Policy to reduce poverty has often foundered on the issue of work incentives. The issue is a manifestation of the traditional conflict between equity and efficiency; the redistribution of income from higher to lower income people typically leads to reduced incentives for both groups to supply...

Recent developments in the international economy have given rise to concern about the effects of international trade and foreign direct investment on domestic employment and wages. These concerns include fears that: jobs are being "siphoned out" of many highly industrialised countries by...

This technical working paper presents the method of analysis used by the Secretariat to shed light on the possible links between foreign trade, employment and relative wages by industrial sector and type of labour. The conclusions drawn from the study indicate, <I>inter alia</I>, that overall the...</i>

Over the past twenty years or so, unemployment has been increasing in most OECD economies. In the same period, there has been a considerable increase in the wedge between the real cost to the employer of hiring a worker and the net real wage received by the worker. The present study examines...

This working paper deals with the effects of collective bargaining and other forms of collective employee representation (such as works councils) on employment and unemployment. Collective bargaining is concerned with both substantive issues, such as rates of pay or weeks of notice to be given...

This working paper addresses the question whether imperfect competition in product markets contributes substantially to the level and persistence of unemployment in modern industrial economies. In section I, the paper documents the available empirical research of the origin and extent of product...

This working paper considers how hours of work and labour force participation are likely to respond to tax reforms. As regards hours of work, the analysis looks at married women and lone parents. Married women constitute a group which responds to incentives, as shown by experimental and sample...

Enterprise management involves finding solutions for many problems in which information is incomplete and for which co-operative relationships with employees are needed if the firm’s objectives are to be realised. To this end, management may develop practices one of whose side-effects is to...

This paper reviews recent literature on job gains and job losses. Economies exhibit high rates of gross job reallocation - both high levels of job gains and job losses. For the OECD nations for which data are available, total turnover averaged more than twenty per cent during the 1980s. This is...

This paper studies whether the belief is justified that foreign trade and capital outflows have dramatically reduced the number of jobs available to French workers and are leading to a substantial decline in French wages, especially of low-skilled workers. L'impact des échanges et de...