Since formal laws can be observed or ignored to varying degrees, the actual enforcement regime shapes incentives and constraints. Most of the studies exploring EPL effects on labour market performance implicitly assume that EPL compliance is near to complete and therefore all firms bear full...

This paper presents and discusses new data on employment protection legislation (EPL) in the successor states of the former USSR - the CIS and Baltic states - over 25 years from 1985 to 2009. We use the OECD methodology (OECD EPL, version II) for assessing the strictness of national labor laws...

This paper analyzed the OECD data on employment protection for 23 OECD countries over the time span 1990-2008 on the basis of alternative dynamic panel data models and panel causality tests and examines the validity of the neo-liberal argument that strictness of employment protection hurts labor...

Differential enforcement of employment protection by explicit design of the legislation, for example, through exemptions for small firms, has been exploited in a growing body of research. However, little is known about the effects of differential enforcement that is not defined by the letter of...

This article surveys the literature and adds to the evidence on the impact of employment protection legislation on employment. While stringent employment protection contributes to less turnover and job reallocation, the effects on aggregate employment and unemployment over the business cycle are...

This paper presents and discusses various modalities of labour market flexibility and security. The focus is on employment protection legislation, part-time work and temporary agency work, drawing evidence and examples from the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain and the United States. The main thrust...

The number of workers on the border between self-employment and employment strongly increased across Europe over the last decade. This paper investigates whether and in what respect these workers differ from employees and self-employed and analyses whether these work relationships are a stepping...

This paper is concerned with the evolutionary process of the global governance of labour migration, which has led to the progressive privatisation and commodification of international labour mobility. The focus is on the effects of such change on working conditions for migrants. In particular,...

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...

Wage inequality does not fully capture differences in job quality. Jobs also differ along other key dimensions, including the prevalence of labor-rights violations. Yet, there is little systematic evidence on this non-wage dimension of job quality and how it contributes to overall inequality. We...