We estimate the impact of union density on wages using Portuguese matched employer-employee-contract data, extending Gelbach's (2016) omitted variable bias decomposition procedure to obtain the contribution of worker, firm, and job-title heterogeneity to the union wage premium. The principal...

A number of studies have reported that union decline is associated with rising overall wage inequality, not least in Germany where the phenomenon has been linked to economic resurgence. The present paper takes an unconventional approach to this potential source of rising inequality by examining...

This paper assesses the decline in collective bargaining coverage in Germany. Using repeat cross-section and longitudinal data from the IAB Establishment Panel, it indicates the overwhelming importance of behavioral as opposed to compositional change in this process. Further, in the first use of...

Despite its seeming lack of attractiveness to other countries, the German system of quasi-parity codetermination at company level has thus far held up fairly well. We recount the theoretical arguments for and against this form of codetermination, and survey the evolving empirical evidence as to...

The effect of collective bargaining on innovation has long been in dispute. At the level of theory, the hold-up problem has been used to justify positive as well as negative effects of unionism. At the empirical level, although some would consider the North American evidence as cut and dried,...

Recent studies have pointed to the association between declining collective bargaining coverage and rising overall wage inequality. This association holds more or less across-the-board, at least for broad swathes of recent history. That said, the exact contribution of deununionization is a...