In the mid-1980s, many European countries introduced fixed-term contracts. Since then their labor markets have become more dynamic. This paper studies the implications of such reforms for the duration distribution of unemployment, with particular emphasis on the changes in the duration...

It has been argued that employee owned firms are not a viable organizational form; either they will fail as commercial undertaking or degenerate into capitalist firms as the proportion of hired workers increases. In this paper, we assemble 'stylized facts' on, and investigate empirically diverse...

This paper contains a selective review of some of the key fiscal issues faced by transition economies. The twelve countries that provide the empirical background for this study have all been under Fund programs for at least some of the time since they initiated their transitions from plan to...

This paper analyses the effect of a non-linear tax system on wage bargaining. The main conclusions are: an increase in the marginal income or payroll tax reduces the pre-tax wage; in the iso-elastic case, an increase in the average tax rate increases the pre-tax wage by more than the tax...

This paper reports the results of one part of a research project which investigated the nature and extent of the impact of the labour legislation enacted between 1980 and 1990 on the conduct of the industrial relations and the processes by which this came about. Interviews were carried out with...

The main macroeconomic cost of a European Monetary Union could result from the loss of nominal exchange rate flexibility as an instrument for real exchange rate adjustments between regions exposed to asymmetric goods-market (IS) shocks. However, if asset-market (LM) shifts drive macroeconomic...

There is a growing consensus among economists that extending shop opening hours createsjobs. While this is probably true in deregulating industries, this paper argues there are somedeficiencies in the existing hypotheses about how exactly deregulation affects employment.First, this paper...

The paper uses data from the annual British General household Survey to examine changes in the structure of weekly earnings for full-time male employees aged 16 to 64 during the period 1974-1988. The principal findings are: (1) earnings inequality fell slightly in the second half of the 1970s...

The deregulation of the system of pay determination in Britain in 1979 was intended to give employers the freedom to determine wage increases without the restriction of pay norms or statutory limits. Yet thirteen years later, despite a rise in productivity, nominal wage growth and the growth of...

Immigration to the UK has risen in the past 10 years and has had a measurable effect on the supply of different types of labour. But, existing studies of the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers in the UK (e.g. Dustmann, Fabbri and Preston, 2005) have failed to find any...