The Experts below are selected from a list of 19104 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Michael Neugart - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Lobbying and dismissal dispute resolution systems
International Review of Law and Economics, 2015Co-Authors: Laszlo Goerke, Michael NeugartAbstract:Previous studies of dismissal protection have largely been based on the analysis of the rules on the books. However, actual outcomes often rely on the involvement of Courts. Our model takes this feature into account and explains how relative lobbying power of unions and employer associations in the legislature and judicial realm, and characteristics of Labor Court systems shape Labor Court activity and affect payoffs. Our model predicts that (a) as employer associations become stronger, Court activity increases, and firms’ costs and workers’ payoffs decrease; (b) higher Court costs tend to reduce the extent of Labor Court disputes and may, therefore, actually reduce the cost of judicial involvement; (c) Court systems that can be lobbied more effectively make reliance on Courts less attractive for the trade union if it is the stronger party.
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Lobbying and dismissal dispute resolution systems
2015Co-Authors: Laszlo Goerke, Michael NeugartAbstract:Previous studies of dismissal protection have largely been based on the analysis of the rules on the books. However, actual outcomes often rely on the involvement of Courts. Our model takes this feature into account and explains how relative lobbying power of unions and employer associations in the legislature and judicial realm, and characteristics of Labor Court systems shape Labor Court activity and affect payoffs. Our model predicts that (a) as employer associations become stronger, Court activity increases, and firms’ costs and workers’ payoffs decrease; (b) higher Court costs tend to reduce the extent of Labor Court disputes and may, therefore, actually reduce the cost of judicial involvement; (c) Court systems that can be lobbied more effectively make reliance on Courts less attractive for the trade union if it is the stronger party. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
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How German Labor Courts Decide: An Econometric Case Study
German Economic Review, 2012Co-Authors: Helge Berger, Michael NeugartAbstract:Courts are an important element in the institutional framework of Labor markets, often determining the actual degree of employment protection. German Labor Courts provide a vivid example in this regard. However, we know relatively little about actual Court behavior. A unique data set on German Labor Court verdicts reveals that social and other criteria like employee characteristics, the type of job, local Labor market conditions, and Court composition influence Court decisions. At least as striking is that workers’ chances to win depend on where and when their cases are filed generating considerable ex-ante uncertainty about outcomes.
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Labor Courts, nomination bias, and unemployment in Germany
European Journal of Political Economy, 2011Co-Authors: Helge Berger, Michael NeugartAbstract:Labor Courts play an important role in determining the effective level of Labor market regulation in Germany, but their application of law may not be even-handed. Based on a simple theoretical model and a new panel data set, we identify a nomination bias in Labor Court activity - that is, Court activity varies systematically with the political leaning of the government that has appointed judges. In an extension, we find a significant positive relation between Labor Court activity and unemployment, even after controlling for the endogeneity of Court activity. The results have potentially important policy implications regarding the independence of the judiciary and Labor market reforms.
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Labor Courts, nomination bias and unemployment in Germany
2011Co-Authors: Helge Berger, Michael NeugartAbstract:Labor Courts play an important role in determining the effective level of Labor market regulation in Germany, but their application of law may not be even-handed. Based on a simple theoretical model and a new panel data set, we identify a nomination bias in Labor Court activity - that is, Court activity varies systematically with the political leaning of the government that has appointed judges. In an extension, we find a significant positive relation between Labor Court activity and unemployment, even after controlling for the endogeneity of Court activity. The results have potentially important policy implications regarding the independence of the judiciary and Labor market reforms. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Helge Berger - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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How German Labor Courts Decide: An Econometric Case Study
German Economic Review, 2012Co-Authors: Helge Berger, Michael NeugartAbstract:Courts are an important element in the institutional framework of Labor markets, often determining the actual degree of employment protection. German Labor Courts provide a vivid example in this regard. However, we know relatively little about actual Court behavior. A unique data set on German Labor Court verdicts reveals that social and other criteria like employee characteristics, the type of job, local Labor market conditions, and Court composition influence Court decisions. At least as striking is that workers’ chances to win depend on where and when their cases are filed generating considerable ex-ante uncertainty about outcomes.
