A century has passed since the first call for a British national minimum wage (NMW). That remarkable Fabian tract discussed wage setting, coverage, monopsony, international labour standards, inspection and compliance and the interaction between the NMW and the social security system. The NMW was...

Management scholars and economists have recently set out the requirements of a system to elicit good performance when it is necessary to align the interests of the principal and agent. We analyse pay and performance in an occupation — jockeys — replete with moral hazard possibilities. We are...

Productivity growth in 329 companies (total employment = 1.96 million workers) is analysed for the period 1984-1989. The study breaks new ground by (i) analysing the impact of changes in union status - such as repudiation of a closed shop or derecognition - on productivity growth; (ii) examining...

Great Britain has had statutory regulation of minimum pay for much of this century but never previously had a national minimum wage (NMW). This paper outlines the history of minimum wage regulation culminating in 1997 with the establishment of the Low Pay Commission (LPC) and the introduction of...

'The ultimate objective of empirical work on incentives should be to find out why firms use the compensation systems they doàhuge advances in our understanding could be made by a concerted effort to collect data on contracts.'' So concludes the 1998 Journal of Economic Literature survey on...

If the presence of a union in a workplace or firm raises the pay level, unless productivity rises correspondingly, financial performance is likely to be worse. If the product market is uncompetitive this might imply a simple transfer from capital to labour with no efficiency effects, but is...