type="main" <p>Atypical work arrangements have long been criticized as offering more precarious and lower paid work than regular open-ended employment. An important British paper by Booth et al. (Economic Journal, Vol. 112 (2002), No. 480, pp. F189–F213) was among the first to recognize such...</p>

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of key labor institutions on the occurrence and extent of temporary employment. Design/methodology/approach: In a new departure, this study uses a zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) model given that most establishments are...

Summary This paper presents new evidence of works council impact on two dimensions of firm performance, namely, relative profitability as assessed by top management, and innovative activity as measured by new product development. The extant German literature is reviewed en passant, and some care...

Summary Summary measures of the overall strictness of a country’s employment protection laws have proven popular constructs in cross-country studies of the covariation of labour market institutions and macroeconomic outcomes. Portugal occupies an unenviable position in the rankings, and is...

Summary Using OLS and quantile regression methods and rich cross-section data sets for western and eastern Germany, this paper demonstrates that the impact of works council presence on labor productivity varies between manufacturing and services, between plants that are or are not covered by...

“A genuine productivity agreement offers solutions to many of the typical problems of industrial relations. It raises standards of supervision and of managerial planning and control. It closes the gap between rates of pay and actual earnings. It enables demarcation difficulties to be...

Theory suggests that firms confront a hold-up problem in dealing with workplace unionism: unions will appropriate a portion of the quasi-rents stemming from long-lived capital. As a result, firms may be expected to limit their exposure to rent-seeking by reducing investments. The U.S. evidence...