Labour books

This 12th edition of "Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor-Managed Firms" contains a stimulating collection of original papers spanning a wide variety of topics. Part 1 of the volume contains three papers on the subject of job design and organizational performance, covering the determinants of multiskilling from a theoretical perspective and also the empirical effect of multiskilling and teams on financial performance. Part 2 of the volume concerns compensation, worker attitudes, and productivity. Papers in this section cover the effect of rules and costs on employer-provided health insurance, majority ownership and executive compensation, worker attitudes towards different forms of employee ownership and variable pay, and an analysis of performance-related pay, unions, and productivity in Italy. Part 3 contains three studies of worker cooperatives and nonprofit organizations in Italy, Spain, and Uruguay. This volume concludes with a debate on free trade and the ecological effects of alternative socio-economic systems.

With the financial crisis and Great Recession, some economists have begun to question the orthodox approach to production and capital/labor relations over the last two to three decades. This orthodoxy has been thrown into question due to concerns of poor corporate decision-making, corporate capture of regulators, perceived rewards for failure, and uneven productivity growth. But a new spirit of introspection and doubt about orthodox approaches has created some impetus leading to greater interest in themes, such as worker ownership, sharing rewards, co-operatives, and employee involvement practices which feature heavily in the "Advances" series. This "new spirit" is apparent for all to see in the 12 contributions to this volume of "Advances" which cover co-operatives; effects of worker participation on firm performance; the diffusion of high involvement management practices; and outcomes for workers (i.e., job satisfaction and wages).

Volume 16 of "Research on Economic" contains a selection of thirteen papers from the Second Biannual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, Berlin, July, 2007. This conference brings together both established scholars in the field of income distribution as well as advanced graduate students and new Ph.D's. The multi-day conference provides a forum for over 150 participants to share their work with one another. The papers contained in this volume are selected from a few of the many different sub-fields represented at the conference. As the title suggests a major emphasis of the volume is to collect work on the inequality of opportunity. An additional emphasis of the volume is on inequality measurement issues. Finally, the volume is designed to present work from both senior researchers and as well as emerging scholars. The volume begins with an essay on equal liberties by Serge-Christophe Kolm. The second paper examines the relationship between inequality and envy. The next four papers address the inequality of opportunities. Empirical studies of the equality of opportunity include Africa, Italy, Germany, and the United States. The measurement section also contains four papers. The topics covered in these papers include welfare analysis with ordinal data, unit consistency and multidimensional inequality indices, unit consistency and intermediate inequality indices, and the examination of two newly rediscovered inequality measures originally introduced by Bonferroni and De Vergotini. The volume also includes papers on the intergenerational transfer of income inequality and poverty in the US and Germany, income inequality and mobility in Argentina, the use of experimental methods to understand inequality aversion, and the recognition that measuring unemployment is an ethical problem, not simply an exercise in statistical measurement.

This volume contains twelve cutting edge papers contributing new research to important issues concerning worker welfare. The research deals with earnings inequality, discrimination, the effects of migration, and economic policy. Answers to a number of policy related questions are given including: Why are jobs designed the way they are? Does seniority-based pay provide a sufficient motivation for workers? Do sex-segregated firms grow more quickly than firms more equally divided by gender? What policies are effective in combating discrimination? Why is relative rural-urban income inequality so much greater in China than the US? How does migrating from one region to another affect one's child's schooling decisions? Do higher migration levels affect native worker wages?

This volume is divided into five parts, each one including two chapters. Part I is devoted to 'Information Theory and Segregation Measurement', part II to 'The Gini Index and the Measurement of Segregation', part III to 'Measuring Segregation with Ordered Categories', part IV to 'Exploring Changes in Segregation' and part V to 'Wage Inequality and Segregation'. Let us now review into more details each of these ten chapters.

This volume contains nine original innovative chapters on worker well-being. Three chapters are on time allocated to work and human capital acquisition, three on aspects of risk in the earnings process, two on migration, and finally one on how tax policies affect poverty. Questions answered include: Are more educated women now opting out of work with a higher probability than in the past? Under what circumstances do young adults allocate non-school time to educational pursuits? How do macroeconomic shocks affect labor force participation rates? Can tax policies alleviate poverty? Are workers compensated adequately for taking risks? Do differences in private and public sector earnings affect mobility between the two sectors? And, do migrant parents affect educational decisions of their offspring?

This volume contains eight new and innovative research articles relevant to researchers and policy makers. Each chapter deals with an aspect of human welfare and is authored by an expert in the field. One deals with how technological change affects the distribution of earnings, two deal with how workers advance through corporate hierarchy, four deal with how incentives motivate workers, and the final chapter deals with how one immigrant group is far more successful than even the native population. Among the questions answered are: What accounts for the relative rise in skilled worker salaries? Which workers advance more quickly up the corporate ladder? Are workers hired from outside the company as successful as internally promoted workers? Does performance-based pay affect worker absenteeism? Do retirement incentives to workers really help the firm? Do unexpected decreases in retirement income decrease retiree life satisfaction? Do more stringent divorce laws increase cohabitation? What causes immigrants to really succeed in their new country?

Economic events such as the recent global economic crisis can have substantial effects on the distribution of resources at the individual and household levels. Identification of appropriate and timely policy responses that support vulnerable groups is hampered by how little is known about the likely patterns of losses early on during the downturn. This volume contains fresh knowledge on the effects of the economic downturn on employment and income distribution. It contains 9 original research papers from both Europe and the US, including illustrations of forward-looking simulation methods that can be used before detailed data on actual household experiences become available. These papers offer new insights into issues such as how wages, employment and incomes are affected by the crisis, which demographic groups are most vulnerable in the recession, how well the welfare system protects the newly unemployed and how consumption and income poverty change over the business cycle.