In many European countries, the majority of workers have their wages directly defined byindustry-level agreements. In addition, for some workers, industry agreements arecomplemented by firm-specific agreements. Yet, the relative importance of firm and industryagreements (in other words, the...

Collective bargaining in Germany takes place either at the industry level or at the firm level; collective bargaining coverage is much higher than union density; and not all employees in a covered firm are necessarily covered. This institutional setup suggests to explicitly distinguish union...

Persistent productivity gains to rural-urban migrants have been documented by a number ofresearchers. One interpretation of this result is that individuals learn higher value skills incities than they would have learned in less dense areas. Another explanation for this result,however, is that...

The model of compensating differentials in regional labor markets was developed by Roback(1982). The model interprets regional differences in constant quality wages and rents ascompensating firms and residents for inter-regional differences in amenities. The modelassumes that the costs of...

Using linked employer-employee data from the German Structure of Earnings Survey 2001,this paper provides a comprehensive picture of the wage structure in three wage-settingregimes prevalent in the German system of industrial relations...