We analyze the impact of product market competition on unemployment and wages, and how this depends on labour market institutions. We use differential changes in regulations across OECD countries over the 1980s and 1990s to identify the effects of competition. We find that increased product...

Repräsentative Daten des IAB-Betriebspanels für das Jahr 2002 zeigen, dass im privaten Sektor fast die Hälfte der westdeutschen, aber nicht einmal ein Fünftel der ostdeutschen Betriebe mit Tarifbindung über Tarif entlohnen. Das Ausmaß der übertariflichen Entlohnung in diesen Betrieben...

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...

The paper provides a historical overview of the pre-modern allocation of work within the territory of the later Germany from the 18th until the middle of the 19th century. We explore how the social allocation of work during the feudal system took place and trace back the development of wage...

This paper introduces a two-stage union-oligopoly-council model of wage and employment determination wherein at the first stage wage is negotiated through collective bargaining and at the second stage employment in each firm is co-determined by the employer and its works council. We provide a...

Conventional theory predicts that productivity gains lead to pay hikes. Pay increases, however, can influence labor productivity. But what about in a corporatist economy? Focusing on Germany, we use an innovative technique developed by Geweke to disentangle the relationship between pay and...

In this paper we show that panel estimates of tenure specific sensitivity to the business cycle of wages is subject to serious pitfalls. Three canonical variates used in the literature - the minimum unemployment rate during a worker's time at the firm (min u), the unemployment rate at the start...

[Einleitung] Die Tarifverhandlungen im 1. Halbjahr 2020 standen ganz im Zeichen der Corona-Pandemie. Bereits am 9. März 2020 beschloss die Bundesregierung ein Verbot von Großveranstaltungen, eine Woche später folgten Schulschließungen und ab dem 23. März 2020 folgte ein umfassendes...

This paper analyses the wage demands of a sector-level monopoly union facing internationally mobile firms. A simple two-country economic geography model is used to describe how firms relocate in function of international di erences in production costs and market size. The union sets wages in...

In a framework of a unionised international Bertrand duopoly with differentiated products, this paper analyses national labour market interdependencies and the consequences of trade liberalisation for union wages. The analysis suggests that national wages are likely to be strategic complements...