This book is about two polemical issues in labour studies, namely, the notions and determinants of labour productivity and flexibility. This book attempts to develop the notion of labour input flexibility or the capacity of workers to adapt to changes in the environment and its relation with labour productivity. The role of institutions, employment practices, capital-labour relations and labour market policies in determining labour flexibility is emphasized. The chapters look at the experiences of industrialized countries (European countries, the USA, Canada and Japan) and three Latin American countries (Brazil, Chile and Mexico).

Twenty-six scholars present findings from a wide range of national experiences, including those of Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Although the bulk of the study is empirical, the conceptual approach with which the book opens pervades the entire analysis, so that important questions such as the following are raised frequently in differing contexts:
- Do organizations send mixed signals about flextime to their professional employees?
- What if anything compensates for the virtual elimination of "slack time" in the skilled labour market?
- Are flexible staffing arrangements inherently discriminatory?
- Do local managers tend to implement organizational strategic visions of good working life in a way that merely creates new compromises for their subordinates?
- How do non-permanent workers balance anxiety and freedom?
- Have flexible work arrangements affected traditional patterns of gender discrimination?
- Does "nonstandard" often mean "substandard"?

This work reports on a range of research studies in the career field that use biographical, narrative, and ecological approaches within an interpretive framework. It responds to the recognized dissonance between career theory and research, on the one part, and practice, on the other. It also responds to the view that in recent years practice has outstripped career theory and research. The qualitative approaches used in the research reported have gained popularity in the social sciences in recent years, but have been largely untried in the career field.

This work offers specific interpretive studies that range over the life span and involve a number of perspectives including contexts such as parental influence, socio-political milieu, early career studies of apprentices, medical students, and nurses, studies of the established careers of secretaries, women entrepreneurs, teachers, and studies of the careers of older workers. In addition, the book contains interpretive studies pertaining to career theory, counseling and other interventions, and the research process. It also recognizes issues highlighted by a postmodernist perspective. A number of audiences will find this book useful: industrial/organizational psychologists, counseling psychologists, career counselors, counselor educators, and researchers in the career area from psychology and sociology.

The book uses an innovative theoretical framework to explain how the EU social dimension has taken its present form. It presents and applies a political economic framework to the European labour market integration process and offers new tools for analysing the dynamics of regional integration. The theory is applied to case studies of the EU's approach to social protection, health and safety protection at the workplace, and maternity leave. The topical issues around the future of welfare provision in Europe, how a 'Social Europe' may develop and the political and economic consequences of this are discussed.

This volume collects original contributions and research in economic theory and the political economy of unemployment and inflation. These essays, collected in honour of John Cornwall, demonstrate the importance of economic institutions for economic outcomes and share his focus on the need for high-level economic theory to be socially relevant. The book includes an intellectual biography of the honouree by Geoff Harcourt and Mehdi Monadjemi, and a full bibliography of his work.

"A splendid and hard-hitting book that exposes the campaigns by some governments to urge their citizens to work overseas, a key and virtually unnoticed aspect of economic globalization." -Karen Brodkin, author of Power Politics "Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes brings the intricate workings of the Philippine state in brokering transnational migration into sharp critical relief. Anna Romina Guevarra offers an exemplary piece of scholarship that cuts across various scales of complexities and levels of analyses which will define the contours of future debates and research agendas on migration." -Martin F. Manalansan IV, associate professor of anthropology and Asian American studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign "Guevarra's carefully researched, richly textured ethnographic study provides a compelling analysis of the employment agencies that recruit, mold, and market Filipina nurses and domestic workers for export as 'model workers' to the United States and around the globe. Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes offers a valuable contribution to the literature on migration as well as that on care work." -Ruth Milkman, author of L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement In a globalized economy that is heavily sustained by the labor of immigrants, why are certain nations defined as "ideal" labor resources and why do certain groups dominate a particular labor force? Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes focuses on the Philippines-which views itself as the "home of the great Filipino worker"-and the multilevel brokering process that manages and sends workers worldwide. Anna Romina Guevarra unravels the transnational production of Filipinos as ideal migrant workers by the state and explores how race, color, class, and gender operate. This multisited ethnography reveals the disciplinary power that state and employment agencies exercise over care workers-managing migration and garnering wages-to govern social conduct, bringing this isolated yet widespread social problem to life. Anna Romina Guevarra is an assistant professor of sociology and Asian American studies and affiliated faculty of gender and women's studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

