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Based on qualitative interviews of workers, managers and labour inspectors in China, we examine how employers adjust, often in subtle fashions, to minimum wage increases. Our findings highlight the “law of unintended consequences” in that their effects are often “undone” or offset by subtle adjustments such as reductions in fringe benefits and in overtime work and overtime pay premiums that are otherwise valued by employees. Employees often feel that they are no better off in spite of minimum wage increases because of these offsetting adjustments. This study also suggests possible reasons for the small or zero effect of minimum wage on employment in China. Lack of enforcement may be one of the reasons, but the employees we interviewed seem well aware of the legal minimum wage and employers do not want to get involved in disputes over this matter. For employers who would otherwise be affected by the minimum wage increase, the cost increase is mitigated by the offsetting adjustments. As a result, minimum wages do not seem to weaken the competitive position of employers in China.

This article reviews the book, "Ain’t Got No Home: America’s Great Migrations and the Making of An Interracial Left," by Erin Royston Battat.

The article reviews the book, "Locked Out: A Century of Irish Working-Class Life," edited by David Convery.

The aim of this paper is to conduct an exploratory analysis of the wider economic and social conditions associated with larger informal economies. To do this, three competing perspectives are evaluated critically which variously assert that cross-national variations in the size of the informal economy are associated with: under-development (modernization perspective); high taxes, corruption and state interference (neo-liberal perspective), or inadequate state intervention to protect workers (political economy perspective). Analyzing the variable size of the informal economy across 33 developed and transition economies, namely 28 European countries and five other OECD nations (Australia, Canada, Japan, New zealand and the USA), the finding is that larger informal economies are associated with under-development as measured by lower levels of GNI per capita, employment participation rates, average wages and the institutional strength and quality of the bureaucracy, higher levels of perceived public sector corruption, lower levels of expenditure on social protection and labour market intervention to protect vulnerable groups, but also restrictions on the use of temporary employment contracts and TWAs. The outcome is a tentative call to combine a range of tenets from all three perspectives in a new more nuanced and finer-grained understanding of how the cross-national variations in the size of the informal economy are associated with broader economic and social conditions. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for theory and policy, including the need for further analysis of the different impacts on the size of the informal economy of a wider range of indicators of modernization, corruption, taxation and types of state intervention.

Fréquemment, les chercheurs ont conceptualisé le conflit travail-famille de façon bidirectionnelle : l’étude des effets de la vie professionnelle à l’endroit de la vie de famille (appelé conflit travail-famille) et celle des effets de la vie de famille à l’égard de la vie d’emploi (appelé conflit famille-travail). Toutefois, les résultats inhérents aux recherches basées sur cette conceptualisation se sont avérés controversés. Autrement dit, très peu d’effort a été déployé afin de différencier entre les effets des différentes formes de ce conflit. Pourtant, Greenhaus et Beutell (1985) en ont proposé une conceptualisation multidimensionnelle, en ajoutant aux deux dimensions directionnelles trois autres supplémentaires liées au conflit de temps, d’effort et de comportement. Ainsi, notre recherche répond à la question générale suivante: la conceptualisation multidimensionnelle du conflit travail-famille est-elle plus efficace pour cerner la réalité de ce phénomène que la conceptualisation bidirectionnelle ? À partir d’un échantillon de 375 sujets provenant du personnel infirmier d’un centre hospitalier, nous avons privilégié une conceptualisation multidimensionnelle dudit conflit (Greenhaus et Beutell, 1985), et ce, afin d’identifier les effets spécifiques aux diverses dimensions de ce conflit. Pour ce faire, nous avons utilisé l’analyse en termes des cartes autoorganisatrices de Kohonen (SOM), cartes qui sont basées sur un réseau de neurones résultant de la méthode d’apprentissage non supervisée (Kohonen, 2001). Les résultats de l’analyse neuronale indiquent qu’il y a six formes de conflit. Deux d’entre elles paraissent générer des effets similaires à ceux obtenus selon la conceptualisation bidirectionnelle (conflit à haute intensité versus conflit à basse intensité), tandis que les quatre autres formes apparaissent engendrer des effets spécifiques, justifiant la nécessité d’appliquer la conceptualisation multidimensionnelle préconisée. En outre, l’analyse de variance appliquée aux données a révélé plusieurs différences significatives entre les six formes de ce conflit et des variables externes liées à des facteurs explicatifs dudit conflit, ainsi qu’à ses conséquences. Cette nouvelle taxonomie, basée sur la conceptualisation multidimensionnelle des conflits travail-famille, contribue à une meilleure compréhension de l’interférence entre la sphère de la vie familiale et celle de la vie professionnelle, en identifiant les formes spécifiques du conflit travail-famille au niveau desquelles une ou plusieurs sources de conflictualité sont en action. Des avenues de recherche et des implications managériales sont déduites à la lumière des résultats enregistrés.

Although the literature on comparative capitalism has been expanded to encompass the Mixed Market Economies (MMEs) of the Mediterranean world and other less mature institutional arrangements, it can be argued that more attention needs to be accorded to internal diversity within capitalist archetypes and the nature and path of change. In focusing on the latter, this paper explores changes in Industrial relations (Ir) regulation and practice in Greece which, since the onset of the economic crisis, has shifted towards lighter regulation; however, liberalization has not meant convergence with the mature Liberal Market Economy (LME) model and its presumed associated complementarities. Based on current developments and advances in the literature on comparative capitalism, this study explores the process and dynamics of institutional change, and the long continuities that set Greece apart from both ‘disorganized’ LMEs and other MMEs. This encompasses issues such as the composition of elites, the nature of institutional path dependence and change, and the uneven and partial nature of what constitutes institutional functionality. Whilst the Greek system is commonly condemned as dysfunctional, it satisfies specific economic interests. Being impelled in one direction by a progressive movement from below, it is driven in another by external pressures, and, at home, by “unpatriotic” elites, who have little interest in stronger regulation, and may well be served by weaker governmental capabilities. As local economic elites seek to reposition themselves within the system in order to cope with shifts in the capitalist economy, it may result in them further narrowing their focus onto their own immediate concerns accommodated through economic liberalization. Smaller, marginal, players may be pushed further out of the system and/or actively choose to withdraw, the attempts of the present government to ameliorate the shocks of liberalization notwithstanding. This vests the organized labour and other civil society associations with great historic importance.

The article reviews the book, "Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic," by Margaret Gray.