This paper investigates the effects of labour market institutions on wage persistence among young European workers at the beginning of their careers. We use ECHP data from 1995 to 2001 for 13 EU countries and estimate a three-level random intercept probit model that allows for unobserved...

This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of sector-level bargaining systems and their role for labour market performance. We compare two countries with seemingly similar collective bargaining systems, the Netherlands and Portugal, and document a number of features that may affect labour...

In this paper we study the evolution of the Italian wage inequality, and of its determinants, using two decades of matched employer-employee data covering the entire population of private-sector workers and firms in the Veneto region. We find that wage inequality has increased since the...

During the 1930s and 1940s, collective bargaining emerged as the workplace governance norm in much of the U.S. industrial sector. Following its peak in the 1950s, union density in the U.S. private sector fell steadily, to only 7.4 percent in 2006. Governance shifted from a formalized union norm...

We give an overview of the "German model" of industrial relations. We organize our review by focusing on the two pillars of the model: sectoral collective bargaining and firm-level codetermination. Relative to the United States, Germany outsources collective bargaining to the sectoral level,...

We define worker representation, identify the factors that determine demand for it among workers and employers, discuss difficulties in supplying worker representation, and reflect on the implications of worker representation for worker welfare and the behavior and performance of employers

Since there is scant evidence on the role of industrial relations in wage cyclicality, this paper analyzes the effect of collective wage contracts and of works councils on real wage growth. Using linked employer-employee data for western Germany, we find that works councils affect wage growth...

Income inequality has been lower in periods when trade unionism has been strong. Using observations on wages by occupation, by geography, and by gender in collective bargaining contracts from the 1940s to the 1970s, patterns in movements of wage differentials are revealed. As wages increased,...

Among the steps to improve a country's competitiveness, several commentators and international institutions include a general emphasis on deregulation and decentralization of industrial relations. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by studying whether and how firm-level unionism and...

This paper investigates the influence of industrial relations on firm wage premia in Germany. OLS regressions for the firm effects from a two-way fixed effects decomposition of workers' wages by Card, Heining, and Kline (2013) document that average premia are larger in firms bound by collective...