Stephen F. Diamond

The International Labor Organization : the international standards system and basic human rights

Part 1 History and functioning of the Standards system: introduction to the ILO the system of International Labour Standards the adoption of conventions and recommendations submission of conventions and recommendations to the competent authorities ratification of conventions denunciation of conventions the debate on the future of Standards. Part 2 Supervision of International Labour Standards: communication of reports and information the committee of experts on the application of conventions and recommendations the Conference Committee on Standards assistance provided by the Office representations complaints complaints of the Violation of Freedom of Association special studies on discrimination special procedures and investigations characteristics and complementary nature of the procedures the debates on the supervisory procedures. Part 3 Fundamental human rights: Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No 29) Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No 105) the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention, 1948 (No 87) the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention (No 98) other standards on freedom of association. Part 4 Equality of opportunity and treatment: the Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No 100) the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No 111).

The Delphi "Bankruptcy": The Continuation of Class War by Other Means

The bankruptcy filing in October of last year by the Delphi Corporation, the giant auto-parts supplier spun off by General Motors in a 1999 public offering, sent a shock wave across the American labor movement. The slow grinding down of organized labor, and with it the standard of living of American workers, has been underway for several decades. This attack on the heavily unionized auto sector, however, indicates a new level of aggressiveness by employers. Coming as it did only a few months after the controversial breakaway from the AFL-CIO of several large affiliates to form the new Change to Win Coalition, the Delphi events seemed to confirm the argument by some in the new grouping that organized labor has to look to a new postindustrial economy in order to rebuild. This is no ordinary bankruptcy, however. Rather than pointing to an economy inevitably beyond manufacturing, it represents a strategic innovation intended to exploit the value still extant in our industrial economy. The entire labor movement must confront this important development.

Governance Heterogeneity and Performance at US Stock Exchanges: Evidence from Regulation NMS

Regulation NMS, announced in June 2005 by the SEC, was intended to generate competition with the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The NYSE had for many decades maintained a near monopoly on the trading of securities initially listed on the exchange. Reg. NMS allowed trades on electronic communications networks (ECNs) without considering prices on the NYSE trading floor. With Reg. NMS in place, the NYSE immediately began losing market share and average bid-ask spreads for NYSE-listed shares increased, sometimes getting significantly closer to the average spreads for shares listed on the traditionally more volatile Nasdaq. What explains this outcome? The conventional wisdom predicts that consumers (here, investors) would benefit as the profits of a monopoly producer (here, dealers executing trades) declined, but evidence of wider spreads suggests the opposite. The literature relies on a standard model of a member-governed non-profit in which broker-dealers own the exchange. But that standard model fails to capture the actual heterogeneity in governance structure: the Nasdaq fits this model, but the NYSE does not. Thus, we consider an alternative to the standard model in which underwriters are owners, for which there is anecdotal evidence. However, a statistical test is possible because of the starkly different objective function that underwriters would have as compared with dealers; for underwriters, efficient trading is an input to their production function where for dealers, trading is the primary source of profits. Using panel data of Corwin-Schultz bid-ask spreads, we measure differences in market quality between the NYSE and Nasdaq, which the new regulation allows because NYSE-listed shares trade on multiple new venues after Reg. NMS but Nasdaq-listed shares do not trade on the NYSE. A difference-in-differences test finds that spreads for NYSE-listed shares increased after Reg. NMS issue to resemble more closely spreads for Nasdaq-listed shares.

Institutional Heterogeneity Among Stock Exchanges: Implications for Market Efficiency

The current financial crisis is a crisis of theory as well. The dominant theory of financial markets, the efficient market hypothesis (EMH), states that in an efficient market the price of a financial asset reflects publicly available information about that asset. Competing theories, such as behavioral finance, argue that other factors, including irrational investor behavior, impact the price of financial assets. We argue, however, that an analysis of market institutions can help explain when and why the EMH works. Although not widely examined, we argue it is significant that until very recently the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), whose listed companies’ price behavior inspired the EMH, was a nonprofit organization. Thus, we apply an economic theory of nonprofits to the NYSE, and NASDAQ, to identify the incentives of Exchange members and the various governance mechanisms they created in response. We find that the NYSE, which was organized by underwriters, generated mechanisms that made prices on the NYSE relatively well behaved, what we term synthetic inertia. The NASDAQ, on the other hand, was organized by traders who had polar opposite incentives with regard to disclosure. We hypothesize that NYSE demutualization - converting from nonprofit to for-profit - altered the incentives of the NYSE and undermined this synthetic inertia and thus informational efficiency. We test our hypothesis by comparing bid-ask spreads, a measure information quality, at the NYSE and NASDAQ and find that bid-ask spreads on the NYSE were consistently lower than the NASDAQ (suggesting better information quality at the NYSE) but that spreads converged after demutualization. We believe that our approach helps resolve an apparent tension between competing theories of market behavior and contributes an analytical framework from which to consider regulatory changes.

Anatomy of a Financial Meltdown

Power points of talk on financial crisis.

Will the Real 'Che' Guevara Please Stand Up? Labor and Authoritarianism in Sandinista Nicaragua

This paper examines the impact of authoritarian left theory, in particular that of Che Guevara, on labor rights during the Sandinistas Nicaraguan revolution. This is important because of the current revival of movements like that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela that rely on similar approaches to labor and human rights issues as that of the original Sandinista movement. In addition, there is widespread interest today in Che Guevara, yet little is known or understood about his actual politics while in power during the early years of the Cuban revolution. In addition, there is increasing sympathy for such authoritarian approaches to labor activism inside the U.S. labor movement.