This paper analyzes wage competition between national trade unions caused by the international mobility of capital. Perfect capital mobility leads to a Bertrand result for the outcome of wage competition: A pure strategy equilibrium implies full employment in all countries. It is shown that such...

This paper indicates that East Germany's unemployment originates primarily in the labor market, caused by the fast wage adjustment after German reunification. We model the resulting labor market traps in a search and matching framework, show that they are difficult to overcome, and provide...