This study provides empirical evidence for the economic rationality of wage rigidities. Theoretically wage rigidities can result from contracts, implicit contracts, from efficiency wages and from insider-outsider behaviour. Based on a survey of 801 firms strong support has been found for...

An obvious answer to this question is the capital-skill complementarity hypothesis originally proposed by Zwi Griliches (1969). But the relatively poor performance of this hypothesis suggests that other explanations are needed. Here we consider the labour union behaviour in the wage bargaining...

Ein zentrales Ergebnis dieser Studie ist, dass die Tarifbindung von Betrieben nicht mit einem Mangel an Betriebszeit- und Arbeitszeitflexibilisierung verbunden ist. Das Gegenteil ist der Fall. In Relation zu den nicht tarifgebundenen Betrieben weisen die tarifgebundenen Betriebe in der für die...

This paper analyzes whether workplace employee representation (ER) affects the design of firm hierarchies. We rationalize the role of ER within a knowledge-based model of hierarchies, where the firm's choice of hierarchical layers depends on the trade-off between communication and knowledge...