This thesis sheds new light on the study of law in Japan by exploring legislative interventions and dispute resolution processes in the Japanese field of employment. The academic literature about the legal system of Japan has produced valuable research about various areas of Japanese law, from attempts at explaining patterns of rights assertion in the country to more recent studies about the legal reforms launched by the government of Japan starting from the 2000s. However, it has rarely considered the employment field as a fruitful subject for research. Nonetheless, in the past thirty years, employment has been one of the areas of Japanese law to experience considerable reform. Against the backdrop of the changes in the composition of the Japanese workforce and the bursting of the economic bubble of the beginning of the 1990s, the government of Japan assumed a more prominent role in the regulation of employment relations. In light of these developments, this thesis contributes to the debate on the role of law in Japan by examining this rarely investigated area of the Japanese legal system. Specifically, it focuses on the legislative interventions of the Japanese government to regulate the peripheral workforce of the labour market, namely women and part-time workers, and procedures for the resolution of employment disputes. In doing so, it demonstrates that the efforts of the legislators to enhance the creation of a more inclusive labour market have been fundamentally constrained by ideological and institutional factors, and resulted in an uneven distribution of legal resources among workers which exacerbated existing employment status divisions. This, in turn, has translated into unequal access to justice, affecting the extent to which different categories of workers can obtain redress through the legal apparatus.

Debates on flexible employment and labour persist in most Western market economies, while being largely absent regarding Saudi Arabia. Increasing unemployment among qualified Saudi citizens remains a major concern, particularly for females, despite a government policy of Saudisation. Notwithstanding incentives for prioritising Saudi citizens, foreign nationals dominate private sector employment. Few empirical studies consider the factors impacting employment of educated Saudi women: further, there are hardly any robust frameworks which offer policy makers, employers, and those championing the employment of this group a clear set of plausible guidelines bearing in mind the socioeconomic context of Saudi Arabia. The research aims, first and foremost, to examine how far "labour flexibility" in Saudi Arabia offers solutions to unemployment among educated Saudi females, exploring interalia the main institutions and regulatory framework of the Saudi labour market, and the effectiveness of these in managing the relationship between employers and employees. It also examines the major labour market and employment policy concerns of government, employers and employees, considering flexible employment forms in Saudi Arabia, and in what context employers and employees do or would consider flexible employment. Following on from this, the second aim is to develop a conceptual framework on key factors impacting the participation of educated Saudi females in the Saudi labour market. The framework that emerges from these analyses also provides some guidance for graduate women who seek labour market entry and participation. iii The study employed quantitative and qualitative methodologies, with targeted participants, returning 1347 usable questionnaires (41% response) augmented by 28 semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data underwent statistical examination by performing descriptive and inferential analysis on the SPSS software, and qualitative data were analysed using summative content analysis. A conceptual framework was developed and validated through interviews with ten representatives of the interviewed sample population, who held senior positions. To improve understanding of key influencing factors for educated women’s participation in the Saudi labour market for key stakeholders. The six factors identified were personal, socio-cultural, educational, legal/political, organisational and economic. The study identifies a relationship between increased flexible work patterns and increased employment of educated Saudi females and suggests a relationship between the challenges Saudi females face within employment practices and numbers employed in the labour market. Similarly, a relationship exists between educational level and employment chances for Saudi women. Recommendations are proffered to the Saudi Government, Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Education, industrial sector, organisations, researchers and academia.

