Results

CEP discussion paper

Minimum wages and the nature of work

When minimum wage increases impose a cost shock on employers of low wage workers, there are a variety of ways in which firms can adjust. Rather than study the main focal point of much minimum wage research, possible labo...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Non-compete agreements, wages and efficiency: theory and evidence from Brazilian football

The Pele Act banned non-compete agreements in Brazilian football in 1998. We explore this policy change to study how non-competes affect the labour market. The Act changed the wage profile heterogeneously, reducing young...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why do flexible work arrangements exist?

This paper studies flexible work arrangements, with a focus on zero-hours contracts (ZHCs). Leveraging a unique dataset from a large UK firm in the low-pay sector, it provides novel descriptives on ZHC workers, as well a...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Literature:

Temporary employment in markets with frictions

Temporary employment has spiked in OECD countries over the last 40 years and is now a common feature of their labor market landscape. A large body of empirical literature examines the spread of temporary employment, but ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics:

Technology transfer in global value chains

Global value chains create opportunities for North-South technology diffusion. This paper studies technology transfer in value chains when contracts are incomplete and input production technologies are imperfectly exclud...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The organizational economics of school chains

We use the insights of firms' organizational economics to study school chains' organization. We match information on decentralization of activities for approximately 400 chains and 2,000 schools in England to student and...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

The costs and benefits of rules of origin in modern free trade agreements

Rules of origin offer preferred market access for final goods whose inputs originate mostly within a free trade agreement. Governments often champion such rules for boosting investment. We use a property-rights framework...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Collective bargaining and spillovers in local labor markets

How does collective bargaining affect the broader wage structure? How are such spillovers transmitted? I present a model where firms with wage-setting power that are not covered by collective bargaining agreements, but a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Who's got the power? Wage determination and its resilience in the Great Recession

Whereas wage inequality has risen markedly in most OECD countries in recent decades, it has fallen in several Southern European economies. To shed light on this phenomenon, we embed sectoral bargaining, which is common i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The costs and benefits of rules of origin in modern free trade agreements

We study the welfare impact of rules of origin in free trade agreements where final-good producers source customized inputs from suppliers within the trading bloc. We employ a property-rights framework that features hold...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technology transfer in global value chains

Firm-to-firm relationships in global value chains create opportunities for North-South technology diffusion. This paper studies technology transfer in value chains when contracts are incomplete and in-put production tech...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Preferential trade agreements and global sourcing

We develop a new framework to study the welfare consequences of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) under global sourcing, incomplete contracts and endogenous matching. We uncover several new channels through which PTAs...Read more...

Journal article

The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization:

In-house and arms length: productivity heterogeneity and variation in organizational form

This paper analyzes firm boundaries in the US hotel industry. Hotel properties of a given brand are often managed either by a chain employee or by a franchisee. We document that brand properties with the lowest and the h...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Policy:

Zero hours contracts and labour market policy

The evolving nature of atypical work arrangements is studied. A particular focus is placed on one such form of work relation: zero hour contracts (ZHCs). The paper uses existing secondary data and new survey data collect...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Preferential trade agreements and global sourcing

We study how a preferential trade agreement (PTA) affects international sourcing decisions, aggregate productivity and welfare under incomplete contracting and endogenous matching. Contract incompleteness implies underin...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

In-house and arms length: productivity heterogeneity and variation in organizational form

This paper analyzes how firms are organized in the U.S. hotel management industry. For most hotel brands, properties with intermediate room occupancy rates are relatively more likely to be managed by company employees ra...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Supplier search and re-matching in global sourcing: theory and evidence from China

In this paper, we consider a dynamic search-and-matching problem of a firm with its intermediate input supplier. In our model, a headquarter currently matched with a supplier, has an interest to find and collaborate with...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Internalizing global value chains: a firm-level analysis

In recent decades, advances in information and communication technology and falling trade barriers have led firms to retain within their boundaries and in their domestic economies only a subset of their production stages...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Relational knowledge transfers

