Although the Industrial Revolution is often characterized as the culmination of a process of commercialisation, the precise nature of such a link remains unclear. This paper provides an analysis of one such link: the role of commercialisation in raising wages as impersonal labour market...

This paper considers the optimal level of firm-specific training by taking into account the positive effect of training on the expected duration of workers current employment. In the framework of an efficiency wage model, a short expected job tenure represents a disamenity that reduces the...

The impacts of introducing or tightening time limits on welfare use are studied in an efficiency wage model. Those losing access to regular benefits receive some smaller benefit, which can be interpreted as food stamps. Stricter time limits raise both employment and profits and generally reduce...

Redundancy payments for collective dismissals are incorporated into a Shapiro-Stiglitz model of efficiency wages. It is shown that a fixed payment will lower wages, leave employment and welfare unaffected if there are no wage-dependent taxes, no additional firing costs and if unemployment...

More progressive income taxes raise employment in models of imperfectly competitive labour markets. However, this prediction is not robust to modifications of the analytical structure. For example, in an efficiency wage setting, more progressive taxes reduce profits. This induces firms to exit...

In this paper fiscal policy is examined for an open economy characterised by unemployment due to efficiency wages. We allow for capital and firm mobility in a model where the government chooses the level of wage, source-based capital and profit taxation. The taxing choices of governments are...

We analyse the implications of habit formation relating to wages in a multi-period efficiency-wage model. If employees have such preferences, their existence provides firms with incentives to raise wages and reduce employment over time. Greater intensity does not necessarily have the same...

We explore the implications of trade liberalization in economies with State Owned enterprises (SOEs) and shirking. SOEs are modelled as controlled by the members of the enterprise who determine output and effort levels, while facing output prices and wage rates set by government. Enterprise...

This paper evaluates two approaches to work-sharing by examining both within the same macro model. The standard approach involves imposing a quantity constraint on labour market participants (a maximum number of standard hours for each worker). This approach is compared to a revenue-neutral...