1. Myth of meritocracy
There has been a belief that humans can be promoted as long as they make an effort to obtain merit regardless of their origin of birth and their belonging social class, and they are deserved to be impoverished otherwise. This is a typical structure of modernity, and both capitalism and socialism regard highly it as an important key maxim motivating individuals to progress.
The aforementioned system functions as long as all humans have an opportunity to be recruited in any possible market or bureaucracy to use their merit. In another word, there needs to be enough demand for humans in the world. Humanity also prevails when the world demands human-individuals as its important resource.
Nevertheless, the share of the revenue produced by human individuals merit is not fairly split to those majority human individuals. A significant proportion of the share goes to those who have the ownership of this system such as capitalists (Owner of huge enterprises) and high status bureaucrats of nation states. Therefore, majority humans tend to often feel unsatisfied with their living situation.
Furthermore, the demand of human beings decreases by following various reasons. The market is now monopolised by a countable huge corporations. The significance of the public sector bureaucracy declines due to the lowering power of nation states. The current technology growth discourages the labour intensive industrial structures. Therefore, the dissatisfaction of majority humans tends to be exaggerated.
2. Inferiority complex
The misery is that many humans still believing in meritocracy suffer from the inferiority complex. When they feel they are not rewarded as much as they expect, they tend to feel inferior to the other humans. When they feel inferior to the others, they tend to either of the following actions. They are disappointed by themselves and then suffer from depression. They hide their feeling by showing servile obedience to those in their superior position meanwhile looking down those who are in the inferior position in their living community.
There are many humans suffering from a constant irritating feeling due to the latter case scenario. This is troublesome because there are many of those who have achieved in obtaining high income and status in this category. Those with high status but yet suffering from the inferiority complex still tend to be not satisfied with what they have already achieved in. These humans suffering from the inferiority complex are harmful for both the others and themselves. The irritation caused by the dissatisfaction negatively affects not only their mental status but also their physical health status.
This is a psychological disorder which their upbringing has caused them to suffer. Their parents or any guardians in their childhood may have pressured them to continuously work hard by comparing them with the others. In this case, their parents also suffer from the inferiority complex. So, the multiple numbers of humans suffer from the inferiority complex simultaneously.
This is partially because of the modern world structure pressuring humans to believe in the meritocratic ideal although there are still several other cultural, biological, and psychological factors. Meritocracy is a fine ideal as long as it rewards all human individuals as much as what the idea offers in the real life. The problem is in real is that it hardly rewards majority human individuals to fulfil their expectation in meritocracy.
3. Anti-Perfectionism
This failure comes from the modern political philosophy expecting all humans act rationally under a unified logical principle. To the certain extend, human individuals act rationally and decide their choice with rational minds in various occasions. Nonetheless, all individuals are not always 100% rational, and they are not always in an occasion providing them with any rational choice available.
Some humans are more rational than the others, and some humans are less rational than the others. Moreover, an occasion does not always allow any human individual to decide their rational choice despite their rationality. The information is not always symmetrically distributed evenly to all human individuals in every occasion. In another word, there is always some level of disruption preventing either a human individual becoming rational or an occasion providing a human individual an available rational choice.
This is why both capitalism and socialism, and the other alternative modern political philosophy, fail to function perfectly. There are still many humans believing in the perfectionism where rationality and information symmetry prevail in majority occasions, and they are expected to perfectly fit in with the rationally designed structure. The dilemma is that this rational expectation of the modern political perfectionism hardly prevails, and many humans tend to be disappointed with themselves because they feel like not fulfilling the rational expectation from the perfectionist perspective.
On the other hand, there are a few numbers of humans who seem to have accomplished what the perfectionist modern political philosophy expects them and they think they have achieved it because they are rational. These minority humans tend to be called as elites, and these elites are often permitted to hold authority of gaining a high share of benefits and controlling the core function of their community structure. The politics based on the modern perfectionist political philosophy indoctrinates humans living in this community to believe that these elites are deserved to hold such authority over.
