Measures the relationship between market competition and the treatment of women, minorities, and the disabled in the workplace.

While increased competition may generate economic efficiency and push employee compensation to market rates, it may also help reduce differential treatment for protected groups such as women, minorities, and the disabled. This book presents the most comprehensive body of empirical evidence on the connection between the product market and the extent of discrimination in labor markets. The contributors look at data from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Hong Kong in order to explore the product market's influence on discrimination against the disabled, the role of deregulation in creating competition and altering racial employment patterns, and the influence of privatization on public employees' earnings. Nuanced analyses, using best practice econometrics, lead the contributors to conclude that while competition helps equalize treatment of employees, it does not eliminate discrimination.

This book discusses the institutional aspects of the American labor market. The introduction assesses the major changes since 1971.

Why our workplaces are authoritarian private governments—and why we can’t see it One in four American workers says their workplace is a “dictatorship.” Yet that number almost certainly would be higher if we recognized employers for what they are—private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives. Many employers minutely regulate workers’ speech, clothing, and manners on the job, and employers often extend their authority to the off-duty lives of workers, who can be fired for their political speech, recreational activities, diet, and almost anything else employers care to govern. In this compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson examines why, despite all this, we continue to talk as if free markets make workers free, and she proposes a better way to think about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom.

What happens if an employer cuts wages by one cent? Much of labor economics is built on the assumption that all the workers will quit immediately. Here, Alan Manning mounts a systematic challenge to the standard model of perfect competition. Monopsony in Motion stands apart by analyzing labor markets from the real-world perspective that employers have significant market (or monopsony) power over their workers. Arguing that this power derives from frictions in the labor market that make it time-consuming and costly for workers to change jobs, Manning re-examines much of labor economics based on this alternative and equally plausible assumption. The book addresses the theoretical implications of monopsony and presents a wealth of empirical evidence. Our understanding of the distribution of wages, unemployment, and human capital can all be improved by recognizing that employers have some monopsony power over their workers. Also considered are policy issues including the minimum wage, equal pay legislation, and caps on working hours. In a monopsonistic labor market, concludes Manning, the "free" market can no longer be sustained as an ideal and labor economists need to be more open-minded in their evaluation of labor market policies. Monopsony in Motion will represent for some a new fundamental text in the advanced study of labor economics, and for others, an invaluable alternative perspective that henceforth must be taken into account in any serious consideration of the subject.

The MENA region is facing important vulnerabilities, which the current crises—first the pandemic, then the war in Ukraine—have exacerbated. Prices of food and energy are higher, hurting the most vulnerable, and rising interest rates from the global tightening of monetary policy are making debt service more burdensome. Part I explores some of the resulting vulnerabilities for MENA. MENA countries are facing diverging paths for future growth. Oil Exporters have seen windfall increases in state revenues from the rise in hydrocarbon prices, while oil importers face heightened stress and risk—from higher import bills, especially for food and energy, and the depreciation of local currencies in some countries. Part II of this report argues that poor governance, and, in particular, the lack of government transparency and accountability, is at the root of the region’s development failings—including low growth, exclusion of the most disadvantaged and women, and overuse of such precious natural resources as land and water.

Regulatory reform represents a major shift in the government's role toward price determination in the transportation and telecommunication industries. The resulting policy emphasizes dependence on market forces to set prices and to encourage efficient production techniques. While extensive research investigates the influence of deregulation on prices, profits and productivity, the effect on labor markets has not received the same scrutiny. Firms in these industries are of major importance to business operations in other industries because they provide the critical services of transporting goods and transmitting information. This may partly explain such extensive research on the product market aspects of regulatory reform. Examining labor markets in the transportation and telecommunications industries is also highly warranted, as historically these industries represented some of the most heavily unionized sectors in the economy. The extent to which regulatory reform has encouraged product market competition may not necessarily result in the same degree of competition across industries. Regulatory Reform and Labor Markets debates the notion that research on regulatory reform and labor markets should develop within the framework of the competitive model. This is achieved by presenting diverging views on wage and employment determination in distinctly different deregulated industries.

A decade since the spark of the Arab Spring, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region continues to suffer from limited creation of more and better jobs. Youth face idleness and unemployment. For those who find jobs, informality awaits. Few women attempt to enter the world of work at all. Meanwhile, the available jobs are not those of the future. These labor market outcomes are being worsened by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. 'Jobs Undone: Reshaping the Role of Governments toward Markets and Workers in the Middle East and North Africa' explores ways to break these impasses, drawing on original research, survey data, wide-ranging literature, and young entrepreneurial voices from the region. The report finds that a prominent reason behind MENA's unmet jobs challenge is a lack of market contestability in the formal private sector. Few firms in the region enter the market, few grow, and those that exit are not necessarily less productive. Moreover, firms in the region invest little in physical capital, human capital, or research and development, and they tend to be politically connected. At the macro level, economic growth has been mediocre, labor productivity is not being driven by structural change, and the growth of the stock of capital per capita has declined. New evidence generated for this report shows that the lack of dynamism is due to the prevalence of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). They operate in sectors where there is little economic rationale for public activity and they enjoy favorable treatment--flouting the principles of competitive neutrality. Meanwhile, labor regulations add to market rigidity, while gendered laws restrict women's potential. To change this reality, the state must reshape its relationship toward markets, toward workers, and toward women. The region must create a level playing field between SOEs and the private sector, replace labor rigidities with appropriate social protection and labor market programs, and remove barriers to women's economic participation. Governments can also foster new sectors and occupations, gradually propelling market contestability and job creation. All reforms will have to rely on improved data capacity and transparency to create a new social contract between governments and the people of the region.