employment and unemployment effects of unions despite an extensive literature examining the effects of unions on wages little attention has been paid to the resultant aggregate employment consequences of this change in the relative cost of unionized labor this article uses 1983 current population survey data to estimate the effects of union strength on the probability of employment and labor force participation union strength which reflects both union coverage and the union wage differential is found to decrease employment and increase unemployment by a small but significant amount these effects are concentrated primarily among females and young males while little impact is found on prime age males

union effects on municipal employment and wages a longitudinal approach this article examines municipal union employment and wage effects in a sample of police fire sanitation streets and highways and finance and control departments from approximately 900 u s cities during 1977 80 cross section results for 1980 suggest positive union contract effects on fire fighter and sanitation employment and wages consistent with demand shifts due to union political influence in municipal bargaining i then model potential omitted variables as nonstationary fixed effects and apply longitudinal models to estimation of employment and wage changes between 1977 and 1980 the longitudinal results provide little support for the demand shift hypothesis

property tax limits local fiscal behavior and property values evidence from massachusetts under proposition abstract this paper examines the impact of a specific property tax limit proposition 2 1 2 in massachusetts on the fiscal behavior of cities and towns in massachusetts and the capitalization of that behavior into property values proposition 2 1 2 places a cap on the effective property tax rate at 2 5 and limits nominal annual growth in property tax revenues to 2 5 unless residents pass a referendum allowing a greater increase the study analyzes the 1990 1994 period a time when massachusetts municipalities faced significant fiscal stress because of a 30 cut in real state aid and a demographically driven increase in school enrollments the findings include the following 1 proposition 2 1 2 significantly constrained local spending in some communities with most of its impact on school spending 2 constrained communities realized gains in property values to the degree that they were able to increase school spending despite the limitation and 3 changes in non school spending had little impact on property values

wages and employment under trade unionism microeconomic models and macroeconomic applications the first part of this paper is a critical survey of microeconomic research into behavioural models of trade unionism although certain formulations of union objectives and models of wage and employment determination in unionized markets have found favor with economists unfortunately only a little is known about their empirical relevance the second part of this paper deals with the daunting problems of applying these models at the macroeconomic level one such model is estimated with data from sweden s mining and manufacturing sector from 1968 to 1982

asset stock accumulation and sustainability of competitive advantage given incomplete factor markets appropriate time paths of flow variables must be chosen to build required stocks of assets that is critical resources are accumulated rather than acquired in strategic factor markets barney barney j 1986 strategic factor markets expectations luck and business strategy management sci october 1231 1241 sustainability of a firm s asset position hinges on how easily assets can be substituted or imitated imitability is linked to the characteristics of the asset accumulation process time compression diseconomies asset mass efficiencies inter connectedness asset erosion and causal ambiguity

the tax revolt and electoral competition this paper explores the effect of electoral competition onstate and local expenditures in the us during the politicalenvironment following the tax revolt of the late 1970s itutilizes a theoretical model in which both electoralcompetition and tax and expenditure limits impact spending empirical results indicate the tax revolt s primary impact wastransmitted through political candidate competition notthrough the adoption of tax or expenditure limitations as iscommonly believed however tax and expenditure limits doaffect public education expenditures

the effect of property tax limitation measures on local government fiscal behavior abstract previous evidence on the effects of tax and expenditure limitation measures has not been conclusive difficulties arise in characterizing differences in fiscal institutions across states and estimating behavior in the absence of limitation measures a recently enacted tax limitation measure limits the growth in local property taxes in some illinois jurisdictions but not in others such differential treatment of otherwise similar jurisdictions provides a natural experiment for estimating the impact of the tax cap on local government fiscal behavior we find that the cap has been effective in that the fiscal behavior of capped jurisdictions differs from that of never capped jurisdictions

industrial relations in britain this work has 17 chapters covering trade unions management collective bargining industrial conflict the labour market labour law and state intervention in industrial relations each chapter is an essay which brings together the most up to date theoretical and empirical work each focuses on trends over the past two or three decades and says something about likely developments over the 1980s the emphasis is on analysis and explanation as well as on description

optimal fiscal limits with overrides abstract this paper studies optimal fiscal limits in the context of a simple political economy model a politician chooses the level of taxation for a representative citizen but is biased in favor of higher taxes a constitutional designer sets a tax limit before the citizen s preferred level of taxation is fully known the politician is allowed to override the limit with the citizen s approval the paper solves for the optimal limit and explains how it is impacted by the possibility of overrides the paper also shows that the citizen s welfare can be enhanced if the designer imposes a limit on the politician s override proposals