J’utilise des modèle de search comme point de départ de mon analyse, en examinant l'impact des frictions d'un point de vue soit théorique soit empirique. Dans le Chapitre 1 j’analyse les effets de l’incertitude sur la macroéconomie. Les estimes empiriques montrent que l’incertitude a un impact négatif sur l’économie et que le marché du travail est un important canal de transmission. Un modèle d’équilibre général avec frictions DMP est capable de reproduire les faits observés. Dans le Chapitre 2 j’utilise un Time Varying Parameter SVAR avec volatilité stochastique pour investiguer les propriétés de la création d’emploi aux Etats Unis et leur variation dans le temps. Les estimes indiquent que la volatilité dépend largement des chocs de demande et de prix. Les postes de travail réagissaient négativement aux chocs technologiques jusqu’au début des années 90. Le Chapitre 3 intègre la dimension spatiale dans un modèle de search. Cela permet d'expliquer quelques régularités observées dans des données Autrichiens: i) l’existence d’une frontière de réserve entre salaire est distance; ii) le changement de stratégie de recherche d’emploi; iii) l'effet décourageant des d’allocations chômage. Dans le Chapitre 4 je présente un modèle qui explique la sélection des nouvelles embauches entre contrats à court et à long terme. En exploitant une base de données italienne, on trouve que la probabilité d’obtenir un contrat permanent dépend négativement du degré de mismatch entre l'éducation du travailleur et l'occupation. En outre, les réformes qui libéralisent le contrats à durée déterminée encouragent leur utilisation mais ils ont effets non-linéaires sur le taux de chômage. / In this thesis I take the search and matching framework as the starting point of my analysis to investigate several aspects of the labor market. In Chapter 1, I explore the consequences of uncertainty on the macroeconomy . The empirical analysis shows that uncertainty has a detrimental effect on the aggregate economy and that job creation is an important channel of transmission. The empirical findings are then rationalized through a DSGE model incorporating the DMP setup and featuring stochastic volatility. In Chapter 2, I study the time-varying characteristics of job creation in the US. The econometric setup is a Time-Varying Parameter SVAR (TVP-SVAR) with stochastic volatility. The identification strategy is based on a DSGE model with a frictional labor marketIn Chapter 3, I extend the standard framework to take into account the spatial dimension of job search. Austrian data show the existence of a trade- off between wage and commute time. They also uncover complex patterns in the dynamics of exits from unemployment. Cox-regressions further show that the level of unemployment benefits has a strong discouraging effect on job search. In Chapter 4, I use a random search model to study the sorting of new hires into open-ended and fixed-term contracts. The co-existence of these two types of contracts is explained by match heterogeneity. The match productivity is interpreted as the fit of worker's skills to task requirements. This hypothesis is supported by matched employer-employee data from a large Italian region.

This thesis will argue that high levels of internal migration in Gilded Age America undermined the stability and growth of trade unions and labour-based parties. Most of the traditional ‘American Exceptionalist’ arguments which asserted a lack of class consciousness will be challenged. Significant weight will be given to the racial, ethnic, and gender divisions within the American working class as a source of relative organizational weakness. As archival sources reveal, however, despite their divisions, workers of all ethnic and racial groups drawn into wage-labour in the Gilded Age often displayed high levels of class consciousness and political radicalism through their actions, organizations, and hundreds of weekly labour papers. They also showed an awareness of the problems of frequent migration or ‘tramping’ in building stable organizations. Driven by the tumultuous conditions of uneven industrialization, millions of people migrated from state-to-state, country-to-city, and city-to-city at rates far higher than in Europe. A detailed analysis of the statistics on migration, work-related travelling, and union membership trends shows that this created a high level of membership turnover in the major organizations of the day—the American Federation of Labour and the Knights of Labour. Confronted in the 1880s with the highest level of migration in the period, the Knights of Labour saw rapid growth turn into continuous decline. The more stable craft unions also saw significant membership loss to migration through an ineffective travelling card system. The organizational weakness that resulted undermined efforts by American workers to build independent labour-based parties in the 1880s and 1890s. ‘Pure-and-simple’ unionism would triumph by the end of the century despite the existence of a significant socialist minority in organized labour.

India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) is a unique initiative in the history of state sponsored social security interventions, which guarantees at least 100 days of employment on local public works to anyone who demands for it. NREGS is in operation since 2006. This is world’s largest public-works programme ever, covering around 45 million households every year. Launching of the NREGS indicates a renewal of importance of public-works programme in the global South during the last decade. After 9 years of its continued implementation, there seems to be a dearth of systematic and scientific studies based on grassroots primary survey on how this programme is being implemented and why there is a renewed interest around this programme among the academics and development practitioners across the world. This thesis therefore seeks to understand i) what impacts NREGS created at the household level and ii) the political economy behind its implementation. This thesis comprises of three essays or chapters. Chapter1 and Chapter 3 are based on a threewave household-level longitudinal primary dataset and Chapter 2 is based on a threewave village-level longitudinal primary dataset. All the surveys were conducted between the period 2009 and 2012 in West Bengal state of India. First core chapter of this thesis addresses the research question: what are the impacts of the NREGS participation on household level economic variables and whether participation in NREGS can work as a proxy for collateral in accessing the informal credit for consumption smoothing? Second core chapter addresses the research question: whether the Village Council level ruling political party preferentially allocates the NREGS fund to optimise its chances re-election. Third core chapter addresses the research question: whether there is any non-poor capture of NREGS and whether households’ explicit political affiliation with the ruling party matters in obtaining any extra dividend under NREGS.

