Overview
Aims and objectives
The aim of this project was to understand the role of labour law in alleviating poverty in developing countries, with the focus on four country cases, namely Cambodia, China, India and South Africa. The project was undertaken with the support of the International Labour Office (ILO), which provided advice on access in the case study countries, data support, and policy analysis. It was initially funded by the DFID-ESRC Joint Scheme on Poverty Alleviation (2013-16). In 2015 it received additional funding from the ILO and 2016-17 from the Cambridge University Humanities Research Grant Scheme.
Background
Labour regulation can operate to reduce poverty in two ways: by promoting greater equality of incomes and wealth, and by encouraging the more productive and efficient use of labour resources. A key issue is the effectiveness of labour law regulation in practice. Even if, in principle, labour law rules can serve social and economic goals, they may fail to do so if the capacity of regulatory institutions is limited, if rules lack legitimacy on the ground, or if the laws are ill-suited to economic or social conditions.
Methods
The empirical strategy for addressing these issues was two-fold. The quantitative dimension of the work took the form of econometric analysis of datasets providing data on legal and institutional variables at national and regional level, alongside relevant economic and labour market indicators (GDP, employment, unemployment, productivity, and so on). The qualitative dimension of the work took the form of interviews with actors in the case study countries. These included interviews with legal knowledge and experience (judges, lawyers, politicians, regulators, civil servants, labour inspectors), private-sector firm-level actors (HR and other managers), and actors in civil society (trade unions, NGOs). These two aspects of the study were brought together to provide comparative data on countries with different levels of industrialisation, economic structures and cultural contexts.
Results and dissemination
We constructed a new dataset coding for changes in labour law in 117 countries over the period 1970 to 2013 (the CBR Labour Regulation Index or ‘CBR-LRI’). The wide reach of the dataset and its decades-long time series make it unique in the field. Its nearest equivalent, the OECD’s Employment Protection Index, codes for a times series only from the mid-1990s, and does not cover working time or most aspects of collective labour law. The CBR-LRI provides data on for five areas of labour regulation (different forms of employment, working time, dismissal, employee representation, and collective action) using a series of original coding algorithms. All codings are precisely sourced to specific laws or regulations.
We then carried out time-series and panel data econometrics in conjunction with the new dataset to estimate the effects of changes in labour laws on economic outcome variables. Exploratory analysis using the pooled mean group regression model suggests that strengthening worker protection generally increases the labour share of national income (after controlling for GDP growth and for differences in institutional quality as proxied by ‘rule of law’ indices). Improvements in employee representation and dismissal protection generally have positive effects on productivity and employment. The picture is more mixed for strike law. Overall the research suggests that worker-protective labour laws can contribute to poverty alleviation both directly, through their impact on distribution, and indirectly, through their effects on growth, but that these effects depend on context and may not be present consistently across all countries.
Qualitative fieldwork was undertaken on the operation of labour laws in MICs and LICs. The Chinese case suggests that legislatively-mandated labour standards can be successfully implemented if there is effective state capacity, but also illustrates the limits of legal strategies in the context of global value chains. The Cambodian, Chinese and South African fieldwork highlighted the importance of labour arbitration systems for providing unions and workers with low-cost access to justice. The Cambodian case illustrated ways in which legislated standards interacted with monitoring by NGOs. The Indian case illustrated the problems that can arise from political deadlock over labour law reform.
A number of methodological advances were made. The project demonstrated the potential of quantitative approaches to the study of legal institutions (‘leximetrics’) to generate new knowledge and opportunities for statistical testing of law-economy interactions. It also demonstrated the value of multiple-methods approaches, combining quantitative and qualitative analysis. In 2017 an updated version of the CBR-LRI dataset was posted on the University of Cambridge Apollo Data Repository, where it is one of the most frequently downloaded datasets. In November 2016 Simon Deakin gave a talk on the dataset to the OpenConCam 2016 conference, Building Impact through Openness.
