Transitions Out of Casual Employment: The Australian Experience

This paper uses longitudinal data to examine the extent to which casual employees, who account for almost 25 percent of all Australian employees, are able to access non‐casual jobs in the future, and to contrast their experiences with that of other labor market participants. A dynamic mixed multinomial logit model of labor market states is estimated which reveals high rates of mobility from casual employment into non‐casual employment. Among men, casual employees are found to be far more likely to make the transition into non‐casual employment than otherwise comparable unemployed job seekers. For women, however, this is not the case.     

Problems of Fit: Changing Employment and Labour Regulation

This paper indicates key issues in identifying and assessing change in the employment relationship. It explores various challenges that the changing shape of employment poses for both legal regulation and regulation provided through collective bargaining. It suggests different rationales for seeking a better fit and discusses various adjustments and changes to achieve this. Finally, I argue that problems of fit (misfit), and the need for adaptation to which this gives rise, are relevant also to the study of industrial relations.     

Unequal Japan: Conservative Corporatism and Labour Market Disparities

The majority of the literature on the increasing labour market disparities in Japan has attributed the trend to changing market circumstances or new government policies. However, this article claims that widening income disparities, especially between regular and non-regular workers, are more deeply rooted in the nature of Japan's policy-making mechanism. Combining industrial actors' conservative orientation towards dual labour markets and their corporatist interactions for policy making, this article argues that Japan's disparity problem has originated from its ' conservative corporatism '. The article presents the manner in which conservative corporatism has widened the disparities in employment security and welfare benefits.     

Towards a New Standard Employment Relationship in Western Europe

This paper examines critically the concept of the standard employment relationship (SER), differentiating between form and substance. It explores the social functions served by the SER and its evolution in western Europe. Six major causes underpinning changes in the employment relationship are explored and the contours of a new more flexible SER developed. Two further social functions are added: equal access for men and women to the employment system, and increased internal flexibility in the workplace.     

Promoting Labour Market Efficiency and Fairness through a Legal Minimum Wage: The Webbs and the Social Cost of Labour

Neoclassical economists, using a competitive demand/supply model of labour markets, typically conclude a legislated minimum wage is harmful to economic efficiency and social welfare. The major theoretical counter-attack by proponents of a minimum wage is to argue that low-wage labour markets are better modelled as monopsonistic. This article develops and formalizes a second theoretical defence for a legal minimum wage law. This defence rests on the concept of the social cost of labour , as originally popularized by Sidney and Beatrice Webb and then further developed by American institutional economists. This analysis is unique in that it continues to use the competitive demand/supply model but nonetheless demonstrates that a legislated minimum wage often simultaneously increases both economic efficiency and fairness, unlike the neoclassical prediction.     

Immigration,Labour Markets and Employment Relations: Problems and Prospects

In this review essay, I argue that immigration presents employment researchers with a promising strategic research site because it raises a number of theoretically significant problems with mainstream economic approaches to labour and labour markets. Despite the tendency to view economic migrants as homo economicus personified, I argue that immigration brings the institutional nature of labour markets into sharp relief as it exposes, among other things, the influence of the state, processes of labour market segmentation, and the role of trade union policy and practice. Having identified a number of empirical anomalies that contradict neoclassical economic theory, I proceed to sketch out three areas where a more institutionally oriented approach should prove more fruitful.     

Regulating the European Labour Market: Prospects and Limitations of a Reflexive Governance Approach

This article reviews developments in European Union employment policy from the perspective of reflexive governance. Reflexive governance instruments have a procedural orientation and provide a structural framework or steering mechanism to facilitate a process of self‐regulation. Recent developments in relation to the Employment Framework Directive, the European Employment Strategy and the Working Time Directive highlight some of the prospects and limitations of this reflexive approach to regulating employment relations and the potential impact on the UK labour market. These developments indicate that the hopes invested in the reflexive approach remain to be fulfilled.     

