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The received view is that, across countries and time, strike dimensions trace an empirical regularity. The incidence and duration of contract strikes move in opposite directions over the business cycle: incidence is procyclical and duration countercyclical. The Canadian experience in the interwar years was different. Strike incidence was independent of the business cycle and strike durations fell steadily over the period. A distinct pattern emerged. The 1920s saw a decline in strike activity and steady losses for workers; in the 1930s strike activity gained momentum and there were more worker wins. Our interpretation of this extraordinary episode is based on a new data set collected for the period 1920 to 1939. We evaluate strikes in the context of a war-of-attrition model and estimate the probability of strike outcomes (success, failure, or compromise) and capitulation times (for firms and workers) as functions of firm and striker characteristics. We find that workers capitulated first in the 1920s because firms used replacement workers as part of a larger strategy to break the union movement. In the 1930s, it was firms' turn to capitulate first because they had cut back on resources to fight strikes, even as workers became more belligerent.

Globalisation was a fact of life in Europe before 1913, but as trade shares increased, so did wage and employment instability. Faced by growing pressure from workers, national authorities established labour compacts – a packet of labour market regulations and social insurance programmes – that defended workers against the risks they faced in and outside the factory. The labour compact provided workers with insurance because it compressed wage structures. We construct an index of labour market regulations and social insurance schemes for seventeen European countries and find that the extent of the labour compact varied with the level of openness. We conclude that the labour compact gave workers reason to support free trade because it protected them from external risk. Contrary to the received view, globalisation before 1913 was compatible with state intervention. Our findings are consistent with Rodrik's and Agell's for the period after 1945.

This article constructs new measures of worktime for Europe, North America, and Australia, 1870–1913. Great Britain began with the shortest work year and Belgium the longest. By 1913 certain continental countries approached British worktimes, and, consistent with recent findings on real wages, annual hours in Old and New Worlds had converged. Although globalization did not lead to a race to the bottom of worktimes, there is only partial evidence of a race to the top. National work routines, the outcome of different legal, labor, and political histories, mediated relations between hours and income.

This framework seems to mesh with the economic history of Canada's two central provinces, Ontario and Quebec, around the mid-twentieth century. Quebec was clearly the labour-abundant province, Ontario the capital-abundant region. Many labour reforms were first introduced in Ontario because it was the wealthier region. Since the two regions remained relatively large trading partners - as they were as long as tariffs protected Canadian industry - Quebec had an incentive to match Ontario's labour standards. ( 16) Thus, as long as Canada had effective tariff protection, producers and workers in the export industries in both regions benefited from rising labour standards, while consumers all across the country suffered, a result that was clearly not in the general interest. Since there was an incentive to overprotect, Ottawa's intervention in this area did not come up against provincial antagonism. In fact, sub-national authorities would have welcomed a central authority to coordinate standards. Richard Block and Karen Roberts (2000) provide the most exhaustive study of labour standards as they were in the late 1990s. Their results show a more consistent pattern. They divide provincial, territorial and federal labour standards for 1998 into nine categories reproduced in Table 3. ( 19) Each category is itself a composite of several indicators. Thus the category "paid time off" comprises, but is not restricted to, the variables found in Table 2. The calculation of the index value for each category followed a two-step procedure. First, individual provisions or labour standards in each category were given an index value that was greater the higher the level of employee protection; secondly, each provision was given a weight to represent its importance in its category. ( 20) There is some degree of arbitrariness in all this but, given the large number of standards included in the exercise, it would be expected that errors of commission would cancel out. The first two columns of Table 4 report the sum of the index values (nine labour standards and employment insurance) and the sum of the index values after each provision was deflated by an estimate of coverage. The higher the value, the greater the degree of labour protection. The last column of Table 4 gives the ranking of labour protection of each province and territory in North America in descending order. ( 21 ) Jurisdiction Minimum wage Over-time Paid time off Worker's compensation Federal 4.28 10.00 6.27 6.77 Alberta 1.52 (12) 7.28 (7) 7.61 (2) 6.69 (10) British Columbia 7.04 (1) 10.00 (1) 6.27 (4) 8.58 (3) Manitoba 2.44 (6) 10.00 (1) 5.89 (8) 6.54 (11) New Brunswick 2.44 (6) 3.21 (12) 5.38 (11) 5.99 (12) Newfoundland 2.44 (6) 4.57 (11) 5.53 (10) 7.25 (9) North West Territories 6.12 (3) 10.00 (1) 6.27 (4) 8.82 (1) Nova Scotia 2.44 (6) 1.85 (1) 5.71 (9) 7.32 (8) Ontario 6.12 (3) 7.28 (7) 6.07 (7) 7.64 (7) Prince Edward Island 2.44 (6) 5.92 (10) 5.20 (12) 7.72 (6) Quebec 6.12 (3) 7.28 (7) 7.23 (3) 8.35 (5) Saskatchewan 2.44 (6) 10.00 (1) 9.11 (1) 8.66 (2) Yukon 7.04 (1) 10.00 (1) 6.27 (4) 8.43 (4) Jurisdiction Collective Employment Unjust Occupational Advance notice bargaining equity discharge safety of plant closing and health largescale layoffs Federal 6.00 9.00 7.00 4.33 5.53 Alberta 6.00 (9) 8.10 (11) 7.00 3.07 (5) 0.00 (11) British Columbia 10.00 (1) 8.60 (5) 7.00 3.20 (2) 7.89 (1) Manitoba 9.00 (3) 9.10 (1) 7.00 3.13 (4) 6.03 (5) New Brunswick 8.00 (8) 8.10 (11) 7.00 2.11 (10) 5.71 (6) Newfoundland 9.00 (3) 8.60 (5) 7.00 2.08 (11) 5.03 (8) North West Territories 6.00 (9) 9.00 (3) 7.00 2.18 (8) 3.21 (10) Nova Scotia 6.00 (9) 9.10 (1) 7.00 2.18 (8) 6.37 (4) Ontario 9.00 (3) 8.50 (9) 7.00 3.24 (1) 7.03 (2) Prince Edward Island 9.00 (3) 8.60 (5) 7.00 1.87 (12) 0.00 (11) Quebec 10.00 (1) 9.00 (3) 7.00 2.63 (7) 4.50 (9) Saskatchewan 9.00 (3) 8.60 (5) 7.00 3.00 (6) 6.87 (3) Yukon 6.00 (9) 8.50 (9) 7.00 3.17 (3) 5.21 (7)

