A major question for the comparative analysis of industrial relations and labour market institutions has been the extent to which labour laws in different countries have converged or diverged over time. A second question is whether any convergence between labour law systems is associated with...

This paper investigates empirically how similarity of demand structures - approximated by similarity of income distributions - affects trade patterns along both the extensive and intensive margin. The idea that similarity of demand structures intensifies trade goes back to the well-known Linder...