The recent change of government brings to an end a sustained attempt to transform British industrial relations by legislative action. This article explores the consequences. It explains the cumulative effect of the legal changes since 1979, including the growing influence of the European...

Using the persistence of corporate profits as a measure of the intensity of product market competition in 19 countries for the period 1995-2005, we find that civil law systems are more competitive, in this sense, than common law ones. Greater shareholder protection increases competition between...

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...

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...

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. While collective procedures have declined...

The British film industry has long been characterised as highly volatile, chronically unstable and liable to recurrent crises. The traditional policy response up until the 1980s involved support through a mixture of quotas, fiscal support and industry levies. During the 1980s this policy stance...

It is argued here that - contrary to current conventional wisdom - an active market for corporate control is not an essential ingredient of either company law reform or financial and economic development. The absence of such a market in coordinated market systems during their modern economic...

We present evidence on the evolution of labour law in five countries (the UK, USA, Germany, France and India) using a newly-created dataset which measures legal change over time. The results cast light on the claim that legal origin, or the influence of common law and civil law regulatory...