A Theory of Efficiency Wage with Community-Based Income Sharing

Kaushik Basu and Amanda Felkey
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Amanda Felkey: Cornell U

Working Papers from Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics

Abstract: This paper uses efficiency wage theory and the existence of community based sharing to hypothesize that labor markets in developing countries have multiple equilibria--the same economy can be stuck at different levels of unemployment with different levels of wages. The result is constrained to poor economies where wage productivity models seem to be applicable and income sharing among the poor is prevalent. We establish a mutual reinforcement of income sharing and unemployment. That more unemployment leads to more income sharing is a logical extension of evidence and the fact that more sharing increases unemployment rates is established theoretically in our model. As a corollary, we show that within the same society, two different racial groups, that may be innately identical, can have different levels of unemployment and wages in equilibrium.

JEL-codes: D40 J60 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-06
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:corcae:04-10

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