Using data on team assignment and weekly output for all weavers in an urban Chinese textilefirm between April 2003 and March 2004, this paper studies a) how randomly assignedteammates affect an individual worker’s behavior under a tournament-style incentive scheme,and b) how such effects...

UK government policy encourages mothers of young children in low-income families to enter or return to work, via tax credit subsidies and support for childcare. Maternal employment is seen a central plank in the campaign against child poverty, both because it raises income immediately and...

We pursue an economic approach to analysing poverty. This requires a focus onthe variables that individuals can influence, such as forming or dissolving aunion or having children. We argue that this indirect approach to modellingpoverty is the right way to bring economic tools to bear on the...

The paper investigates the relationship between work and family life in Britain.Using appropriate statistical techniques we estimate a five-equation model,which includes birth events, union formation, union dissolution, employmentand non-employment events. The model allows for unobserved...

In this paper we adopt a theory of class positions based on employmentrelations to assess what implications individuals’ class positions have for theireconomic life. In particular we consider economic security (the risk ofunemployment), economic stability (the variability component in...

This paper analyses the economic disadvantage experienced by disabled personsof working-age using data from the British Household Panel Survey. We arguethat there are three sources of disadvantage among disabled persons: preexistingdisadvantage among those who become disabled (a ‘selection’...

This paper investigates the overlap between work and labour market status andidentifies those groups at risks of poverty and social exclusion in the labourmarket. A particular attention is devoted to the working poor and precariousworkers. This analysis is undertaken using the Kyrgyz Poverty...

During the 1930s and 1940s, collective bargaining emerged as the workplace governancenorm in much of the U.S. industrial sector. Following its peak in the 1950s, union density inthe U.S. private sector fell steadily, to only 7.4 percent in 2006. Governance shifted from aformalized union norm to...