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This study assesses the effects of industrial disputes legislation and the dispute-settlement process on informal versus formal employment in India. It uses indicators of pro-worker court awards and court efficiency as well as amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act (IDA) at the level of Indian states. The state-level IDA amendments are classified in relation to their pro-worker stance and ability to enforce existing legislation. The main finding is that the relationship between formal employment in both the industrial and service sectors and the judicial indicators is weak. Results are not robust to model specification. Thus, the evidence is neither robust nor strong enough to confirm the much claimed negative relationship between pro-worker judicial change and the degree of formal work in the entire service or industrial sectors.

This paper uses a new time series dataset of shareholder protection consisting of 60 annual legal indicators for the period 1970-2005 for France, Germany, the UK and the US. On the basis of these data it examines developments in shareholder protection and reassesses the claims that common-law countries have better shareholder protection than civil law countries. Furthermore it examines the relationship between legal changes and stock market development. It casts serious doubt on the claim that common-law countries have better shareholder protection which in turn leads to more stock market development.JEL Codes: F02, F36, E44, G11, O16, K22

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