the microeconomic theory of the trade union a comment in a recent article in this journal oswald 1 982 analyses the behaviour of a utilitarian trade union which maximises the expected utility ofits representative member subject to the constraint imposed by the employing industry s demand curve for labour at the end of his section iii oswald makes the surprising statement that it is not always true despite the folk lore on this topic in labour economics that the union s optimal wage is a decreasing function of the elasticity of labour demand he goes on to say that it is not always true that the optimal wage rate is a decreasing function of the employed man s degree of risk aversion oswald does not produce counter examples his claims rest on assertions that certain derivatives are ambiguous in sign the object of this note is to point out that such claims are unfounded the folk lore is essentially correct oswald s basic model can be summarised as follows the union wishes to maximise the expression

sustainable competitive advantage combining institutional and resource based views this article suggests that the context and process of resource selection have an important influence on firm heterogeneity and sustainable competitive advantage it is argued that a firm s sustainable advantage depends on its ability to manage the institutional context of its resource decisions a firm s institutional context includes its internal culture as well as broader influences from the state society and interfirm relations that define socially acceptable economic behavior a process model of firm heterogeneity is proposed that combines the insights of a resource based view with the institutional perspective from organization theory normative rationality institutional isolating mechanisms and institutional sources of firm homogeneity are proposed as determinants of rent potential that complement and extend resource based explanations of firm variation and sustainable competitive advantage the article suggests that both resource capital and institutional capital are indispensable to sustainable competitive advantage 1997 john wiley sons ltd

corporatism labor unions and the safety net abstract this paper models corporatism as the attainment of outcomes superior to those when individual parties act alone this idea is developed in the context of union government interactions in the determination of wages and unemployment benefits a central finding is that while corporatism is welfare improving for the actors involved it yields few clear implications for the evolution of wages employment benefits or output it may therefore be unwise to employ corporatism indices in macroeconometric analyses without explicitly accounting for bargaining structures information and especially preferences

what has 20 years of public private pay gap literature told us eastern european transitioning vs developed economies this paper surveys the literature on public private sector pay differentials based on 20 years of research in transitioning countries of eastern europe ee and compares the results with estimates obtained from developed market economies the majority of empirical studies from ee economies found evidence of public sector pay penalties during the period of economic transition from a communist to market based economy in developed economies however the average differential is usually around zero or positive the public sector pay inequality reducing effect relative to the private sector is greater in transitioning economies than in developed economies nevertheless there is evidence that the sign of the public sector pay gap as well as the relative public sector pay distribution change with the progress of economic transition towards those usually observed in developed economies different pay setting arrangements between private and public sectors and competition for workers seem to be major arguments for the existence of systematic pay differences between the two sectors

the economics of cash limits as a method of pay determination since the second world war there have been four main methods for determining pay settlements in the uk public sector they are a comparability b formal incomes policy c a market approach and d cash limits at any particujar time there has often been more than one method in operation and of course which type of approach is successful in controlling public sector pay settlements has always been hotly disputed whilst the first three have been the subject of extensive analysis the final method though universally acknowledged to impinge on pay settlements has not been formally analysed this paper attempts to redress this imbalance robinson 1 983 has written that cash limits has had a significant effect on pay bargaining in parts of the public sector and that if wages per worker rise by more than the increase in the cash limit for the pay component there must be a reduction in the numbers employed a cash limit is the idea that there is a fixed amount of money available for pay prior to negotiation the paper considers the case of an exact cash limit where the wage fund or cash limit is rigidly defined and known to the union later a less strong assumption is made more in accordance with institutional reality where the cash limit is not known precisely but is considered from the union s view point to be a subjective random variable with a known density function with public sector employment central government local authorities and public corporations accounting for some 30 of total employment and public sector pay accounting for 30 of total public expenditure the importance of a sound analysis of these issues cannot be underestimated this paper discusses a model of bilateral monopoly with the additional constraint of a cash limit the first section discusses briefly the institutional framework of cash limits in the public sector and how they operate the second section presents the formal analysis

