Although microenterprises are the most prevalent employer in Africa, boosting their productivity remains a development challenge. Theoretically, microenterprise business associations could foster technology, improve access to inputs, pool risk, ensure coordination, and facilitate credit for...

Does employers' association (EA) membership affect wages? Such effects, positive or negative, could follow from increased productivity, employer collusion, or other channels. We analyse this question drawing on matched employer-employee panel data, including time-varying EA affiliation and...

In many countries, notably across Europe, collective bargaining coverage is enhanced by government-issued extensions that widen the reach of collective agreements beyond their signatory parties to all firms and workers in the same sector. This paper analyses the causal impact of such extensions...

While there is a strong overlap between membership in employers' associations and collective bargaining coverage, the overlap is far from being perfect. Using unique firm-level data from Germany, this study estimates the determinants of the membership in employers' associations and the coverage...

While trade unions have been studied in detail, there is virtually no economics research on employer associations (EAs), their counterparts in many countries. Here we argue that EAs are important economic agents as they provide sectoral public goods such as collective bargaining, training, and...

Social partners (trade unions and employers' associations) and their representativeness can shape labour institutions and economic and social outcomes in many countries. In this paper, we argue that, when examining social partners' representativeness, it is important to consider both affiliation...

We maintain that employer associations are a specific form of employer collusion that is overt, formal and labour market focused which encompasses but is by no means confined to collective bargaining. We consider the conditions under which this form of collusion might emerge, and how it might...

Trade unions and employers' associations play an important role in Germany not only in wage setting, but also in social policy and labour market regulation. While the majority of companies are organised in employers' associations, less than one fifth of employees are still members of a trade...

This paper studies the effect of endogenous group formation on the outcome in two types of coordination games with multiple Pareto-ranked equilibria. Endogenous group formation means that in each period players are free to choose among two or more groups within which they want to play the...