Available empirical evidence regarding the degree of symmetry between European economies in the context of Monetary Unification is not conclusive. This study offers new empirical evidence concerning this issue related to the manufacturing sector. Instead of using a static approach as most...

A convergence analysis is applied to wages and productivity for Euro-area countries in the period from 1981 to 2001. The results show a reduction in the dispersion of wages and unit labour costs, but not in productivity. Different patterns are found for real and nominal wages: higher levels of...

This article analyses the importance of labour market institutions and, in particular, collective wage bargaining in shaping regional wage differences in the Spanish labour market. Using microdata from the Spanish Structure of Earnings Survey, our results reveal that there are significant...