There is a sceptic view against the authority of these elites remaining. If all humans were available to become rational enough to offer enough merit to achieve such a social status, all of them would have done their best to act for what is expected and decided the most optimum choice with a full rational mind. The fundamental problem of disrupting majority individuals from this opportunity is the imperfect rationality of humans and the asymmetric information distributed among humans. Then, these elites could have been just fortunate enough to "accidentally" obtain their ability and the occasion enabling them to fit in what the ideology expects.
The reason why this is described as "accidentally" is that it is not necessary for these elites to be rational humans. Humans are never perfectly rational and there is no occasion providing any human with a possible occasion enabling them to act and choose with a perfect rationality. Even though they tend to believe they have chosen their perfect path with their rational mind, it should not purely by their rationality. They might have chosen their actions and decisions at random without knowing it. They have chosen this path because of some assistance from their peers who are already in the power.
The reason why these elites are not always guaranteed to be significantly more rational than the majority is that the world is still not governed as stable as humans have expected. This instability is caused by the imperfect humans' rationality regardless of their social status. The problem cannot be solved by either criticising these elites in charge of the economic and political structure or demolishing the current modern world structure. The necessary step to revise the problematic situation can be fundamentally evaluate how the logic of humans' minds propping up economy, politics, and daily life psychology operates from scratch.
4. Life code hacking
The common mind set of both elitists propping up the perfectionist policy and those obeying these elites and the perfectionist policy is that they have a strong worship in future. They put an excessive priority on future over past and present, and they expect that they are treated better in future for sure than present. This can be seen as an unfortunate mind set because they are always unsatisfied with their present situation and feel unhappy, miserable, and sometimes upset, and this often induces their inferiority complex.
Furthermore, it is impossible to either perfectly predict future outcomes or select the perfectly optimum tool of leading future outcomes to a desirable direction. Self-proclaimed rational human individuals attempt to use their logical inferences to either predict future outcomes or use optimum tools for leading future outcomes to a desirable direction. However, unlike mathematics, logical inference does not always have an objective measurement like mathematical axiom enabling to self-evaluate and self-contradict its validity. The validity of their arguments can be sustained by their belief in the possibility without any possible experiment because any experimental result only comes in the unknown future which nobody has yet ever experienced.
There is neither superiority nor inferiority of humans' life choice. The fundamental mistake of many humans is to assume humans’ logics follow the universal logical principle shared among all humans. This belief in the universal principle distinguishes human individuals between more rational or less rational. This is highly suspicious in terms of the anti-perfectionist analysis in this essay.
Each unique human individual has their own universe in their mind so that their principle is uniquely different from each other. Then, each human has their own rational logics rationally following their own principle in their mind universe. The critical point is that the difference among human individuals is not derived from rationality or any other quality: It is derived from the mere different characteristics of their personality and their own world view based on their own mind universe.
All human individuals should not forcibly be united with each other under one universal principle because it may cause an unnecesary conflict induced by misunderstanding. They should also not be forcibly separated from each other because they may have an opportunity to expand their world view to become friendly with each other. The natural flow of unification and the reasonable distance between different individuals should be kept.
It is not worth off for human individuals to listen to those who frequently criticise or accuse the others because some human suffers from the inferiority complex. The inferiority complex is contingent so that those who seriously listen to those suffering from the inferiority complex can be infected by their inferiority complex. It is safer to ignore and keep a distance from those suffering from the serious inferior complex as much as possible. The problem is that there are many elites suffering from the inferiority complex and many human individuals are in the situation where they are hardly able to avoid the elites' interference such as in family, school, or workplace. The best advice is to prevent taking their attitude personally and to keep any possible length of distance such as decreasing the time of the contact with them.
It is costly to revolutionarily change the world and human individuals should know how to enjoy their present life rather than expecting the future to be better. It is not necessary to replace the current environment with a revolutionary futuristic alternative. They can still optimise what they have already obtained in their daily life, and they can become happier by hacking their life code of their mind set. Instead of unsatisfied with their available resources, they can relocate their resource distribution pattern to optimise to improve their current life better as long as they can prevent any aggression from the inferiority complex.
5. Brief Summary
The modernity has produced massive benefits for humans especially in a material field by optimising resources to maximise the production level and the stable governance. At the same time, it has stressed humans enough to have a risk of suffering from the inferiority complex. It has come to the stage for humans to evolve into the next level from the modern perfectionist politics. Perhaps, it is time for every human individual to revolutionalise their own logics and mind-sets instead of a big system of economy and politics.