Dans le premier chapitre, après une présentation des institutions responsables des négociations salariales en France, je me penche sur l'utilisation, par les grandes entreprises, des salaires planchers pour évincer la concurrence. En effet, les salaires négociés au niveau de l'industrie s'appliquent à l'ensemble des entreprises, qu'elles soient présentent lors des négociations ou non. Ce chapitre possède une partie théorique où il est montré que les plus grosses entreprises ont un intérêt à augmenter les salaires planchers, pour réduire le profit des plus petites entreprises, et ainsi récupérer leurs parts de marché. Par conséquent, plus les syndicats patronaux représentent les intérêts des grandes entreprises, plus le salaire négocié au niveau sectoriel est important. Cette prédiction est testée en utilisant des données françaises. L'utilisation d'une stratégie instrumentale permet de montrer que plus les entreprises négociant les salaires planchers sont grosses par rapport à la moyenne de l'industrie concernée, plus le salaire négocié est important.Dans le second chapitre, je regarde l'effet des négociations sectorielles sur l'innovation. J'utilise un modèle avec compétition monopolistique. Je trouve que, dans le cas d'une négociation salariale au niveau de l'industrie, les parties à la négociation prennent en compte le fait que l'augmentation du coût du travail va diminuer les investissements, de leurs concurrents. En effet, avec la négociation sectorielle, l'augmentation du salaire plancher implique que les revenus tirés d'une innovation diminuent. Cette baisse des investissements permet aux entreprises dominantes de sécuriser leur place, ce qui possède un effet négatif sur l'innovation et la croissance.Dans le dernier chapitre, je trouve que la compétition internationale réduit l'importance des effets mis en avant précédemment. En effet, les négociations sectorielles permettent aux entreprises dominantes de former des accords collusifs. Cependant, les entreprises étrangères du même secteur ne sont pas sujettes à ces accords salariaux. Cela vient donc empêcher la mise en place de ces effets de cartel. Ce chapitre est basé sur un modèle de type Melitz. De plus, des donnés sur les salaires négociés en France sont utilisées. L'augmentation des échanges avec la Chine est utilisée comme un choc exogène. Il est prouvé que cela réduit la rente extraite lors des accords de branche. / In the first chapter, after a presentation of institutional settings, I will focus on the use of sector-level agreements by large firms to reduce competition. Indeed, wage floors are binding for all firms of the industry, whether they sit at the negotiating table or not. This chapter provides a theoretical framework showing that such agreements can be used by dominant firms to reduce competition. In this framework, the higher the over-representation of large firms in employers' federations, the larger the bargained wage floors. This leads to the eviction of small firms. This prediction is tested on French administrative data. I document the domination of large firms within federations and devise an instrumental strategy to show that when the bargaining firms are relatively large compared to the industry standard - ie the lower the federation's representativeness, the higher are wage floors.In the second chapter, I look at the effect of sector-level agreements on innovation. It is based on a model with monopolistic competition between products of an industry on the one hand, and between industries on the other hand. First, I find that when the bargaining process occurs at the industry level, negotiating parties take into account that a wage increase will deter investments of competitors. Indeed, when the wage negotiated at the industry-level increases, the labor cost increase implies that the reward for innovations decrease. As this will reduce the probability to be outperformed, this will generate a wage surplus when the bargaining takes place at the industry-level, reducing both production and employment. Furthermore, it will decrease the research effort of the industry reducing the productivity growth.In the final chapter, I find that international competition mitigates the previous effects. Indeed, collective wage bargaining allows firms of a given industry to coordinate. However, international competition makes this collusive equilibrium unsustainable. Indeed, domestic firms face competition from foreign competitors which are not bound by those agreements. To support this argument, a Melitz-type model is developed and its implications tested on French data using the China Shock as a source of exogenous variation. The rent extracted during sector-level agreements no longer exist when domestic firms face Chinese competition.

