IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cbr/cbrwps/wp478.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Contribution of Labour Law to Economic Development & Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Simon Deakin

Abstract

A review of theoretical, historical and quantitative empirical research on the economic effects of labour laws suggests that worker-protective labour regulation generates net positive outcomes for development and growth. Labour law should be seen as a developmental institution which has a symbiotic relationship to the rise of capitalism in the global north and is part of the transition to a market economy being experienced by today's low- and middle-income countries. Claims made for the desuetude of labour law's core mechanisms, including the standard employment relationship, are not borne about by recent evidence. The complex role played by labour regulation in the dynamics of capitalism would repay further investigation.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon Deakin, 2016. "The Contribution of Labour Law to Economic Development & Growth," Working Papers wp478, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    • Handle: RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp478
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/cbrwp478/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Prebisch, Raúl, 1950. "The economic development of Latin America and its principal problems," Sede de la CEPAL en Santiago (Estudios e Investigaciones) 29973, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    2. Björn Bartling & Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 2012. "Use and abuse of authority: A behavioral foundation of the employment relation," ECON - Working Papers 098, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    3. Viral V. Acharya & Ramin P. Baghai & Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian, 2014. "Wrongful Discharge Laws and Innovation," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(1), pages 301-346, January.
    4. Peter M. Solar, 1995. "Poor relief and English economic development before the industrial revolution," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 48(1), pages 1-22, February.
    5. Deakin, Simon & Wilkinson, Frank, 2005. "The Law of the Labour Market: Industrialization, Employment, and Legal Evolution," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198152811, Decembrie.
    6. Bartling, Björn & Fehr, Ernst & Schmidt, Klaus M., 2012. "Use and Abuse of Authority: A Behavioral Foundation of the Employment Relation," CEPR Discussion Papers 9231, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Simon Deakin & Prabirjit Sarkar, 2008. "Assessing the Long-Run Economic Impact of Labour Law Systems: A theoretical Reappraisal and Analysis of New Time Series Data," Working Papers wp367, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    8. Björn Bartling & Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 2013. "JEEA-FBBVA Lecture 2012: USE AND ABUSE OF AUTHORITY: A BEHAVIORAL FOUNDATION OF THE EMPLOYMENT RELATION," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 711-742, August.
    9. Sarkar, Prabirjit, 2011. "Indian Labour Regulation and Its Impact on Unemployment: A Leximetric Study, 1970-2006," MPRA Paper 32929, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Mathias Siems & Simon Deakin, 2010. "Comparative Law and Finance: Past, Present, and Future Research," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 166(1), pages 120-140, March.
    11. Simon DEAKIN & Jonas MALMBERG & Prabirjit SARKAR, 2014. "How do labour laws affect unemployment and the labour share of national income? The experience of six OECD countries, 1970–2010," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 153(1), pages 1-27, March.
    12. Simon Deakin & Antara Haldar, 2015. "How Should India Reforms Its Labour Laws?," Working Papers wp469, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    13. Putterman, Louis, 1984. "On Some Recent Explanations of Why Capital Hires Labor," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 22(2), pages 171-187, April.
    14. Deakin, S. & Sarkar, P., 2011. "Indian Labour Law and its Impact on Unemployment, 1970-2006: A leximetric study," Working Papers wp428, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anamitra Roychowdhury, 2019. "Application of job security laws, workers’ bargaining power and employment outcomes in India," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 30(1), pages 120-141, March.
    2. Antonio ALOISI & Valerio DE STEFANO, 2020. "Regulation and the future of work: The employment relationship as an innovation facilitator," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 159(1), pages 47-69, March.
    3. Rolf, Steven & O'Reilly, Jacqueline & Meryon, Marc, 2022. "Towards privatized social and employment protections in the platform economy? Evidence from the UK courier sector," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(5).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Simon Deakin & Shelley Marshall & Sanjay Pinto, 2020. "Labour Laws, Informality, and Development: Comparing India and China," Working Papers wp518, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    2. Simon Deakin, 2014. "Labour Law and Inclusive Development," Working Papers wp458, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    3. Simon DEAKIN & Jonas MALMBERG & Prabirjit SARKAR, 2014. "How do labour laws affect unemployment and the labour share of national income? The experience of six OECD countries, 1970–2010," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 153(1), pages 1-27, March.
    4. Simon Deakin, 2018. "The Use of Quantitative Methods in Labour Law Research: An Assessment and Reformulation," Working Papers wp495, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    5. Simon Deakin & Antara Haldar, 2015. "How Should India Reforms Its Labour Laws?," Working Papers wp469, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    6. Carpenter, Jeffrey & Dolifka, David, 2017. "Exploitation aversion: When financial incentives fail to motivate agents," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 213-224.
    7. Simon Deakin, 2013. "Addressing Labour Market Segmentation: The Role of Labour Law," Working Papers wp446, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    8. Sarkar, Prabirjit, 2011. "Does employment protection lead to unemployment? A panel data analysis of OECD countries, 1990-2008," MPRA Paper 35547, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Alan Benson & Aaron Sojourner & Akhmed Umyarov, 2020. "Can Reputation Discipline the Gig Economy? Experimental Evidence from an Online Labor Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 1802-1825, May.
    10. Albanese, Marina & Navarra, Cecilia & Tortia, Ermanno C., 2015. "Employer moral hazard and wage rigidity. The case of worker owned and investor owned firms," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 227-237.
    11. Zoe Adams & Parisa Bastani & Louise Bishop & Simon Deakin, 2017. "The CBR-LRI Dataset: Methods, Properties & Potential of Leximetric Coding of Labour Laws," Working Papers wp489, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    12. Beinhocker, Eric & Dhami, Sanjit, 2019. "The Behavioral Foundations of New Economic Thinking," INET Oxford Working Papers 2019-13, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    13. Simon Deakin & Jonas Malmberg & Prabirjit Sarkar, 2013. "Do Labour Laws Increase Equality at the Expense of Higher Unemployment? The Experience of Six OECD Countries, 1970-2010," Working Papers wp442, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    14. Diti Goswami & Sourabh Bikas Paul, 2020. "Labor Reforms in Rajasthan: A boon or a bane?," Papers 2012.01016, arXiv.org.
    15. Zoe Adams & Louise Bishop & Simon Deakin & Colin Fenwick & Sara Martinsson Garzelli & Giudy Rusconi & Centre for Business Research, 2018. "The Economic Significance of Laws Relating to Employment Protection & Different Forms of Employment: Analysis of a Panel of 117 Countries, 1990-2013," Working Papers wp500, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    16. Drouvelis, Michalis & Nosenzo, Daniele & Sefton, Martin, 2017. "Team incentives and leadership," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 173-185.
    17. Zoe Adams & Simon Deakin, 2014. "Institutional Solutions to Precariousness and Inequality in Labour Markets," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 52(4), pages 779-809, December.
    18. Kawai, Masahiro & Schmiegelow, Henrik, 2013. "Financial Crisis as a Catalyst of Legal Reforms: The Case of Asia," ADBI Working Papers 446, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    19. Belloc, Filippo & Burdin, Gabriel & Cattani, Luca & Ellis, William & Landini, Fabio, 2022. "Coevolution of job automation risk and workplace governance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(3).
    20. Marina Albanese & Cecilia Navarra & Ermanno Tortia, 2019. "Equilibrium unemployment as a worker insurance device: wage setting in worker owned enterprises," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 36(3), pages 653-671, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labour law; development; growth; inequality; leximetrics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
    • J83 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Workers' Rights
    • K31 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Labor Law
    • O43 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Institutions and Growth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp478. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ruth Newman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.