This volume is a collection of papers dedicated to the memory of the late Tikva Lecker. Professor Lecker's many interests included topics in labor economics, women and the economy, the economics of Judaism, the economics of migration and every aspect of the economic experience of immigrants and their descendants. Each chapter in this volume honors the memory of Professor Lecker by presenting research on a topic in which she was especially interested. "The Research in Labor Economics" series was started in 1977. Each volume consists of a collection of refereed research papers written by top economists. Recent volumes have hosted papers from D. Acemoglu, J.D. Angrist, D. Card, H. Farber, A. Kreuger, E. Lazear, G. Field, and J. Mincer, among others.

Europe's notoriously high level of unemployment is one of the big puzzles of empirical macroeconomics. In recent years the unemployment rate has fallen in The Netherlands, but the overall level in OECD Europe remains high. An investigation into why Dutch economic policy has been relatively effective could be useful for the unemployment debate in Europe. This book contributes to this investigation with its empirical analysis covering three important topics.

The first part of the book investigates whether (macro) economic policies could be effective in reducing unemployment in the short run. This depends on the cause of unemployment: is it due to lack of demand for goods, or is it due to a shortage of capacity. Another question is whether macroeconomic policies can be directed to one side of the market.

The high rate of unemployment among low-skilled workers is the topic of the second part of this book. How important is the impact of wage inflexibility at the lower tail of the income distribution due to institutional factors? To what extent is it caused by skill-biased technological change? A central issue is, again, how economic policy could contribute to reducing unemployment among low-skilled workers?

The persistence of unemployment is investigated in the third part. Since the early eighties, Dutch policymakers have employed wage moderation as a remedy for unemployment in The Netherlands. Substantial cutbacks were made in the social security programme. This had a moderating effect on wages, which is thought to have contributed to employment growth. However, unemployment remained rather high up to 1997. Why didn't unemployment fall morequickly?

To answer these questions, economists have developed different structural macroeconometric models. The Netherlands has a rich tradition in using macroeconomic models for policy analysis. This tradition originates in the work of Jan Tinbergen, Nobel laureate in economics, and the first director of CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. This book, which builds on CPB's broad experience with macroeconomic modelling, makes an important contribution to this fine Dutch tradition.

This volume examines attempted changes to industrial relations in Britain during 1948 1990, designed to promote institutional reforms of management and trade unions. Specific focus is given to the Donovan Commission and other trade union reforms, and incomes policies to connect pay more tightly with productivity. International initiatives of the AACP, BPC, and EPA are also included. MARKET 1: Undergraduates and postgraduates studying Economic History; British Economic History of the Twentieth-Century.

The contributions collected in this volume take a fresh look at the traditional debate on education, training and labour market outcomes. The quality of education is difficult to measure in the education market and does not always find clear recognition in the labour market. The book provides new empirical evidence on these themes, including data specifically relating to Italy and the UK.

While the long-term gains from liberalization are generally accepted, liberalizing economies are, nevertheless, likely to face short to medium term adjustment costs. Yet most developing countries do not have well-developed social safety nets to address these problems. This book gauges the possible development implications of the current WTO trade negotiations by examining the various proposals and assessing their likely economic impact. Eight country studies examine the experiences of a number of countries at different levels of development and across various regions to ascertain the impact of their trade reforms and the factors contributing to the outcomes.

This book sheds light on the impact of the Great Recession from the perspective of both developing and developed countries. It traces the complex and multiple causes of the Great Recession, delineates the diversity in the macroeconomic and labour market consequences, and highlights the effectiveness of policy responses undertaken so far.

