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This article considers the potential and limits of quantitative approaches to labour law research. It explores the methods used to construct and validate indicators of labour regulation ('leximetrics') and those used in the econometric analysis of the effects of labour law rules on employment, productivity and inequality. It is argued that while there is a risk of the misuse and misappropriation of legal indicators, they can provide new evidence on the nature and effects of labour law rules, and thereby contribute to labour law theory as well as to the resolution of some practical issues of regulatory policy.

"Juridical concepts -specialized terms used in legal reasoning- have adaptive properties which allow for their coevolution with the social relations that they describe and constitute. Concepts form a bridge between empirical facts and legal norms. As such they allow data about the social world to enter legal discourse and frame normative judgments. Their defeasibility allows them to adjust to changes in their social and economic context. Studying juridical concepts in their historical context opens up new perspectives on institutional change and contributes to our understanding of social reality." (author's abstract)

The timing & nature of industrialization in Britain & continental Europe had significant consequences for the growth & development of labor market institutions, effects which are still felt today & which are visible in the conceptual structure of labor law & company law in different countries. However, contrary to the claims of the legal origin hypothesis, a liberal model of contract was more influential in the civilian systems of the continent than in the English common law, where the consequences of early industrialization included the lingering influence of master-servant legislation & the weak institutionalization of the juridical form of the contract of employment. Claims for a strong-form legal origin effect, which is time invariant & resistant to pressures for legal convergence, are not borne out by a growing body of historical evidence & time-series data. The idea that legal cultures can influence the long-run path of economic development is worthy of closer empirical investigation, but it is premature to use legal origin theory as a basis for policy initiatives. Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.

Leaving aside cases of overt discrimination and interventions aimed at favouring certain firms or modes of production, legislative and regulatory provisions may have such an impact on costs and prices that it will be necessary to consider with the greatest care whether, either by virtue of their own impact or by reason of disparities between two or more countries, some of them may have the effect of distorting conditions of competition among the national economies as a whole or in particular branches of economic activity … But at the same time it will be necessary to identify very precisely the limits of whatever action is necessary, and to dispel certain misunderstandings …