Michael Reich

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the effects of minimum wages. Michael Reich’s cutting-edge research findings challenge traditional approaches to the topic, exploring the effects of minimum wage policies across different sectors, groups and demographics.Reich examines the effects of minimum wages on pay and employment among the two groups most affected by the policies - restaurant workers and teens - as well as investigating their impact on the lowest-wage areas of the US. He outlines how minimum wages influence parental labor supply, racial inequality, the health of low wage workers and government spending on food stamps and Medicaid. The book further reflects on the extension of pay standards to gig drivers, who are not typically covered by minimum wage laws as independent contractors. It concludes by demonstrating how minimum wages can be absorbed by increasing the supply of workers to low-wage employers, reducing the costs of recruiting and retaining workers and introducing modest price increases, rather than reducing employment.The Unexpected Economics of Minimum Wages is a crucial resource for students, scholars and practitioners of labor economics. Thorough and detailed, it is also key for policymakers and advocates who are working to raise low pay and reduce inequality.

In an investigation of the effects of racism on the American economy, Michael Reich evaluates the leading economic theories of racial inequality and presents the new theory that discrimination against blacks increases inequality of income among whites. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Die Umfeld Bedingungen der Versicherungsbranche unterliegen seit mehr als ber einem Jahrzehnt einem fortw hrenden und dramatischen Wandel. Dieser Wandel dr ckt sich zum einen Teil in beobachtbaren, langanhaltenden Mega-Trends, zum anderen Teil aber auch in unerwarteten Strukturbr chen aus. Mehr denn je stellen diese Ver nderungen die Versicherungsunternehmen vor gro e Herausforderungen. Deregulierung und Wettbewerbsintensivierung haben dazu gef hrt, dass sich Versicherer zunehmend ber ihre Produkte und Tarife differenzieren m ssen und diese zu einem zentralen wettbewerbspolitischen Instrument geworden sind. Das Versicherungsprodukt ist das abstrakte Dauerschutzversprechen in die Zukunft f r den Versicherungsnehmer. Dabei handelt es sich um eine auf hohes Vertrauen ausgerichtete Dienstleistung, denn erst im Schaden- bzw. dem Leistungsfall erkennt der Kunde die Qualit t des abgeschlossenen Versicherungsproduktes. Konzentriert auf die Gewinnung zus tzlicher Marktanteile sowie die St rkung der Wettbewerbsposition auf Basis einer hochdifferenzierten Produktpalette nehmen Versicherungsunternehmen Komplexit t und deren Konsequenzen billigend in Kauf. Prim r treten diese als ungeplante Kosten prozess- und funktions bergreifend auf, welche sich nur mittels einer explizit formulierten Prozesskostenberechnungen beziffern und zuordnen lassen. Ein Nachweis der urs chlichen Zugeh rigkeit dieser Kosten zur Komplexit tsentwicklung und damit zur Verschlechterung der Wertsch pfung, erfordert die Konzentration auf den Aspekt "Kosten von Komplexit t" - ein Aspekt, der in der analytischen Diskussion bisher nur untergeordnet behandelt wurde. Ein Vergleich mit der Automobilindustrie liefert interessante Ans tze. Es zeigt sich, dass der Faktor Komplexit t sowie das Management von Komplexit t sehr stark die operative Gestaltung von Produkten und Gesch ftsmodellen pr gt. hnlich wie in der Versicherungsbranche treiben im Wesentlichen die Produkte die Komplexit t und damit einhergehend die

The goals of universal health coverage (UHC) are to ensure that all people can access quality health services, to safeguard all people from public health risks, and to protect all people from impoverishment due to illness, whether from out-of-pocket payments for health care or loss of income when a household member falls sick. Countries as diverse as Brazil, France, Japan, Thailand, and Turkey have shown how UHC can serve as vital mechanisms for improving the health and welfare of their citizens, and lay the foundation for economic growth and competitiveness grounded in the principles of equity and sustainability. Ensuring universal access to affordable, quality health services will be an important contribution to ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), where most of the world's poor live. The book synthesizes the experiences from 11 countries – Bangladesh, Brazil, France, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Japan, Peru, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam – in implementing policies and strategies to achieve and sustain UHC. These countries represent diverse geographic and economic conditions, but all have committed to UHC as a key national aspiration and are approaching it in different ways.The study examined the UHC policies for each country around three common themes: (i) the political economy and policy process for adopting, achieving, and sustaining UHC; (ii) health financing policies to enhance health coverage; and (iii) human resources for health policies for achieving UHC. The findings from these country studies are intended to provide lessons that can be used by countries aspiring to adopt, achieve, and sustain UHC. Although the path to UHC is specific to each country, countries can benefit from the experiences of others in learning about different approaches and avoiding potential risks.

This book provides a multi-disciplinary framework for developing and analysing health sector reforms, based on the authors' extensive international experience. It offers practical guidance, and stresses the need to take account of each country's economic, administrative, and political circumstances. The authors explain how to design effective government interventions in five areas - financing, payment, organization, regulation, and behaviour - to improve the performance and equity of health systems around the world.

In Work and Pay in the United States and Japan, authors Clair Brown, Yoshifumi Nakata, Michael Reich, and Lloyd Ulman provide an integrated and detailed analysis of the components of firm human resources systems in the US and Japan. Drawing on data obtained from fieldwork in comparable establishments in these two countries, as well as from national sources, this work examines the relationship between company practices and national economic institutions. The authors address a number of key questions about employer-employee relations. How have major Japanese manufacturing companies been able to convert the assurance of "lifetime" employment security into a source of superior employee efficiency and adaptability, when job and income security have been feared as a source of "shirking" and wage inflation in the US? How have higher economic and real wage growth rates been associated with greater equality in earned income distribution in Japan, when the incentive role of income inequality to worker effort and savings has been stressed in the US? How could Japanese emphasis on employment security in the firm be reconciled with greater price stability and lower unemployment than in the US? This work analyses elements such as employee training and involvement programs, wage behavior as an incentive system and an alternate channel of savings, and synchronous wage determination (shunto) at work in the Japanese economy that provide for such successes. The book also explores the costs that have been associated with these Japanese accomplishments, as well as who must bear them. In particular, it examines how Japanese women compare less favorably with American women in terms of opportunities for work, pay, and promotion; the higher hours of working time for men in Japan than in the US; and the constraints on mobility for Japanese workers. It also poses the question of whether Japanese unions are weaker than their American counterparts, or just more sensible and far-sighted. Finally, this \ork examines the outlook for these distinctive Japanese institutions and practices in a period of slower growth and economic "maturity." Based on a research project carried out in both countries, the book concludes with the lessons that each country can learn much from the employment practices of the other. Work and Pay in the United States and Japan will be essential reading for students, professors, and all professionals involved with employment systems and employer-employee relations.

Segmented Work, Divided Workers presents a restatement and expansion of the theory of labor segmentation by three of its founding scholars. The authors argue that divisions with the US working class are rooted in a segmentation of jobs since World War II. They explain the origins of job segmentation through a careful and systematic historical analysis of changes in the labor process and the structure of labor markets since the early 1800s. this analysis builds, in turn, upon hypotheses about successive stages in the history of capitalist development. Segmented Work, Divided Workers integrates this economics analysis with a careful historial appreciation of the complexity of working-class experience in the United States.