Strikes as a consequence of labour conflicts occur about 28 times as much in France as in the Netherlands. This paper examines the institutional differences underlying these differences in strike activity. Our empirical analysis shows that strike activity is high in France if workers were...

Short-term contracts and exogenous productivity growth are introduced in asimple wage bargaining model. The equilibrium utilities corresponding tomilitant union behaviour are independent of the contract length. The wagedynamics are linear if strike is credible (low wage shares) and...

One of the main unanswered questions in the field of urban economics is to which extent subsidies to public transit are justified. We examine one of the main benefits of public transit, a reduction in car congestion externalities, the so-called congestion relief benefit, using quasi-natural...