The classical labour theory of value generates two well-known contradictions: Ricardo’s problem of an invariable measure of value and Marx’s transformation problem. I show that both contradictions derive from a category-mistake of supposing that technical costs and total costs are of the same logical type. This category-mistake is the underlying cause of the almost two hundred year history of t...

We critically consider the conventional belief that the attractiveness of international outsourcing lies in cheaper labour costs overseas and that it offers a means to ‘escape’ the power of unions. We develop an oligopoly model in which firms facing unionised domestic labour market choose between producing an intermediate in-house or outsourcing it to a non-unionised foreign supplier that makes...

The increasing precariousness of work, its concentration among vulnerable groups, and the divide between secure, primary sector workers and the expendable army of casual and contract labour is well documented. Much less attention has been directed to the other side of precariousness – the practices that increase the costs of job loss for workers in the primary labour market. In an era of low of...

According to the “smooth adjustment hypothesis”, the labour-market adjustment costs entailed by trade liberalisation are lower if trade expansion is intra-industry rather than interindustry in nature. In this paper, we study the link between trade and labour market changes in UK manufacturing industries during the 1980s. We use industry-level measures of unemployment duration and wage variabili...

A multi-objective simulated annealing (MOSA) algorithm is described in this chapter to solve a real maintenance workforce scheduling problem (MWSP) aimed at simultaneously minimizing the workforce cost and maximizing the equipment availability. Heavy industry maintenance facilities at aircraft service centres, railroad yards and steel companies must contend with scheduling Preventive Maintenanc...

Labour Turnover and Labour Productivity in a Retail Organization We study the impact of labour turnover on labour productivity using a panel dataset of 347 shops belonging to a large UK clothing retailer over1995-1999. For the within-shop link – holding constant the shop’s permanent characteristics – we observe an inverted U-shape effect of labour turnover on productivity. The productivity-maxi...

This paper develops a model of intellectual labor augmentation to explain both the marriage wage premium and educational assortative mating. We suggest that husbands and wives are complementary factors of production where a spouse’s education and skills augment their partner’s productivity and earnings potential. We test this proposition using data from the 2000 U.S. Census of Population and th...

This article argues that patriarchy expands capitalist accumulation by increasing surplus labour-time, lowering production costs, and dividing controlling workers. Consequently, increases profits, manages intra-capitalist competition, impedes labour’s capacity to organise. Analysing how it does so can inform counter-strategies. Based on fieldwork in two West Java villages, the analyses four for...

National labour market institutions interact across national boundaries when product markets are global. Labour market policies can thus entail spill-overs, which suggest that there are benefits from international policy coordination. This paper studies the effects of wage subsidies in an international duopoly model with unionized labour markets. The authors document both positive and negative ...