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英国assignment代写:英国全国最低工资
UK National Minimum Wage
英国全国最低工资标准目前不到平均工资的50%。它应该设置更高吗？
全国最低工资（NMW）介绍了在英国1999年的目标，帮助许多低收入工人尽可能无任何重大不良影响通胀或就业。这篇文章将探讨最低工资应高于目前的水平£5.80市场竞争作为一种工具使用供求结构。对英国经济的最低工资的影响将进行调查，并与1999年的最低工资在原来的目标相比。
在2005年的中心论点是，它可以保护低收入工人。这是“植根于关注市场的能力提供收入”。虽然人们普遍的共识是，社会和道德方面的最低工资是一件好事，经济利益与弊端已争论多年。反对的是，设置一个最低工资高于均衡点的需求和供给曲线（一个最低工资是有效的本质）在竞争激烈的市场将通过劳动供给的增加会导致失业率（由于工人的高工资和激励）减少对劳动力的需求（因为企业无法承受）。一个关键点是，平衡点（和相应的供应和需求曲线）涉及到每个工人，他们的就业能力，因此，没有一个平衡点持有的市场。
The UK National Minimum Wage is currently set at less than 50 per cent of median earnings. Should it be set higher?
The National Minimum Wage (NMW) was introduced in the UK in 1999, with the goal of helping “as many low-paid workers as possible without any significant adverse impacts on inflation or employment” (Low Pay Commission, 2006) This essay will explore whether the minimum wage should be higher than its current level of £5.80 using the demand-supply framework in a competitive market as a tool. The impact of the minimum wage on the UK economy will be investigated, and compared against the original goals of the minimum wage back in 1999.
The central argument for a NMW is that it protects low paid workers from exploitation. It is “rooted in concern about the ability of markets to provide income equity for the least able members of the work force” (Eatwell et all, 1987). Whilst there is general consensus that socially and morally the NMW is a good thing, the economic benefits versus drawbacks have been vigorously debated for years. The principle argument against is that setting a NMW above the equilibrium point of the demand and supply curves (essential for a NMW to be effective) in a competitive market will cause unemployment through an increase in the supply of labour (because workers are incentivised by higher wages) and decrease in the demand for labour (because firms cannot afford to pay for the same volume of labour as before). One crucial point is that the equilibrium point (and the corresponding supply and demand curves) relates to each worker, and their employability, and therefore there is no one equilibrium point that holds for the market.
There is no one accepted definition of what low pay is, or indeed what the level of the minimum wage should be. At the upper limit, the Council of Europe defines a so called ‘decency threshold' that originally was 2/3 of the mean wage level (Council of Europe, 2008). This has now been revised down to 60% of net earnings. This would give a NMW in the UK of between £8.17 and £9.00 (40-55% higher than the current £5.80 level). As a result of this up to 38% of full-time workers would have their wages improved (Sloman and Hinde). If the NMW was set at 2/3 of median male earnings rather than mean wages, this would lead to a NMW of £7.50, and positively impact 20% of men and 40% of women. (Sloman and Hinde, 2007)
Regardless of which measure is chosen to compare the NMW to average (mean, median, full-time male etc), it is clear that the UK NMW is someway off the 60-67% of ‘average' earnings suggested as appropriate. On the flipside, the Low Pay Commission has recommended (and had accepted) above average earnings rises in the minimum wage over the past 10 years (Low Pay Commission, 2009).
A minimum wage acts as a “classical price floor on labour” (Ehrenberg and Smith, 1994). It goes on to explain that “if set above the equilibrium price, more labor will be willing to be provided by workers than will be demanded by employers” The result is “a surplus of the commodity” and this “takes the form of unemployment, which tends to be higher with minimum wage laws than without them” (Sowell, 2007).
