We explore the finding of La Porta et al. that differences in Ôlegal originÕ account for part of cross-national diversity in labour regulation and corporate governance. We suggest that the finding needs a better historical grounding and that a mechanism which might explain it has not been...

The timing and nature of industrialization in Britain and continental Europe had significant consequences for the growth and development of labour market institutions, effects which are still felt today and which are visible in the conceptual structure of labour law and company law in different...

This paper explores the links between the economic notion of 'capabilities' and the judicial concept of social rights. We begin by revisiting TH Marshall's classic analysis of social rights and their ambiguous relationship to the market. We then examine how far Amartya Sen's Capabilities...

This paper considers the implications for regulatory competition of the recent judgment of the European Court of Justice in Laval. This case is potentially the most important decision on European labour law for a generation. The Court has greatly extended the scope for judicial review of...

Standard economic theory sees labour law as an exogenous interference with market relations and predicts mostly negative impacts on employment and productivity. We argue for a more nuanced theoretical position: labour law is, at least in part, endogenous, with both the production and the...

Using longitudinal data on labour law in France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the UK and the USA for the four decades after 1970, we estimate the impact of labour regulation on unemployment and equality, using labour’s share of national income as a proxy for the latter. We employ a dynamic panel...

The EU Working Time Directive has so far had little impact on an ingrained culture of long-hours working in the UK. Case studies suggest that the use of individual opt-outs from the 48-hour limit on weekly working time is a principal reason for this. However, removal of the individual opt-out...

The corporate governance environment in the UK and US is generally thought to be hostile to the emergence of cooperative employment relations of the kind exemplified by labour-management partnerships. We discuss case study evidence from the UK which suggests that, contrary to this widespread...

The article analyses the institutional basis and form of the employment contract in Britain using the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey. It assesses the extent to which collective bargaining still regulates pay and non-pay aspects of employment. The paper shows that while collective...

We use data from REPONSE 2004 and WERS 2004 to analyse whether approaches to HRM differ according to whether an establishment is part of a company with a stock exchange listing. In both countries we find that listing is positively associated with teamworking and performance-related pay, while in...