We examine why employers use temporary agency and contract company workers and the implications of these practices for the wages, benefits, and working conditions of workers in low-skilled labor markets. Through intensive case studies in manufacturing (automotive supply), services (hospitals),...

Trevor Bain explores the industry restructurings that occurred in eight major steel-producing countries, including the U.S., Germany and Japan. He begins by categorizing each country as having either an adversarial or a cooperative industrial relations system, and then analyzes the differences...

This book's essays analyze innovative responses by unions, corporations and governments to job loss caused by economic restructuring, drawing on examples from Western Europe and the U.S.

Ballou and Podgursky analyze the issues surrounding the debate over whether increasing salaries for teachers leads to a more qualified teaching workforce. The authors find little evidence to support the link between increased salaries and teacher quality, then address two questions: 1) What went...

This paper estimates the effect of domestic and foreign privatization on multifactor productivity (MFP) using long panel data for nearly the universe of initially state-owned manufacturing firms in Ukraine. The longitudinal dimension of the data is used to measure and control for...

This paper addresses the question of how a minimum wage increase affects the wages of low-wage workers. Most studies assume that there is a simple mechanical increase in the wage for workers earning a wage between the old and the new minimum wage, with some studies allowing for spillovers to...