This is a collection of three papers presented during a workshop in October 2000 in Heidelberg. They discuss to what extent the so-called "new economy" is associated with news ways of organising labour. The aim of the workshop was to organise a comparative discussion on Japan, the USA, and the EU, making use of theory-based reflections. Christoph Scherrer presents some theoretical background on the issue of the "new economy" and asks whether the recent experience of the US productivity performance is indicative of the possibility of growth without cyclical downturns. Michael Muller et al. look at a long-term study of personnel concepts in Europe and try to draw conclusions on what may be happening in Europe's "new economy". Wolfram Manzenreiter finally looks at Japan´s IT industries and asks to what extent the employment situation is being affected.