In 2017-18 progress has mostly consisted of writing up the results of the project and in seeing working papers through to the stage of publication in peer-reviewed journals. Publications include a methodological paper and an empirical paper setting the most detailed and comprehensive analysis to date of the CBR-LRI dataset. A paper describing the results of qualitative fieldwork in India and China was presented to an international conference in 2017 will be published in an edited book collection on labour law and development in the course of 2019. In addition, we have been working to extend to the dataset, bringing it more up to date. A revised version of the dataset covering 50 years of data (1970-2019) will be published next year.
Impact
In 2015 project findings were used by the International Labour Organization in the preparation of data and reports on global trends in labour regulation and its economic and social effects. This joint work was reported in the ILO’s 2015 World Employment and Social Outlook. In addition, in 2015, Simon Deakin used the dataset to contribute to a discussion on labour law reform organised by leading officials of the European Commission. In 2015-16 the data were made available to the Asian Development Bank for econometric analysis.
During 2015 Simon Deakin used part of the findings in the course of consulting work on labour law reform for the Vietnamese government. This work, connected to reforms of labour dispute resolution procedures, was presented by Deakin at workshops in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, in March 2015.
In 2016 team members contributed to a discussion of benchmarking of employment protection laws organised by the European Commission and to a workshop at the OECD to discuss proposed reforms to its Jobs Strategy. In 2016 and 2017 they contributed to the deliberations of the European Economic and Social Committee.
In September 2016 a user workshop was held in Cambridge with support from the ESRC Rising Powers and Interdependent Futures Research Programme. The workshop was attended by officials from the International Labour Office and Trade Union Advisory Council of the OECD. At the workshop, there were presentations of results from quantitative research analyzing the CBR-LRI dataset, and from fieldwork in developing countries conducted by the CBR team and by colleagues at the University of Manchester. Case studies explored the interaction of labour laws with private labour standards operating in global supply chains, and investigated the influence of civil society actors and states in the development of private regulatory initiatives and in the framing of discourses on labour standards. A report of the workshop proceedings was placed on the CBR website along with a blog and podcast.
In 2018 the work of the project was prominently featured in a special issue of the University of Cambridge’s research magazine, Research Horizons, devoted to the theme of ‘work’. An article written by the University’s central communications team reported that ‘ten years (with various intermissions) in the making, the project involved around 20 legal, economic and statistical researchers – from senior academics to PhD students and postdocs – pulling together numerous data sources before refining the analysis with sophisticated regression models based on equations created by Cambridge economists in the 1990s’.
The dataset is increasingly being used by other research teams and international organisations. It recently formed the basis for an analysis conducted by ILO officials which was published in the World Employment and Social Outlook Report for 2017. The dataset has been cited over 100 times in academic papers.
Project leader
Simon Deakin
Co-investigator
Shelley Marshall (Monash University)
Research fellows
Enying Zheng, Parisa Bastani
Researchers
Louise Bishop
Zoe Adams
Research associates
Ajit Singh
Prabirjit Sarkar (Jadavpur University)
Ewan McGaughey (King’s College, London)
Sanjay Pinto (Cornell and Rutgers Universities)
Project status
Completed
Project dates
2013-2017
Funding
ESRC (DFID-ESRC Joint Scheme on Poverty Alleviation)
ILO
Cambridge University Humanities Research Grant Scheme
Output
Journal articles
Adams, Z., Bishop, L., Deakin, S., Fenwick, C., Martinsson-Garzelli, S., and Rusconi, G. (2019) ‘The economic significance of laws relating to employment protection and different forms of employment: analysis of a panel of 117 countries, 1990-2013’ International Labour Review, forthcoming.
Deakin, S. (2018) ‘The use of quantitative methods in labour law research: an assessment and reformulation’ Social and Legal Studies, 27: 456-474.
Adams, Z., Bastani, P., Bishop, L. and Deakin, S. (2017) ‘The CBR-LRI dataset: methods, properties and potential of leximetric coding of labour laws’ International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations, 33: 59-91.
Adams, Z., and Deakin, S. (2015) ‘Quantitative labour law’, in A. Ludlow and A. Blackham (eds.) New Frontiers in Empirical Labour Law Research (Oxford: Hart).
