapore is 77.5%, which is similar to the weighted average pass-through rate of the studied countries where wage bargaining predominantly takes place at the local or firm level, as in Singapore. These findings indicate that labor market competitiveness can play a significant role in determining the labor market impact of payroll taxation. A policy implication is that labor market distortion due to payroll taxation would be small when the labor market is competitive.

1- Introduction

2- Theory: Predictions

3- Methods

4- Results

5- Conclusions

References

Abstract

We analyze the effect on inflation of doubling the minimum wage and cutting the value-added tax in half. Annual inflation decreased by 1.8 percentage points, suggesting that the minimum wage increase had a limited or even null effect on prices.

Introduction

Mexico elected a new government in the summer of 2018, in a context of high levels of violence in municipalities on the U.S. border and throughout the country, and of growing antiimmigration rhetoric in the U.S. For these reasons, and also because of concerns about migration from Central American countries, the newly-elected president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced his intention to generate better working conditions at the border to reduce incentives to cross to the U.S. The new government implemented a set of place-based policies that went into effect in the bordering municipalities beginning in January 2019. These included doubling the nominal minimum wage, halving the value-added tax (VAT) from 16 to 8 percent, reducing the corporate income tax by one-third, and adjusting the price of energy goods to make them comparable to those in bordering counties in the U.S. This set of policies is one of the boldest recent place-based policies in the world. In this paper, we restrict our analysis to the effects of these policies on inflation, taking advantage of their regional variation to estimate their joint effect. In particular, by using a rich dataset that includes the prices of goods with and without VAT in different cities throughout Mexico, we are able to shed some light on the magnitude of the effect on prices of doubling the minimum wage.

This study develops and tests a research model to analyze the overall effects of minimum wage policy implementation on hotel employees’ overall perception of the minimum wage policy in relationship to satisfaction with compensation, work behaviors, and perceived quality of life. An electronic survey was developed, and data were collected from hotel employees who worked at three-, four-, and five-star hotels in Malaysia. Results from the structural equation modelling analysis and the bootstrap mediational effects analysis offered significant empirical findings that will enable understanding of the overall effects of minimum wage increases on Malaysian hotel employees. Employee perception of minimum wage policy significantly influenced their satisfaction with compensation and work motivation. Additionally, employee satisfaction with compensation significantly influenced their work motivation, job satisfaction, and perceived quality of life. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.

Introduction

In 2009, the Ministry of Human Resources Malaysia found 40% of private sector employees had incomes below the poverty level (Guie, 2012). Knowing that the poverty rate could be reduced by increasing employee income (Yusof et al., 2016), Malaysia government took steps similar to other countries and implemented a minimum wage policy in 2013. The policy was implemented throughout all businesses and was set monthly at RM900 (USD215) for Peninsular Malaysia and RM800 (USD191) for other regions (Attorney General’s Chambers of Malaysia, 2012). In 2016, the monthly minimum wage was increased by 10% to RM1,000 (USD236) for Peninsular Malaysia and RM920 (USD217) for other parts of Malaysia (Attorney General’s Chambers of Malaysia, 2016). Given the National Wages Consultative Council (NWCC) review of the Minimum Wages Order of 2016 and current economic conditions, another increase in the minimum wage (RM1,100 per month) started January 2019; this rate was standardized throughout the country (Attorney General’s Chambers of Malaysia, 2018). The minimum wage policy objectives in Malaysia include assuring basic needs of employees and their families are met and giving social protection to employees through minimum acceptable wages (http://minimumwages.mohr.gov. my/). The minimum wage policy aims to improve the living standards of Malaysian and non-Malaysian employees and reflects the Malaysian government’s commitment to overcoming poverty.

This study examines the relation between audit personnel salaries and officelevel audit quality. We measure audit personnel salaries at the associate, senior, and manager ranks for Big 4 audit offices from 2004 to 2013, using unique individualauditor-level data obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor. We find that offices that pay lower salaries have a higher percentage of clients that experience restatements. In related analyses, we also find lower levels of audit quality when audit employees are paid less, relative to other lines of service in accounting firms. Finally, we document positive and significant associations between salary and fees, suggesting that audit offices pass some of the cost of higher labor onto their clients. Overall, our findings provide important initial evidence on the role of audit salary and its relation to audit quality and audit fees.