We study how relational contracts mitigate Becker's classic problem of providing general human capital when training contracts are incomplete. The firm's profit-maximizing agreement is a multiperiod apprenticeship in whi...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Relational contracts and supplier turnover in the global economy

Headquarters and their specialized component suppliers have a vital interest in establishing long-term collaborations. When formal contracts are not enforceable, such efficiency-enhancing cooperations can be established ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Relational knowledge transfers

An expert with general knowledge trains a cash-constrained novice. Faster training increases the novice?s productivity and his ability to compensate the expert; it also shrinks the stock of knowledge yet to be transferre...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Contracting and the division of the gains from trade

This paper examines the microstructure of import markets and the division of the gains from trade among consumers, importers and exporters. When exporters and importers transact through anonymous markets, double marginal...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Relational contracts and supplier turnover in the global economy

Headquarters and their specialized component suppliers have a vital interest in establishing long-term collaborations. When formal contracts are not enforceable, such efficiency enhancing cooperations can be established ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The future of the German industrial relations model

The paper examines recent evidence on the erosion of the German industrial relations model. Although its coverage has declined, much of this has occurred in smaller and newer establishments, and compared with Britain, it...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Determinants of Intrafirm Trade: Evidence from French Firms

How well does the theory of the firm explain the choice between intrafirm and arms' length trade? This paper uses firm-level import data from France to look into this question. We find support for three key predictions o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Change and Persistence in the German Model of Collective Bargaining and Worker Representation

This paper depicts and examines the decline in collective bargaining coverage in Germany. Using repeat cross-section and longitudinal data from the IAB Establishment Panel, we show the overwhelming importance of behavior...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Individual Voice in Employment Relationships: A Comparison Under Different Forms of Workplace Representation

This article considers the role of individual employee voice in regulating the `zone of acceptance? within the employment relationship, and examines the extent to which different models of collective voice inhibit or fos...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managerial Incentives and Compensation in a Global Market

This paper embeds a principal-agent firm in an otherwise standard trade model a la Melitz (2003) to investigate the impact of globalization on the provision of managerial incentives and on the distribution of managerial ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Union Density and Varieties of Coverage: The Anatomy of Union Wage Effects in Germany

Collective bargaining in Germany takes place either at the industry level or at the firm level; collective bargaining coverage is much higher than union density; and not all employees in a covered firm are necessarily co...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Incomplete Contracts and the Impact of Globalization on Consumer Welfare

We embed a North-South trade model into an incomplete contracts setting where the production of heterogeneous firms can be geographically separated. When a Northern headquarter contracts with a Southern supplier instead ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Recursive Contracts

We obtain a recursive formulation for a general class of contracting problems involving incentive constraints. These constraints make the corresponding maximization (sup) problems non recursive. Our approach consists of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Individualisation and Growing Diversity of Employment Relationships

At a time when the economic recession is more severe, and trade unions are weaker, than at any time since the War, it would be unproductive to speculate about the extent to which these changes have been imposed, acquiesc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Individual Voice in Employment Relationships: A Comparison Under Different Collective Voice Regimes

This article examines the relationship between individual and collective employee voice, and management-led voice (appraisal), under contrasted collective voice regimes. In the first, collective workplace voice depends o...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Men in black: the impact of new contracts on football referees' performance

In the 2001/02 English football season, referees of Premier League matches were paid a salary for the first time. Alex Bryson and colleagues investigate the impact on their performance....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Collective Agreements, Wages and Restructuring in Transition

Using a large matched employer-employee dataset, the authors investigate the relationship between collective agreements, wages and restructuring in transition in three former centrally planned economies (Czech Republic, ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Extent of Collective Bargaining and Workplace Representation: Transitions between States and their Determinants. A Comparative Analysis of Germany and Great Britain

Industrial relations are in flux in many nations, perhaps most notably in Germany and Britain. That said, comparatively little is known in any detail of the changing pattern of the institutions of collective bargaining a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Participation in Organisations: Economic Approaches

