We analyze the effect of the increase in trade exposure induced by the rise of China and the transformation of Eastern Europe on collective bargaining coverage of German plants in the period 1996-2008. We exploit cross-industry variation in trade exposure and use trade flows of other high-income...

Using rich linked employer-employee data for (West) Germany between 1996 and 2014, we analyze the most important drivers of the recent rise in German wage dispersion and pin down the relative contribution of plant and worker characteristics. Moreover, we separately investigate the drivers of...