Many governments extend the coverage of collective agreements to workers and employ- ers that were not involved in their bargaining. These extensions may address coordination issues but may also distort competition by imposing sector-specific minimum wages and other work conditions that are not...

This report consists of a comprehensive overview of labour market institutions in the small Pacific island countries in order to propose recommendations to improve the performance of their labour markets. We pay particular attention to three countries: Fiji, Palau and Papua New Guinea. We focus...

According to the National Household Survey (ENAHO), approximately three out of four employment relationships within the formal sector of the Peruvian economy are based on temporary contracts. This percentage is larger than that of any OECD country and also considerably larger to that of any...

The German law on co-determination at the plant level (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz) stipulates that works councilors are neither to be financially rewarded nor penalized for their activities. This regulation contrasts with publicized instances of excessive payments. The divergence has sparked a...

This study examines the influence of the statutory minimum wage on labor demand elasticities regarding low-skilled workers. For this, a regression discontinuity analysis is conducted using company panel data from 2013 to 2018. In addition, a possible endogeneity of the remuneration for...

Based on a correspondence experiment covering 3,124 fictitious job applications, the paper identifies and quantifies duration dependence in Germany, with a particular emphasis on company and vacancy characteristics as potential determinants. The experiment reveals that duration dependence...

This chapter deals with the question of whether labour standards are less relevant or more relevant for the new world of work which is vastly different from the old world of work when most labour standards were first established. The various rationales for labour standards are first outlined....

How much value does collective bargaining add to the working conditions already established in general labour law? In this paper we propose a methodology to address this question: we compare the specific contents of collective agreements (except minimum wages) to their equivalent norms set by...

Using data of the largest online job board in China, Zhaopin.com, we examine the impacts of the lockdown policy on the Chinese labor market demand during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The analyses reveal that the lockdown policy, which was implemented in Wuhan on January 23, 2020,...

This study considers the economic impact of Covid-19 on enterprises in four Central American countries - El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. At the time of the analysis neither the pandemic nor its economic consequences had fully run their course. It is not, therefore, a definitive...