Wage Bargaining Structure, Employment and Economic Integration.

It is widely believed that the integration of European economies will have little impact on labor mobility. This does not mean, however, that European labor markets will be unaffected by the process of economic integration. In this paper, the authors show that, with increased competition resulting from closer economic integration, the hump-shaped pattern summarizing the relationship between economic performance and the degree of centralization in wage bargaining flattens out. As a consequence, the importance of where a particular economy stands on the wage bargaining scale diminishes. Copyright 1994 by Royal Economic Society.