Abstract Labour market regulation constrains small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) ability to minimize redundant labour. However, it is often neglected that many SMEs might circumvent these constraints by accessing a business group’s internal labour (ILM). In this study, we analyse whether with ILM access—i.e., an increasing number of sister group companies in the same subnational region-i...

This paper provides a review of how questions in labour economics link to the central concerns of development economics in understanding the mechanisms that both create, and perpetuate, poverty in some countries and not others and in some areas within countries. The paper frames this link by asking what determines first the price of labour, then the nature of employment open to labour and final...

Agriculture is an important engine of growth and poverty reduction in much of Africa, Nigeria inclusive. But the sector is underperforming in part because women, who are often crucial resource in agriculture and rural economy, face constraints that reduce their productivity. An understanding of these constraints is a prerequisite to devising policies to improve agricultural production and produ...

The (Unexpected) Structure of “Rents” on the French and British Labour Markets This paper considers the allocation of labour on the French and British markets, using objective wage and subjective satisfaction data. We show that, in some sectors, workers enjoy both higher wages and higher job satisfaction. We argue that this reflects labour market wage rents. Perhaps surprisingly, wage rents are...

National labour market institutions interact across national boundaries when product markets are global. Labour market policies can thus entail spill-overs, a fact widely ignored in the academic literature. This paper studies the effects of wage subsidies in an international duopoly model with unionised labour markets. We document both positive and negative spill-over effects and discuss the be...

One of first initiatives of the newly elected Federal Coalition Government in 1996 was to cut funding to regional development and labour market programs (LMP). The justification seemed to be based on the notion that the LMPs were not generating 'real' jobs; simply creating participants for jobs that did not exist. Analysis of ABS census data for regional Australia reveals an interesting pattern...

Introduction According to the classic view of labour markets, workers move freely from job to job and firm to firm (Bakke, 1954). From the worker’s perspective, this movement is governed by pressures to maximize the fit between worker skills and job requirements, with the objective of maximizing earnings. Historically, however, hierarchical (internal) control of labour supplanted the open labou...