when competitive advantage doesn t lead to performance the resource based view and stakeholder bargaining power what if rent from a competitive advantage is appropriated so it cannot be observed in performance measures the resourcebased view was not formulated to examine who will get the rent yet this essay argues that the factors leading to a resource based advantage also predict who will appropriate rent knowledge based assets are promising because firm specificity social complexity and causal ambiguity make them hard to imit ate however the roles of internal stakeholders may grant them a great deal of bargaining power especially relative to investors this essay integrates the resource based view with the bargaining power literature by defining the firm as a nexus of contracts this new lens can help to explain when rent will be generated and simultaneously who will appropriate it in doing so it provides a more robust theory of firm performance than the resource based view alone it is also suggested that this lens might be useful for examining other theories of firm performance

unemployment insurance and union wage setting the authors examine alternative systems of financing unemployment insurance benefits in an economy with wage sett ing unions where as in some nordic countries each union runs its o wn unemployment insurance system it is shown that a higher lump sum grant to the union s unemployment insurance fund increases employment whereas higher marginal subsidies have ambiguous effects an unempl oyment insurance tax on wages has no effect on employment whereas an unemployment insurance tax on profits unambiguously increases employ ment the authors also analyze a case where wages are set at the firm level and premiums at the industry level copyright 1988 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

envy fairness and political influence in local government wage determination evidence from norway the main question in this paper is do wages of low skilled workers in norwegian local governments adjust to clear the labor market for such workers or are the wages affected by trade unions comparing their wages with other wages inside the local governments the main empirical findings are as follows first wages of low skilled local government employees respond not to wages in the external labor market but to wages of higher skilled and higher paid workers inside the local government second wages are positively associated with the share of socialist politicians in the local council these results are interpreted as support for a union model with internal pay comparisons in norwegian local governments copyright 1995 by the london school of economics and political science

government decision making and the incidence of federal mandates abstract this paper analyzes the effects of federally mandated program changes on state spending and revenues incorporating and evaluating the predictive value of several common theories of the state decision making process using several sources of exogenous increases in public medical spending i estimate that the entire state portion of the burden of mandated spending is borne by decreases in other public welfare spending while federal mandates may influence the composition of benefits at the state level it is much more difficult for them to change the total level of state transfers comparison of state reactions to different shocks suggests that these reductions are due in part to the substitutability of programs in the voter utility function but also in part to the stickiness of spending within budget categories states with greater racial differences between recipients and voters and states with less generous neighbors reduce other public welfare spending by even more alleviating the burden the medical expansions imposed on their taxpayers mandates may thus serve only to increase inequality across states

work rules featherbedding and pareto optimal union management bargaining this article examines a model of semiefficient bargaining in which the union and the firm bargain over wages and various types of work rules the results are compared to the outcomes that are associated with fully efficient bargaining i e over wages and the level of employment and bargaining solely over wages

why sweden s welfare state needed reform according to professor walter korpi the swedish economy would be in better shape if leading politicians had paid less attention to the advice from an influential group of swedish academic economists allegedly hostile to the welfare state their claim that high taxes and extensive social security programmes have strong adverse effects on aggregate economic performance rested on a politically biased reading of comparative international data in purporting to show that sweden had fallen behind other comparable countries the sclerosis diagnosis they set the stage for cutbacks in the welfare state and a major tax reform involving substantially lower marginal tax rates apart from creating inequality at a negligible gain in efficiency the very same reforms may also explain why sweden ran into a macroeconomic tailspin in the early i 990s rather than an instructive case study of the ultimate consequences of a long term obsession with income equality and social protection the exceptional economic crisis can be traced to severe macroeconomic policy blunders the views of professor korpi are quite familiar for anyone that has followed the swedish debate over the last decade supporters of the welfare state applaud professor korpi for revealing the ideological bias underlying the evidence presented in support of the sclerosis diagnosis some swedish economists rather thank of him as a modern day don quixote eager to pick a fight with imaginary villains being a swede and a professor of economics i can hardly claim the status of an impartial observer i certainly believe that harberger triangles convey information and i am convinced that most of the recently implemented reforms make sense nevertheless i believe that professor korpi raises important issues many of the accusations made against the welfare state in sweden and elsewhere rest on evidence which does not survive normal academic scrutiny in their capacity as policy advisors academic economists far from always live up to the standards of the seminar room speculation and sweeping generalisations are poor substitutes for facts and empirical investigations like professor korpi i doubt that very important insights on the harmfulness of the welfare state can be gained from comparative aggregate data over the period i970 90 swedish economic growth was below the oecd average at the same time the public sector was very large however

