"The prevalence of opening clauses in collective bargaining agreements may indicate a tendency towards more decentralised wage setting. Increasing competition on international product markets is assumed to be one reason for the decentralisation of collective bargaining. Current theoretical...

"Unions are often stigmatized as being a source of inefficiency due to higher collective bargaining outcomes. This is in stark contrast with the descriptive evidence presented in this paper. Larger firms choose to export and are also more likely to adopt collective bargaining. We rationalize...

"Differences in the development of wage levels and employment between individual economies are often explained by the institutional structuring of national wage rate systems. Clamping down on wage levels leads to higher levels of employment particularly in decentralised but also in centralised...

"We test the theoretical claim that coordination and centralisation in wage setting reduce strike activity by estimating nonlinear regression models using a dataset of 17 OECD countries for the period 1972-2000. We find moderating effects of coordination on strike activity but the effects are...

"German employment relations are characterized by a distinct dual system: First, working conditions and wages are determined by industry level collective bargaining agreements. Second, on the establishment level the works council is responsible for employer-employee negotiations. But since the...

"The financial crisis drew attention to the way in which workers in certain countries had been able to sustain consumption through housing and consumer credit despite insecure labour-market positions. This indicates a need to expand the analysis of the relationship between flexibility and...

"Differences in the development of wage levels and employment between individual economies are often explained by the institutional structuring of national wage rate systems. Clamping down on wage levels leads to higher levels of employment particularly in decentralised but also in centralised...

"In theoretical trade models with variable markups and collective wage bargaining, export exposure may reduce the exporter wage premium. We test this prediction using linked German employer-employee data from 1996 to 2007. To separate the rent-sharing mechanism from assortative matching, we...

"This paper examines whether differences in wage rigidity across sectors can be explained by differences in workforce composition, wage-bargaining institutions, technology and competition. We rely on a large administrative matched employer-employee dataset for Belgium over the period 1990 -...