Instituting an initial round of centralized wage setting before an ultimate round ofdecentralized wage bargaining may raise actually raise employment. A general multiequilibriummodel is presented with strategic complementarities in theimplementation of a new technology through aggregate demand...

We investigate the information content of aggregate stock market liquidity and askwhether it may be a useful realtime indicator, both for nancial stress, and real economicactivity in Norway. We describe the development in a set of liquidity proxies at the OsloStock Exchange (OSE) for the period...

This paper studies how dierent unionisation structures aect rm productivity, rmperformance, and consumer welfare in a monopolistic competition model with heterogeneousrms and free entry. While centralised bargaining induces tougher selection among hetero-geneous producers and thus increases...

Building on the right-to-manage model of collective bargaining, this paper tries to infer unionpower from the observed results in wage setting. It derives a time-varying indicator of unionstrength and confronts it with annual data for Germany. The results show that union powerwas relatively...

Using several unique data sets on wage agreements at both industry and firm levels inFrance, we document stylized facts on wage stickiness and the impact of wage-settinginstitutions on wage rigidity. First, the average duration of wages is a little less than one yearand around 10 percent of...

We present evidence about the role of rent sharing in fostering the interdependence of labourmarkets around the world. Our results draw on a firm-level panel of more than 2,000multinationals and more than 5,000 of their affiliates, covering 47 home and host countries.We find considerable...

This paper examines an economic union where oligopolistic firms produce by skilled andunskilled labor and do in-house R&D by skilled labor. The planner of the union accepts newmembers to the union, regulates the labor market through a minimum wage for unskilledlabor and supports firms by...

Implementing performance pay requires that workers' output be measured. Whenmeasurement costs differ among firms, those with a measurement cost advantage choose toimplement performance pay. They attract the best workers, and both the level and variabilityof compensation are higher at these firms...

To investigate the size and the timing of the direct impact of participatory arrangements onbusiness performance, we assemble and analyze extraordinary daily data – for rejection,production and downtime rates for all operators in a single plant during a 35 month period,more than 77,000...

In this paper we document the wage structure and labor mobility in the Netherlands in theperiod 1999-2003. We explain the importance of wage-setting institutions in the Netherlandsand the main actors. The analyses are based on administrative sources allowing forcomparisons between and within...