incidence analysis of financing unemployment benefits in a partially unionized economy the incidence of unemployment benefits are analysed under alternative financing modes in a two sector general equilibrium model with a segmented labour market where one sector is unionized and queue unemployment exists specific tax incidence as well as balanced budget incidence are analysed the main results are i the distributional effects are identical irrespective of which factor is taxed in the union sector ii the distributional effects are also identical irrespective of which factor is taxed in the non union sector and iii labour gains by a uniform ui tax on capital in both sectors and may or may not gain from a uniform labour tax while capital owners lose in both cases thus what matters for the incidence outcome is which sector and not which factor that is taxed

the future of stakeholder management theory a temporal perspective we propose adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory and assess the implications thereof for firm level competitive advantage we argue that a firm s competitive advantage fundamentally depends on its capacity for stakeholder management related transformational adaptation over time our new temporal stakeholder management approach builds upon insights from both the resource based view rbv in strategic management and institutional theory stakeholder agendas and their relative salience to the firm evolve over time a phenomenon well understood in the literature and requiring what we call level 1 adaptation however the dominant direction of stakeholder pressures can also change namely from supporting resource heterogeneity at the firm level to fostering industry homogeneity and vice versa when dominant stakeholder pressures shift from supporting heterogeneity towards stimulating homogeneity in industry the firm must engage in level 2 or transformational adaptation stakeholders typically provide valuable resources to the firm in an early stage without these resources which foster heterogeneity in line with rbv thinking the firm would not exist at a later stage stakeholders also contribute to inter firm homogeneity via isomorphism pressures in line with institutional theory thinking adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory has far reaching implications for this theory s practical relevance to senior level management in business

estimation and testing of the union wage effect using panel data we present estimates of the union wage effect controlling for unmeasured individual effects and subject the conventional fixed effects model to specification tests for psid men the union wage effect is 5 8 after controlling for person effects as opposed to 20 in cross section omnibus tests based on an unrestricted reduced form and instrumental variables tests based on differencing are consistent with conventional models tests based on comparing those who enter and leave union coverage provide evidence against the usual model we find evidence for interactions between union status and other variables even after controlling for person effects

the political economy of benefits and costs a neoclassical approach to distributive politics this essay offers a rational political explanation for the notorious inefficiency of pork barrel projects with an optimization model of legislative behavior and legislative institutions the model emphasizes the economically arbitrary from a welfare point of view importance of the geographic incidence of benefits and costs owing to the geographic basis for political representation we explore the implications of a legislator s objective function and derive conditions under which a representative legislature will select an omnibus of projects each of which exceeds the efficient scale

reform of police pensions in england and wales we analyse pension reforms for police officers in england and wales using force level data we quantify the impact on overall police pension plan liabilities examining incidence across police officers national and local taxpayers we also examine reforms of retirement rules especially concerning early retirement on grounds of ill health differences in ill health retirement across forces are statistically related to area specific stresses of policing and force specific human resources policies reforms in 2006 impacted primarily on the level of ill health retirement among forces with above average rates of early retirement we find residual differences in post 2006 ill health retirement rates across forces are related to differential capacities to raise revenue from local property taxes

fiscal institutions and wage bargaining in the local public sector in a theoretical analysis of the properties of different wage setting and financing systems in the local public sector two financing systems are considered a benchmark model with local financing through local taxes is compared with a system of centralized financing through grants where taxes are decided at the national level it is shown that the wage outcomes under centralized financing depend heavily on the order of moves in the budgetary game between the central and local levels jel classification h23 j45

the stakeholder theory and the common good the theory of the social responsibility of the firm oscillates between two extremes one that reduces the firm s responsibility to the obtainment of the greatest possible profit for its shareholders and another that extends the firm s responsibility to include a wide range of actors with an interest or stake in the firm the stakeholder theory of the social responsibility of business is more appealing from an ethical point of view and yet it lacks a solid foundation that would be acceptable to a variety of schools of thought in this paper i argue that the stakeholder theory could be founded on the concept of the common good first i explain the foundations of the theory of the common good the concept itself how it relates to the individual good and its role in the firm following that i explain how the theory of the common good could be applied to the stakeholder theory finally i draw some conclusions

does the market pay off earnings returns to education in urban china previous work on the market transition in reform era china has missed the direct link between individuals labour market history and individuals labour market outcome a typology of workers is developed based on individuals labour market histories and a model of selective mobility of workers from the state sector to the market sector is offered as an explanation for higher earnings returns to education in the market sector analysis of data from an urban survey in china reveals that commonly observed higher earnings returns to education in the market sector are limited only to recent market entrants and that early market entrants resemble state workers in both their level of earnings and returns to education these results challenge the prevailing wisdom that education is necessarily more highly rewarded in the market sector thus it is concluded that higher returns to education in the market sector should not be construed as being caused by marketization per se and instead that the sorting process of workers in labour markets helps explain the sectoral differentials