Deakin, S., and Haldar, A. (2015) ‘How should India reform its labour laws?’ Economic and Political Weekly, 50(1), 48-55.
Deakin, S., and Adams, Z. (2015) International Experience in Settling Labour Disputes: A Comparative Review Report to the Justice Partnership Programme, Vietnam.
Adams, Z., and Deakin, S. (2014) ‘Institutional solutions to inequality and precariousness in labour markets’ British Journal of Industrial Relations, 52: 779-809.
Deakin, S. (2014) ‘Labour law and inclusive development’, Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 57: 19-34.
Deakin, S. (2014) ‘Labour law and inclusive development’, forthcoming, Indian Journal of Labour Economics.
Deakin, S., Malmberg, J. and Sarkar, P. (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, 153: 1-27.
Book chapters
Deakin, S. (2016) ‘Labour law and development in the long run’, in S. Marshall and C. Fenwick (eds.) Labour Regulation and Development: Socio-Legal Perspectives (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar).
Marshall, S. and Fenwick, C. (2016) ‘Labour law and development: characteristics and challenges’, in S. Marshall and C. Fenwick (eds.) Labour Regulation and Development: Socio-Legal Perspectives (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar).
Marshall, S. (2016) ‘Revitalising labour market regulation for the economic South: new forms and tools’, in S. Marshall and C. Fenwick (eds.) Labour Regulation and Development: Socio-Legal Perspectives (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar).
Adams, Z. and Deakin, S. (2015) ‘Freedom of establishment and regulatory competition’, in D. Chalmers and A. Arnull (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of EU Law (Oxford: OUP).
Deakin, S. (2015) ‘Law as evolution, evolution as social order: common law method reconsidered’, in S. Grundmann and J. Thiessen (eds.) Law in the Context of Disciplines (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck).
Deakin, S., Fenwick, C. and Sarkar, P. (2014) ‘Labour law and inclusive development: the economic effects of industrial relations laws in middle-income countries’, in M. Schmiegelow and H. Schmiegelow (eds.) Institutional Competition between Common Law and Civil Law (Frankfurt: Springer), 185-209.
Deakin, S. (2013) ‘Droit social et travailleurs pauvres dans la Grande-Bretagne: une perspective historique’, in P. Auvergnon (ed.) Droit social et travailleurs pauvres, pp. 143-162 (Brussels : Bruylant).
Working papers
Adams, Z., Bishop, L., Deakin, S., Fenwick, C., Martinsson-Garzelli, S., and Rusconi, G. (2018) ‘The economic significance of laws relating to employment protection and different forms of employment: analysis of a panel of 117 countries, 1990-2013’ CBR WP No. 500, March 2018.
Deakin, S. (2018) ‘The use of quantitative methods in labour law research: an assessment and reformulation’ CBR WP No. 495, March 2018.
Adams, Z., Bastani, P., Bishop, L. and Deakin, S. (2017) ‘The CBR-LRI dataset: methods, properties and potential of leximetric coding of labour laws’ CBR WP No. 489, March 2017.
Deakin, S, Mollica, V and Sarkar, P. ‘Varieties of Creditor Protection: Insolvency Law Reform & Credit Expansion in Developed Market Economies’
Zheng, E., and Deakin, S. (2016) ‘Pricing labour capacity: the unexpected effects of formalising employment contracts in China’
Zheng, E., and Deakin, S. (2016) ‘State and knowledge production: industrial relations scholarship under Chinese capitalism’
Adams, Z., Bishop, L., Deakin, S., Fenwick, C., Martinsson, S, and Rusconi, G. (2015) ‘Labour regulation over time: new leximetric evidence’ , working paper, in progress.
Deakin, S., and Haldar, A. (2015) ‘How should India reform its labour laws?’ CBR Working Paper No. 469, March 2015.
Deakin, S., and Sarkar, P. (2015) ‘Does labour law increase youth and total unemployment? Analysis of a new dataset for 63 countries’ working paper, in progress.
Deakin, S., Adams, Z. and Bishop, L. (2015 ) CBR Labour Regulation Index for 117 countries.
