Building the New Europe: western and eastern roads to social partnership

This article focuses on the struggle for a social Europe by examining social partnership developments in two western countries, Germany and Britain, and two eastern countries, Bulgaria and Poland. The resurgence of social partnership in the west, even in the weakest case (Britain), is paradoxically driven in part by neoliberal EU economic policies. In the east, post-communist tripartism helped preserve social peace with the coming of markets, while both international lending agencies and subsequent EU accession processes pushed domestic actors towards social dialogue. The coming or deepening of markets has therefore surprisingly promoted or reinforced relations of social partnership throughout Europe.     

The rise and fall of cryptocurrency coins and tokens

Decisions in Economics and Finance - Since Bitcoin’s introduction in 2009, interest in cryptocurrencies has soared. One manifestation of this interest has been the explosion of newly created...     

社会保障--欧洲社会的稳定器

欧洲社会保障制度经过100多年的发展,至今已相当完善.它对于促进欧洲经济的发展,保证人民生活质量和生活水平的不断提高,保持欧洲社会的稳定,发挥了巨大的作用.     

The persistence of social pacts in Europe

This article argues that, despite pessimistic forecasts for their future, social pacts remain a central element of industrial relations across many member states of the European Union. Social pacts provide a mechanism of pragmatic adaptation to the trilemma of reconciling market integration, intergovernmentalism and democratic accountability. In addition, recent developments in the general direction of social dialogue and social pacts, in some of the new member states, indicate a learning process to enable economic catch‐up while engaging in institutional innovation. Finally, the article argues that social pacts remain important in ensuring a voice for labour across Europe.     

The free movement of workers and social Europe: maintaining the European ideal

The big EU enlargement of 2004 has fuelled the debate about whether labour migration from the east to the west is causing social dumping in the European economy, with the effect of upsetting established national systems of labour market regulation. This article reviews the effects of migration on EU labour markets. It also examines three recent industrial relations disputes which were about job displacement. It argues that there is little evidence of greater labour mobility causing new social dumping pressures on a widespread basis. However, it goes on to suggest that the situation may change if the EU adopts neoliberal policies such as the initial draft Services Directive at the same time as promoting greater labour market openness between the Member States. The article concludes by arguing for a better policy mix which would on the one hand involve the EU maintaining its commitment to the free movement of workers and on the other hand strengthen labour standard‐setting mechanisms at both the EU and national levels.     

人民币汇率的"升"与"降"

依经济学原理,一国货币面临升值压力,从根本上讲,是由于该国经济走强,导致对它的市场需求增加而发生的。在当今各国经济普遍面临增长乏力,就业压力巨大的形势下,相对较低的汇率有利于本国生产要素得到较充分运用,从而增加就业,而对外国的经济不会带来一定压力。这样,就容易引发国与国之间的经济争端,如协调不好,就有可能演化成外交斗争和     

The rise (or fall) of lottery adoption within the logic of collective action: Some empirical evidence

This paper builds upon previous work on the economics of lottery adoption by incorporating the collective action logic developed in an important series of works by Mancur Olson. Public choice research points out that legislators are rational maximizers, and act within a costbenefit framework in attempting to implement means of budget finance. Discrete-time hazard models presented suggest that lottery adoption is more likely to occur in older states where rent seeking groups are older and more organized, and can more effectively engage in efforts for collective action (and benefits). By implementing lotteries as taxshifting mechanisms, the role of, government and the direction of social evolution are also altered.     

Britain in a social Europe: industrial relations and 1992

This article suggests that European Community social policy is now moving into a third stage that is having an increasing impact on the UK. However, continuing differences in European labour markets, collective bargaining and trade union organisation make it impossible to identify a common European pattern of industrial relations     

Two speed ahead: social Europe and the UK after Maastricht

Legislation and collective bargaining are a different but often complementary means of protecting employees and strengthening workers’ rights. At the EC level both means are now being followed but, at present, since Maastricht largely without the UK. Here the author considers whether in the longer term the UK's isolation from such developments can be sustained even in the light of the outcome of the April General Election.     

Minimum labour standards in a social partnership system: the persistence of the Irish variant of Wages Councils

This article examines the Irish variant of the Wages Councils, Joint Labour Committees (JLC), which set legally binding minimum pay and conditions for low‐paid workers in some sectors. We trace the reasons for the continued existence of the JLC system even after the introduction of a National Minimum Wage in 2000. We also examine its contemporary relevance and the prospects for its retention in the future, particularly in light of growing employer opposition to them.     

