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This thesis presents the results of my doctoral studies at Middlesex University London. It contains different papers related to Labour Markets and presents some results on production, delegation and dishonest behaviour. The first study compares how group size interacts with both constrained and un-constrained resource environments, finding that resource limitations diminish production over time and that all the groups learn with experience. The second explores the effects of incentives in dishonest behaviour in both the gain and loss domain finding that contrary to theoretical predictions, subjects do not cheat more when they are facing a loss. The third, studies the distributions derived from different delegation scenarios. We find that the distributions derived from optional delegation are more egalitarian than the ones made under compulsory delegation. Finally, I study gender differences in delegation finding that gender biases only arise in compulsory delegation, and not under endogenous delegation, and at an agent level.

The recent promotion of monetary incentives for preserving the environment is being interpreted as a means of advancing capitalist interests. Until present most research on this topic has concentrated on the strategies used by conservation organisations, private companies and development institutions, while little is known about how people working to make a living (hereafter “workers”) are experiencing the development of green economies. This thesis seeks to fill this gap. It studies how the conditions of workers’ labour are being shaped by the social relations of production enabling the development of nature-based tourism and forestry-related payment for ecosystem service (PES) projects in a group of villages in the Sine-Saloum delta, Senegal. Based on a six-month period of primarily qualitative fieldwork research and drawing conceptually on Marx’s critique of political economy, it explores three ways in which the social relations of capitalist production in this green economy have shaped labour conditions: a) the privatisation of 1800 hectares of mangrove forest through the creation of a tourism-oriented protected area; b) the activity of work in nature-based tourism and forestry-related PES projects; and c) workers’ mobilisations against exploitation and expropriation. The thesis shows how, through expropriation, exploitation and class conflict, the green economy benefits capitalist owners while separating workers from the ownership of their labour. Forest privatisation belongs to a broader process of primitive accumulation where workers enable capital accumulation through their adaptations to capital. Production in the green economy is based on social relations that perpetuate poverty, inequality and neo-colonial relations in neoliberal Senegal. The different contribution of nature-based tourism and PES projects to capital accumulation and the importance of class conflict, workers’ disagreement and hope in this case study emphasise the heterogeneity and unpredictability of green economies. Socially-committed researchers will benefit from integrating labour and the relations of production in their analyses.

This case study was on one of the major areas in industrial relations (IR), union-employer relations. Specifically it dealt with the global mining giant, AngloGold Ashanti, the only mining signatory to an International Framework Agreement (IFA) in Africa. The study also examined the management practices transfer, the two IFA/GFA agreements (2002 and 2009) and the company’s corporate code of conduct (CCC) and its CSR practices. The methodology for this study was qualitative through the interpretive method, entailing desk research, internet searches and interviews of 46 persons among select mining stakeholder groups. There were national and local unions, AngloGold staff, government agencies, academics/researchers, other professionals and NGOs. The results showed that there was little or no awareness/knowledge of IFAs, AngloGold as an IFA signatory, her CCC, management practices transfer, unions and global union federations (GUF). The respondents were however aware of the company’s corporate philanthropy projects. The findings also revealed that the power of the unions has not been able to match up to the powers of AngloGold in all respects. Whatever “meaning” there was, had been socially constructed by AngloGold in their activities and CSR, their recourse to a management initiated CCC, rather than their two global agreements. The Ghana unions were more of the “pluralist” tradition, within a “neo-institutionalist” type of worker representation as opposed to their South African counterparts who were “radical” and “militant” within the “social movement” stock. The Ghana unions were spineless despite the successes achieved in other jurisdictions and continents, in “union coalition”, “transnational solidarity”, “social movement unionism”, and “community unions”. The unions should also strive to reconstruct the AngloGold determined “meanings”. These unions with the assistance of sister unions and GUFs need to counter the management practices in union-employer relations like outsourcing, discrimination in remuneration and the poor corporate governance practices of AngloGold.

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Cette thèse est composée de quatre chapitres qui peuvent être lus de manière indépendante. Chacun des chapitres s'intéresse à un moment particulier des trajectoires des jeunes français au sein du système éducatif jusqu'à leur insertion sur le marché du travail et à leur transition vers l'emploi. Tout au long de ces trajectoires, les individus s'orientent dans le système scolaire et font des choix professionnels. Ce travail s'intéresse à la compréhension de ces choix et à l'impact que ceux-ci peuvent avoir sur le devenir des individus. Bien que chacun de ces travaux soit autonome, ils s'attachent tous à expliquer les inégalités à l'école et sur le marché du travail des jeunes en France et à caractériser la manière dont celles-ci sont liées. La thèse contribue à la recherche en sciences économiques par le fait qu'elle pose des questions originales sur les décisions individuelles qu'effectuent les jeunes lors de leurs parcours et répond à ces questions par des méthodes empiriques adaptées au problème et aux données disponibles. / This dissertation is composed of four independent chapters. Each of the chapters focuses on one particular moment of individual trajectories of young French people at school and on the labor market. Through these trajectories, individual make schooling and employment decisions. This work aims at explaining these decisions and understanding their consequences on later outcomes. Although these chapters are independent, they all aim at explaining inequality at school and on the labor market for young French people and to charcterize the link between education and labor market outcomes. The thesis contributes to the research in economics given that it raise original questions on individual decisions and answers to these questions using a large scope of empirical methods and dataset.

In this thesis I study how socio-economic background – seen as the socio-economic conditions while growing up and the resources someone has access to – affects the labour market outcomes of young adults. Through three distinct chapters I show that young adults from a disadvantaged background are substantially less likely to be employed and when employed tend to find worse jobs than their more advantaged peers, even when keeping education constant. I first discuss how being out of work is transmitted over generations in the UK. Children whose father did not work are substantially less likely to be employed themselves and tend to work fewer hours, but are no different in earnings or contract. I show how this may be partly due to differences in how work is experienced. A disadvantaged background does not always pose the same limits to labour market opportunity. I show that in Germany background does not negatively affect labour market outcomes during good economic times, but becomes more important as labour market conditions worsen. In the final chapter I study ethnic penalties in the labour market. Ethnic minorities in the UK are highly qualified but even among British university graduates there are ethnic penalties in employment and – to a lesser extent – in earnings. Having access to support and assistance through socio-economically advantaged parents or a highly-skilled co-ethnic community can shelter young ethnic minority graduates. Those who lack these resources are at a substantial disadvantage. It is important to recognise the different ways in which disadvantage affects young adults and that differences exist even among those with similar qualifications. The main hurdle the disadvantaged face is finding employment which is where additional help could be offered to the disadvantaged.

This thesis explores the consequences of 'increasingly capable machines' on earnings and employment. A new literature, the task-based approach, has been developed for this purpose. And this literature presents an optimistic account of the prospects for labour in the 21st century. The central claim in this literature is that "people tend to overstate the extent of machine substitution for labour and ignore the complementarities". This thesis challenges this optimism. I argue that such optimism is based on two assumptions, neither of which is justified. The first is that the supply-side analysis in this literature is based on outdated reasoning about how these machines operate. The result is that the models arbitrarily constrain what machines are capable of doing. The second is that the demand-side analysis in this literature is either altogether missing, or is carried out in a way that is constrained by the arbitrary supply-side assumption. In this thesis I build a new range of task-based models that are based on more justifiable assumptions. The first set of models show that updated reasoning about how machines operate leads to a pessimistic account of the prospects for labour. The second set of models show that the demand-side has an important role in either strengthening, or weakening, this pessimism that is reached when the supply-side is looked at in isolation. This analysis leads to the identification of an important new 'race' in the labour market.