Introduction

In recent years, the auditing profession has undergone significant changes, and the work required to perform public company financial statement audits has increased substantially. Despite increased expectations, workloads, and complexity (Laux and Leuz 2009; Persellin et al. 2015; Hanson 2013), anecdotal evidence suggests auditors’ real starting salaries have remained relatively unchanged and have underperformed alternative career options (e.g., consulting, tax, and corporate accounting). Given that audit personnel (e.g. associates, seniors, and managers) play a critical role in the audit process, it is important to understand how the profession can incentivize and attract high quality auditors (DeFond and Zhang 2014). Even though compensation is likely to be an important incentive, our understanding of whether salaries influence audit quality is limited to a few studies on audit partner compensation (e.g., Carcello et al. 2000; Knechel et al. 2013) and anecdotal evidence. Using a unique data set of audit personnel salaries, we seek to better understand how the salaries of audit professionals relate to audit office quality and how this relationship varies with the attractiveness of alternative career options within accounting firms. Ex ante, the relation between audit personnel salary and audit quality is not clear. On the one hand, efficiency wage theories imply that higher wages should improve audit personnel productivity by motivating greater effort from audit personnel and/or by attracting higher quality personnel, because providing an above market-clearing wage makes it more costly for employees to switch to alternative lower-paying jobs (Akerlof 1984; Yellen 1984; Akerlof and Yellen 1986; Shapiro and Stiglitz 1984; Levine 1993).1 Thus, if higher salaries help attract or retain higher quality audit personnel, we expect audit personnel salaries to be positively related to audit quality. This finding would also be consistent with regulatory claims that stagnant salaries in the audit profession are reducing worker quality in the audit industry, as accounting majors avoid becoming auditors and instead become tax accountants or consultants.2 On the other hand, neoclassical views of the firm suggest that employees are homogenous and substitutable inputs into the production process, allowing little to no role for individuals to influence outcomes of the firm (Weintraub 2002; Bertrand and Schoar 2003; Bamber et al. 2010; Dyreng et al. 2010).

Every enterprise is operated by people, and people are the most important assets of an enterprise (Pamenter, 1999). Attracting talented employees has become an important factor in the success of an enterprise (Ehrhart and Ziegert, 2005). With the development of the internet in recent years, job seekers find their way to job vacancies through various channels. Now enterprises are using the internet to find ideal talent. Such actions not only increase vacancy information available for the job seekers, but also increase the chance of companies finding suitable talent (Zusman and Landis, 2002). This transition indicates that enterprises nowadays have taken the initiative in recruitment activities to reach out to potential talent instead of waiting for them to come. However, job seekers place emphasis not only on the information provided by business organizations, including working conditions, working environment, salary, benefits, and promotion, but also external assessments and general impressions of the organization. In recent years, Taiwan’s brain drain has attracted more and more attention from both home and abroad. In IMD’s World Talent Report 2016, which evaluated the three indicators of “Investment and Development”, “Appeal” and “Readiness”, in a total of 60 countries, Taiwan ranked 51 in “Foreign High-Skilled People” under the indicator of “Appeal”, and 42 in “International Experience” under the indicator of “Readiness” (IMD World Competitiveness Center, 2016). In this report, Taiwan’s performance ranked poorly on the global stage. In addition, in a report concerning “International talent shortage”, Taiwan’s ranking was even worse, which showed the issues of talent attraction and talent cultivation had not been improved. Chang (2011) put forward a report on the issue of brain drain, the astonishing discovery of which was that the top researchers in Taiwan were being poached by Mainland China’s research institutions with 3 to 4 times larger salaries. Another recent report from the Asia-Pacific region disclosed that the salaries of top executives in Taiwan ranked 10th in 13 countries (Rti Anchors, 2014). Yang (2014) found that Taiwan’s current salary level is low, with 49% of the sample earning an income of around NT$25,000. Chang (2011) concluded that the cause of the brain drain is “relatively low salaries”. Taiwan does not only suffer from average wage stagnation but also the inability to attract overseas talent. The brain drain plight and wage stagnation are dragging down the country’s momentum in social development. The overall decline in Taiwan’s labor demand is the root of the problem of brain drain and 20-year wage stagnation (Chang, 2011). In this regard, Mainland China has chosen to recruit domestic and foreign talent with high salaries because Mainland China is deeply aware of the role of talent and technology in catching up with advanced countries. Therefore, salary design is of paramount importance in attracting and retaining talent.

مقاله سال 2016

2 Labor unions play an important role in many labor markets in many countries. There is also a 3 large body of literature within labor economics focusing on how union presence influences labor market outcomes. Yet, there is relatively little work studying the impact of this institution on the 5 labor market when this market is described as having frictions and featuring unemployment due to 6 these frictions. Since search and matching models have come to play a central role as a workhorse 7 for macroeconomic labor market analyses, this gap in the literature leaves open important ques- 8 tions: What is the impact of unions on unemployment and wages? How do unions affect how 9 strongly unemployment varies over the business cycle? What institutional settings are desirable, 10 when considering rules regarding union coverage?

The model can be interpreted as representing either the aggregate labor market or an in- 12 dustry labor market, but in either case, the focus is on the case of a “large” union, which has 13 monopoly power over some group of workers. This case is particularly relevant for many Euro- 14 pean economies, in which there is a nationwide union or cooperation/agreements among unions 15 representing different industries. It is also relevant in other settings in which workers cannot eas- 16 ily move across industries and competition among different unions within an industry is limited. 17 The union is assumed to be fully rational, taking job creation into account when making its wage 18 demands, and its objective to be the welfare of all workers covered by union wages.

In the model, all workers have the same productivity and fulfill equally productive jobs. We 20 start with the view that union operations are governed by a norm of solidarity and egalitarianism 21 among workers, which leads to the assumption that unions impose identical wages across these 22 workers. This view can be motivated in part by the broad empirical evidence documenting that 23 unions compress the distribution of wages. Such fairness is found to come at a nontrivial cost, 24 however, as it leaves the unionized labor market vulnerable to a potentially severe holdup problem, 25 which leads to inefficiently high wages and low job creation.