This paper comes from a February 2012 Symposium, "The Role of ADR Mechanisms in Public Sector Labor Disputes: What Is at Stake, Where We Can Improve & How We Can Learn from the Private Sector." It discusses the history of an important form of alternative dispute resolution: the use of what is...

This symposium piece was written around the time that Ohio voters were deciding whether or not to reject (in a voter referendum) SB-5, a bill greatly limiting the rights of public-sector unions in Ohio. The article argues that SB-5 was a flawed and misguided law, enacted for partisan purposes....

Standard economic analysis holds that labor market rigidities are harmful for job creation and typically increase unemployment. But many orthodox reforms of the labor market have proved difficult to implement because of political opposition. For these reasons it is important to explain why we...

Many sorts of quantitative and qualitative empirical research are regularly used to answer questions related to work and workplace issues. However, some issues involving human behavior may be difficult to capture using standard empirical methods. Common barriers include access to people or...

The compelling case offered by Austrians regarding the recent economic downturn has no doubt encouraged many to take a closer look at the broader Austrian perspective. Similarly, the jobless recovery has prompted some soul searching in labor economics. We briefly review the history and...

This paper presents conflicting evidence on trends in private sector union and nonunion wages. The BLS quarterly Employment Cost Index (ECI), constructed from establishment surveys, uses fixed weights applied to wage changes among matched job quotes. The ECI shows a substantial decrease in wage...

The paper examines the impact of labour market institutions and social norms and values on the relative performance of countries in balancing flexibility and security. In a previous paper (Muffels, 2010) we defined a set of institutional and transition outcome indicators to compare the relative...

No region of the United States fared worse over the postwar period than the "Rust Belt," the heavy manufacturing zone bordering the Great Lakes. We argue that a lack of competition in labor and output markets in the Rust Belt were responsible for much of the region's decline. We formalize this...

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...

Apprenticeship varies greatly across countries, in terms of both quantity (numbers trained) and quality (skill content); and across sectors and occupations within countries, in terms of its provision and finance by employers. This chapter outlines recent advances in both areas. Some firms engage...