Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
32
result(s) for
"Job security Europe History."
Sort by:
Challenges in constructing a multi-dimensional European job quality index
There are few attempts to benchmark job quality in a multi-dimensional perspective across Europe. Against this background, we have created a synthetic job quality index (JQI) for the EU27 countries in an attempt to shed light on the question of how European countries compare with each other and how they are developing over time in terms of job quality. Taking account of the multi-faceted nature of job quality, the JQI is compiled on the basis of six sub-indices which cover the most important dimensions of job quality as identified in the literature. The paper addresses the methods used to construct the JQI and make it comparable over time. It presents the results for 2010 and briefly addresses changes over time to illustrate the potential and limits of a multidimensional European JQI. It also considers alternative specifications for various sub-indices and tests for the impact of changes in the indicators used on the outcomes. Overall, the findings appear to confirm the feasibility and desirability of attempting to assess job quality by means of a composite index that can be periodically updated. The key strength of this approach is the possibility to monitor and benchmark EU countries' overall job quality performances and the outcomes in six sub-dimensions of job quality and compare them with each other, across gender and over time. At the same time, the limitations of such a composite index need to be borne in mind. The most important challenges are the availability (over time), timeliness and periodicity, comparability and disaggregation of data.
Journal Article
Measuring Precarious Employment: A Proposal for Two Indicators of Precarious Employment Based on Set-Theory and Tested with Dutch Labor Market-Data
Scholars claim that precarious employment is rising. The precariously employed earn low wages, have little job- and income security and occupy jobs that can generally be deemed low quality. These employees are at a disproportionally high risk of poverty and are at risk of detrimental psychological effects. Despite the salience of the issue, precarious employment remains an elusive concept and has proven difficult to measure directly. Instead, measurement tends to rely on non-integrated indicators and proxies, thus introducing significant issues concerning the validity of found results. This paper proposes two integrated indicators for specific aspects of precarious employment. Indicator 1 focuses on income insecurity and is constructed using wage, supplementary income and unemployment benefit entitlements. Indicator 2 focuses on job insecurity and is constructed using contract type and unemployment duration. Additionallym to check for the coexistence of job- and income insecurity at the individual level and give a more holistic picture of precarious employment, Indicators 1 and 2 are integrated. First, previous research on precarious employment and job insecurity is reviewed to bolster the indicators’ validity. Second, the indicators are constructed using an approach grounded in crisp-set theory and data from the Dutch “Organisatie Strategisch Arbeidsmartkonderzoek” labor supply panel. Finally, the indicators are tested by assessing precarious employment over time, by educational level, sector and immigrant status.
Journal Article
Employers’ Mutuals and Accident Insurance Scheme in Spain: From Rejection to Control and Collaboration (1966–1990)
This article discusses the role of employers and their organizations in promoting or hindering social insurance schemes and, ultimately, the welfare state. Unlike most studies that center on countries in periods of democracy, this research focuses on the role of employers, and specifically employers’ mutuals, in the development of the industrial accident scheme during the Franco dictatorship in Spain. The institutional elimination of the class struggle, by repressing the working class and prohibiting class-based unions, led to an evolution of the industrial accident scheme and employers’ liabilities that revolved around the interrelationship between employers and the state. While employers tried to keep control of the management and low cost of the insurance, the state maintained significant bureaucratic intervention and increased auditing and control. The democratic period that began in 1977 prolonged the structure fostered during the Franco regime and enhanced the power of the mutuals in managing this insurance.
Journal Article
Early Determinants of Work Disability in an International Perspective
This study explores the interrelated roles of health and welfare state policies in the decision to take up disability insurance (DI) benefits due to work disability (WD), defined as the (partial) inability to engage in gainful employment as a result of physical or mental illness. We exploit the large international variation of health, self-reported WD, and the uptake of DI benefits in the United States and Europe using a harmonized data set with life history information assembled from SHARE, ELSA, and HRS. We find that the mismatch between WD and DI benefit receipt varies greatly across countries. Objective health explains a substantial share of the within-country variation in DI, but this is not the case for the variation across countries. Rather, most of the variation between countries and the mismatches are explained by differences in DI policies.
