Liberating labour: The New Zealand employment contracts act

Between 1984 and 1991, New Zealand converted its economic system from the most heavily regulated to the least regulated in OECD. The public sector was restructured to separate core administrative functions from government-owned production activities. The latter were corporatised, and many privatised. Product markets were deregulated and opened to international competition. Virtually all producer subsidies were abolished. Foreign trade was liberalised. Financial and capital markets were liberalised and foreign investment and immigration were made welcome. Labour markets were freed up, and workers were given the right to associate freely. In the process, a formerly inwardlooking, slow-moving economy with rising unemployment was turned into a flexible, globally competitive, high-growth economy with price stability, above-average job creation and small, effective government. New Zealand had long been known internationally for its system of centralised wage fixing and arbitration. Since 1991, however, it has become equally known for the new Employment Contracts Act (ECA), which was the capstone of the comprehensive economic and social reform programme. The ECA converted a centralist, corporatist industrial relations system into a decentralised 'market order. Freely negotiated labour contracts are now the basis for responsive, diverse labour markets. The effects of the Act can only be understood as an integral part of all-round liberalisation and New Zealand's reinvention of government. Previously antagonistic industrial relations have given way to cooperation between employers and workers, flexible adjustment to competitive conditions and an enhanced competitiveness of New Zealand workplaces and firms in a rapidly changing, internationally open economy. The new workplace relationship has led to profound attitude changes which have been inspired by the discipline of open, competitive product markets and the withdrawal of several labour-supply disincentives in the form of public-welfare supports. The main effect of the labour reforms has been to assist in making the supply-side of the New Zealand economy fairly price elastic. This has been underpinned by a price-level target for independent monetary policy and by fiscal downsizing, privatisation and public debt reduction. Employers and most employees have welcomed the freedoms under the new contracts system. In many sectors, productivity has risen steeply, reflecting more rational work practices. Managers are now able to effectively manage the human resources that firms hire. Real wages have risen, but slowly, reflecting productivity gains. Union membership and the number of union officials have fallen, as many workers now use bargaining agents to negotiate employment contracts. The frequency of strikes and lockouts has fallen considerably. The ECA and the other reforms have created a Kiwi job-creation machine, which has increased aggregate employment by over 10 percent during the long upswing of 1991- 95. It has nearly halved the overall unemployment rate within less than two years - in contrast to earlier upturns in the New Zealand cycle and the pattern in Australia. As labour shortages are emerging in the present cyclical upswing, many long-term unemployed, the young and Maori are being drawn back into gainful employment. Labour market deregulation has also increased the market premia for skills and reduced transaction costs in operating about markets. Most observers predict a period of sustained, inflation-free growth and further drops in unemployment (March 1995: 6.6%) as New Zealand - despite a strengthening currency - is now seen as an internationally highly competitive exporter and an attractive location to internationally mobile capital and enterprise.

Integration through monetary union: A sceptical view

After several years of unrest in the international monetary scene, the governments of the EEC countries agreed in December 1969 at The Hague to place monetary union in Europe on the agenda. Behind this agreement, however, resides a wide range of differences of opinion, which are partly expressed in the host of plans for European monetary integration that have been published in recent months. One essential divergency of opinion is, whether one should first peg intra-Community exchange rates or whether one should first try to harmonize policies and wait till stable exchange rates come about almost by themselves. A premature fixing of exchange rates would lead to — unwanted waves of imported inflation in the more stable countries and to imported deflation and unemployment in the less stable countries, — regional problems in those parts of the EEC that have had a tradition of wage push, and the danger of undue industrial concentration in those parts that have a tradition , of relatively high labour discipline, and — the necessity for sizeable intra-EEC fiscal transfers in favour of cost-push regions to counterbalance the negative effects of high wage costs. These transfers might easily overstress the European solidarity, that is the readiness to pay, of the more stable national regions. These problems appear to be bigger if one thinks of an enlarged EEC. Contrary to the costs and risks of premature exchange rate fixing, the benefits are, it seems, frequently overestimated: As long as the free flow of goods and capital is guaranteed (and not impaired in defense of outdated fixed parities, as has often been the case in the past) most of the beneficial economic integration effects are secured. To avoid a setback in integration - similar to the recent setback due to the premature fixing of common agricultural prices - it therefore seems advisable not to force together divergent underlying trends, but rather to implement elastic devices for a harmonious growing-together of the various European economies. --

Spatio-temporal distribution of induced seismicity in flooded mines in the Ruhr area - interpretation by geomechanical numerical modelling

