This article discusses the historical trajectories of employment research in the U.S. and Germany. Both countries exemplify very different research traditions, which have their origins in the 19th and early 20th century and are shaped not only by the field of inquiry (different national...

The present economic crisis has sparked a new debate in a wider political and academic public about the role of the state in advanced capitalist societies. The paper discusses this issue in a comparative perspective: How have different models of capitalism in Europe coped with major economic and...

Using data from the German case, the paper examines a new form of client firms’ utilization of temporary agency work that is distinctly different from traditional forms responding to production problems. Client firms, particularly from manufacturing, increasingly use temporary agency workers...

There is a protracted stalemate between rich (the North) and poor (the South) countries over the question of minimum labour standards in developing economies. This paper is a sequel to Singh and Zammit (2000). It considers afresh key issues in the controversy. While fully recognizing the moral,...

The notion of flexicurity was introduced in the 1990s to promote a better job security and social security of atypically employed (other than permanent full-time). The given paper suggests an operational definition of flexicurity which implies the corresponding flexicurity index. For analytical...

The notion of flexicurity was introduced in the late 1990s. It promotes the idea of compensation of deregulation of labour markets (= flexibilization) by advantages in employment and social security, in particularly for flexibly employed (other than permanent full-time, called also atypically...

The paper contains both critical remarks on and constructive suggestions to Green Paper: Modernising labour law to meet the challenges of the 21st century of the European Commission (2006a) which promotes flexicurity policies, that is, relaxing the employment protection legislation while...

Maternity leave policies are presumed to be essential to ensure the health of pregnant workers and their unborn children. However, little is known about the optimal duration of prenatal maternity leave and existing policies are not evidence-based. We evaluate a substantial maternity leave...