Empirical evidence suggests that high-productivity firms face stronger trade unions than low-productivity firms. Then a policy that puts all unions into a better bargaining position is no longer neutral for firm selection as in models with a uniform bargaining strength across firms. Using a...

Empirical evidence suggests that the bargaining power of trade unions differs across firms and sectors. Standard models of unionization ignore this pattern by assuming a uniform bargaining strength. In this paper, we incorporate union heterogeneity into a Melitz (2003) type model. Union...

A striking feature of the past few decades has been the development of wage-determination models that assume that labour markets are imperfectly competitive. This paper discusses two such models (trade unions and oligopsony), although there are many more. It also asks if imperfectly competitive...

Empirical evidence suggests that high-productivity firms face stronger trade unions than low-productivity firms. Then a policy that puts all unions into a better bargaining position is no longer neutral for firm selection as in models with a uniform bargaining strength across firms. Using a...

The presented paper proves that working time arrangements, which include hours flexibility and enable hours deposits, are appealing under product market uncertainty. The model integrates efficiency wage arguments into an implicit insurance-contract environment, thus extending the existing...

Dieser Beitrag wägt Vorteile und Nachteile verschiedener Flexibilisierungsstrategien ab, die der Stabilisierung des Beschäftigungsniveaus dienen. Insgesamt zeigt sich, daß Arbeitszeitflexibilisierung durch Arbeitszeitkonten alternativen kurzfristig ausgerichteten Anpassungsmechanismen aus...

Der vorliegende Beitrag begründet die Vorteilhaftigkeit von Arbeitszeitflexibilisierung bei Produktmarktunsicherheiten theoretisch über die Existenz von Arbeitszeitkonten. Das Arbeitszeitkonten Modell kombiniert dabei effizienzlohn und versicherungstheoretische Aspekte. Die Lösungen sind...

In a principal-agent framework, principals can mitigate moral hazard problems not only through extrinsic incentives such as monitoring, but also through agents' intrinsic trustworthiness. Their relative usage, however, changes over time and varies across societies. This paper attempts to explain...

Contrary to some of the leading critiques of neoclassical theory, I argue that this theoretical framework can incorporate the moral dimension into the modeling of economic agents when the consequences of their choices are not answerable to market forces. Neoclassical theory, broadly defined,...

We present the first panel estimates of the productivity effects of the unique German institution of parity, board-level co-determination. Although our data span two severe recessions when labour hoarding costs of co-determination are probably highest, and the panel is too short to capture the...