Don’t complicate it even further: Macroeconomic Conditionality as a Substitute for new Structural Reform Contracts. European Policy Brief No. 15, May 2013

The idea of introducing contracts between Member States and the EU on structural reforms has its merits, it also has several disadvantages. Most notably, the contracts risk rendering European economic governance even more complex and cumbersome. It is therefore sensible to first try to integrate the structural reform contracts into one of the foreseen economic governance instruments. This Policy Brief argues that macroeconomic conditionality can serve this purpose. With some minor reforms, it could even become a full-fledged substitute for structural reform contracts – without suffering some of latter’s disadvantages.

The Future of Model Germany: Challenges to the Corporatist System of Business Labor Relations. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 07.4, 12 December 1996

Germany's economic and social system faces immense economic, social, and political demands. These may be encapsulated in challenges like "new management concepts and labor policies," "deregulation of the infrastructure sector," "globalization," and "reunification." The paper analyzes these challenges and changes to the corporatist system of industrial relations--a cornerstone in .Model Germany's specific economic success and social consensus until now.

Falling Labor Share and Rising Unemployment: Long-Run Consequences of Institutional Shocks? CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 00.2, 1999

The literature on unemployment has mostly focused on labor market issues while the impact of capital foonation is largely neglected Job-creation is often thought to be a matter of encouraging more employment on a given capital stock. In contrast, this paper explicitly deals with the long-run consequences of institutional shocks on capital foonation and employment. It is shown that the usual trade off between employment and wages disappears in the long run. In line with an appropriation model, the estimated values for the long-run elasticities of substitution between capital and labor for Germany and France are substantially greater than one.

An Italian job: the need for collective wage bargaining reform. Bruegel Policy Brief ISSUE 2016/11 - JULY 2016

Highlights: Since the mid-1990s, Italy has been characterised by a lack of labour productivity growth, combinedwith a 60 percent growth in labour costs, 20 percentage points above euro-area average consumer price growth. As a consequence, Italy has become less competitive compared to its euro-area partners, the profitability of its firms has dropped and real GDP-per-capita has flatlined. • At the root of the substantial discrepancy between wages and productivity is Italy’s system of centralised wage bargaining which, in many ways, is designed without regard for the underlying industrial structure and geographical heterogeneity of the Italian economy.This has fostered perverse incentives and imbalances within Italy. • Collective wage bargaining, and in particular the determination of base salaries, should be moved from the national to the regional level for all contracts, in the public and private sectors.The Mezzogiorno,which might superficially be seen as losing out from this policy, would actually gain the most in competitiveness terms. • Furthermore, measures should be taken so that, in the long run, the Italian industrial structure evolves into a less fragmented small-company-based economy. This firm consolidation would likely expand the use of firm-level agreements and performance payments, and would improve Italy’s productivity and competitiveness overall.

Labor clauses in regional trade agreements and effects on labor conditions : an empirical analysis

An increasing number of bilateral or plurilateral trade agreements (or regional trade agreements: RTAs) include "labor clauses" that require or urge the signatory countries to commit to maintaining a certain level of labor standards. This paper performs an empirical analysis of the impacts of such labor clauses provided in RTAs on working conditions that laborers in the RTA signatory countries actually face, using macro-level data for a wide variety of countries. The paper first examines the texts of labor provisions in more than 220 effective RTAs and (re-)classifies "RTAs with labor clauses" according to two criteria: (i) the agreement urges or expects the signatory countries to harmonize their domestic labor standards with internationally recognized standards, and (ii) the agreement stipulates the procedures for consultations and/or dispute settlement on labor-condition issues between the signatory countries. Based on this labor-clause RTA classification, the paper estimates the impacts of RTA labor clauses on working conditions in countries with two empirical specifications using the sample covering 136 countries or economies and years from 1995 through 2011. The estimation is extended to takes into account possible lags in the labor-condition effects of labor clauses as well as to consider potential difference in the impacts for countries in different income levels. The empirical results for the four measures of labor conditions (mean monthly real earnings, mean weekly work hours per employee, fatal occupational injury rate, and the number of the ILO's Core Conventions ratified) find no evidence for possible pro-labor-condition effects of RTA labor clauses overall, which should be consistent with the view of economics literature that questions the relevance of linking trade policy with issues in the domestic labor standards.

The Jewel cutting and polishing industry in Puerto Rico.

Cover title.

Farm labor fact book.

Mode of access: Internet.

The migratory farm labor problem in the United States : a report, together with individual views, to the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, made by its Subcommittee on Migratory Labor, pursuant to S. Res. 267 (86th Cong., 2d sess.) a resolution authorizing a study of the problems of migratory labor.

Cover title.

Migratory labor. Hearings before the Subcommittee on Migratory Labor of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, Eighty-sixth Congress, first [-second] session, on S. 1085 [and other] bills ...

Hearings held Aug. 7, 1959-July 11, 1960 in various cities.