The prevalence of opening clauses in collective bargaining agreements may indicate a tendency to a higher decentralised wage settlement. Increasing competition on international product markets is assumed to be one reason for wage-setting decentralisation, whereas theoretical explanations focus...

The introduction of opening clauses in collective wage agreements allowing firms to deviate from their collective bargaining agreements has become widely accepted for the last fifteen years. With respect to the flexibility agreed through collective bargaining, the distinctions between single...

The prevalence of opening clauses in collective bargaining agreements may indicate a tendency to a higher decentralised wage settlement. Increasing competition on international product markets is assumed to be one reason for wage-setting decentralisation, whereas theoretical explanations focus...

Given the recent financial crisis, the German labour market performs relatively well. This has not been the case until recent years: collective bargaining and the rigid system of wage setting have been often cited as one of the reasons for Germany's high structural unemployment. Contrary, a...

This paper is an analysis of the impact of different bargaining regimes on firm-specific wages and wage dispersion. In recent years, firms in Germany favored flexible to collective bargained wages. Opening clauses were introduced to combine collective bargaining and flexible adaptation of e.g....

Collective bargaining agreements still play an important role in the German wage setting system. Both existing theoretical and empirical studies find that collective bargaining leads to higher wages compared to individually agreed ones. However, the impact of collective bargaining on the wage...

"Given the recent financial crisis, the German labour market performs relatively well. This has not been the case until recent years: collective bargaining and the rigid system of wage setting have been often cited as one of the reasons for Germany's high structural unemployment. Contrary, a...

Collective bargaining agreements still play an important role in the German wage setting system. Both existing theoretical and empirical studies find that collective bargaining leads to higher wages compared to individually agreed ones. However, the impact of collective bargaining on the wage...

Collective wage agreements still play an important role in the German wage bargaining system. However, there is a critical debate in Germany whether collective agreements deliver the flexibility needed by firms to adjust to the needs of international competition and technological change. In...

"Given the recent financial crisis, the German labour market performs relatively well. This has not been the case until recent years: collective bargaining and the rigid system of wage setting have been often cited as one of the reasons for Germany's high structural unemployment. Contrary, a...