Journal Article
Health and safety regulations and stock returns: evidence from the 1974 Swedish legislative lottery
This article provides causal evidence on a long-standing controversy in the finance and labour literature, namely, whether better health and safety in the working environment is in the best interests of firm owners. While, on the one hand, an influential strand of the literature argues that improvements in workers’ health and safety provision can increase costs and harm the market value of equity, another well-consolidated strand of the literature argues that such improvements can reduce costs and create shareholder value. It is empirically challenging to study the relation between the work environment and equity value due to their endogenous relation. To overcome this challenge, I utilize a historic natural experiment that uniquely isolates the effects of mandated investments in health and safety provision on firm market value: on 27 March 1974, the Swedish hung parliament drew a lottery ticket to decide on a legislative proposal that mandated companies to improve their employees’ work environment. The lottery resulted in the approval of the proposal. I find that this outcome led to an immediate and sizable decrease in the market value of Swedish companies that persisted for several days.
Journal Article
Workers and narratives of survival in Europe : the management of precariousness at the end of the twentieth century
Workers and Narratives of Survival in Europe explores the growing problem of job uncertainty in Europe at the end of the twentieth century. The management of professional precariousness is reconsidered against the backdrop of far-reaching social, economic, and political changes in Europe in recent decades, including: the instability of the traditional family; the emergence of new forms of parenthood; globalization of the economic sphere; attempts to impose a uniform pattern of culture; and the breakdown of borders with former Communist countries. The contributors utilize extensive field studies in both Western and Central Europe to understand the meaning of professional uncertainty, as perceived by its victims, and the strategies they develop to face it.
eBook
Statistical Analysis of the Effects of the Global Financial Crisis in Kosovo
The global financial crisis means the emergence of financial problems in the economy, eroding the economic and financial potential of various countries. Our generation is witnessing one of the biggest economic crises in history, where we have seen how one big financial institution goes bankrupt one after another or how the “Domino Effect” operates, about which until now we had heard and had read only in texts. Kosovo has gone through various difficulties, both financial and numerous economic constraints, which have brought for many years its unresolved status for many years. Hence the emergence of the financial crisis found the country's economy unstable and powerless on the verge of Independence. The main channels through which the crisis affected the economy of Kosovo are: revenues from abroad, mainly remittances and foreign direct investment which decreased during this period. The global financial crisis and family reunification are the main factors reducing the amount of remittances in the country. Other factors such as low wages, job insecurity, socio-economic situation and consumption, have an impact but are mainly related to the crisis and are its derivatives. The analysis that compares how remittances are positioned against other factors of the FDI crisis, savings, wages, unemployment, etc., highlights the role of each indicator and all together in the domestic economy. However, this will not apply to foreign investment because in the last six years, the biggest concern is the very sharp decline in the amount of FDI in Kosovo, which has been reduced by up to 29%. This shows a not very interesting option of attracting foreign investment in the country and shows signs of an economy where living standards and consumption are closely related to the contribution of the diaspora, as an important category in the economic life of the country. The decline in exports, which were already low, and the low rate of production, negatively affected the economic activity in the country and made Kosovo having a high trade deficit.
Journal Article
Innovation, inclusion and integration : from transition to convergence in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
The study offers a unified perspective on what has driven productivity, economic integration, migration, employment and living standards in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, drawing on household budget surveys, enterprise surveys and special purpose firm level data sets.
eBook
An investigation of Oliver Williamson's analysis of the division of labour
In 2009 Oliver Williamson was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his analysis of economic governance. Williamson was central to the emergence of the transaction cost framework as an important aspect of social scientific analysis. Part of this approach makes important efficiency predictions and prescriptions regarding the division of labour within firms in contemporary capitalist economies. This discounts issues of power and privileges 'firm-specific human assets' as the key organisational driver. Indeed, Williamson's approach intentionally conflates the employment relation with exchanges for 'intermediate' goods. This article seeks to investigate Williamson's explanatory claims through a UK-based panel dataset using a dynamic logit modelling approach. The findings question Williamson's central argument. The results, instead, are more consistent with the idea of the industry-specificity of labour and highlight the importance of firm size.
Journal Article