It is clear from the above diagram that in a competitive market, setting a minimum wage above the equilibrium rate, leads to deadweight welfare loss. The consumer (employer) surplus must decrease, while producer (employee) surplus may or may not increase; however the decrease in consumer surplus must be greater than the increase in producer surplus
Back in 1946, Stigler argued (Stigler, 1946) that “a rise in the minimum wage leads perfectly competitive employers to cut employment”. The level of the NMW is not the sole factor determining the size of this employment gap. The elasticity of price for a sectors goods has an impact as well (Sloman and Hinde). Since the NMW applies to the sector as a whole, and not an individual firm, this elasticity effect is attenuated, and the potential unemployment in any one firm minimized. Additional complications such as replacing staff with machines, or overseas threats, serve to ensure that the NMW has the potential to cause unemployment in some sectors prone to these 2 cost reduction techniques.
Under monopsonistic competition, in which the employer has “some influence over rates of pay (Sloman and Hinde), an “appropriately set minimum wage could increase both wages and employment, with the optimal level being equal to the marginal productivity of labor” (Manning, 2003). In this sense, the NMW is seen from the perspective of being a “market regulation policy akin to antitrust policies, as opposed to an illusory "free lunch" for low wage workers” (Manning, 2003) . Dickens et al (Dickens, Machin and Manning, 1999) propose that a modern monopsonistic framework, less based on unrealistic company town concepts, and more on “labor market frictions” could explain the (neoclassically) anomalous neutral/positive employment impacts caused by the introduction of a NMW. They studied the ‘Wage Councils' in the UK, the forerunner to the UK NMW, and found that such firms potentially have a “degree of monopsony power” (Dickens, Machin and Manning, 1999) because those that cut wages “do not instantaneously lose all their workers, so the supply of labor to a firm is not perfectly elastic”. They found that “irrespective of specification and data definition, the effect of minimum wages on employment is always estimated to be nonnegative and in many cases to be positive”. They do add a word of caution, however, that if the NMW was set “high enough”, their theoretical framework could lead to negative results.
Blinder (Blinder, 1996) argues that an increased NMW encourages employees to stay, thus reducing turnover and training costs (associated with new employees). It could also “render moot” (Blinder, 1996) the potential problem of recruiting workers at a higher wage than current workers. He further argues that minimum workers may be such a small part of a businesses cost that it doesn't matter. Whilst these are not proven points, they could explain part of the reason why the NMW has not had a negative impact on the UK economy as a whole.
Contrary to initial concern, and possibly as a result of the deliberately cautious (Low Pay Commission, 2009) initial £3.60 rate; there has been little evidence that the NMW has had a negative economic impact. Research by the Low Pay Commission has found that employers may have “reduced their rate of hiring, reduced staff hours, increased prices, and have found ways to cause current workers to be more productive (especially service companies)” (Low Pay Commission, 2005)
Research in the US by Card and Krueger (Card and Krueger, 1994) (Card and Krueger, 1995) showed that increases in the minimum wage actually increased employment. This result was supported by Krugman (Krugman, 2007) and Stiglitz (Stiglitz, 2002), but vehemently opposed by Murphy, Mankiv (Mankiw, 1999) and Becker (Becker, 1995).
In the UK, Machin et al (Machin, Manning and Rahman, 2003) demonstrated that the “current evidence on the employment effects of the National Minimum Wage suggests that these effects (employment and hours reduction) have been small or non-existent, whilst Stewart (Stewart, 2004) showed “there to have been no reduction in the employment probabilities of minimum wage workers as compared to workers slightly higher up the wage distribution”.
The Low Pay Commission in their 2009 commission report (Low Pay Commission, 2009) assert that the NMW continues to exert “significant influence on wages at the bottom of the earnings distribution” whilst “firms appear to have adapted to these increases in wage costs by changing pay structures, removing wage premia, and reducing non-wage costs” This would suggest that the NMW is achieving its goals of benefiting low paid workers, whilst having a “benign influence on the economy” (Low Pay Commission, 2009) |
