Poland has tackled its economic problems with courage and, thus far, success. Hyperinflation has ceased, the well-chosen exchange rate has held, and wage behaviour has been responsible.A major recession is under way, and it must not become endemic. A big export effort is needed, followed with...

The view that the stock market is myopic is commonly expressed in the financial press. However, the existing econometric evidence does not support this view. In this paper, we report econometric evidence suggesting that the market attaches too high a weight to current dividends relative to...

This paper attempts to assess the relative importance of firm-specific factors (i.e., insider forces) in wage determination. Using firm-level data on 219 UK companies over the period 1974-82, it finds that a 1% rise in a firm's prices or productivity relative to the aggregate economy leads to a...

A key feature of OECD economic growth since the early 1970s has been the secular decline in manufacturing’s share of GDP and the secular rise of service sectors. This Paper examines the role played by relative prices, technology, factor endowments and labour market institutions in the process...

This paper derives and then estimates a model of employment where unions and firms bargain over wages and possibly employment, and efficiency wage considerations may be important. It illustrates the difficulties involved in interpreting many existing attempts to discriminate between alternative...

The received wisdom tells us that the rigidity and inflexibility of European job markets relative to that in the United States is the reason why Europe has high unemployment. This paper argues that this broad brush analysis is simply too vague to be useful. Indeed it is probably positively...

Barely a day goes by without some expert telling us how the continental European economies are about to disintegrate unless their labor markets become more flexible. Basically, we are told, Europe has the wrong sort of labor market institutions for the modern global economy. These outdated...

This paper derives, and then estimates, a model of employment where unions and firms bargain over wages and possibly employment, and efficiency wage considerations may be important. It illustrates the difficulties associated in interpreting many existing attempts to discriminate between...