Beyond the Anglo‐Saxon and North European models: social partnership in a Greek textiles company

Much of the literature examining social partnership focuses on either Anglo‐Saxon or North European countries, differentiating between liberal market economies (LMEs) and coordinated market economies (CMEs). These studies argue, quite correctly, that the institutional forces shaping partnership in the two types of economy differ markedly, with the consequence that partnership takes somewhat different forms at the workplace. By contrast, there is only limited research on social partnership in Mediterranean economies—such as Greece—even though there are strong reasons to suggest it may be quite different from both LMEs and CMEs because of relatively recent military influence at state level and less well‐developed systems of industrial relations at organisational level. This article examines the forces operating both at national and at local level that facilitate or hinder the development of social partnership. It is based on the results of interviews with government, industry and union officials and a case study of partnership in a textiles company in northern Greece. It concludes that institutional forces provided workers with more protection than they would have achieved in an LME but that ultimately competitive pressures and a lack of effective workplace representation limited the degree to which the state can influence the processes and outcomes of social partnership at local level.     

External labor market strategy and career success: CEO careers in Europe and the United States

In this paper, we examine the career histories of the chief executive officers (CEOs) affiliated with the 500 largest organizations in Europe and the 500 largest in the United States. Our purpose is to determine whether frequent career moves across employers, a phenomenon we label an “external labor market strategy,” brings greater career rewards than moves inside the same organization. The results reveal that an external labor market strategy is negatively related to career success. On both continents, CEOs who have spent a smaller fraction of their career in their current organization or have changed employers more often have taken a longer time from the start of their career to be promoted to the most influential corporate positions. The labor market institutions in the 22 countries sampled do not influence the relationship between an external labor market strategy and career success, while the specific geographic region in which the employers are located has a limited impact on this relationship. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Venture Capital Investments in Europe and Portfolio Firms' Economic Performance: Independent Versus Corporate Investors

Using a new European Commission‐sponsored longitudinal dataset—the VICO dataset—we assess the impact of independent (IVC) and corporate venture capital (CVC) investments on the economic performance of European high‐tech entrepreneurial firms during the period 1992–2010. After controlling for potential sources of endogeneity and selection bias, our results indicate that both IVC and CVC investments boost portfolio firms' economic performance. These effects are mostly due to an increase in real sales value. Moreover, the dynamics of the impact of VC investments on firms’ overall economic performance and its components—real sales value, real fixed assets, and real labor costs—differs depending on the type of investor. Finally, we do not detect any impact related to the syndication of investments by both IVC and CVC investors.     

“Rulers ruled by women”: an economic analysis of the rise and fall of women’s rights in ancient Sparta

Until modern times, most women possessed relatively few formal rights. The women of ancient Sparta were a striking exception. Although they could not vote, Spartan women reportedly owned 40 percent of Sparta’s agricultural land, and enjoyed other rights that were equally extraordinary. We offer a simple economic explanation for the Spartan anomaly. The defining moment for Sparta was its conquest of a neighboring land and people, which fundamentally changed the marginal products of Spartan men’s and Spartan women’s labor. To exploit the potential gains from a reallocation of labor—specifically, to provide the appropriate incentives and the proper human capital formation—men granted women property (and other) rights. Consistent with our explanation for the rise of women’s rights, when Sparta lost the conquered land several centuries later, the rights for women disappeared. Two conclusions emerge that may help explain why women’s rights have been so rare for most of history. First, in contrast to the historical norm, the optimal (from the men’s perspective) division of labor among Spartans involved women in work that was not easily monitored by men. Second, the rights held by Spartan women may have been part of an unstable equilibrium, which contained the seeds of its own destruction. For helpful comments, we thank Yoram Barzel, Paul Cartledge, Beth Davenport, Dino Falaschetti, Nancy Folbre, Barbara Hanssen, Ron Johnson, Lea Kosnik, Francine Lafontaine, Dean Lueck, Sarah Pomeroy, Mark Ramseyer, Randy Rucker, Wendy Stock, Chris Stoddard, Werner Troesken, Doug Young, and seminar participants at Colby College, George Mason University, Montana State University, the Property and Environment Research Center, the University of Virginia, Wabash College, the 2006 meetings of the Economic History Association, and the 2007 meetings of the American Economic Association.     

Structural aspects of social capital: tests for cross-national equivalence in Europe

In this contribution we start from the emerging consensus on the widely disputed phenomenon of social capital. We propose to focus on structural aspects of social capital: formal (contacts within formal organizations) and informal (contacts outside of formal organizations). First, we address methodological questions on the cross-national equivalence of these social capital measurements. Second, we re-visit substantive questions on the patterns of relationships in different European countries. In particular, we inquire to which degree formal and informal social capital can substitute each other, as well as being complementary. We take advantage of recent Eurobaromer data (2004) containing a wide range of valid measurements on both structural aspects of social capital. We find strong evidence for cross-national equivalent measurements regarding formal social capital, employing probabilistic scalogram analyses. For informal social capital, we find strong evidence for configural and metric invariance as well as evidence for partial scalar invariance, employing multi group confirmatory factor analyses. We have to reject the substantive hypothesis on substitution of formal and informal social capital for all countries under consideration, except for Romania. We corroborate the hypothesis on complementarity of formal and informal social capital.