Induced seismicity during mine flooding is the focus of the FloodRisk project. One of the study areas is the Ruhr area, which is characterised by centuries of intensive coal mining. After the closure of the last mines, controlled flooding began. Within the FloodRisk project, we investigate ground uplift, stress changes due to pore pressure changes and the reactivation potential of faults to explain induced seismicity. We concentrate on the seismicity monitoring and geomechanics of the Haus Aden catchment, for which we investigate the relationship between water rise, tectonic stress and induced seismicity. The monitoring of seismicity is based on a network of up to 30 short-period seismic stations installed by the Ruhr University in the area of the former "Bergwerk Ost", which exhibited the highest seismicity in the Ruhr area during active mining. The stations cover an area of about 160 km 2 and are spaced between 0.5 and 3.5 km apart. They allow continuous monitoring of seismicity. Since 2019, more than 2200 induced events have been localised. A prerequisite for the interpretation of seismicity is a detailed localisation of the events. The relative localisation of the induced earthquakes has significantly reduced the location uncertainty and allowed the spatial and temporal evolution of earthquake clusters due to the rise in mine water levels to be studied. The resulting pattern of seismicity was compared with known underground structures. This comparison indicates that most of the events occur approximately 300 m below the main pillars between the longwall panels in the already flooded deepest level of the mine. A generic FE numerical model was developed for a section of the Heinrich Robert mine based on the geometry of the pillars, shafts and longwall panels. The stress data for model calibration are based on a compilation of the regional stress state in the eastern Ruhr area. For this purpose, hydraulic fracture tests carried out in the mines to minimise rock bursts were re-evaluated and compared with stress orientations derived from independent sources such as borehole fractures and earthquake source mechanisms. Using this 3D numerical approach, we conclude that there is increased vertical stress within and below the pillars as a result of stress arching. As the horizontal stress changes below the mine levels are small, this results in increasing differential stresses that can lead to the observed events below the mine level when the mine water level rises

Standardised empirical dispersal kernels emphasise the pervasiveness of long‐distance dispersal in European birds

1. Dispersal is a key life-history trait for most species and is essential to ensure connectivity and gene flow between populations and facilitate population viability in variable environments. Despite the increasing importance of range shifts due to global change, dispersal has proved difficult to quantify, limiting empirical understanding of this phenotypic trait and wider synthesis. 2. Here, we introduce a statistical framework to estimate standardised dispersal kernels from biased data. Based on this, we compare empirical dispersal kernels for European breeding birds considering age (average dispersal; natal, before first breeding; and breeding dispersal, between subsequent breeding attempts) and sex (females and males) and test whether different dispersal properties are phylogenetically conserved. 3. We standardised and analysed data from an extensive volunteer-based bird ring-recoveries database in Europe (EURING) by accounting for biases related to different censoring thresholds in reporting between countries and to migratory movements. Then, we fitted four widely used probability density functions in a Bayesian framework to compare and provide the best statistical descriptions of the different age and sex-specific dispersal kernels for each bird species. 4. The dispersal movements of the 234 European bird species analysed were statistically best explained by heavy-tailed kernels, meaning that while most individuals disperse over short distances, long-distance dispersal is a prevalent phenomenon in almost all bird species. The phylogenetic signal in both median and long dispersal distances estimated from the best-fitted kernel was low (Pagel's λ 0.7) when comparing dispersal distance estimates for fat-tailed dispersal kernels. As expected in birds, natal dispersal was on average 5 km greater than breeding dispersal, but sex-biased dispersal was not detected. 5. Our robust analytical framework allows sound use of widely available mark-recapture data in standardised dispersal estimates. We found strong evidence that long-distance dispersal is common among European breeding bird species and across life stages. The dispersal estimates offer a first guide to selecting appropriate dispersal kernels in range expansion studies and provide new avenues to improve our understanding of the mechanisms and rules underlying dispersal events.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659Peer Reviewe

GDPR Privacy Policies in CLAUDETTE: Challenges of Omission, Context and Multilingualism

The latest developments in natural language processing and machine learning have created new opportunities in legal text analysis. In particular, we look at the texts of online privacy policies after the implementation of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We analyse 32 privacy policies to design a methodology for automated detection and assessment of compliance of these documents. Preliminary results confirm the pressing issues with current privacy policies and the beneficial use of this approach in empowering consumers in making more informed decisions. However, we also encountered several serious issues in the process. This paper introduces the challenges through concrete examples of context dependence, omission of information, and multilingualism

Drug-Induced Liver Injury during Antidepressant Treatment: Results of AMSP, a Drug Surveillance Program

Background: Drug-induced liver injury is a common cause of liver damage and the most frequent reason for withdrawal of a drug in the United States. The symptoms of drug-induced liver damage are extremely diverse, with some patients remaining asymptomatic. Methods: This observational study is based on data of Arzneimittelsicherheit in der Psychiatrie, a multicenter drug surveillance program in German-speaking countries (Austria, Germany, and Switzerland) recording severe drug reactions in psychiatric inpatients. Of 184 234 psychiatric inpatients treated with antidepressants between 1993 and 2011 in 80 psychiatric hospitals, 149 cases of drug-induced liver injury (0.08%) were reported. Results: The study revealed that incidence rates of drug-induced liver injury were highest during treatment with mianserine (0.36%), agomelatine (0.33%), and clomipramine (0.23%). The lowest probability of drug-induced liver injury occurred during treatment with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors ([0.03%), especially escitalopram [0.01%], citalopram [0.02%], and fluoxetine [0.02%]). The most common clinical symptoms were nausea, fatigue, loss of appetite, and abdominal pain. In contrast to previous findings, the dosage at the timepoint when DILI occurred was higher in 7 of 9 substances than the median overall dosage. Regarding liver enzymes, duloxetine and clomipramine were associated with increased glutamat-pyruvat-transaminase and glutamat-oxalat-transaminase values, while mirtazapine hardly increased enzyme values. By contrast, duloxetine performed best in terms of gamma-glutamyl-transferase values, and trimipramine, clomipramine, and venlafaxine performed worst. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are less likely than the other antidepressants, examined in this study, to precipitate drug-induced liver injury, especially in patients with preknown liver dysfunction