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
Econometric Analysis of Employment Rate based on New Economic Geography theory
* This was originally posted on 13th May, 2010:
Abstract:
This project attempted to create the model to indicate the significant factors influencing the employment rate in countries. As the author was sceptical about the traditional macroeconomic concepts the new economic geography theory approach is used. European countries are assessed in this project as Europe has a flexible labour mobility and is more convenient to assess the impact of language speaking ability in labour market than the USA where majority of people speak English. The Employment Rate Index (ERI), the index of employment, was based on the exponential of the employment rate subtracting the minimum employment rate in the data and then multiplied with 10 in order to make a symmetric variable (The raw data for the employment rate was very asymmetric). There are two explanatory variables are used; one indicates the employment opportunity in the other countries, and the other indicates the advantage to speak English in trade in both with other countries and within a country. Generalised Least Squares (GLS) estimates showed these two variables are significant enough to explain about the employment rate in a country.
1. Introduction:
This research was carried out to investigate to explain how the employment rate changes in terms of the New Economic Geography theory approach.
2. The reason why the data sets in European countries are used:
Europe has a flexible labour mobility as same as the USA unlike Asia and South America where people rarely change their job in their life. Europe is more convenient to assess the impact of language speaking ability in labour market than the USA where majority of people speak English. The global research encounters with lack of data set for the employment rate figure.
3. The Simultaneous Equation Problem in the traditional Macroeconomic theories:
The traditional macroeconomic theories claim that the employment rate is negatively correlated with the real wage. However, this assumption encounters with the simultaneous equation problem. The real wage rate is highly affected by the employment rate itself. For example, when the employment rate decreases, the real wage starts being depreciated in order to encourage employers to employ labour more. A part of Keynesian wage theory claims that when the employment rate decreases, the nominal wage should increase in order to encourage employees to work more.
4. The significance of using Geographic data:
The best variable explaining the unemployment rate is considered as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). There is a high demand for productions when the GDP rises so that the demand for labour rises whilst there is a low demand for productions when the GDP falls so that the demand for labour falls. Nonetheless, John Maynard Keynes (1936) claimed that the productivity and the demand of labour is not always positively correlated. When the productivity rises, the production method can alter the labour incentive to the capital incentive. In addition, whenever the employment rate (or any variable representing it) is regressed on the GDP, it causes the endogeneity problem. Therefore, the GDP hardly becomes the best explanatory variable.
Alternatively, geographical aspects are recommended to be used as explanatory variables. Any variables used in economics tend to be measured by a common measure such as money. All variables introduced in IS-LM model are correlated each other. For example, the investment rate, the consumption rate, and the money supply are highly correlated with the productivity, and the productivity is highly correlated with these variables as well. On the other hand, the variables representing geographical aspects are not affected by any economic data generally speaking although these geographic data may affect the economic data. For instance, the geographic distance between cities and latitude (not used in this project but commonly used in the NEG theory) are not modified by any social scientific data sets.
Instead of analysing by the real wage effect inside the countries, the real wage effect in outside the countries is used to analyse the employment rate. Focusing on the graph below, rise in the real wage implies either decrease in the labour supply or increase in the labour demand. When the labour supply decreases in a country, there is a lack of labour supply or labourers in this countries are reluctant to work anymore. Therefore, there is more employment potential for immigrant labourers from outside this country. When the labour demand increases in a country, there is also more employment potential for immigrant labourers from outside this country. By contrast, fall in the real wage implies the opposite effect to the rise in the real wage by referring to the graph below.
This project used the matrix algebra (Explained in Chapter 6) to explain the employment potential in the other countries. The variable representing this is called the Wage Potential Index (WPI) in this project. In order to show this potential, the minimum distance between capital cities is used. As the countries are closer each other the effect of the real wage on employment in a country is stronger whilst as the countries are farer each other the effect of the real wage on employment in a country is weaker. The matrix algebra enables to asses this effect of all the countries surrounding the country assessed by this analysis simultaneously.