对互联网保险的道德风险防范探究

互联网保险作为新兴的互联网金融产品,已然被越来越多的保险公司乃至其他金融组织和机构的业务所涉及,近几年的快速发展也是显而易见。然发展与风险并存,本文基于互联网保险模式和发展现状,旨在研究互联网保险发展过程中可能遇到的道德风险,并针对这些道德风险探讨有效的风险防范和管理措施,以希望对推动我国互联网保险健康发展提供一定的参考。     

促进就业:德国劳动力市场改革

自2003年始,德国推行了一系列劳动力市场改革措施。改革的取向,是放松劳动力市场管制从而增强就业灵活性。为此,德国政治家和经济学人做了大量社会动员工作。在理论上,强调向有关社会市场经济制度的基本思想回返,将就业安全性与灵活性相结合。在政策设计中,对劳动和社会保障管理系统实行去官僚化改造,变革社会救助和失业保险条例,激励失业者从事灵活就业。同时,辅之以对人力资本的大规模公共投资,并以就业目标为导向,在职业培训和中介领域引入竞争机制。在经济整体向好的形势下,德国改革取得了就业形式多样化和失业率下降的成果。这其中的理论和制度创新,值得中国决策者和公众借鉴。     

Transitions into Permanent Employment in Spain: An Empirical Analysis for Young Workers

This article analyses the transitions into permanent employment of a sample of young temporary employees in Spain for the period 1996–2003. For this purpose, we apply multiple‐spell duration techniques to a longitudinal dataset of temporary workers obtained from Social Security registers. Our main findings are as follows. First, the transitions from a temporary contract into unemployment and into another temporary contract are very high when compared with transitions into permanent employment. Second, the entry into permanent employment — although slightly increasing with tenure at the temporary contract — is very low; the only exception is that of semi‐skilled and unskilled individuals, who are particularly likely to enter into permanent employment at the 24th and the 36th month of tenure (respectively). Third, we find that there exists a substantial proportion of workers with unobservable characteristics that make them show high exit rates from temporary employment and, at the same time, a rapid exit from unemployment — while the remaining individuals exit from unemployment more slowly, particularly those who are receiving unemployment benefits.     

Active Labour Market Policy by a Profit‐Maximizing Firm

This article investigates the effectiveness of an employment programme exclusively run by a private sector firm in order to find out whether such a programme can be beneficial to both the participating individuals and the private firm. To answer these questions, we use a unique dataset on a private employment programme covering 23 years of operations and data on 1,000 participating unemployed individuals. Using conservative estimates, we show that a private employment programme is more effective in reintegrating the unemployed than public efforts, while providing tangible benefits to the firm.     

Labour Market Assimilation of Recent Immigrants in Spain

This article provides a preliminary analysis of the employment and occupational assimilation of recent immigrant waves to the Spanish labour market as their residencies lengthen. Using Spanish data from the 2001 Population Census and the 2002 Earnings Structure Survey, we find evidence of immigrant employment and occupational assimilation significantly varying by gender, origin and educational attainment.     

Labour Market Governance and the Creation of Outsiders

Using case‐study data, the article examines the contention that protective labour market policies and trade union action are responsible for growing divisions between labour market ‘insiders and outsiders’. Case studies are reported on developments in collective bargaining in the hospitals and engineering sectors from seven western and central European countries. The article finds that managerial strategies, and interactions between management and unions, have to be considered to give a full account of the growth of precarious employment.     

British Evidence on The Employment Effects of Profit Sharing

A sample of British firms with diverse sharing arrangements is used to investigate the effects of profit sharing on employment levels. Employment effects are sometimes significant, but this depends upon the measure of profit sharing, how the dynamics are modeled, and whether measures of employee participation in decision making are included in the estimating equation. Using a continuous measure of profit sharing, employment effects, which typically range from -6 per cent to 6 per cent, are much more modest than those obtained by some other researchers. Most findings are not dramatically affected by estimating the specifications separately for discrete time periods, for individual industries, or for larger firms.     

The Domestic Sources of Differences in Labour Market Policies

In this article we analyse what drives both the specific choices and the relative amount of change in labour market policies in two countries, Britain and Spain, in the 1990s. Although we find more substantial and radical labour market reform in Britain, Spain experienced greater union inclusion in policy‐making. We examine the roles of economic institutions and the ideology of the governing party and find that neither accounts satisfactorily for the labour market changes in our cases. Domestic political variables, especially electoral factors and the power and autonomy of government, give more insight into the similarities and differences between the two countries.