In Germany, dependent employees take almost 30 days of paid vacation annually. We enquire whether an individual's trade union membership affects the duration of vacation. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the period 1985 to 2010 and employing pooled OLS-estimators, we...

This paper examines the effects of industrial action and the impact of strike costs on the industrial action activity. Germany is characterised by having little industrial action. Within the framework of a wage bargaining model, it is argued that higher industrial action costs for the union lead...

We analyse the implications of habit formation relating to wages in a multiperiod efficiency-wage model. If employees have such preferences, their existence provides firms with incentives to raise wages and reduce employment over time. Greater intensity does not necessarily have the same...

Trade unions distort a profit-maximizing firm's input choice. The nature of the resulting inefficiency depends on whether there are wage negotiations or there is efficient bargaining. Moreover, trade unions redistribute income and thereby affect welfare. If firms also pursue Corporate Social...

The so‐called excess‐entry theorem establishes conditions guaranteeing that more firms enter a homogeneous Cournot‐oligopoly in equilibrium than a benevolent government prefers. We generalize the approach and analyze the behavior of a competition authority, which attaches different weights...

How does cost uncertainty affect the welfare consequences of an oligopoly? To answer this question, we investigate a Cournot oligopoly in which firms produce a homogeneous commodity and market entry is feasible. Marginal costs are unknown ex ante, that is, prior to entering the market. They...

Monopsony power by firms and social preferences by consumers are well established. We analyze how wages and employment change in a monopsony if workers compare their income with that of a reference group. We show that the undistorted, competitive outcome may no longer constitute the benchmark...

Do trade unions benefit from economic crises by attracting new members among workers concerned about job security? To address this question, we provide a comprehensive empirical investigation based on panel data from Germany, where workers decide individually on their membership. We analyse...