Cette thèse explore différents déterminants du comportement de recherche d’emploi, dans le but de comprendre certains des obstacles au retour à l’emploi pour les travailleurs les plus défavorisés. Le premier chapitre est consacré à l’évaluation d’impact d’un programme d’accompagnement collectif innovant pour les jeunes chômeurs des zones urbaines sensibles. Ce programme semble plus efficace qu'un programme classique pour permettre l'accès à un emploi stable. L'effet le plus large est détecté parmi les participants qui sont assignés à un groupe avec des chômeurs en grande difficulté. Dans le second chapitre, j’étudie l’impact d’un choc d’information sur la recherche d’emploi et la probabilité de retour à l’emploi des chômeurs. Mes résultats suggèrent qu’apporter de l’information permettant aux chômeurs d’orienter leurs candidatures vers les entreprises qui ont le plus de chance de faire des recrutements à court-terme peut permettre de corriger certaines inégalités dans l’accès à l’emploi et stimuler la mobilité géographique. Le troisième chapitre explore les mécanismes sous-jacents derrière l’effet négatif de la durée d’assurance chômage sur le taux de retour à l’emploi. Les efforts de recherche augmentent de 25 % dans les mois qui entourent la date de fin des droits à l’assurance chômage, même lorsqu’on neutralise l’impact de la sélection dynamique. Une extension de l’assurance chômage affecte les comportements de recherche d’emploi principalement par un recul du pic dans l’intensité de la recherche d’emploi observé autour de la date de l’épuisement des droits. / My dissertation explores different determinants of job search behavior in order to highlight some obstacles in the access to jobs, in particular among disadvantaged workers. The first chapter evaluates a collective counselling program for young workers from deprived neighborhoods. This program seems more effective in helping participants access a stable job. The largest effect is found among participants assigned to groups with peers who have relatively bad employment prospects. In the second chapter, I study how an information shock affects the job search of unemployed workers and their access to employment. My findings suggest that providing information to help disadvantaged job seekers target firms which have large short-term hiring needs could contribute to correct inequalities in job access and increase geographic mobility. The third chapter explores the mechanisms behind the well-documented negative impact of unemployment insurance on re-employment rate. I highlight a 25% spike in job search intensity in the months surrounding benefits exhaustion, when controlling for dynamic selection. A benefits extension increases unemployment duration mostly by postponing the spike in search intensity associated with benefits exhaustion.

Against the backdrop of the brain drain-brain gain debate, this thesis explores certain facets of the return migration phenomenon. Drawing on several theories, the decision to return among high skilled migrants is likely to be influenced by the prospect of using their overseas-acquired knowledge to secure a better livelihood back home. While ample consideration is given to motivations to return, the choice of employer and issues adjusting to the work and social surroundings, the main objective of the research is to understand migrants' transfer of overseas-acquired knowledge upon their return to India. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, the scope of the thesis is focused on returnees working in two organizations in New Delhi—Fortis Escorts Hospital and Research Centre (EHIRC) and Tata Consultancy Services' Government Industry Solutions Unit (GISU). Adopting a mixed methods approach, survey data and case interviews are analyzed to address the core research question: “How and in which ways do returnees transfer their newly acquired knowledge, skills and experiences in employing organizations?” A key hypothesis is that returnees' social ties affect the extent and nature of knowledge transfers and thus confer intended benefits and may lead to unintended consequences for their organizations. The analyses pit McPherson's (2001) principle of homophily in social networks against Granovetter's (1973) weak ties hypothesis to grasp the role of returnees in knowledge transfers within EHIRC and GISU. Results drawn from data collected on returnees, non-migrants and transnationals strongly confirm that social ties—strong, intermediate or weak—affect the transfer of knowledge to stakeholders in their organizations. The contribution of this thesis to the existing body of research is to shed light on both the potential and limitations of returnees as a conduit for transferring knowledge, upgrading skills and relaying insights to non-migrants, teams or units in the workplace.

No description available.

Cette thèse contribue à la littérature théorique et empirique concernant le marché du travail en macroéconomie. La partie théorique a deux thèmes majeurs : l’analyse des conséquences des coûts de licenciements sur la persistance de l’inflation et celle de l’effet de la politique budgétaire sur le marché travail en fonction du cycle économique. La partie empirique étudie les conséquences des réformes du marché travail allemands sur les partenaires commerciaux de l’Allemagne. Le marché du travail peut-il influencer les performances de la politique monétaire ? Les conditions macroéconomiques peuvent-elles influencer les performances de la politique budgétaire ? Les réformes sur le marché du travail allemand peuvent-elles expliquer les performances de l’Allemagne en matière de commerce extérieur ? / This thesis contributes to both theoretical and empirical aspects of the literature on the labor market in macroeconomics. On the theoretical side, I provide insights both on the impact of labor market institutions on monetary policy and on the efficiency of fiscal policy according to the business cycle position. On the empirical side, I discuss the spillover effects of the Germany’s labor market reforms on its trade partners. How do labor markets institutions affect monetary policy? Has fiscal policy the same effect on labor market during economic downturns than during economic upturns? Can the German labor market and fiscal reforms account for Germany’s new trading performances?