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This thesis explores the necessary conditions for voluntary wage restraint in advanced industrialized democracies. In particular, it addresses the question of how governments can get union movements to trade their labour market power for non-wage objectives, and how union peak organizations can secure near universal compliance with a voluntary wages policy, notwithstanding the pressures upon individual unions to free ride. Rational choice theory furnishes the initial analytical framework. Within these terms it will be argued that the problem of securing voluntary restraint has the strategic structure of a prisoner's dilemma. In other words, the situation entails an inherent conflict between individual and collective interests. Moreover, this conflict is not merely between the short-term interests of individual unions and those of the whole labour movement, but also between labour (wages) and capital (profit). Given this situation, the thesis will investigate the conditions under which rational, self-interested unions, seeking to maximize some combination of real wage, relative wage and employment objectives, and operating in the context of uncertainty, decentralized bargaining and a significant degree of monopoly power in the labour market, will voluntarily be prepared to restrain their wage demands. Following this exploration, the behavioural assumptions of rational choice theory will be modified to allow for the fact that economic agents are also motivated by various normative commitments, and that these can be sufficient in certain circumstances to overcome the free-rider problem. This new theoretical approach will then be employed in a detailed examination of the Social Contract between the British Labour Government (1974-79) and the Trades Union Congress. It will be concluded that certain moral, political and ideological commitments played a crucial role in the negotiation, implementation and eventual collapse of the Social Contract. It should be noted that this inquiry is based upon published sources and interview data.

Habilitationsschrift--Bonn, 1977. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 437-459) and index.

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This investigation analyzes the government's current attempt at wage and price controls; and covers only Phases I, II, and III--with primary emphasis on Phase II. The sources of data used are current periodicals. The study is composed of five major chapters. Chapter I presents a brief summary of prior attempts at wage and price controls, both in this country and abroad, plus-a thumbnail sketch of economic conditions in this country preceding Phase I. The next three chapters deal with the three phases themselves. In each case, the guidelines are presented along with the mechanism of execution, enforcement, and actual cases of operation. As the overall program is still in operation, final conclusions are not appropriate at this time.

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No description available.

Research supported by MIT's Center for Energy Policy Research.

The contribution of this thesis is to build a small macro-econometric model of the Namibian economy, which demonstrates that there is significant statistical support for the hypothesis that there is a contemporaneous relationship between real wage, productivity, unemployment and interest rates in Namibia. This phenomenon has not yet been exploited using macro-econometric modelling, and thus, represents a significant contribution to modelling literature in Namibia. The determination of the sources of unemployment also receives special attention given that high unemployment is a chronic problem in Namibia. All models specified and estimated in the study use the SVAR methodology for the period 1980 to 2013. The study develops a small macro-econometric model using three modular experiments, which include, a basic model, models that separately append demand and exchange rate channels variables to the basic model, and the specification of a small macro-econometric model. The ultimate aim is to find out if monetary policy plays a role in influencing labour market and nominal variables. The hypothesis that the basic real wage, productivity, unemployment rate and interest rate system can be estimated simultaneously is validated. Further, demand and exchange rate channels variables are found to have important additional information, which explains the monetary transmission process, and that shocks to labour market variables affect monetary policy in Namibia. The results also show that the demand channel (import prices and bank credit to the private sector) and the exchange rate channel (nominal exchange rate) variables have important additional information, which affects monetary transmission process in Namibia, which justifies their inclusion in the small macro-econometric model. In addition, shocks to the import price and exchange rate in the macro-econometric model significantly affect labour market variables. However, shocks to bank credit only partially perform as expected, implying that its results need to be considered cautiously. The study further finds that tight monetary policy shocks significantly affect real and nominal variables in Namibia. The results also show that shocks to all variables in the unemployment model significantly affect unemployment, suggesting that the hysteresis assumption is corroborated. This implies that long run aggregate demand is non-neutral in Namibia. / Economics / D. Litt. et Phil. (Economics)