This book is an extensive review of the current state of illegal immigration in Europe and North America whilst providing theoretical analysis. This analysis models illegal immigration in a two-country framework, highlights the inter-related labour markets and considers a range of immigration policy instruments, including border patrols and employer surveillance and sanctions. Distinguishing between scenarios with and without the international mobility of capital, this book also examines various profit sharing arrangements. Other issues explored include: - The effectiveness of tighter border patrols and internal surveillance upon the level of illegal immigration - The effects upon national and international welfare - And optimal immigration policy choices

This book reexamines classical issues in the relationship between indifferent forms of democratization, civil, political and social--in Chile's transition to democracy during the 1990's. It highlights the lasting institutional limits tosocial democratization in countries that are democratizing in the context ofradical market reforms and provides an account of the politics of limiting social deepening in the crucial early years of Chile's transition, including a detailed examination of the influence of local union history and labor relations.

The purpose of this book is to analyse the remaining obstacles to achieving gender equality. The first chapters present different aspects of the gender earnings gap. Different countries are studied and special emphasis is laid on particular sectors and occupations. The rest of the book deals with the postponement of first birth by educated women, the non-cooperative behaviour in time use, gender differences in job and worker mobility, transitions between employment status, discriminations contained in tax systems and poverty rate of single parent households.

Over the past four decades the wealthiest OECD economies-in Europe, North America, and Australasia- have faced massive structural change. Industrial sectors, which were once considered the economic backbone of these societies, have shrunk inexorably in terms of size and economic significance, while service sectors have taken over as the primary engines of output and employment expansion. The impact on labor markets has been profound: in many OECD countries more than three-quarters of employment is now in services, while industrial sectors, on average, account for less than one-fifth. This sectoral shift in the locus of economic activity has potentially radical implications for politics and society. However, these implications are only beginning to be understood. This path-breaking book is a systematic attempt to understand the distinct political economy of service societies. It examines how different types of socio-economic regimes manage the service transition, with a central focus on job creation and destruction and the changing characteristics of labor markets, and shows that the economic, distributional, and political outcomes with which it is associated vary across countries depending on their political-institutional structures.

Work and Idleness develops the view that redistributing employment is a feasible capitalist' solution, not just to the unemployment which particular groups suffer, but also to the work that others have to contend with, including many women. Putting the redistribution of employment on the policy agenda opens up debate on how to ensure a more equitable and fulfilling relationship between the ways we gain our livelihoods and the lives we lead. Growing insecurity in labour markets and changing patterns in the commodification of labour have led to a redistribution of paid and unpaid labour time as the structure of power relations, the gender order, discrimination, and state regulation have been modified. The first main trend affecting insecurity is mass unemployment and the growth of workless households. A second notable trend is a gender-based redistribution of hours worked. The third major trend is a shift from full-time waged work to full-time self-employment. Part I of this book presents the main economic theories driving the continuing divide between the intensification of work and the extension of idleness. Part II documents the ways in which the shift to mass idleness in advanced industrial countries has hit some groups particularly hard: the youngest and oldest age groups and other groups, including disabled workers, have traditionally been subject to discrimination in the labor markets. Part III provides a set of policy prescriptions.

Studies of international labour migration typically assume that foreign labour is a universal feature of wealthy economies. Exploitation of foreign workers can contribute significantly to employers' profits. However, some wealthy societies do not import workers on a large scale, despite employers' pressures. Using Israel and Japan as empirical cases, this comparative-historical work investigates why some governments allow employers relatively free access to foreign labour, while others require alternative responses to labour shortages. A focus on variation leads to an innovative and insightful argument to explain international labour migration.

This book provides new evidence on the magnitude and sources of pay inequalities between women and men in European countries and New Zealand on the basis of micro data. Particular attention is devoted to job access and workplace practices, promotions and wage growth, sectoral affiliation and rent-sharing, and unobserved heterogeneity and dynamics.

This important book collects together Peter Nijkamp's work on spatial-economic markets, particularly housing and labour markets, and the increasing impact of information technology on mobility and the location of firms, residents and job seekers.The first part deals with applied modelling and theoretical advances in housing market dynamics and research. The papers address issues such as the implications of household dynamics for relocation decisions, migration movements in Europe, and the driving forces for migration decisions of ethnic groups. The second part focuses on the spatial labour market, dealing with recruitment channel and search channel choices by job seekers and firms, vacancy durations and the opportunities offered by ethnic entrepreneurship for improving the chances of ethnic groups. The third part comprises an analysis of spatial mobility flows and interaction patterns and the final part emphasises the scope and effect of information technology in transport. This includes the effect of real-time information on the behaviour of car drivers, the effect of telematics devices on public transport users, the importance of telematics for the freight transport sector and the adoption mechanisms of ICT users and their related policy implications. This collection will be essential reading for scholars and students interested in the housing and labour markets and the impact on both of developments in IT and transport.