Adams, Z., and Deakin, S. (2014) ‘Institutional solutions to inequality and precariousness in labour markets’ CBR Working Paper No. 463, September 2014.
Sheng, A., Mirakhor, A. and Singh, A. (2014) ‘Future of Islamic finance: theory and practice’, working paper, in progress.
Singh, A. (2014) ‘Competition, competition policy, competitiveness, globalisation and development’ Centre for Business Reseach Working Paper No. 460, June 2014.
Singh, A. (2014) ‘New developments in the world economy: a tough agenda for MICS?’ CBR Working Paper No. 461, June 2014; MICS Challenges, Seoul Debates 2013: 76-83.
Singh, A. and Singh, G. (2014) ‘Almost steady East Asian rise; implications for labour markets and income distribution’ CBR Working Paper No. 456, June 2014.
Singh, A. (2014) ‘Alice Amsden, an outstanding American political economist’, working paper, under review.
Deakin, S., Malmberg , J. and Sarkar, P. (2013) ‘Do labour laws increase inequality at the expense of higher unemployment? The experience of six OECD countries 1970-2010’ Centre for Business Research Working Paper Series WP No. 442, June.
Deakin, S. (2013) ‘Addressing labour market segmentation: the role of labour law’, working paper commissioned by the ILO, in progress.
Conference/Workshop papers
Borodina, S., Chen, D., Deakin, S., Hamilton, J., and Wang, B. (2017) ‘The rule of law and socio-economic development in Russia and China’ paper presented to the conference, From Rising Powers to Interdependent Futures, Final Conference of the ESRC Rising Powers and Interdependent Futures Research Programme, University of Manchester, 21-23 June.
Deakin, S. (2016) ‘The CBR-LRI dataset: methods, properties and potential of leximetric coding of labour laws’, presented to the 3rd. Conference of the Labour Law Research Network, University of Toronto, 26 June 2017.
Deakin, S., Marshall, S. and Pinto, S. (2016) ‘Labour laws, informality and development: comparing India and China’, presented to the conference Reimagining Labour Law for Development: Informal Work in the Global North and Global South, IALS, London, 15-16 September 2016, and to the 5th conference of the Regulating for Decent Work Network, Geneva, 5 July 2017.
Deakin, S. and Sarkar, P. (2016) ‘Does labour regulation improve income distribution at the cost of decreased employment and productivity?’, paper presented to the workshop on Labour Standards and Labour Law Reforms in the Rising Powers: Trends and Prospects in Public and Private Regulations, Homerton College, Cambridge, 5-6 September 2016.
Deakin, S. and Wang, B. (2016) ‘The effects of labour protection on productivity: evidence from the new Chinese Labour Law’, paper presented to the workshop on Labour Standards and Labour Law Reforms in the Rising Powers: Trends and Prospects in Public and Private Regulations, Homerton College, Cambridge, 5-6 September 2016.
Zheng, E. and Deakin, S. (2016) ‘Pricing labour capacity: the unexpected effects of formalizing employment contracts in China’,paper presented to the workshop on Labour Standards and Labour Law Reforms in the Rising Powers: Trends and Prospects in Public and Private Regulations, Homerton College, Cambridge, 5-6 September 2016.
Bastani, P., McGaughey, E., presentation to European Commission on employment law metrics, April 2016.
Deakin, S. (2016) presentation to OECD on employment law metrics, June 2016.
Adams, Z., Bishop, L., Deakin, S., Fenwick, C., Martinsson, S, and Rusconi, G. (2015) ‘Labour regulation over time: new leximetric evidence’ paper presented to the 4th conference of the Regulating for Decent Work network, ILO, Geneva, July 2015.
Deakin, S., and Sarkar, P. (2015) ‘Does labour law increase youth and total unemployment? Analysis of a new dataset for 63 countries’ presented to SASE Annual Conference, LSE, July 2015.
Deakin, S. (2014) ‘Labour law and inclusive development’, V.V Giri Memorial Lecture, Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics, New Delhi, December 2013.
