This thesis focuses on the collective responses of union members and unions to redundancy. It adopts a theory of trade union action based on the idea that workers react to violations of what they perceive to be "rights" in the employment context. "Rights" are to a degree inculcated into the minds of workers by "union cultures", which condition moral and ethical judgements of behaviour. Connections are drawn between "cultures", "ideologies" and "world views". Workers' responses to redundancy it is suggested should show evidence of the influence of union cultures in a sequence of events over long periods of time. This is borne out in the empirical chapters; Chapter 4 (which describes the historical background to the 1965 Redundancy Payments Act) quotes developments in union responses to redundancy since the 1930s. In a further section, Chapter 5, a case study of a series of redundancy events in the computer company, ICL, is provided, covering union responses to redundancy in the period 1969 to 1979. The evidence also calls into question the view expressed in some academic and policy work on redundancy, that the 1965 Redundancy Payments Act has defused union opposition to redundancy. The period before 1965, the evidence suggests, could not be characterised as a period of strong union opposition, and the years since the passing of the Act have not seen a predominance of union acquiescence. On this basis, too, Hardy's argument that managements have managed redundancy and closure by a process of legitimisation, is called in to question. Also, the work of neo-classical labour economists, who see workers and union attitudes towards redundancy in terms of the decisions of "economic man", is refuted by the evidence and the argument in the thesis, which emphasises the moral influence of unions and the practice of unionism.

The central questions posed by this thesis are: what are the effects of labour market regulations pertaining to job security in India, and why are these regulations so difficult to reform. The thesis finds that job security regulations have a negative effect on both efficiency and equity. They have a significantly negative impact on employment in all categories. They benefit a small minority of highly educated and high human capital workers, while excluding the large majority of the labour force from secure, protected work. They also have a negative impact on output, as they discourage investment. This is shown through a ranking of twenty four Indian states according to the strictness of job security regulations. Highly labour regulated states have lower levels of investment, leading to a negative impact on output, employment and real wage. In this way, these regulations harm both efficiency and equity. In saying this, this thesis supports the distortion view of job security regulations as held by the World Bank, and refutes the institutional view as held by the International Labour Office (ILO). The findings of this thesis show that the result of high levels job security regulations do not cause a necessary trade-off between efficiency and equity (sacrificing the former to get more of the latter), but that the result is a negative impact on both efficiency and equity. The thesis then asks why policies that reduce both efficiency and equity are so difficult to reform in a democracy like India. It explores this by doing an inter-state analysis of policy reform in ten Indian states, considering each state as a separate democracy. It finds conclusive evidence that political factors influence the capacity and motivation to carry out labour policy reform, and it analyse what factors these might be. We use a multi-pronged political economy approach in this thesis. We use extensive historical and institutional analysis, combined with fairly simple, but powerful, empirical analysis. Most of our empirical analysis relies largely on simple and straightforward ordinary least squares (OLS). We are encouraged by the fact that we use four different datasets, and all four give us the same significant result. This gives us confidence in the strength and robustness of our findings.

This thesis aims to show that usually neglected compositional changes of the labour force over the last 30 years (more young workers, more women, more workers with low attachment to the labour market, less experienced workers, more educated workers), can explain important stylized facts. First, about unemployment: the countries with high female unemployment are also countries with high young unemployment (the correlation across OECD countries between the two rates is positive and quite high at about 0.84). This can be explained by a shift towards more competition among young / women in a secondary labour market due to increased labour supply of the two groups. About 4 points of total unemployment are associated with observed changes in labour supply, if endogeneity of participation variables with respect to unemployment is properly accounted for. Second, about wage inequality: the most important trend in wage inequality in the US is the rising return to experience, or equivalently the deterioration of the relative position of younger workers. The second fact can be explained by a historical change in the skill composition of the labour force - workers though more educated are yet less experienced. This substitution of skills can also explain a significant part of the unexplained rise in the return to education, depending on the substitutability between education and experience in human capital: more inexperienced workers in the labour force generate a relative scarcity of human capital that increases the demand for education. In the theoretical part of the thesis, two trends of the OECD labour markets are explored within matching models. First, it is shown that more short-term employment can be explained by higher active population growth and lower productivity growth. Second, stronger urban unemployment gradients and higher aggregate unemployment can be shown to reinforce each other when location choices within agglomerations are endogenous.

