The authors present a detailed case study of the evolution of apprenticeships in German banking over the past two decades to analyze why employers continue to be willing to invest in these programs that provide workers with transferable skills. They explain employers' motivation in terms of two...

Rapid economic growth over the past two decades has substantially increased employment in Luxembourg, which has largely been met by in–flows of cross–border workers and, to a lesser extent, immigration. Unemployment has remained low compared to other European countries. These significant...

Dieser Beitrag wägt Vorteile und Nachteile verschiedener Flexibilisierungsstrategien ab, die der Stabilisierung des Beschäftigungsniveaus dienen. Insgesamt zeigt sich, daß Arbeitszeitflexibilisierung durch Arbeitszeitkonten alternativen - kurzfristig ausgerichteten - Anpassungsmechanismen aus...

The presented paper proves that working time arrangements, which include hours flexibilityand enable hours deposits, are appealing under product market uncertainty. The modelintegrates efficiency wage arguments into an implicit insurance-contract environment, thusextending the existing...

We present the first panel estimates of the productivity effects of the unique German institution of parity, board-level co-determination. Although our data span two severe recessions when labour hoarding costs of co-determination are probably highest, and the panel is too short to capture the...

We study how ownership structure and management objectives interact in determining the company size without assuming information constraints or explicit costs of management. In symmetric agent economies, the optimal company size balances the returns to scale of the production function and the...

This article presents the results of a survey of Bulgarian industrial organizations with respect to their clashes with the world financial and economic crisis’s effects on local economy. The crisis manifestations under business environment specificity factors and important cultural aspects of...

This paper examines three questions: 1) How and why have financial models of doing business emerged in the last three decades? 2) What new forms of financial capitalism have become important in the current period? 3) How do new financial intermediaries, such as private equity, and the financial...

An argument often adopted to explain the relatively scarce presence of Producer Co-operatives (PCs) in Western capitalist economies is the instability that may affect this type of firm during the positive phases of the business cycle. In a nutshell the argument is that in profitable industries...

Twenty years have passed since Freeman and Medoff's What Do Unions Do? This essay assesses their analysis of how unions in the U.S. private sector affect economic performance - productivity, profitability, investment, and growth. Freeman and Medoff are clearly correct that union productivity...