Growth Externalities, Unions, and Long-Term Wage Accords

This paper presents an innovation driven endogenous growth model, where firms and unions bargain over wages. We find that the degree of centralization of the bargaining structure plays a crucial rule for economic performance. Central bargaining, which incorporates the leapfrogging externality incorporated in firm-level bargaining, will yield lower rates of unemployment for a given rate of economic growth. The increase in labor resources will in turn also yield faster growth rates in a corporatist economy. Indeed, when unions focus on issues other than short term wage increases, they may even outperform the non-unionized economy, as they can internalize the knowledge externality through long-term wage moderation accords