This paper uses the common agency approach to analyse the joint determination of product and labour market distortions in a small (developing) open economy. Capital owners and union members lobby the government on both tariffs and minimum wages, while other factors of production are not...

In this article, I study the effect of worker heterogeneities on wages and unemployment within the context of a directed search model. A worker's productivity in a given firm depends both on their type and on a worker-firm specific component. Firms advertise unconditional wage offers, and hire...

The paper analyses the contemporary organizational restructuring of production and work and derives some salient implications for the labour market. The analysis focuses on the switch from occupational specialization at 'Tayloristic' organizations to multi-tasking at 'holistic' organizations....

In a capitalist economy capitalists can sell their stake in a firm on the stock market whereas workers cannot sell their jobs. It is argued that when workers have some bargaining power this asymmetry in property rights leads to inefficiencies. The consequences of this are explored and certain...

In this paper, we construct a game form based on the constitutions of conciliation boards in the British coal industry and show how the induced game can be used to explain certain features of the wage negotiations for which the conciliation boards were responsible. In particular, we test various...

The Paper examines real and nominal wage rigidities. We estimate a switching regime model, in which the observed distribution of individual wage changes, computed from West German register data for 1976-97, is generated by simultaneous processes of real, nominal or no wage rigidity, and...

Most treatments of the Great Depression have focused on its onset and its aftermath. In contrast, we take a unified view of the interwar period. We look at the slide into and the emergence from the 1920-21 recession and the roaring 1920s boom, as well as the slide into the Great Depression after...

This paper examines whether the different macroeconomic performances of the German economy in two post-war decades provide evidence for the theory (first advanced by Mancur Olson) that sharp institutional breaks are conducive to economic growth because they destroy the existing network of...

A theoretical model of collective wage bargaining is developed in which unions set wages and employers decide employment. A novel feature of the model is that the conventional expected utility calculus is replaced by one in which regret from failed wage bargains and jubilation from successful...

We argue that the 1970s were characterized by attempts to maintain a cooperative, low unemployment equilibrium in the face of considerable union power, through use of incomes policies and neo-corporatist machinery. The 1980s saw a shift away from this, towards direct measures to limit union...