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his note reviews a growing body of literature on the "Employing Workers" T index (EW index) developed by the World Bank as part of its "DoingBusiness" indicators (DB indicators). This controversial project represents an important attempt to measure "business regulations" and their enforcement across 178 countries, and provide a guide for evaluating regulations that directly impact on economic growth, allowing for cross-country comparisons and identification of good practice (World Bank, 2008). The key product of the DB project is an "ease-of-doing business" index. It is made up of ten sub-indices including the EW index, which measures the cost of labour market regulations. This index is a composite indicator based on measures of three elements: difficulty of hiring; rigidity of working hours; and difficulty of firing. 1 Since the DB project was launched in 2004, the World Bank's assessment of existing regulations in developing countries has been predominantly negative. Rigid labour market policies are blamed for poor labour market performance, such as low productivity, high unemployment and informal employment, while a more flexible regulatory framework is perceived to be associated with increased growth and employment creation. In a sense, then, this project can be understood as providing an empirical basis for the "augmented Washington Consensus" (Rodrik, 2005), which attributes much of the failure of the "Washington Consensus" in developing countries to the rigidity of their labour markets.

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2012) 'New frontiers of regulation : domestic work, working conditions and the holistic assessment of non-standard work norms.', Comparative labor law and policy journal., 34 (1). pp. 167-192. Further information on publisher's website:http://www.law.illinois.edu/publications/cllp j/archive/vol 3 4/ Publisher's copyright statement:Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.

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Research on the effects of labour market institutions on employment performance has recently been extended from industrialized to developing countries, using institutional indicators far more extensive in their coverage than those at the core of the OECD debates. These indicators extend to the regulation of working conditions, including working time, and are being used as the basis for the contention that 'rigid' regulation of employment conditions is to a large extent responsible for poor labour market performance such as low productivity and high unemployment and informal employment.Among the efforts that have been made towards quantifying, comparing and assessing the impact of these kinds of laws, the most prominent are those carried out by Botero et al. 2 and the World Bank. 3 Their assessment of the existing regulations in developing countries has been overwhelmingly negative. As the World Bank has argued: 3 Measuring Labour Market Institutions: Conceptual and 2 Methodological Questions on 'Working Hours Rigidity' In Defence of Labour Market Institutions: Cultivating Justice in the Developing World Berg and Kucera (eds) Beyond adopting and enforcing [the ILO's fundamental principles], governments struggle to strike the right balance between labor market flexibility and job stability. Most developing countries err on the side of excessive rigidity, to the detriment of businesses and workers alike. 4 Such views have been the subject of severe criticism from trade unions. The ICFTU and Global Unions, for example, have suggested that the World Bank index is "based on the simplistic premise that any kind of labour regulation, other than those strictly limited to the core labour standards, is inherently bad for development and should be removed." 5 Despite the significance of this debate, however, few research attempts have been made to evaluate these indexes. One notable exception is that by Bertola et al., which used the World Bank's Employment Rigidity Index but questioned its premises. 6This research does not, however, examine the quality of the Index, except to indicate its potential problems, based on the experiences of Latin American labour markets.There is, then, an urgent need to broaden the research towards investigating the existing indicators and the claims being made for their policy implications, and evaluating the role of labour regulations from a perspective that takes into account the policy rationales that underlie them. Since the adoption of the ILO Declaration of FundamentalPrinciples and Rights at Work in 1998, 7 this kind of research has in the main been devoted to laws related to these fundamental principles (freedom of association; freedom from forced labour and child labour; and non-discrimination in employment). 8 The risk of confining the research to the core standards, however, is that, as Alston and Heenan have argued, the kinds of measures mandated by these instruments could come to be viewed as the central features of acceptable labour market regulation, rather than an absolute mini...

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. The designations employed in ILO publications, which are in conformity with United Nations practice, and the presentation of material therein do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the International Labour Office concerning the legal status of any country, area or territory or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers.The responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles, studies and other contributions rests solely with their authors, and publication does not constitute an endorsement by the International Labour Office of the opinions expressed in them.Reference to names of firms and commercial products and processes does not imply their endorsement by the International Labour Office, and any failure to mention a particular firm, commercial product or process is not a sign of disapproval. PrefaceIn many countries around the world there is growing recognition of changes in the structure of populations. While primarily affecting industrialized countries, trends in many societies clearly indicate that, as life expectancy grows and fertility rates continue to decline, there will continue to be a growth in the elderly segment of the population. The primary focus of policy-makers has been on the economic impacts of this growth, namely in the costs of pensions and policies associated with the medical and social needs of this age group. Equitable concerns about who should pay the costs of such provisions have led to reconsideration among policy-makers of how long people should work before being able to claim the benefits of retirement.However, though the concept of raising the retirement age has received much attention in research and the popular press, the conditions of work and employment faced by older workers if they are expected or choose to continue working have received limited scrutiny to date.Concern regarding older workers is not new to the ILO. In the late 1970s, the potential problems faced by aging societies around the world were discussed and debated in detail. The result of these activities was the creation of an international labour standard, the Older Workers Recommendation, 1980 (No. 162). This international standard was intended to frame the issues of concern regarding the employment and work circumstances of older workers and to stimulate action to improve them. Integral to this were provisions addressing the conditions of work and employment of older workers and the issues that needed to be considered when im...