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Labor Courts, nomination bias, and unemployment in Germany
European Journal of Political Economy, 2011Co-Authors: Helge Berger, Michael NeugartAbstract:Labor Courts play an important role in determining the effective level of Labor market regulation in Germany, but their application of law may not be even-handed. Based on a simple theoretical model and a new panel data set, we identify a nomination bias in Labor Court activity - that is, Court activity varies systematically with the political leaning of the government that has appointed judges. In an extension, we find a significant positive relation between Labor Court activity and unemployment, even after controlling for the endogeneity of Court activity. The results have potentially important policy implications regarding the independence of the judiciary and Labor market reforms.
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Labor Courts, nomination bias and unemployment in Germany
2011Co-Authors: Helge Berger, Michael NeugartAbstract:Labor Courts play an important role in determining the effective level of Labor market regulation in Germany, but their application of law may not be even-handed. Based on a simple theoretical model and a new panel data set, we identify a nomination bias in Labor Court activity - that is, Court activity varies systematically with the political leaning of the government that has appointed judges. In an extension, we find a significant positive relation between Labor Court activity and unemployment, even after controlling for the endogeneity of Court activity. The results have potentially important policy implications regarding the independence of the judiciary and Labor market reforms. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Joyce Sadka - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Information and Bargaining through Agents: Experimental Evidence from Mexico’s Labor Courts
2018Co-Authors: Joyce Sadka, Enrique Seira, Christopher WoodruffAbstract:While observers agree that Courts function poorly in developing countries, a lack of data has limited our understanding of the causes of malfunction. We combine data from administrative records on severance cases filed in the Mexico City Labor Court with interventions that provide information to parties in randomly selected cases on predicted case outcomes and conciliation services. We first use the data to document a set of stylized facts about the functioning of the Court. The interventions nearly double the overall settlement rate, but only when the plaintiff herself is present to receive the information directly. Administrative records from six months after the treatment indicate that the treatment effects remain unchanged over that period, even though an additional one in three cases in the control group settle in that period. The post-treatment results indicate that lawyers do not convey the information provided in the intervention to their clients. A simple analytic framework rationalizes the experimental results. Analysis of settlements induced by the interventions suggests that the provision of information is welfare-improving for the plaintiffs. The experimental results replicate over two phases conducted in different sub-Courts, showing robustness.
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The Plaintiff's Role in Enforcing a Court Ruling: Evidence from a Labor Court in Mexico
2011Co-Authors: David S. Kaplan, Joyce SadkaAbstract:We analyze the outcomes of 332 cases from a Labor Court in Mexico in which a judge awarded money to a plaintiff who claimed to have been fired by a firm without cause. The judgments were enforced in only 40% of the cases. A plaintiff may try to enforce a judgment by petitioning the Court to seize the firm's assets when the firm refuses to pay. Thirty eight percent of the enforced judgments required at least one seizure attempt. We estimate the parameters of post judgment games in which the worker does not know if a seizure attempt would ultimately succeed and show that these models explain the data well. We then simulate the effects of a policy that reduces worker costs of a seizure attempt. We find that this policy would increase the probability of enforcement, either by increasing the probability that the worker attempts an asset seizure or by inducing firms to pay voluntarily to avoid such seizure attempts. However, reducing worker costs of seizure attempts can only have a modest effect on enforcement probabilities because a high percentage of firms are able to avoid payment in spite of worker efforts to force collection.
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The effects of exaggeration in Labor lawsuits in Mexico
2009Co-Authors: Joyce Sadka, Alexander Gotthard, David S. KaplanAbstract:This paper uses data gathered by the authors from the archives of a local Labor Court in the State of Mexico to study the effects of overtime claims on lawsuit outcomes. Labor law in Mexico dictates that Labor Courts must record the amounts of compensation in all pre-trial settlements. This allows us to measure the impact of strategies chosen by the parties on all lawsuit outcomes, including settlement. In particular, this paper focuses on the plaintiff (employee)’s choice of overtime claim as part of her total claim. Overtime claims are generally unverifiable, particularly because firms that are sued in this Court tend to be small or medium-sized firms that do not have formal time-keeping procedures. In addition, Labor jurisprudence indicates that judges in Labor Courts should evaluate unverified overtime claims conservatively, that is they should not recognize unreasonable amounts of overtime. We find that these overtime claims, although often large enough to be considered unreasonable, do affect Court rulings, making them more favorable to workers. In addition, in cases that settle, workers whose cases are handled by private lawyers tend to receive higher payments as their claims contain relatively more overtime, while workers whose cases are handled by public lawyers tend to receive lower payments as their claims contain relatively more overtime. This may indicate that private and public lawyers choose very different strategies in relation to the amount of overtime claimed, but may also reflect the selection effect of lawyer type, that is the fact that cases going to public lawyers tend to be different, in both observable and unobservable ways, from cases going to private lawyers.