Based largely on the Fifteenth Annual Report of the U.S. Department of Labor, published in 1900, we have built a sample of wages and hours for roughly fifty countries in six continents that covers the period 1890-1900. The Report, which is drawn from official (national) publications, gives information on normal or usual hours and earnings per week at the establishment level. To our knowledge, this is the most extensive data set of its kind totaling about 15,000 observations. We combine the data set with other country-specific evidence to derive implications about labour supply. The data reveal a cross-country supply curve that was markedly backward-bending. In addition, for a given wage level, we find a positive relation between a country's per-capita income and work hours. We interpret the patterns by proposing a standard utility function in consumption and hours of work, where a minimal level of consumption is introduced as a constraint. We interpret that minimum more broadly than biological subsistence. Rather minimal consumption is assumed to increase with the average income of a country. We also explore the possible role of climate in affecting the consumption constraint. Given the size of the data set, although coverage is uneven, we are able to estimate labour supply curves within countries and regions, in addition to making overall comparisons of work hours across countries. Our preliminary work suggests that a consumption constraint played a key role in the negative relation between wages and hours of work within countries, and that across countries higher average incomes, which effectively raised the constraint, promoted greater work hours.

This paper brings a historical perspective to debates on worktime differences across OECD countries, exploiting new data sets on hours of work per week, and days and hours of work per year between 1870 and 2000. We contest the popular view that the divergence in worktimes between Europe and North America and Australia is a recent phenomenon. Since 1870 the decline in weekly and annual hours was consistently greater in the Old World; the New World has had fewer days off for the last 130years. Labor power and inequality, held to be important determinants of worktime after 1970, had comparable effects in the period before 1913. We find that given their levels of income in 1870 New World workers supplied relatively too many hours of work.

Standard trade theory, as invoked by political scientists and economists, would anticipate that workers in Belgium, a small Old World country, rich in labour relative to land, were in a good position to benefit from the wave of globalization before 1914. However, wage increases remained modest and ‘labour’ moved slowly towards adopting a free-trade position. Beginning in 1885, the Belgian labour party backed free trade, but its support was conditional on more and better social legislation. Belgian workers' wellbeing improved in the wave of globalization, but the vehicle was labour and social legislation and not rising wages.

Globalisation is often accused of unleashing a race to the bottom in labour regulation and social protection. The evidence suggests otherwise. This column explains how, historically, trade itself was a path to better labour regulation and social entitlements.