dynamic capabilities what are they this paper focuses on dynamic capabilities and more generally the resource based view of the firm we argue that dynamic capabilities are a set of specific and identifiable processes such as product development strategic decision making and alliancing they are neither vague nor tautological although dynamic capabilities are idiosyncratic in their details and path dependent in their emergence they have significant commonalities across firms popularly termed best practice this suggests that they are more homogeneous fungible equifinal and substitutable than is usually assumed in moderately dynamic markets dynamic capabilities resemble the traditional conception of routines they are detailed analytic stable processes with predictable outcomes in contrast in high velocity markets they are simple highly experiential and fragile processes with unpredictable outcomes finally well known learning mechanisms guide the evolution of dynamic capabilities in moderately dynamic markets the evolutionary emphasis is on variation in high velocity markets it is on selection at the level of rbv we conclude that traditional rbv misidentifies the locus of long term competitive advantage in dynamic markets overemphasizes the strategic logic of leverage and reaches a boundary condition in high velocity markets copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

labour market policy and unemployment the paper discusses three aspects of the system for unemployment support first active labour market programmes as a means of re allocating labour from high unemployment to low unemployment sectors are analysed and it is concluded that wage raising accommodation effects may be a serious problem second the possibility of strengthening incentives for wage moderation by differentiating employee and or employer contributions to unemployment insurance are discussed third the question is raised whether there may exist other institutional set ups for providing unemployment support that are more efficient in terms of returning the unemployed to work than government run systems

the rise in unemployment a multi country study one of the most remarkable features of recent economic history has been the remorseless rise in unemployment throughout the industrialized countries however while the trend to higher unemployment is universal the experience of individual countries also differs widely the increase is especially marked within the european community where unemployment rates rival those reached in the interwar years by contrast in the scandinavian countries and japan unemployment is lower and has risen very much less experience in the united states lies somewhere between these extremes and in the last few years unemployment there has fallen sharply

can fiscal rules constrain the size of government an analysis of the crown jewel of tax and expenditure limitations abstract fiscal rules attempt to alter budget outcomes by constraining policy makers they have been one of the primary responses to the recent string of fiscal crises around the globe we ask if these rules succeed in altering fiscal outcomes by examining what is arguably the most stringent set of fiscal rules in the u s colorado s taxpayer bill of rights tabor as tabor attempts to constrain both taxes and expenditures we develop a novel approach of estimating treatment effects for multiple outcomes simultaneously using the synthetic control methodology of abadie et al 2010 although there will always be a degree of uncertainty over external validity when a policy is enacted in only a single state our results provide no evidence that tabor affected the level of taxes or spending in colorado and are precise enough to rule out large negative effects thus no support is found for the contention that fiscal rules alter budget outcomes instead tabor appears to have been partly evaded by policy makers and voters despite its stringency and partly nothing more than a ratification of the state s preference over the size of its public sector

public pension accounting rules and economic outcomes we find a negative association between a state s fiscal condition and the use of discretion in applying governmental accounting standards board gasb rules to understate pension funding gaps we also find that the use of discretion is negatively associated with states decisions to increase taxes and cut spending in addition we find that the funding gap understatement is positively associated with higher future labor costs importantly this association is primarily attributable to the gasb methodology which systematically understates the funding gap this suggests that the gasb approach is associated with policy choices that have the potential to exacerbate fiscal stress

motivators of mobilization although the possibility that a firm s stakeholders may take damaging measures against it in response to its activities has been an underlying assumption of stakeholder theory from inception the conditions that predispose stakeholders to act against firms remain largely unexplored in the literature based on work in equity theory expectancy theory and resource dependence theory we present and test hypotheses concerning stakeholders propensities to impose sanctions upon or to support firms using a vignette based experiment we found strong confirmation of the criticality of fairness in the firm stakeholder relationship stakeholder equity perceptions were unequivocally associated with the proclivity to sanction the firm or to engage in prosocial behaviours of benefit to it stakeholder expectancy perceptions and resource dependence were related to only certain forms of stakeholder action indicating that researchers should take care to differentiate between types of stakeholder response when investigating questions surrounding stakeholder mobilization our results also suggest specific avenues for stakeholder dialogue that could help firms mitigate the likelihood of stakeholders taking damaging action against them

