This paper aims to test several hypotheses on the determinants of the quality of trade in cross-country regressions, taking a sample of trade competitors in EU markets. The hypotheses are those underlying two models of VIIT: the so-called neo-H-O model based on factor endowment and an ?economic...

We present a model of wage contract violation that implies a possibility of multiple equilibria in the level of arrears. Positive feedback arises because each employer's arrears affect the costs of late payment faced by other employers operating in the same labor market, resulting in a network...

The paper was produced as a background paper on labor issues for the UNDP study Convergence to the European Union: Challenges and Opportunities. It first looks at the issue of how the labor market institutions of an acceding country like Macedonia should be shaped to further the integration of...

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain how wages are being determined in China during the reform period. The paper focuses on the development of the regulatory framework since 1978 and proceeds by examining official regulations regarding labor market institutions and wage setting, and by...

Deferred payments, as implicit contracts, are predicted to bind workers to firms as long as workers believe that firms adhere to these implicit contracts. We employ a unique personnel data set from a Russian manufacturing firm to investigate whether wage arrears, delayed payments of wages,...

Die Gewerkschaften ließen sich zunächst auf die Forderung der Politik ein, Lohnzurückhaltung zu üben. Da die Krise aber schneller als erwartet überwunden werden konnte, stagnierten die Reallöhne, während die Unternehmensgewinne explodierten. Zusätzlich gerieten die Gewerkschaften dadurch...

In a two-country model with trade driven by comparative advantages, it is considered how imperfectly competitive labour markets are affected by lower frictions in international goods trade. Easier goods trading is equivalent to increased mobility of employment across countries and thus a change...

Conventional theory predicts that productivity gains lead to hikes in real pay. Efficiency wage theory hypothesizes that pay increases can lead to productivity improvements. But would such results be observed in a corporatist economy with centralized bargaining? For the case of Austria, a...

Even when international product market integration is taking place between fairly similar countries with low labour mobility, it may have important effects for labour markets by increasing the mobility of jobs. This creates both opportunities through exports and threats from imports. Is there...

In search of a macroeconomic theory of wage determination, the agnostic reader should be puzzled by the apparent contradiction between two influential theories. On one hand, in the standard search-matching theory with wage bargaining, hiring cost and constant returns of labor, the bargaining...