View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Research Papers in Economics THE EVOLUTION OF LABOUR LAW: CALIBRATING AND COMPARING REGULATORY REGIMES Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge Working Paper No. 352 by Simon Deakin Centre for Business Research University of Cambridge Judge Business School Building Trumpington Street Cambridge CB2 1AG
[email protected] Priya Lele Ashursts 5 Broadwalk House Appold Street UK London EC2A 2HA
[email protected] Mathias Siems School of Law University of Edinburgh Old College South Bridge Edinburgh EH8 9YL
[email protected] September 2007 This Working Paper forms part of the CBR Research Programme on Corporate Governance Abstract We present evidence on the evolution of labour law in five countries (the UK, USA, Germany, France and India) using a newly-created dataset which measures legal change over time. The results cast light on the claim that legal origin, or the influence of common law and civil law regulatory styles, affects the content of labour law regimes. We find some divergence between common law and civil law countries at the aggregate level but a more complex picture when the index is decomposed so as to identify changes in specific areas of labour law. We discuss the potential significance of this relatively new approach to the measurement of law for understanding the forces at work in the evolution of labour law. JEL Codes: J53, K31 Keywords: labour law, legal origin Acknowledgements The work reported here was carried out at the Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, and supported by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council’s World Finance and Economy Programme.