Trade unions have been successful in compressing the wage distributionbut not in influencing the share of national income going to labour. This paperclaims that a compressed wage distribution provides insurance in the same way thatthe tax and benefit system does and thus may be...

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

Considering Cournot competition, this note shows that, if the firms differ inlabor productivities, the equilibrium wage rates under a centralized labor union are notindependent of the number of firms and product differentiation if the labor unioncharges a uniform wage rate. However, if the...

We show the incentive for divisionalization by a monopolist producer. Incontrast to the previous literature, where divisionalization occurs for product marketadvantage, we show that divisionalization occurs if it provides strategic advantage inthe labor market. With unionized labor market, we...

This paper deals with institutional challenges German works councils face currently. These challenges consist of structural economic change from industrial to service sectors accompanied by an extension of ‘co-determination-free-zones’, an enhanced labour force diversity beyond the image of...

Wenn es um die Mitbestimmung im Aufsichtsrat geht, kochen nach wie vor die Emotionen hoch. In Gastkommentaren in „Der Aufsichtsrat“ liefern sich Theodor Baums und Marcus Lutter (2009, S. 153) einen heftigen Schlagabtausch mit Roland Köstler von der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung (2009, S. 137)....

This paper draws attention to an increase in the size of the union membership wage premiumin the UK public sector relative to the private sector. We find the public sector membershipwage premium is approximately double that in the private sector controlling for a full range ofindividual, job and...