Deakin, S., Fenwick, C. and Sarkar, P. (2014) ‘Labour law and inclusive development: the economic effects of industrial relations laws in middle-income countries’ paper presented to the Regulating for Decent Work conference, ILO, Geneva, July 2013.
Singh, A. attended the Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics, New Delhi, 16-18 December 2013. At this meeting, organised by the Institute of Applied Manpower Research (now the National Institute of Labour Economics Research and Development), Ajit gave the 2nd Gautam Mathur Memorial Lecture.
Singh, A. attended the National Conference ‘India’s Industrialisation: How to Overcome the Stagnation’, organised by the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development in association with the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi. Ajit gave a Special Address ‘Some Brief Notes on the State of the Indian Economy’.
Singh, A. presented a paper at the Stockholm International Conference on ‘Entrepreneurship and Regulation’entitled ‘Full Employment in Western Europe and the Regulatory Regime: An Institutional and Historical Analysis Together with a Commentary on Government as an Entrepreneur’. The paper is currently under review for publication.
Singh, A. was also a discussant of a paper ‘The Impact of Judiciary Efficiency on Entrepreneurship: A European Perspective’ by Allessandro Melcarne.
Singh, A. attended and spoke at the Marshall Society Conference at Cambridge University Union, January 2014.
Singh, A. attended the IPPR Round Table ‘Reforming British Innovation Policy’ June 2014.
Singh, A. attended the TUC seminar ‘Beyond Shareholder Value’ July 2014.
Singh, A. attended a workshop ‘New Perspectives on Industrial Policy for a Modern Britain, sponsored by Oxford University Press and the IPPR. February 2014
Deakin, S. (2013) ‘Do listed firms have different HRM from non-listed ones? Evidence from Workplace Employment Surveys’, presentation to Drucker Seminar, Nanjing Business School, 22 May.
Deakin, S. (2013) ‘Addressing labour market segmentation: the role of labour law’, presented to workshop on Labour Market Segmentation, ILO, Geneva, 25 April.
Deakin, S. (2012) ‘Legal perspectives on labour market segmentation’, presentation to workshop on Employment Quality in Segmented Labour Markets, ILO, Geneva, 10-11 December.
Deakin, S. (2012) ‘Labour law during and after neoliberalism’ presentation to conference on New Socio-Economic Paradigm, New Social Policies, Korea Labour Institute, Seoul, 19 October.
Books
Marshall, S. and Fenwick, C. (eds.) Labour Regulation and Development: Socio-Legal Perspectives (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar).
Datasets
Adams, Z, Bishop, L. and Deakin, S. (2017) ‘CBR Labour Regulation Index (Dataset of 117 Countries) April 2017’, in Deakin, S., Armour, J., & Siems, M. CBR Leximetric Datasets [updated] [Dataset] (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Apollo Data Repository).
Media
Deakin, S., Adams, Z., Bastani, P., Bishop, L., Sarkar, P., Wang, B. and Zheng, E. (2016) ‘Labour standards and labour law reforms in the rising powers: trends and prospects in public and private regulations’, CBR blogs and podcasts, September 2016.
Workshops attended
Deakin, S. (2012) attended workshop on the legal theory of finance, Columbia University, September.
Deakin, S. (2012) attended workshop on labour market indicators, ILO, Geneva, 10 October.
MPhil students supervised
Deakin, S. supervised Zoe Adams (PhD), ‘Towards a social ontology of the wage’
Deakin, S. supervised Ann Sofie Cloots (PhD), ‘Corporate social responsibility and the theory of the firm’.
News
View the latest news items about Professor Simon Deakin
19 August 2014: Social Europe Journal: Social policy will be critical to a sustainable EMU
8 March 2013: Financial Times: European Court’s Pringle judgment: good law, bad economics
15 February 2013: Progress Online: Rejoining the north European mainstream
11 February 2013: Financial Times: Shares for rights: why entrepreneurial firms need employment law too
Labour standards and labour law reforms in the Rising Powers: trends and prospects in public and private regulations
Professor Simon Deakin (November 2016)