This thesis explores how transitional reforms and the concomitant recession have transformed the labour market in Kazakhstan and how changes in the labour market have transformed workers' attitudes to labour supply. It is found that the initially expected reallocation of labour from the state to the private sector has been a very weak phenomenon and that, instead, a sharp growth of self-employment has occurred. During a period of transition and recession, such as the one that Kazakhstan is experiencing, income seems to converge towards a subsistence minimum across working sectors altering the relationship between growth, wages and productivity. In such an environment, the supply of labour is mainly determined by non-income factors and so is the cross-sector mobility. Unemployment exists not as a temporary phenomenon instrumental in labour reallocation but as a permanent condition for the very poor. Current labour market policies, originally designed for structurally different labour markets, seem inconsistent with the nature of unemployment and unsustainable in the long run. The prolonged stagnation is dragging the economy towards a third world scenario rather than a first. Hence, future prospects and policies are to be rethought not in terms of transition but in terms of economic development.

The potential significance of employers' collective action for economic performance is widely acknowledged, but has not been complemented with corresponding theory-guided research on the probability of collective action and the conditions for effective action. This thesis examines the nature of, the conditions for, and the consequences of employers' collective action on further training, a crucial component of a successful high-skill strategy for industries and nations. The study addresses three core issues of labour economics: transferability of training, skill shortages, and sharing of training costs between employer and employees. The enquiry builds on and adds to previous contributions that analyse transferable training as a collective good. It scrutinises the theoretical foundation and compares its implications with those of human capital theory. Finally, the empirical study of further education and training in four Norwegian industries is offered as a strategic test of these two alternative theories. The collective action perspective shares core assumptions of human capital theory, but integrates the possibility of collective action as a solution to some of the market failures associated with investment in transferable human capital. This alternative view also predicts in what labour market settings such action is likely to occur, building on Olson's work and theories of employers' collective action. The collective action perspective differs crucially from human capital theory by predicting that transferability is endogenous i.e. significantly shaped by employers' individual and collective action, and not simply by technology. Thus, 'endogenous transferability' is a principal link between the constitution of labour markets and employers' choice of training and skill supply strategies. The results confirm the prediction that transferability is 'endogenous'. Moreover, they suggest that employers' collective action is more likely to succeed in ensuring transferability and encouraging employee investment than is using sanctions against employers to promote employer-financed transferable training.

This thesis is divided into three parts, all related to matching models of the labour market. In the first part, I analyze wage determination in search equilibrium. In the second part, I study human capital acquisition and depreciation when the labour market contains frictions. In the last part, I discuss various issues related to search and matching. Below follows a brief description of each paper. Part 1: Wage Determination In A Matching Model with Wage Announcement, I study a matching model where heterogeneous firms publicly announce wage offers. I derive a Walrasian type of equilibrium, which is constrained efficient. In Bargaining Over the Business Cycle, I assume that wages are determined by strategic bargaining. This makes wages more and unemployment less volatile than when the conventional Nash solution is applied. In Bargaining and Matching, I design an alternative extensive form bargaining game, where a third agent may arrive and Bertrand competition take place. The resulting wage schedule is of the same form as the one that prevails from Nash bargaining. Part 2. Human Capital and Matching In Human Capital Investments and Market Imperfections, I analyze how frictions in the labour market can distort the incentives to invest in human capital, and lead to sub-optimal investments and multiple equilibria. In Education and Competition for Jobs, each vacancy can get more than one applicant, and several workers may compete for the same job. Depending on parameter values, workers may or may not diversify and choose different levels of education. In Loss of Skills During Unemployment, workers gradually lose skills during unemployment. As a result, multiple equilibria may exist, and unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed can reduce unemployment. Part 3. Other Topics In Optimal Unemployment, I study the efficiency of matching models using techniques from optimal control theory. In A Search Model with Hiring Costs, I introduce hiring costs in the model, and show that this makes the vacancy rate less volatile and the adjustment process after a shock smoother.

This thesis examines the strategies applied by two German trade unions after the collapse of the GDR. It looks at the causes of stability and instability of corporatist systems and their institutions and how these maintain membership and organizational coherence. The study explores the reconstruction strategies of two contrasted West German trade unions seeking to maintain their organizational position and to protect the neo-corporatist industrial relations system that secures their survival. Their strategies for the organizational survival of the unions are determined partly by the neo-corporatist industrial relations structure and partly by their different organizational constraints. The first section looks at explanations of how encompassing trade unions in a neo-corporatist system maintain their membership and their organizational coherence. After delineating the various incentives which encompassing trade unions provide to their membership, the study examines the threats posed by the disintegration of the GDR to the provision of union services and thus to their ability to attract members. The effects of the collapse of the GDR could reduce their membership's willingness to define interests in collective terms (i.e. a favourable trade-off between inflation and unemployment). The study then examines the objectives for an intervention by the West German trade unions in the GDR in order to secure neo-corporatism by incorporation of the East German membership within the encompassing body of the West German unions. The second section looks at the main determinants of the reconstruction process which have been the legacy of low trust in former East German industrial relations as well as the FDGB's inadequate efforts which facilitated the intervention by the West German trade unions in the form of incorporation. The third section assesses the motives of two West German trade unions related to the reconstruction strategies of free labour representation in the GDR. Both trade unions followed the strategy of incorporating the East German workforce by narrowing the existing East-West wage gap (contractual exchange) as well as offering solidarity (diffuse exchange). In particular the motive of contractual exchange reveals the unions' desire to maintain stability within the neo-corporatist environment. As the research on corporatism rarely examines the causes of stability of corporatist systems and institutions, this thesis makes a contribution to our understanding of the strategies to maintain corporatist structures. The sudden collapse of the GDR, with its repercussions for the FRG, provides a special opportunity to analyse the strategy of corporatist institutions seeking to maintain stability.

