The law of one wage does not strictly hold, nor should it be expected to hold, in contemporary labor markets. The law of one wage, however, provides a surprisingly good first approximation of the structure of U.S. wages...

We analyze the stability and dynamics of an overlapping generations model with imperfectlycompetitive labour markets...

Collective bargaining in Germany takes place either at the industry level or at the firm level; collective bargaining coverage is much higher than union density; and not all employees in a covered firm are necessarily covered. This institutional setup suggests to explicitly distinguish union...

In an open-shop model of trade union membership with heterogeneity in risk attitudes, a worker's relative risk aversion can affect the decision to join a trade union. Furthermore, a shift in risk attitudes can alter collective bargaining outcomes. Using German panel data (GSOEP) and three novel...

Trade unions are consistently found to compress the wage distribution. Moreover, unemployment affects in particular low-skilled workers. The present paper argues that an extended Right-to-Manage model can account for both of these findings. In this model unions compress the wage distribution by...

Most treatments of the Great Depression have focused on its onset and its aftermath. In contrast, we take a unified view of the interwar period. We look at the slide into and the emergence from the 1920-21 recession and the roaring 1920s boom, as well as the slide into the Great Depression after...

Evidently, the benefit-structure of the unemployment insurance has a significant influence onprofits and trade union utility. We show for a wage bargaining model that a stronger earningsrelationship of unemployment benefits may reduce wages and increase employment. Thisraises the question as to...

Using linked employer-employee data from the German Structure of Earnings Survey 2001,this paper provides a comprehensive picture of the wage structure in three wage-settingregimes prevalent in the German system of industrial relations...

We evaluate the effects of outsourcing and wage solidarity on wage formation andequilibrium unemployment in a heterogeneous labour market, where wages are determinedby a monopoly labour union. We find that outsourcing promotes the wage dispersion betweenthe high-skilled and low-skilled workers...

We study both the various consequences and the incentives of outsourcing. We argue thatthe wage elasticity of labour demand is increasing as a function of the share of outsourcing,which is importantly a result consistent with existing empirical research...