Foreign Firms and Indonesian Manufacturing Wages: An Analysis With Panel Data

Wages in domestically- owned Indonesian manufacturing plants taken over by foreign firms increased sharply between the year before takeover and two years after takeover, relative to plants remaining in domestic ownership. Blue- collar wage levels in these plants had been less than 10 per cent above and white- collar wages more than 10 per cent below those in their industries a year before takeover. Two years after takeover both were more than 50 per cent above average. Wages in foreign plants taken over by domestic owners tended to rise less than average for their industries, although they remained above the domestic average. Thus, foreign firms did not select particularly high- wage plants to take over and it was foreign takeovers, rather than takeovers in general, that led to large An econometric analysis of the whole panel found that both foreign ownership throughout the period and foreign takeover resulted in higher wages relative to domestically- owned plants. The wage effects for white- collar employees were typically around twice those for blue- collar employees. Foreign takeovers were associated with large increases in blue- collar employment and both foreign and domestic takeovers with declines in white- collar employment. However, the employment changes were not strongly related to the wage changes.

Foreign Direct Investment and Wages in Indonesian Manufacturing

This paper asks two types of questions. One is about the behavior of foreign-owned firms in Indonesian labor markets and the other is about the effect of the presence of foreign-owned firms on Indonesian wages. We ask first whether foreign-owned plants pay a higher price for labor, that is, more than locally-owned plants for workers of a given quality, as we can measure it. We then ask whether foreign-owned plants pay a higher price for labor given the characteristics of the plants such as their size, industry, and location. The answer is that foreign firms do pay a higher price, and even a higher price given their plant characteristics. The second set of questions is whether a larger presence of foreign-owned plants results in higher wages in locally-owned plants and overall. Higher foreign presence leads to higher wages in locally-owned plants. Since the foreign plants also pay higher wages than locally-owned ones, the two factors together mean that higher foreign presence raises the general wage level in a province and industry.

A Robust Low-Complexity MIMO Detector for Rank 4 LTE/LTE-A Systems

This paper deals with MIMO detection for rank 4 LTE systems. The paper revolves around a previously known detector [1, by Inkyu Lee, TCOM'2010] which we shall refer to as RCSMLD (Reduced-Constellation-Size-Maximum-Likelihood-Detector). However, a direct application of the scheme in [1, by Inkyu Lee, TCOM'2010] to LTE/LTE-A rank 4 test cases results in unsatisfactory performance. The first contribution of the paper is to introduce several modifications that can jointly be applied to the basic RCSMLD scheme which, taken together, result in excellent performance. Our second contribution is the development of a highly efficient hardware structure for RCSMLD that allows for an implementation with very few multiplications.Comment: Accepted for publication in PIMRC-2014, Washington DC, US

Foreign Firms and Indonesian Manufacturing Wages: An Analysis with Panel Data

Wages in domestically- owned Indonesian manufacturing plants taken over by foreign firms increased sharply between the year before takeover and two years after takeover, relative to plants remaining in domestic ownership. Blue- collar wage levels in these plants had been less than 10 per cent above and white- collar wages more than 10 per cent below those in their industries a year before takeover. Two years after takeover both were more than 50 per cent above average. Wages in foreign plants taken over by domestic owners tended to rise less than average for their industries, although they remained above the domestic average. Thus, foreign firms did not select particularly high- wage plants to take over and it was foreign takeovers, rather than takeovers in general, that led to large wage increases and high wages. An econometric analysis of the whole panel found that both foreign ownership throughout the period and foreign takeover resulted in higher wages relative to domestically- owned plants. The wage effects for white- collar employees were typically around twice those for blue- collar employees. Foreign takeovers were associated with large increases in blue- collar employment and both foreign and domestic takeovers with declines in white- collar employment. However, the employment changes were not strongly related to the wage changes.FDI; Foreign ownership; Indonesia; Wages

FDI and Growth in East Asia: Lessons for Indonesia

Foreign direct investment has been important in the economic growth and global economic integration of developing countries over the last decades. Both Northeast and Southeast Asia, especially the latter, have been part of this development with increasing inflows of FDI and greater foreign participation in their economies. However, Indonesia has been an outlier within the region, with lower inflows of FDI than other countries, especially in manufacturing, and with lower inflows than could be expected from its size and other country characteristics. The inflows of FDI that have taken place have benefited Indonesia and we use the Asian experience to provide some suggestions as to what measures would increase FDI. A relatively poor business environment with inefficient institutions seems to be an important explanation behind the low inflows of FDI.East Asia; Northeast Asia; Southeast Asia; Indonesia; Foreign Direct Investment; Multinational Firms

South-South FDI and Development in East Asia

This paper attempts to measure the size of South-South FDI in developing East Asia and the trends in it, and the characteristics of the investing countries and the investments themselves. It also summarizes the findings of studies in individual countries of the effects of these investments. The studies of individual countries will be used to try to find some consensus on differences between South-South FDI and North-South FDI. Among the comparisons of the two types of FDI we try to summarize are be findings about their industrial composition, their effects on their host countries and their host-country firms’ productivity, wages, and employment, and how these differ across industries.FDI; East Asia; South-South; Economic development

Monte Carlo Update for Chain Molecules: Biased Gaussian Steps in Torsional Space

We develop a new elementary move for simulations of polymer chains in torsion angle space. The method is flexible and easy to implement. Tentative updates are drawn from a (conformation-dependent) Gaussian distribution that favors approximately local deformations of the chain. The degree of bias is controlled by a parameter b. The method is tested on a reduced model protein with 54 amino acids and the Ramachandran torsion angles as its only degrees of freedom, for different b. Without excessive fine tuning, we find that the effective step size can be increased by a factor of three compared to the unbiased b=0 case. The method may be useful for kinetic studies, too.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure