Poland has tackled its economic problems with courage and, thus far, success. Hyperinflation has ceased, the well-chosen exchange rate has held, and wage behaviour has been responsible.A major recession is under way, and it must not become endemic. A big export effort is needed, followed with...

This paper attempts to assess the relative importance of firm-specific factors (i.e., insider forces) in wage determination. Using firm-level data on 219 UK companies over the period 1974-82, it finds that a 1% rise in a firm's prices or productivity relative to the aggregate economy leads to a...

A key feature of OECD economic growth since the early 1970s has been the secular decline in manufacturing’s share of GDP and the secular rise of service sectors. This Paper examines the role played by relative prices, technology, factor endowments and labour market institutions in the process...

The view that the stock market is myopic is commonly expressed in the financial press. However, the existing econometric evidence does not support this view. In this paper, we report econometric evidence suggesting that the market attaches too high a weight to current dividends relative to...

This paper derives and then estimates a model of employment where unions and firms bargain over wages and possibly employment, and efficiency wage considerations may be important. It illustrates the difficulties involved in interpreting many existing attempts to discriminate between alternative...

Empirical analyses of longitudinal data on some 66 manufacturing companies on Britain lead us to the following three conclusions. First, agreed reductions in restrictive work practices lead to increases in productivity. Second, controlling for such agreed reductions, there is some weak evidence...

Average unemployment in Europe today is relatively high compared with OECD countries outside Europe. The majority of countries in Europe today have lower unemployment than any OECD country outside Europe, including the US. These two fa cts are consistent because the four largest countries in...

This paper studies the dynamics of labour demand and the determinants of employment rates across the OECD. We find: (i) labour demand adjusts less rapidly when employment protection is more strict and union density is higher; (ii) there is no evidence that overall job turnover is influenced by...

How does monetary policy work? While one aspect of the investigation has focused on the behaviour of consumers, another has concentrated on the behaviour of companies faced with the kind of financial pressures associated with tight monetary policy. The general focus in this area is on the impact...

Market work per person of working age differs widely across the OECD countries and there have been some significant changes in the last forty years. How to explain this pattern? Taxes are part of the story but much remains to be explained. If we include all the elements of the social security...