The thesis addresses the implications of new management and production techniques for workers and unions within a developing country. The specific focus is the white goods industry in Brazil during a period of political and economic transition from 1985 to 1994. In addition to analysing industrial modernisation by four firms, the study uses worker interviews and a review of the unions' identities to provide a comprehensive image of the 'politics of modernisation' in Brazil. The thesis draws on critical work which suggests that modernisation may not have the optimistic effects on labour processes and industrial behaviour that some authors have suggested. Factory regimes are also felt to be strongly related to their particular context. However, the thesis attempts to deepen the degree to which foreign capital and traditional norms of industrial behaviour are considered. Forms of power and resistance are also made more explicit. The study's analysis of the modernisation process suggests that managerial intent must be questioned. Even the most comprehensive examples of modernisation suggest that labour control still drives change. Yet a somewhat 'softer' implicit bargain has replaced the wage-effort contract in such firms. Interview material confirms this mixed picture. Modernisation and related policies have allowed the most advanced firms to foster a more company focussed labour force - one which has embraced new tasks and responsibilities. However, other indicators such as wages and attitudinal factors caution that this situation is neither benign nor immutable. Despite a less normative industrial relations framework, the harsh political and representational situation facing Brazilian unions has simply been further complicated by 'modernisation'. Yet, while workers have become more positive about their employers, to call this change 'employer allegiance' would be an exaggeration. Conflict, albeit of a different nature, still underpins industrial relationships.

China had since the fifties developed a system of occupational welfare which provided 'from cradle to grave' benefits and services to urban state-sector employees, who depended on their work units, or danwei, for health insurance, retirement pensions, housing, various kinds of subsidies both in cash and in kind, various collective facilities and services such as nurseries, dining halls, clinics, bathing facilities, and, in large units, even schools and hospitals. It was a very rare and extreme situation of 'near-complete' welfare dependence. This study explains the origins and the nature of this unique system of welfare and describes how it has undergone changes in market transition. Based on the case study of a large-scale state-owned enterprise, the study shows that in the course of market transition Chinese occupational welfare has undergone very radical changes. Empirical evidence and field data show that these changes have come about through three separate yet inter-related processes at the individual, the work unit, and the government level: the process reshaping dependence, the process reshaping the danwei welfare economy, and the process reforming Labour Insurance. The system emerging from these changes is no longer a unitary system worked entirely through the danwei bureaucracy and is no longer the exclusive rights and privileges of a particular group of workers. The new system has broken with the near-complete dependence of the past and it no longer exempts individuals from their shares of risks and responsibilities. Emerging from the change is a model of welfare pluralism with unique cultural and institutional characteristics.

The Ph.D. thesis submitted under this title consists of three main parts. I start with a description of the regional labour markets in Spain in the last few years. It is followed by a theoretical model of interregional migration, to finish with an empirical exercise on the economic determinants of migration within Spain in recent years. The first two chapters are dedicated to analyze the composition of the two sides of the labour market, employment and unemployment, respectively, according to various dimensions, such as sectoral employment, sex, age, time unemployed. This study includes not only a description of the evolution along time for each region in Spain, but also a comparison of the relevant structures of the labour market across regions, paying particular attention to the degree of geographical homogeneity of both employment and unemployment. The theoretical part of the thesis consists of a model of interregional migration. Using recent developments in search theory, the idea consists of being able to specify a migration function from a micro-economic model of utility-maximizing individuals. Each individual will decide the proportion of the searching time he dedicates to search for a job in each region, as a function of, amongst other things, the probability of getting a job in each one of them. However, at the aggregate level we have to take into account the existence of an externality present in the model, as these probabilities depend on the allocation of searching time decided by the individuals. Once this system is solved, interregional migration appears, under certain assumptions, as the product of the number of effective job-seekers at any time from one region into another times the probability of getting a job in this other region. This model concludes with an study of the comparative statics of the migration function with respect to certain exogenous variables. Finally, the last part is dedicated to an estimation of the reduced form derived from the same principles as the theoretical model. It is done for the case of the migration flows that took place amongst the Spanish regions from 1963 till 1986, and it examines the economic determinants of interregional migration, addressing the issue of why these movements came down when they were more needed to reduce unemployment differentials.