Gayle Allard

Euro-Productivity and Euro-Jobs since the 1960s: Which Institutions Really Mattered?

How have labor market institutions and welfare-state transfers affected jobs and productivity in Western Europe, relative to industrialized Pacific Rim countries? Orthodox criticisms of European government institutions are right in some cases and wrong in others. Protectionist labor-market policies such as employee protection laws seem to have become more costly since about 1980, not through overall employment effects, but through the net human-capital cost of protecting senior male workers at the expense of women and youth. Product-market regulations in core sectors may also have reduced GDP, though here the evidence is less robust. By contrast, high general tax levels have shed the negative influence they might have had in the 1960s and 1970s. Similarly, other institutions closer to the core of the welfare state have caused no net harm to European jobs and growth. The welfare state%u2019s tax-based social transfers and coordinated wage bargaining have not harmed either employment or GDP. Even unemployment benefits do not have robustly negative effects.

THE IMPACT OF THE NEW LABOR LAW IN CHINA: NEW HIRING STRATEGIES FOR FOREIGN FIRMS?

Chinas new labor law transforms the formal work relationship to standards that are similar to many modern European countries. If it is consistently enforced, it could mean higher inflation, a dual labor market and higher inequalities for China, and new strategies for foreign investors.

Competitiveness and the employment relationship in Europe: Is there a global missing link in HRM?

Competitiveness is an often ill-defined concept that is key to economic success. This chapter focuses on the links between competitiveness and the employment relationship (ER). It ranks European countries by their specialization in high-technology, skilled labor sectors to yield a competitiveness ranking and examines workers’ values and attitudes to identify common ER features of the “competitive” countries. Results show that workers in competitive countries enjoy greater flexibility and autonomy. Some conclusions are raised regarding what companies can do from the HRM perspective to optimize employee capabilities, leading to more productive and competitive working environments.

University - industry collaboration in R&D: the role of labor market rigidity: The role of labor market rigidity

We investigate how R&D university – industry collaboration (R&D UIC) is influenced by labor market rigidity. While it is well-established that an educated and skilled workforce will facilitate R&D UIC, another aspect of these alliances has been under-researched: the role of labor market rigidity, in particular the difficulties employers face in hiring and firing workers. We hypothesize that the size of the R&D labor pool in a country will encourage R&D UIC, and that the ease with which employers are legally allowed to hire and fire will directly and indirectly influence R&D UIC. Integrating data from various sources, we test our model on a sample of 73 countries for which information on the size of the R&D labor pool and labor market regulations are available. We also conduct a robustness test using a different proxy for R&D labor pool on a larger sample of 109 countries. Results confirm the strong link between a countrys R&D labor pool and R&D UIC, as well as direct negative impacts of hiring and firing rigidity and an indirect negative impact of hiring rigidity. The findings have implications for managers, policy makers, and researchers of R&D collaboration between universities and industry.