Root Causes of Taiwan's Stagnant Salary: 2000-2014

• Main Authors: CHANG, YUN-HSIANG, 張雲翔
• Other Authors: LIN, CHIN-HSIUNG
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/55139674281754909730

碩士 === 東吳大學 === 企業管理學系 === 104 === Abstract Although many empirical studies have been made to find out the causes of the salary stagnation in Taiwan for the past dozen years, almost all the studies focus on several perspectives such as FDI, higher education expansion, labor supply and demand, structural imbalance of Taiwan’s varied industries, etc. to provide explanation based on general approaches of deductive and inductive methods in mainstream economics. There is little comprehensive study regarding the root causes underlying the empirical and actual domains in the account of Roy Bhaskar’ critical realism, leaving the real domain untouched. This paper attempts to explore and research the societal activity of salary giving between employers and employees through the retroductive method used by critical realism. Through the exploration of societal activity, the real domain can thus be attended. From the real domain, we can find what are neglected but can be what causes our studied event to happen. In this paper, we conclude that the governing structure of our studied event is global capitalism. Under global capitalism, three causal mechanisms that operate across time-space in between 2000-2014 are cost leadership strategy, overinvestment in physical capital by technology industries, and the impotent bargaining power of labor unions. With the causal structure and mechanisms found, we believe their interacting causal powers can provide an efficacious explanation on our studied event. Key Words: FDI, Roy Bhaskar, critical realism, global capitalism, structure, causal mechanisms