5. Shared Language provides more employment opportunities
The NEG theory also uses a variable (variables) representing the human capital index (indices). This project focused on the effect of shared language in both an domestic and international trade. For both non-skilled and skilled workers, language skill is necessary to find a job opportunity. This project focused on English as it is the most commonly used shared language as a shared language in international academic and business activities. As many people speak English in a country, people there find more employment opportunities in the other countries trading with this country. As both a country and the other country trading with have more people speaking English it is more convenient to trade each other.
6. Formulae used:
* The Annual Inflation Rates are the average of the five years.
7. Regression Analysis:
The time periods used are 1995, 2000, and 2005. The countries used are United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Greece, Cyprus, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. The reason why the number of time periods and countries is restricted is due to the lack of data sets in some other countries not introduced in this project. But, the author's previously carried out research on the real GDP per capita in a global data showed it did not make a difference between using all countries in a globe and using some representative of the economic regions in a globe. Therefore, the author was confident enough to use the data set able to use as much as possible to analyse the employment in this project.
The Generalised Least Squares (GLS) was used because one of the explanatory variable, the LPI, does not vary across the time (The author could not find a data for this varying across the time), the fixed-effect estimator based the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) could not be used due to the multicollinearity between the dummy variables used in the OLS and the variable not varying across the time. The pooled OLS should not be used as the unit specific effect in the countries is significant. There is a certain level of the employment rate fixed over the time period. Therefore, the unit specific effect is included in the dummy variable "inside the error term". The regression result is as follows:
Both the WPI and the LPI are significant and positively correlated. The Breusch-Pagan test indicates that the random effect estimate based on the GLS should be used, and the Pooled OLS is not appropriate to use. The Hausman test indicates that the hypothesis claiming there is not an endogeneity problem cannot be rejected. According to what this table shows, the GLS estimates are essential to do this regression, and there is not an endogeneity problem so that this regression analysis is consistent.
8. Conclution:
Having analysed the employment rate, the real wage in the other countries, which represents the potential for labourers in one country to be employed, the geographical figures (the geographical distance represented in this project), and learning English are significant factors influencing the employment rate. This project proved that the NEG theory is able to explain the employment rate in labour market.
Data Sources:
Gleditsch and Ward (2001) Minimum Distance Data // Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/php_site/pwt_index.php
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/01/weodata/weoselgr.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
Abstract:
This project attempted to create the model to indicate the significant factors influencing the employment rate in countries. As the author was sceptical about the traditional macroeconomic concepts the new economic geography theory approach is used. European countries are assessed in this project as Europe has a flexible labour mobility and is more convenient to assess the impact of language speaking ability in labour market than the USA where majority of people speak English. The Employment Rate Index (ERI), the index of employment, was based on the exponential of the employment rate subtracting the minimum employment rate in the data and then multiplied with 10 in order to make a symmetric variable (The raw data for the employment rate was very asymmetric). There are two explanatory variables are used; one indicates the employment opportunity in the other countries, and the other indicates the advantage to speak English in trade in both with other countries and within a country. Generalised Least Squares (GLS) estimates showed these two variables are significant enough to explain about the employment rate in a country.
1. Introduction:
This research was carried out to investigate to explain how the employment rate changes in terms of the New Economic Geography theory approach.
2. The reason why the data sets in European countries are used:
Europe has a flexible labour mobility as same as the USA unlike Asia and South America where people rarely change their job in their life. Europe is more convenient to assess the impact of language speaking ability in labour market than the USA where majority of people speak English. The global research encounters with lack of data set for the employment rate figure.
3. The Simultaneous Equation Problem in the traditional Macroeconomic theories:
The traditional macroeconomic theories claim that the employment rate is negatively correlated with the real wage. However, this assumption encounters with the simultaneous equation problem. The real wage rate is highly affected by the employment rate itself. For example, when the employment rate decreases, the real wage starts being depreciated in order to encourage employers to employ labour more. A part of Keynesian wage theory claims that when the employment rate decreases, the nominal wage should increase in order to encourage employees to work more.
4. The significance of using Geographic data:
The best variable explaining the unemployment rate is considered as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). There is a high demand for productions when the GDP rises so that the demand for labour rises whilst there is a low demand for productions when the GDP falls so that the demand for labour falls. Nonetheless, John Maynard Keynes (1936) claimed that the productivity and the demand of labour is not always positively correlated. When the productivity rises, the production method can alter the labour incentive to the capital incentive. In addition, whenever the employment rate (or any variable representing it) is regressed on the GDP, it causes the endogeneity problem. Therefore, the GDP hardly becomes the best explanatory variable.
Alternatively, geographical aspects are recommended to be used as explanatory variables. Any variables used in economics tend to be measured by a common measure such as money. All variables introduced in IS-LM model are correlated each other. For example, the investment rate, the consumption rate, and the money supply are highly correlated with the productivity, and the productivity is highly correlated with these variables as well. On the other hand, the variables representing geographical aspects are not affected by any economic data generally speaking although these geographic data may affect the economic data. For instance, the geographic distance between cities and latitude (not used in this project but commonly used in the NEG theory) are not modified by any social scientific data sets.
Instead of analysing by the real wage effect inside the countries, the real wage effect in outside the countries is used to analyse the employment rate. Focusing on the graph below, rise in the real wage implies either decrease in the labour supply or increase in the labour demand. When the labour supply decreases in a country, there is a lack of labour supply or labourers in this countries are reluctant to work anymore. Therefore, there is more employment potential for immigrant labourers from outside this country. When the labour demand increases in a country, there is also more employment potential for immigrant labourers from outside this country. By contrast, fall in the real wage implies the opposite effect to the rise in the real wage by referring to the graph below.
This project used the matrix algebra (Explained in Chapter 6) to explain the employment potential in the other countries. The variable representing this is called the Wage Potential Index (WPI) in this project. In order to show this potential, the minimum distance between capital cities is used. As the countries are closer each other the effect of the real wage on employment in a country is stronger whilst as the countries are farer each other the effect of the real wage on employment in a country is weaker. The matrix algebra enables to asses this effect of all the countries surrounding the country assessed by this analysis simultaneously.
5. Shared Language provides more employment opportunities
The NEG theory also uses a variable (variables) representing the human capital index (indices). This project focused on the effect of shared language in both an domestic and international trade. For both non-skilled and skilled workers, language skill is necessary to find a job opportunity. This project focused on English as it is the most commonly used shared language as a shared language in international academic and business activities. As many people speak English in a country, people there find more employment opportunities in the other countries trading with this country. As both a country and the other country trading with have more people speaking English it is more convenient to trade each other.
6. Formulae used:
* The Annual Inflation Rates are the average of the five years.
7. Regression Analysis:
The time periods used are 1995, 2000, and 2005. The countries used are United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Greece, Cyprus, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. The reason why the number of time periods and countries is restricted is due to the lack of data sets in some other countries not introduced in this project. But, the author's previously carried out research on the real GDP per capita in a global data showed it did not make a difference between using all countries in a globe and using some representative of the economic regions in a globe. Therefore, the author was confident enough to use the data set able to use as much as possible to analyse the employment in this project.
The Generalised Least Squares (GLS) was used because one of the explanatory variable, the LPI, does not vary across the time (The author could not find a data for this varying across the time), the fixed-effect estimator based the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) could not be used due to the multicollinearity between the dummy variables used in the OLS and the variable not varying across the time. The pooled OLS should not be used as the unit specific effect in the countries is significant. There is a certain level of the employment rate fixed over the time period. Therefore, the unit specific effect is included in the dummy variable "inside the error term". The regression result is as follows:
Both the WPI and the LPI are significant and positively correlated. The Breusch-Pagan test indicates that the random effect estimate based on the GLS should be used, and the Pooled OLS is not appropriate to use. The Hausman test indicates that the hypothesis claiming there is not an endogeneity problem cannot be rejected. According to what this table shows, the GLS estimates are essential to do this regression, and there is not an endogeneity problem so that this regression analysis is consistent.
8. Conclution:
Having analysed the employment rate, the real wage in the other countries, which represents the potential for labourers in one country to be employed, the geographical figures (the geographical distance represented in this project), and learning English are significant factors influencing the employment rate. This project proved that the NEG theory is able to explain the employment rate in labour market.
Data Sources:
Gleditsch and Ward (2001) Minimum Distance Data // Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/php_site/pwt_index.php
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/01/weodata/weoselgr.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population