How have modern labour markets developed? Both labour economists and economic historians agree that it is necessary to look at labour markets in their historical context. Labour Market Evolution does just this. The contributors examine the operation and development of labour markets in Western Europe and North America since 1500. They address the key questions in this complicated process using new quantitative evidence. First, how closely connected were geographically distant labour markets? Second, how flexible were markets in the past - did wages change in response to demand shocks? Did workers move across space and occupations in response to cyclical or seasonal conditions. Third, were relationships between employees and employers short-term or long-term? Why did relationships change, and what were the implications for the flexibility and integration of markets? In examining these factors, this volume draws on modern labour economic theory and up-to-date quantitative techniques to show how current traditions and systems have evolved.

Floro Ernesto Caroleo and Francesco Pastore This book was conceived to collect selected essays presented at the session on “The Labour Market Impact of the European Union Enlargements. A New Regional Geography of Europe?” of the XXII Conference of the Italian Association of Labour Economics (AIEL). The session aimed to stimulate the debate on the continuity/ fracture of regional patterns of development and employment in old and new European Union (EU) regions. In particular, we asked whether, and how different, the causes of emergence and the evolution of regional imbalances in the new EU members of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are compared to those in the old EU members. Several contributions in this book suggest that a factor common to all backward regions, often neglected in the literature, is to be found in their higher than average degree of structural change or, more precisely, in the hardship they expe- ence in coping with the process of structural change typical of all advanced economies. In the new EU members of CEE, structural change is still a consequence of the continuing process of transition from central planning to a market economy, but also of what Fabrizio et al. (2009) call the “second transition”, namely that related to the run-up to and entry in the EU.

There has been a tremendous explosion of interest in European urban history in the last decades. Across Europe we see a spate of new research projects and publications examining the economic, demographic, social and cultural devel opments of the many thousands of urban centres -metropolitan cities, regional cities and small towns. This is hardly surprising because urban development has been one of the principal forces shaping the transformation of Europe from the Renaissance to the contemporary era. One striking feature of the new work is its strongly interdisciplinary character with economists, archaeologists, geographers, art historians and sociologists, as well as historians, collaborating in research. Another feature of current approaches is the stress on comparative urban history -using the variable pat terns of development in different countries to shed light not only on structural variations but on the process of urban change itself. Testifying to this enthusiasm for comparative history since 1990 the European Association of Urban Historians (instituted by the European Union) has organ ised large -scale comparative conferences on the European city at Amsterdam, Strasbourg and Budapest. Since the 1980s there has also been a network of Eu ropean institutions (including the universities of Leicester, New University of Lisbon, Leiden, Cantabria, Humboldt University, Berlin, and Strasbourg, Gent and Leuven) actively involved in student teaching programmes in the fiel- with support from the European Union ERASMUS programme.

This book seeks to explain the global financial crisis and its wider economic, political, and social repercussions, arguing that the 2007-9 meltdown was in fact a systemic crisis of the capitalist system. The volume makes these points through the exploration of several key questions: What kind of institutional political economy is appropriate to explain crisis periods and failures of crisis-management? Are different varieties of capitalism more or less crisis-prone, and can the global financial crisis can be attributed to one variety more than others? What is the interaction between the labour market and the financialization process? The book argues that each variety of capitalism has its own specific crisis tendencies, and that the uneven global character of the crisis is related to the current forms of integration of the world market. More specifically, the 2007-09 economic crisis is rooted in the uneven income distribution and inequality caused by the current financial-led model of growth. The book explains how the introduction of more flexibility in the labour markets and financial deregulation affected everything from wages to job security to trade union influence. Uneven income distribution and inequality weakened aggregate demand and brought about structural deficiencies in aggregate demand and supply. It is argued that the process of financialization has profoundly changed how capitalist economies operate. The volume posits that financial globalization has given rise to growing international imbalances, which have allowed two growth models to emerge: a debt-led consumption growth model and an export-led growth model. Both should be understood as reactions to the lack of effective demand due to the polarization of income distribution.

Market Evolution: Competition and Cooperation is a selection of papers presented at the recent meeting of the European Association of Research in Industrial Economics (EARIE). The volume brings together twenty high-quality papers reflecting frontier research in modern industrial organization. The contributions cover a broad spectrum of increasing theoretical, empirical and policy issues, including analyses of the nature of the firm, product differentiation, research and development, strategic alliances, information sharing in the banking sector, exchange rate pass-through in international competition, labor unionization and product rivalry, buyer-supplier bargaining, multimarket competition and related entry, entry and exit processes, multinational enterprises in the Third World, European integration and the restructuring of Eastern Europe. From a theoretical perspective, many chapters apply game theory to the analysis of firm behaviors and market competition. Moreover, a large number of the studies contain a significant empirical part, mainly by employing econometric techniques, to test the hypotheses derived from modern industrial organization theories. Data from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the European Union are presented and analyzed.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book examines the links between economic growth, changing employment conditions, and the reduction of poverty in Latin America in the 2000s. Our analysis answers the following broad questions: Has economic growth resulted in gains in standards of living and reductions in poverty via improved labour market conditions in Latin America in the 2000s, and have these improvements halted or been reversed since the international crisis of 2008? How do the rate and character of economic growth, changes in the various employment and earnings indicators, and changes in poverty and inequality indicators relate to each other? Our contribution is an in-depth study of the multi-pronged growth-employment-poverty nexus based on a large number of labour market indicators (twelve employment and earnings indicators and four poverty and inequality indicators) for a large number of Latin American countries (sixteen of them). The book presents a positive and hopeful set of findings for the period 2000 to 2012/13. Economic growth took place and brought about improvements in almost all labour market indicators and consequent reductions in poverty rates. But not all improvements were equal in size or caused by the same things. Some macroeconomic factors were associated with changes in labour market conditions, some of them always in the welfare-improving direction and some others always in the welfare-reducing direction. Most countries in the region suffered a deterioration in at least some labour market indicators as a consequence of the international crisis of 2008, but the negative effects were reversed very quickly in most countries.

This publication highlights principles and factors which are important in supporting integration locally. It includes a comparison of local initiatives implemented in five OECD countries.

How has China approached the global economy? Webber, Wang and Zhu attempt to answer this question through analysis of the concepts of globalization, transition and regionalization. China's approach has been experimental, stressing the liberalization of trade and investment flows and the development of a market economy. By these indexes globalization in China has been gradual and uneven. Integrating Western social science and Chinese research, this book assesses the nature and effect of globalization in China and its implications.