"From the mid-1980s until 2005 the German labour market was characterised by continuous deregulation. In the period of an improving German labour market, the German governments have since imposed measures to re-regulate the labour market in order to strengthen employees' rights. At the same time...

The paper surveys unemployment policies for advanced market economies and evaluates them by examining the predictions of the underlying macroeconomic theories. The basic idea is that, for the most part, different unemployment policy prescriptions rest on different macroeconomic theories, and our...

This paper uses the British Household Panel Survey to investigate when seniority is rewarded by automatic incremental scales. Scales are seen as an alternative to individual merit pay. They are likely to be used when individual productivity is hard to measure, when firms provide all workers with...

In this paper we develop a theory of union bargaining power based on firm-specific skills acquired by the insider work-force. We show that unions increase the bargaining power of insiders only in states of the world in which the firm would like to retain insiders but not hire outsiders. Union...

"Collective wage contracts impose restrictions on wage-setting. We utilize German linked employer-employee data for blue-collar worker to compute the dispersion of wages and wage components within and across firms under three different wage-setting regimes: Establishments applying sectoral...

"The authors use German linked employer-employee data for the years 1990, 1995 and 2001 to analyze, which dimensions of wage setting differ across three wage-setting regimes: Establishments applying sectoral collective contracts, establishments with firm-level contracts and uncovered...

"Collective wage contracts impose restrictions on wage-setting. We utilize German linked employer-employee data for blue-collar worker to compute the dispersion of wages and wage components within and across firms under three different wage-setting regimes: Establishments applying sectoral...

"The authors use German linked employer-employee data for the years 1990, 1995 and 2001 to analyze, which dimensions of wage setting differ across three wage-setting regimes: Establishments applying sectoral collective contracts, establishments with firm-level contracts and uncovered...

Recent research in macroeconomics emphasizes the role of wage rigidity in accounting for the volatility of unemployment fluctuations. We use worker-level data from the CPS to measure the sensitivity of wages of newly hired workers to changes in aggregate labor market conditions. The wage of new...

We characterize optimal incentive contracts in a moral hazard framework extended in two directions. First, after effort provision, the agent is free to leave and pursue some ex-post outside option. Second, the value of this outside option is increasing in effort, and hence endogenous. Optimal...