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Enforceability Of Labor Law : Evidence From A Labor Court In Mexico - Enforceability of Labor law : evidence from a Labor Court in Mexico
Policy Research Working Papers, 2008Co-Authors: David S. Kaplan, Joyce SadkaAbstract:The authors analyze lawsuits involving publicly-appointed lawyers in a Labor Court in Mexico to study how a rigid law is enforced. They show that, even after a judge has awarded something to a worker alleging unjust dismissal, the award goes uncollected 56 percent of the time. Workers who are dismissed after working more than seven years, however, do not leave these awards uncollected because their legally-mandated severance payments are larger. A simple theoretical model is used to generate predictions on how lawsuit outcomes should depend on the information available to the worker and on the worker's cost of collecting an award after trial, both of which are determined in part by the worker's lawyer. Differences in outcomes across lawyers are consistent with the hypothesis that firms take advantage both of workers who are poorly informed and of workers who find it more costly to collect an award after winning at trial.
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enforceability of Labor law evidence from a Labor Court in mexico
Berkeley Program in Law & Economics, 2008Co-Authors: David S. Kaplan, Joyce SadkaAbstract:The authors analyze lawsuits involving publicly-appointed lawyers in a Labor Court in Mexico to study how a rigid law is enforced. They show that, even after a judge has awarded something to a worker alleging unjust dismissal, the award goes uncollected 56 percent of the time. Workers who are dismissed after working more than seven years, however, do not leave these awards uncollected because their legally-mandated severance payments are larger. A simple theoretical model is used to generate predictions on how lawsuit outcomes should depend on the information available to the worker and on the worker's cost of collecting an award after trial, both of which are determined in part by the worker's lawyer. Differences in outcomes across lawyers are consistent with the hypothesis that firms take advantage both of workers who are poorly informed and of workers who find it more costly to collect an award after winning at trial.
Ronen Perry - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Imbalances of Power in ADR: The Impact of Representation and Dispute Resolution Method on Case Outcomes
Law & Social Inquiry, 2014Co-Authors: Oren Gazal-ayal, Ronen PerryAbstract:In recent decades, Alternative Dispute Resolution processes have gained worldwide recognition, a growing role in legal practice, and academic attention. Despite their professed advantages they have also faced fierce opposition. In a seminal article, Owen Fiss argued that ADR exacerbates imbalances of power between the parties. But while the theoretical argument has been widely discussed and developed in academic literature, empirical evidence has remained scant. This Article purports to bridge the gap. It empirically examines the impact of two seemingly relevant factors in inherently imbalanced legal disputes: representation and dispute resolution method. Arguably, professional representation of weaker parties may reduce the effects of inequality, whereas less formal, transparent and adjudicatory processes may exacerbate them.The Article focuses on small claims settlement conferences, using the Israeli Labor Courts system as a test case. It examines the impact of representation on the outcome of settlement conferences, and the effect of using settlement conferences on the outcome of the case itself. Our dataset is based on more than three hundred small claims filed by employees against their employers in the Haifa Labor Court. The data collected with regard to each case consisted of information about the representation of each party (self-representation, representation by a lawyer who does not specialize in employment law, and representation by a specialist in the field), the outcome of the case (a successful settlement conference, a Court facilitated settlement or a judicial decision following full trial), and the amount obtained by the plaintiff (compared to the amount claimed).The most salient and interesting findings are that representation increases the probability of a successful settlement conference, but reduces the ratio between the amount obtained by the plaintiff and the sum claimed. Perhaps more importantly, the more formal the process, the greater the proportion of the claim won by the plaintiff: the ratio between the sum obtained by the plaintiff and the sum claimed in settlement conferences is smaller than in judge-facilitated settlements, and smaller still than in full trials.
