This paper tests whether the job security offered by stricter employment protection legislation (EPL) undermines positive compensating wage differentials that would otherwise be paid. Specifically, we ask whether industries with relatively more need for layoffs and labour flexibility have lower...

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...

In 2005, Professor Phillipa Weeks published an insightful chapter entitled ‘Employment Law – A Test of Coherence Between Statute and Common Law' in S Corcoran and S Bottomley (eds) Interpreting Statutes. That chapter examined the emergence, development and ultimate emasculation of an implied...

The ‘gig economy', comprised of app-enabled enterprises that profit from connecting consumers with service providers through smart communications technology, is growing exponentially. For the workers who provide the services, however, this kind of labour market engagement looks very much like...

This paper argues that employers should adopt practices that provide employees with opportunities to exercise voice. Time and time again, we see corporate scandals that could have been avoided if employees were encouraged to speak up when they saw problems in the workplace. Recent scandals...

Features of the ‘fourth industrial revolution', such as platforms, AI and machine learning, pose challenges for the application of regulatory rules, in the area of labour law as elsewhere. However, today's digital technologies have their origins in earlier phases of industrialisation, and do...

Originally, anchoring labour rights to the existence of a personal relationship of subordination was functional to prevent the greater bargaining strength of the employed being disproportionately reflected in the terms and conditions regulating the provision of labour. This does not seem anymore...

We provide empirical evidence that strong dismissal laws appear to have a positive effect on the innovative pursuits of firms and their employees. Stringent labor laws provide firms a commitment device to not punish short-run failures and thereby spur their employees to pursue value-enhancing...

What is the proper relationship between competition and labour law? In the UK since at least 1906 every real ‘person’ has had ‘freedom of association’ and is free to take collective action in a ‘trade dispute’, whether an employee, or self-employed. This principle was necessary for...

Naidu and Yuchtman (2013) find that labor demand shocks in 19th-century Britain had an impact on master and servant prosecutions, as breaking an employee contract was a criminal offense until 1875. We first reproduce all regression tables in Naidu and Yuchtman (2013) and then test for robustness...