Under the auspices of the debate about high performance work systems, it has been suggested that the evidence of positive results is disappointing and that one reason is that there has been a lack of theory. This paper a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Real Origins of the Great Depression: Monopoly Power, Unions and the American Business Cycle in the 1920s

We attempt to explain the severe 1920-21 recession, the roaring 1920s boom, and the slide into the Great Depression after 1929 in a unified framework. The model combines monopolistic product market competition with searc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Productivity and the Sourcing Modes of Multinational Firms: Evidence from French Firm-Level Data

We investigate the role of a firm?s total factor productivity in its decision to import from their affiliates rather than from independent input suppliers. We propose a slightly modified version of the Antras and Helpman...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Wage Distributions by Bargaining Regime: Linked Employer-Employee Data Evidence from Germany

Using linked employer-employee data from the German Structure of Earnings Survey 2001, this paper provides a comprehensive picture of the wage structure in three wage-setting regimes prevalent in the German system of ind...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Individual Employee Voice: Renegotiation and Performance Management in Public Services

Periodically, the `zone of acceptance? within which management may use its authority to direct employees? work needs to be adapted to the changing needs of organisations. This article focuses especially on the non-codifi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Timing of Monetary Policy Shocks

A vast empirical literature has documented delayed and persistent effects of monetary policy shocks on output. We show that this finding results from the aggregation of output impulse responses that differ sharply depend...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Chinese Unions: Nugatory or Transforming? An 'Alice' Analysis

China has, apparently, more trade union members than the rest of the world put together. But the unions do not function in the same way as western trade unions. In particular Chinese unions are subservient to the Partyst...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The De-Collectivisation of Pay Setting in Britain 1990-1998: Incidence, Determinants and Impact

Overall, collective bargaining coverage has dropped by around fourteen percentage points. This paper investigates the causes and consequences of the decline in collective bargaining in Britain between 1990 and 1998. One ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Short Job Tenures and Firing Taxes in the Search Theory of Unemployment

This paper studies the effects of firing taxes on the job destruction rate, when probation period - or temporary contract - policies are implemented in an otherwise exogenous job separation search model. It is shown that...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Comparatively Open: Statutory Information Disclosure for Consultation and Bargaining in Germany, France and the UK

Information provision is an important part of all mechanisms which give employees voice at work. This paper considers the law on information disclosure for joint consultation and collective bargaining in three countries,...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Anatomy of Union Decline in Britain: 1990-1998

To what extent can the decline in British trade union density between 1990 and 1998 be attributed to declining opportunities to unionize compared to declining propensity to unionize among workers with the opportunity to ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Reviewing the Statutory Union Recognition (ERA 1999)

In 2000 the UK government introduced, under the Employment Relations Act of 1999, a new statutory union recognition procedure, while in 2003 it published a consultation document on its Review of the Act. The document con...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Hidden Costs of Fixed Term Contracts: the Impact On Work Accidents

This paper assesses whether there is a systematic difference between the accident rates of fixed term and permanent contract workers that is not just the result of a compositional effect. A pure contractual effect might ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Employment Penalty After Motherhood In Spain

This paper investigates whether there exists an employment penalty from motherhood in Spain. In particular, we are interested in transitions from employment to non-employment and downward occupational mobility. Results s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Fixed-Term Contracts and Unemployment: An Efficiency Wage Analysis

During the 1980s, many European countries introduced fixed-term contracts to fight high and persistent levels of unemployment. Although these contracts have been widely used, unemployment has remained about the same afte...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Right to Know: Disclosure of Information for Collective Bargaining and Joint Consultation

The legal obligation on employers to provide information to employees has grown since the early 1970s. At that time, the emphasis was on disclosure for collective bargaining. In the 1980s and 1990s, the emphasis shifted ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Workers' Transitions from Temporary to Permanent Employment: the Spanish Case

This paper studies the duration pattern of fixed-term contracts and the determinants of the transformation of these into permanent ones. To address this issue we estimate a duration model for temporary employment, with c...Read more...