This is an important and very useful book in summarizing and synthesizing a vast and disparate literature on this issue and clarifying some of the trade offs implicit in pursing the high or low road to flexibility and modernizing labour markets. It should provide a very useful resource for teaching for courses in the humanities and at business schools, as well as providing an important contribution to a debate that has not ended.

British Journal of Sociology

The arguments are delivered in a clear and systematic way. The book presents a good combination of general, comparative perspectives and a more in-depth presentation of national cases ... keeps its distance from statistical macroeconomic approaches: it presents a lot of quantitative material, but also puts it in a social and political context.

Quarterly of the European Trade Union Institute