David S. Kaplan - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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The Plaintiff's Role in Enforcing a Court Ruling: Evidence from a Labor Court in Mexico
2011Co-Authors: David S. Kaplan, Joyce SadkaAbstract:We analyze the outcomes of 332 cases from a Labor Court in Mexico in which a judge awarded money to a plaintiff who claimed to have been fired by a firm without cause. The judgments were enforced in only 40% of the cases. A plaintiff may try to enforce a judgment by petitioning the Court to seize the firm's assets when the firm refuses to pay. Thirty eight percent of the enforced judgments required at least one seizure attempt. We estimate the parameters of post judgment games in which the worker does not know if a seizure attempt would ultimately succeed and show that these models explain the data well. We then simulate the effects of a policy that reduces worker costs of a seizure attempt. We find that this policy would increase the probability of enforcement, either by increasing the probability that the worker attempts an asset seizure or by inducing firms to pay voluntarily to avoid such seizure attempts. However, reducing worker costs of seizure attempts can only have a modest effect on enforcement probabilities because a high percentage of firms are able to avoid payment in spite of worker efforts to force collection.
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The effects of exaggeration in Labor lawsuits in Mexico
2009Co-Authors: Joyce Sadka, Alexander Gotthard, David S. KaplanAbstract:This paper uses data gathered by the authors from the archives of a local Labor Court in the State of Mexico to study the effects of overtime claims on lawsuit outcomes. Labor law in Mexico dictates that Labor Courts must record the amounts of compensation in all pre-trial settlements. This allows us to measure the impact of strategies chosen by the parties on all lawsuit outcomes, including settlement. In particular, this paper focuses on the plaintiff (employee)’s choice of overtime claim as part of her total claim. Overtime claims are generally unverifiable, particularly because firms that are sued in this Court tend to be small or medium-sized firms that do not have formal time-keeping procedures. In addition, Labor jurisprudence indicates that judges in Labor Courts should evaluate unverified overtime claims conservatively, that is they should not recognize unreasonable amounts of overtime. We find that these overtime claims, although often large enough to be considered unreasonable, do affect Court rulings, making them more favorable to workers. In addition, in cases that settle, workers whose cases are handled by private lawyers tend to receive higher payments as their claims contain relatively more overtime, while workers whose cases are handled by public lawyers tend to receive lower payments as their claims contain relatively more overtime. This may indicate that private and public lawyers choose very different strategies in relation to the amount of overtime claimed, but may also reflect the selection effect of lawyer type, that is the fact that cases going to public lawyers tend to be different, in both observable and unobservable ways, from cases going to private lawyers.
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Enforceability Of Labor Law : Evidence From A Labor Court In Mexico - Enforceability of Labor law : evidence from a Labor Court in Mexico
Policy Research Working Papers, 2008Co-Authors: David S. Kaplan, Joyce SadkaAbstract:The authors analyze lawsuits involving publicly-appointed lawyers in a Labor Court in Mexico to study how a rigid law is enforced. They show that, even after a judge has awarded something to a worker alleging unjust dismissal, the award goes uncollected 56 percent of the time. Workers who are dismissed after working more than seven years, however, do not leave these awards uncollected because their legally-mandated severance payments are larger. A simple theoretical model is used to generate predictions on how lawsuit outcomes should depend on the information available to the worker and on the worker's cost of collecting an award after trial, both of which are determined in part by the worker's lawyer. Differences in outcomes across lawyers are consistent with the hypothesis that firms take advantage both of workers who are poorly informed and of workers who find it more costly to collect an award after winning at trial.
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enforceability of Labor law evidence from a Labor Court in mexico
Berkeley Program in Law & Economics, 2008Co-Authors: David S. Kaplan, Joyce SadkaAbstract:The authors analyze lawsuits involving publicly-appointed lawyers in a Labor Court in Mexico to study how a rigid law is enforced. They show that, even after a judge has awarded something to a worker alleging unjust dismissal, the award goes uncollected 56 percent of the time. Workers who are dismissed after working more than seven years, however, do not leave these awards uncollected because their legally-mandated severance payments are larger. A simple theoretical model is used to generate predictions on how lawsuit outcomes should depend on the information available to the worker and on the worker's cost of collecting an award after trial, both of which are determined in part by the worker's lawyer. Differences in outcomes across lawyers are consistent with the hypothesis that firms take advantage both of workers who are poorly informed and of workers who find it more costly to collect an award after winning at trial.
