This paper evaluates five recent experiences of worksharing in Quebec since 1994: Bell Canada, Alcan, Scott Paper, Sico, and the Ministère de l'environnement et de la faune. Based on survey evidence showing that desired work hours tend to approximate actual work hours, previous studies have...

À l'exception des États-Unis, la plupart des pays industrialisés d'Europe et le Canada connaissent des taux de chômage et une chute des emplois disponibles sans précédent depuis la Deuxième Guerre. Le partage de l'emploi peut-il apporter une solution à ces graves problèmes de chômage?...

The ratchet effect undermines firms' ability to pay workers a steady piece rate. Using examples from the nineteenth-century British textile industry, this paper studies the different strategies firms and workers used to enforce piece rates. The strategies depended upon the emotional responses of...

Assembled by Angus Maddison, the most widely consulted data set on worktime in the long nineteenth century is seriously flawed, because it assumes all countries had British work hours. This paper constructs new measures of worktime in Europe, North America and Australia between 1870 and 1900....

Globalization was a fact of life in Europe before 1913, but as trade shares increased, so did wage and employment instability. Faced by growing pressure from workers, national authorities established labour compacts - a packet of labour market regulations and social insurance programs - that...

Using a new data source on early Canadian strikes, this paper seeks to explain the determinants of strike durations, 1901-14. Three different approaches are evaluated: a screening model, a strike-waves model, and a war-of-attrition model. The results are sensitive to strike issue. For non-wage...

This paper asks whether the trend toward convergence in late nineteenth century Europe depends on the welfare measure used. We construct a Worker Development Index (WDI) composed of Williamson's real wage estimates, and new series of work hours and labor market regulations. Compared to...