Labor Market Pooling, Outsourcing and Labor Contracts

The available evidence on wages and labor contracts supports the existence of a functioning labor market in the early Roman empire, in which workers could change jobs in response to market-driven rewards. Slaves were included in the general labor market because Roman slavery, unlike that in the United States and in Brazil, permitted frequent manumission to citizen status. Slaves' ability to improve their status provided them with incentives to cooperate with their owners and act like free laborers. As a result, the supply and demand for labor were roughly equilibrated by wages and other payments to most workers, both slave and free.

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Volenti Non Fit Iniuria? Contract Freedom and Labor Market Institutions

Analyse & Kritik ◽

10.1515/auk-2009-0104 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 31 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Richard Sturn

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Market Failure ◽

Labor Market Institutions ◽

Economic Welfare ◽

Labor Contracts ◽

Market Institutions ◽

Critical Perspective ◽

The Core ◽

Critical Insight ◽

Core Features

AbstractVarious writers point out that accepting the terms of a contract does not imply consent to the background conditions of this contract. This is an important critical insight allowing for a critical perspective on the principle of free contract, according to which the state should not interfere with what adult agents contractually agree upon. In this paper I argue that the practical relevance of this critical insight depends on the availability of answers to three questions: (1) Which are the core features of baseline background conditions supporting a well-ordered labor market enhancing economic welfare? (2) In which cases and for which reasons are non-market institutions needed in order to support these features? (3) Under which conditions and at which levels can collective mechanisms be expected to support adequate non-market institutions ‘curing market failure’? Some of the core properties of labor markets and labor contracts are discussed which need to be taken into account in attempts to answer these questions, most notably problems of contract enforcement, market failure and collective action.

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Labor Market Pooling, Outsourcing and Contracts in Chamberlinian Regions

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.926526 ◽

2006 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Pierre M. Picard ◽

David E. Wildasin

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Labor Market Pooling

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Labor Contracts, Equal Treatment, and Wage-Unemployment Dynamics

American Economic Journal Macroeconomics ◽

10.1257/mac.2.3.98 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 2 (3) ◽

pp. 98-127 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Andy Snell ◽

Jonathan P Thomas

Keyword(s):

Labor Market ◽

Equal Treatment ◽

Labor Contracts ◽

Real Wages ◽

Us Economy ◽

Productivity Data ◽

Sectoral Productivity ◽

Post War ◽

At Will

This paper analyses a model in which firms cannot pay discriminate based on year of entry. It is assumed that workers can costlessly quit at any time, while firms are committed to contracts. We solve for the dynamics of wages and unemployment, and show that real wages display a degree of downward rigidity and do not necessarily clear the labor market. Using sectoral productivity data from the post-war US economy, we assess the ability of the model to match the actual unemployment series. We also show that equal treatment follows from the assumption of at-will employment contracting in our model. (JEL E24, E32, J31, J41)

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