This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Wage regulation is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
Wage regulation refers to attempts by a government to regulate wages paid to citizens.
Contents |
Minimum wage
Minimum wage regulation attempts to set an hourly, or other periodic monetary standard for pay at work. A recent example was the U.K. National Minimum Wage Act 1998. Germany is currently debating whether to introduce its own.
Collective bargaining
Collective agreements between trade unions and employers can regulate wages of workers according to the needs of the business.
Arbitration
- See also: Australian labour law
Arbitration involves makes collective agreements between trade unions and employers legally binding and mediated through a state appointed judge or magistrate.
Economic labour theory
An economic analysis of the law holds very simply that any intervention in a contract between two parties creates an inefficient labour market. Wages kept artificially high, by imposing any administrative or monetary costs on employers distorts the labour market equilibrium. For a national economy in a globalised world, that means jobs will go overseas and the unemployment rate rises. Major proponents of this sort of labour economics include Nobel Prize winner from the University of Chicago, Professor Gary Becker. Professor Becker keeps a blog with well known academic and judge, Richard Posner. Posner is a lawyer and economist, and wrote a book called Economic Analysis of Law. His starting assumption is that unions are the cartelisation of the labour market. Both would agree, that if its aim is to improve the living standards of society, wage regulation defeats itself. Posner says, “Economics is not a theory about consciousness. Behaviour is rational when it conforms to the model of rational choice, whatever the state of mind of the chooser.”1 So any conscious attempt to improve working standards are impossible under this view.
See also
References
- ^ Posner, Richard, (1998) Economic Analysis of Law, 5th Edition, p.4
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 5 October 2008, at 19:07.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Wage regulation".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.