on the contract curve a test of alternative models of collective bargaining the traditional model of collective bargaining confines unions to settlements constrained by the employer s labor demand curve but an alternative model places wage employment outcomes on a contract curve that extends beyond the labor demand curve this paper derives a multidimensional hedonic contract curve model in which employment security provisions are used to maintain efficient bargains outside the employer s demand curve and distinguishes empirically between the contract curve and demand constraint models using data for public school teachers in new york state estimates clearly support the contract curve model over the demand constraint model by linking the gap between compensation and the value of the marginal product to the strength of employment security provisions

market premium social process and statisticism statistics is a powerful yet potentially dangerous tool more than two decades ago the late otis dudley duncan 1984 226 warned us concerning the danger of statisticism the notion that computing is synonymous with doing research the naive faith that statistics is a complete or sufficient basis for scientific methodology the superstition that statistical formulas exist for evaluating such things as the relative merits of different substantive theo

employment during the thatcher years did they fall or were they pushed the paper examines the argument that real wage push has been responsible for the observed increase in unemployment in the uk over the period 1979 to 1985 it explains why real wage push should have been associated with a decline in real profits and that this decline did not in fact occur the association between real wage push and profit decline is complicated by the presence of intermediate inputs and by compositional effects these are also considered an equation accounting for these complications is derived and estimated the data used are individual company records for around 2 300 of the largest uk public and private corporations with on average about 5 500 employess the hypothesis that real wage push caused recently observed increases in unemployment is rejected by the data

direct democracy and public employees in the public sector employment may be inefficiently high because of patronage and wages may be inefficiently high because of the strength of public employee interest groups this paper explores whether the initiative process a direct democracy institution of growing importance can control these political economy problems as proponents and some research suggests based on a sample of 650 cities in 2000 i find that when public employees are not allowed to bargain collectively and patronage may be a problem initiatives appear to cut employment but not wages when public employees are allowed to bargain collectively driving up wages the initiative appears to cut wages by about 4 percent but has no measurable effect on employment the employment cutting result is quite robust surviving a number of robustness tests the wage cutting result survives some but not all robustness tests

employment determination in a unionized public sector labor market the case of ontario s school teachers a standard efficient contracts model of employment determination in a unionized labor market is contrasted with a naive model of labor supply and demand that allows for the possibility of monopsony in the market for public school teachers the standard model is consistent with the data and suggests that employment contracts are strongly efficient but a more surprising result is that the simple supply demand model is not rejected by the data either estimates of the latter suggest that the demand for teachers is inelastic and that the supply curve is slightly upward sloping rather than perfectly elastic at the union wage

macroeconomic implications of cash limits in the public sector a cash limit is a fixed amount of money available for pay prior to the wage negotiations in the public sector this paper examines the macroeconomic implications of cash limits in a unionized economy with decentralized wage bargaining in both private and public sectors i focus in particular on the linkages between changes in the cash limit wage setting and employment in public and private sectors equilibrium unemployment is independent of the size of the public sector if there are no sectoral differences in the unions relative bargaining power in general unemployment may rise or fall by public sector expansion accomplished by means of an increase in the cash limit unemployment increases if unions are relatively more powerful in the public than in the private sector

on the benefits from rigid labour markets norms market failures and social insurance the common view that far reaching labour market deregulation is the only remedy for high european unemployment is too simplistic first the evidence suggests that deeply rooted social customs are

evaluating stakeholder theory this paper is the third in a series of four that is directed at understanding and assessing stakeholder theory for the purposes of business ethics it addresses the suitability and viability of the theory rejecting objections of a moral and efficiency sort based respectively on claims about property rights and the economic superiority of the alternative stockholder approach but accepting that implementation problems require limiting both the number of groupings admitted to stakeholder status and the degree of responsibility towards them the conclusion looks forward to the construction of a suitably limited version of the stakeholder approach in a fourth paper drawing upon this one and the previous two

endogenous unemployment insurance in a monopoly union model when job search matters abstract the aim of the paper is to derive an optimal unemployment insurance policy for a utilitarian trade union when job search matters it is shown that the well known result from the theory of insurance concerning the optimal risk sharing between risk averse agents changes essentially if the search behavior is allowed to affect the performance of the labor market we assume that labor market mismatch decreases with search effort which in turn decreases with the benefit the resulting equilibrium benefit is shown to be a decreasing function of the trade union s share of the costs of the insurance fund the model is also extended to the case where the benefit is made conditional on monitored search effort