Canadian Strike Replacement Legislation and Collective Bargaining: Lessons for the United States

Opponents of U.S. and Canadian strike replacement legislation contend that restricting the use of strike replacements significantly alters bargaining power and increases strike activity. This article uses data on Canadian manufacturing collective-bargaining agreements to investigate these hypotheses. Although a general ban on strike replacements is found to be associated with longer strikes, little evidence is found to suggest that banning permanent strike replacements significantly influences strike incidence, strike duration, or negotiated wages.     

The market for American state government bonds in Britain and the United States, 1830–431

In the 1830s the British and American economies were hit by a series of shared macroeconomic shocks. This paper investigates the role of markets for America's State bonds in Britain and the USA during and between the crises in 1837, 1839, and 1842.There is strong evidence that the crises in 1839 and 1842 originated in the USA and spread to Britain. There is also strong evidence that credit markets for American state bonds were tighter in the USA than in London between 1839 and 1842. The idea that the depression that began in 1839 in the USA was triggered by credit conditions in Britain and transmitted via the market for state credit, finds no support here.     

Monastic mortality: Durham Priory, 1395–15291

This article presents reliable data on the life expectancy of the monks of Durham Priory between 1395 and 1529. The number of years that monks survived in this northern monastery plunged precipitously in the second half of the fifteenth century before staging a partial recovery in the early sixteenth. The experience of Durham monks mirrors the scale, direction, and timing of the data already produced for the monks of Canterbury and Westminster. While the precise relationship between monastic mortality and that of the population at large remains difficult to determine, there can be no doubt that the symmetry that has been established between mortality in three monasteries located in different parts of the country has important implications for our understanding of the demographic history of late medieval England.     

International Accounting Standards for Line-of-Business Reporting and Oligopoly Competition*

Abstract. This article presents a model in which the impact of international accounting standards on product market competition can be assessed. Formulating the choice of disclosure rules as the first stage in a multistage game between countries and representative incumbent and entrant firms, we establish conditions under which an enforceable international standard to require line-of-business (LOB) reporting could lead to strict improvement in the expected national welfare of participating countries over the equilibrium that would otherwise be attained. Additional results consider the effects of changes in certain model assumptions and the addition of tariffs as further trade policy instruments. Résumé. Les auteurs proposent un modèle permettant d'évaluer l'incidence des normes comptables internationales sur la concurrence, sur les marchés de produits. Ils posent d'abord le choix des règles de présentation de l'information comme étant la première étape d'un jeu à multiples épisodes entre les pays et entre les sociétés en place représentatives du secteur et les nouvelles venues. Ils établissent ensuite les conditions dans lesquelles l'application possible d'une norme internationale exigeant la publication d'information sectorielle pourrait mener à une stricte amélioration de la prospérité nationale attendue des pays participants, au-delà du niveau d'équilibre qui serait autrement atteint. Les auteurs s'intéressent entre autres, dans leurs travaux, aux répercussions de la modification de certaines hypothèses du modèle et de l'introduction des tarifs douaniers à titre d'instruments de la politique d'échange.     

High‐Performance Work System and Organizational Turnover in East and Southeast Asian Countries1

In this paper, we examine the impact of high‐performance work systems (HPWSs) on both voluntary and involuntary organizational turnover rates. Most research on this topic has been done in the United States. Given the global competitive pressures confronting many of the countries of East and Southeast Asia, companies in this region are seeking to become more flexible and often adapt HPWSs practices. We explore the impact of HPWSs in both locally owned companies and subsidiaries of multinational corporations in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand. These countries have significantly different national cultures from the United States and most other Western countries and HPWSs effects in relation to turnover might vary from the studies based in the United States. Our findings are, however, somewhat consistent with U.S.‐based studies. In fact, HPWSs were found to be more effective in reducing turnover in locally owned companies than in subsidiaries of Western and Japanese multinational companies.