The ongoing fiscal and financial crisis with significant macroeconomic imbalances in the euro area raises the question in how far public–private wage interaction and even wage spirals contribute to fiscal and competitiveness problems. In this vain we analyse empirically whether the evolution...

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) once again became a newsworthy topic in the US media, this time during the contested Spring 2008 Democratic primary for the US presidency, particularly from campaign talking-points originating within Midwestern Rust-Belt states. Although the merits...

This paper examines interactions between wage bargaining, unemployment, and growth. In the basic model, wage bargaining determines unemployment and is not influenced by growth. An increase in unemployment benefits increases unemployment and reduces capital accumulation. In a neoclassical...

Alternative ways to organize government subsidies to unemployment insurance (UI) are analyzed in a right-to-manage model where industry-level unions run UI funds of their own. It is shown that equilibrium unemployment is decreasing in the share of UI financed by the employed union members. A...

Seit der EU-Osterweiterung veraendern sich die Handlungsbedingungen der Gewerkschaften in Mittelosteuropa. Die Praegekraft des kommunistischen Erbes und der Dilemmata der Transformation lassen nach. Am Beispiel der Gewerkschaft Solidarnosc wird der organisatorische Wandel der Gewerkschaften...

The introduction of opening causes in collective wage agreements allowing firms to deviate from their collective bargaining agreements has become widely accepted for the last fifteen years. With respect to the flexibility agreed through collective bargaining, the distinctions between single...

Collective wage contracts impose restrictions on wage-setting. We utilize German linked employer-employee data for blue-collar worker to compute the dispersion of wages and wage components within and across firms under three different wage-setting regimes: Establishments applying industry-wide...

In this paper we consider two imperfectly competitive industries, with the polluting emissions from one industry harming the productivity of labor in the other. The polluting industry has to pay an environmental tax chosen by the government. In this framework, we analyze how the different...

Flynn (2005) proposes that the degree to which labor contracts are complete may be a major driving force behind the propensity of employees to unionize. We find behavior consistent with this hypothesis in an experimental production game in which subjects are assigned to playing either employers...