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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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。     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Direct Labor Market Effects of Unemployment Insurance

It has been established that relatively high income families receive a disproportionately large share of UI benefits. Little information on the distribution of costs by income class is available, but it is quite possible that the upper income groups may also bear a disproportionately large share of the costs. More empirical research is needed before the redistributive effects of UI can be known with any degree of confidence. There is little argument about the desirability on income mainlenance grounds of extending Unemployment insurance benefits in a recessionary period, all other things being equal. U1 is quite efficient as an income maintenance tool for covered workers. With respect to the unemployment problem, though, it is feared by some that the program goes too far in maintaining the incomes of covered workers, and as a result any extension of UI benefits will aggravate the unemployment problem. The evidence presented here suggests that fears of a major increase in unemployment as a result of such changes are largely unwarranted. However, extended UI benefits would appear to have some small, nontrivial adverse impact on unemployment. Finally, it seems that UI's income distributional impact has been portrayed unjustly as pro-rich. It may be that income is transferred through the UI system from the relatively well-to-do to the relatively poor. There is no scientific way of bringing these considerations to bear in deciding whether or not to restructure the unemployment insurance system. This question can be answered only by invoking fundamental value judgments to decide how sociely would be better off, and I would not presume here to offer my own. This paper will have served its purpose if it has provided the basis for a more informed decision.     

中小企业融资风险与防范——来自创业板的证据

中小企业尤其是孵化科技型、成长型企业,在高速发展的同时面临企业长久健康发展的巨大资金缺口。而创业板在深交所的成功上市则适时为无法在主板上市融资的中小企业提供了更方便的融资渠道和更广阔的成长空间。本文以创业板上市公司为例,通过描述融资理论、分析融资渠道等途径揭示创业板上市公司的融资风险,并将其风险划分为系统风险和非系统风险进行详细阐述,最后再为创业板上市公司提出融资风险的防范措施。     

Public‐sector Employment Relations Reform under Labour: Muddling Through on Modernization?

The year 2001 in the UK was dominated by the difficulties the Labour government confronted in developing a coherent programme of public-sector modernization. This review examines recent developments in the public sector, focusing on government attempts to involve the private sector and its continuing reforms of pay determination arrangements. It highlights the tensions that this programme of reform aroused as the government struggled to respond to recruitment and retention problems and widespread perceptions of public-sector 'crisis'.     

The Law of the Labour Market — Industrialization,Employment, and Legal Evolution – Simon Deakin and Frank Wilkinson

Books reviewed: The Law of the Labour Market — Industrialization, Employment, and Legal Evolution by Simon Deakin and Frank Wilkinson. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, xxv + 380 pp., ISBN 0 19 8152817, £60.00.     

大学生就业的人力资源市场分析

大学生就业是当前社会关注的热点问题。为促进大学生就业,文章立足社会调查数据,采用描述性实证分析的方法,挖掘出大学生就业难的劳动力市场深层次原因,提出提高大学生人力资源配置和使用效率的路径选择。