Population ageing is an important trend which will be experienced in industrialized countries in the early years of the next century. This significant book examines aspects of population ageing and pensions, with an emphasis on the design and use of simple economic models to focus on particular aspects of a very broad problem. The analysis of pensions presents many complex problems. A major aim of this book is to demonstrate how reasonably simple economic models can be designed and used to shed some light on the issues involved in population growth and pension provision. The basic analytics of population growth and pension structure are first explored. Projections for Australia are examined and used to model ageing and social expenditure and to estimate the 'burden' of aged care on future workers. The author goes on to investigate pensions and pension finance, and examines several types of economic model before turning to the analysis of alternative pension arrangements using a lifetime simulation model. The results of the study suggest that both lower contribution rates and a universal pension encourage a later retirement age. This book will prove invaluable to students and scholars of public sector economics, welfare economics, social economics and public finance.

Globalization, the economic crisis and related policies of austerity have led to a growth in extreme exploitation at work, with migrants particularly vulnerable. This book explores the lives of the growing numbers of severely exploited labourers in the world today, questioning how we can respond to such globalized patterns of extreme inequality.

Research on labour market, labour relations, quality of work, human re- sources management, organisation ~f work and related topics has always been an important element in the activities of SISWO. The Netherlands' Universities Institute for Coordination of Research in Social Sciences (SISWO), is a national agency that initiates and supports, both scientifically and organisationally, research endeavours on a great variety of themes. This is done by organising discussion groups, congresses and conferences, expert meetings, newsletters and publications. For the field oflabour and organisation, WESW A, theN etherlands' Uni- versities Working Committee on Social Science Research of Labour and Organisation, is the inter-university network that, in close cooperation with SISWO, unites experts from Dutch universities. WESWA and SISWO are convinced that an overview of the Dutch state of the art, in English, will be welcomed by an international audience. This state of the art work on research into labour and organisation in The Netherlands was edited by Gerard Evers, Bert van Hees and Joop Schippers. I do hope that this book will receive the attention both within and outside our country that it deserves.

This work carries seven papers that analyze the effect of government and corporate actions on individuals' labor market behavior and seven others from a November 1996 conference at Cornell University discuss new empirical research on employer training.

This book reviews the long history of U.S. shipping policy, and explains the present challenges (including the increasing use of open register arrangements). U.S. labor problems, tort and liability risks, environmental and safety regulations, and coastal and harbor security issues receive heavy emphasis. Options for reviving U.S. shipbuilding are analayzed, along with balance of payments implications, and sealift and national security requirements. The book offers a detailed program for American maritime renewal. It is intended for maritime, national security, international trade, and foreign policy audiences. Extensive data and tables allow for a comprehensive assessment of the U.S. merchant marine and the global shipping industry, with substantial historical background.

Nearly two thirds of world shipping is done under flags of convenience. The significant over-tonnaging, subsidies and/or restrictions, and shipping friendly policies present in many countries create strong competitive pressures. Unfortunately, the U.S. and British merchant marines are in serious decline. But the Japanese, Chinese, Greeks, and Scandinavians are thriving at sea. And many European Union, Asian, and former Eastern bloc nations are likely to remain determined competitors.

U.S. maritime policies need overhaul and a more realistic outlook. This book reviews the long history of U.S. shipping policy, and explains the present challenges (including the increasing use of open register arrangements). U.S. labor problems, tort and liability risks, environmental and safety regulations, and coastal and harbor security issues receive heavy emphasis. Options for reviving U.S. shipbuilding are analayzed, along with balance of payments implications, and sealift and national security requirements. The book offers a detailed program for American maritime renewal. It is intended for maritime, national security, international trade, and foreign policy audiences. Extensive data and tables allow for a comprehensive assessment of the U.S. merchant marine and the global shipping industry, with substantial historical background.