The impact of labour market deregulation: lessons from the "Kiwi" and "Polder" models

Unemployment remains a major economic and social problem in many developed economies. This paper provides theoretical and empirical perspectives on the impact of labour market deregulation as a means of combatting unemployment and of enhancing competitive wage determination. The paper focusses specifically on The Netherlands and New Zealand, two small open economies in which unemployment rates reduced to half their respective previous peaks during the last decade. The labour market policies that contributed to this outcome are referred to as the "Polder" model and the "Kiwi" model respectively. Despite some similarities, there are significant differences between the models. These are highlighted in the paper. Methodological issues regarding empirical tests of the impact of labour market deregulation measures are also addressed. The paper concludes with a survey of remaining research issues.

Recent Labour Market Reforms: A Comparison of the 'Kiwi' and 'Polder' Models

Unemployment remains a major economic and social problem in many developed economies. This paper is concerned with the impact of labour market reform as a means of combatting unemployment and of enhancing competitive wage determination. The paper focuses specifically on The Netherlands and New Zealand, two small open economies in which unemployment rates reduced to close to half of their respective post-1980 peaks, following reforms. The labour market policies that contributed to these outcomes are referred to as the 'Polder' model and the 'Kiwi' model respectively. Despite some similarities, there are significant differences between these models. These are highlighted in the paper. It is argued that the effects of deregulation are hard to separate out from other influences on the labour market. The success of the deregulation policies is easily overstated by a selective use of labour market indicators, or by making trough to peak comparisons along the business cycle

Nomadic firms in a globalizing economy: A comparative study

The location patterns of modern firms appear to exhibit floating patternswith a tendency towards footlooseness. The spatial-economic dynamics - sometimes across teh border - of firms is encapsulated in the term 'nomadic firms'. This paper adresses the issue of nomadic behaviour of firms against the background of globalisation trends. After a critical discussion of globalisation phenomena and a review of the literature on nomadic entrepreneurial behaviour, the paper sets out t formaulate a series of relevant hypotheses of spatial relocation behaviour of international firms in a globalizing network economy. The analytical framework is tested by means of interviews among actual or potential nomadic firms, in both the Netherlands and abroad. Infrastructure quality and geographical accessibility appear to play an important role, but also opportunity seeking behaviour has a prominent place in nomadic behaviour. The comparitive study among the various firms located in various countries, which aims to identify the critical relocation factors, is based on principles of modern meta-analysis.

Retail Investments by Real Estate Investment Trusts

This exploratory paper addresses the driving forces of real estate investment trusts (REITs). Aftera concise overview of the history of REITs in the USA, the success conditions of retail REITsare addressed by investigating the relationship between local retail rents and a set of localexplanatory factors. A sequential regression method is deployed to identify the most prominent,statistically significant variables and to create a ranking of most promising metropolitan areasfrom an investor's perspective

Vacancies and residential search in an empirical equilibrium search model

As is well known housing has a unique set of characteristics which interact to cause the operation of the housing market to be significantly different from that of other markets. On the demand side individuals have to search for vacancies and its characteristics. Due to the high dimensionality of housing considerable search costs are involved. On the supply side, complicated interactions exist in the housing market whereby frictions occur frequently. In the labour market similar behaviour has been explained with search and matching models, where vacancies and turnovers are explicitly considered. Wheaton (1990) remarks that these search and matching models from the labour market would seem particularly applicable to housing. In this paper we formulate an equilibrium search model of the housing market that deals with search and prices. We beleive that an equilibrium searchmodel could be an important step forward into the analysis of vacancies and residential search. Using this framework we formulate an empirical model for the Dutch housing market.

Nomadic firms in a globalizing economy: A comparative study

The location patterns of modern firms appear to exhibit floating patternswith a tendency towards footlooseness. The spatial-economic dynamics - sometimes across teh border - of firms is encapsulated in the term 'nomadic firms'. This paper adresses the issue of nomadic behaviour of firms against the background of globalisation trends. After a critical discussion of globalisation phenomena and a review of the literature on nomadic entrepreneurial behaviour, the paper sets out t formaulate a series of relevant hypotheses of spatial relocation behaviour of international firms in a globalizing network economy. The analytical framework is tested by means of interviews among actual or potential nomadic firms, in both the Netherlands and abroad. Infrastructure quality and geographical accessibility appear to play an important role, but also opportunity seeking behaviour has a prominent place in nomadic behaviour. The comparitive study among the various firms located in various countries, which aims to identify the critical relocation factors, is based on principles of modern meta-analysis