The received view pins the adoption of labor regulation before 1914 on domestic forces. Using directed dyad-year event history analysis, we find that trade was also a pathway of diffusion. Market access served as an important instrument to encourage the diffusion of labor regulation. The type of trade mattered as much as the volume. In the European core, states emulated the labor regulation of partners because intra-industry trade was important. The New World exported less differentiated products and pressures to imitate were weak.

Understanding the relationship between trade and growth is still at the core of the economics profession. This column seeks to identify the pathways by which globalisation affects economic growth looking at the case of Belgium in the decades preceding the First World War. It argues that the collapse in fixed export costs promoted the entry of uncompetitive firms into export markets and as the trade component of GDP rose, the share of high performing firms contracted, slowing growth.

An intractable domestic conflict between forces on the right and the left roiled the Second Spanish Republic. We claim that international trade shocks exacerbated political instability. Leveraging an exposure design and disaggregated trade and employment data, we study the effects of import and export exposure on vote shares of parties and coalitions in the Republic's three elections, 1931, 1933, and 1936. An increase in import exposure had a modest effect on election outcomes. The primary vector of change was the disruption in export markets caused by the world depression and discriminatory trade practices, most importantly the United Kingdom's adoption of imperial preference. Trade dislocation harmed the left and benefitted the right. If trade had remained at 1928 levels, our projections show that the Popular Front would have gained a clear and comfortable majority in the decisive 1936 election.

Critique de cinéma, cAlî Abû Shâdî devient censeur au ministère de la Culture avant d’être promu directeur de l’Organisme des palais de la culture. En sa nouvelle qualité, il fait publier, en janvier 2001, dans l’une des collections de l’Organisme (« Voix littéraires »), trois nouveaux romans jugés « pornographiques » par un député récemment élu, affilié aux Frères musulmans. Indigné par cette littérature qu’il juge attentatoire à la pudeur, ce dernier soulève la question devant le parlement,...

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History critically examines the defining processes and structures of historical developments in North Africa and the Middle East over the past two centuries. The Handbook pays particular attention to countries that have leapt out of the political shadows of dominant and better-studied neighbours in the course of the unfolding uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. These dramatic and interconnected developments have exposed the dearth of informative analysis available in surveys and textbooks, particularly on Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria.

The historiography on the Compagnie de la Nouvelle-France (CNF) focuses primarily on its role in the colonization of New France. By examining its form, I resituate the CNF in the larger history of European experimentations with the joint-stock company. The liquidation of the company’s debts in the 1630s and 1640s forced associates, directors, and jurists to articulate their understanding of who was liable for the enterprise’s financial health. Evaluating the legal and moral arguments of the parties concerned, I argue that the complexity of the liability of associates and directors resulted from the intersection of corporate, monarchical and commercial worlds.

Whereas much of the literature on women and the French Revolution continues to see political activity as incommensurate with a desire to behave properly as a woman, studying the correspondence of Marie-Jeanne Roland from 1788 to 1793 shows how she combined political action with respect for gender norms in the last six years of her life. Both while living in the countryside near Lyon and in Paris itself, Roland assumed three roles which she deemed proper to a woman patriot: inciting revolutionary action, formulating policy, and informing others of revolutionary events. The importance of each of these roles shifted with changes in political climate, as did Roland’s conception of what constituted appropriate female behaviour. What made these changes possible was Roland’s ability both to adapt her political strategy to her circumstance and to create a mutable gender code to fit her political needs.

Being women provided them with a particular perspective, expressed first-hand through their letters. Dalton shows how Lespinasse, Roland, Renier Michiel, and Mosconi grappled with differences of ideology, social status, and community, often through networks that mixed personal and professional relations, thus calling into question the actual separation between public and private spheres. Building on the work of Dena Goodman and Daniel Gordon, Dalton shows how a variety of conflicts were expressed in everyday life and sheds new light on Venice as an important eighteenth-century cultural centre.

One of the most famous Venetian women of her time, Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi (1760-1836) was known not only for her salon, but also for her published works. One of these pieces, Teotochi Albrizzi's Ritratti (1807), a series of literary portraits, reveals Europe's concern over the simulation of virtue in a society beginning to judge merit by behavior and self-presentation rather than birth. Teotochi Albrizzi's portraits demonstrate the strategies used to discern character and how the author drew on ideas concerning sexual difference in the realm of aesthetics to address concerns raised by shifting practices of sociability.