Rent-sharing and collective bargaining coverage : evidence from linked employer-employee data

Using a linked employer-employee data set, this paper analyses the relationship between firm profitability and wages. Particular emphasis is given to the question of whether the sensitivity of wages to firm-specific rents varies with collective bargaining coverage. To address this issue, we distinguish sector-specific wage agreements, firm-specific wage agreements and wage determination without any bargaining coverage. Our findings indicate that individual wages are positively related to firm-specific quasi-rents in the non-union sector and under firm-specific contracts. Industry-wide wage contracts, however, seem to suppress firm-level rent-sharing. While pooled OLS estimates yield a positive correlation between wages and quasirents under centralised contracts, estimates accounting for unobserved individual and establishment heterogeneity point to a coefficient of zero. Finally, GMM estimates using suitable lagged values as instruments indicate that this result appears to be robust to the endogeneity of quasi-rents.