The Finnish unemployment rose in the early 1990's from three to eighteen percent in four years. Unemployment has then decreased to the average European level, being 8.5 percent in October 2002. In this paper, we describe the shocks leading to this unforeseen increase in unemployment. We then...

This paper indicates that the extent of collective bargaining coverage in an industry may depend on the differences in firms productivity levels within the industry. Less pronounced differences in productivity levels make it easier to design collective wage contracts that are accepted by a wider...

We study sequential bargaining between two unions and a single firm. Parties bargain bilaterally and efficiently (over wage and employment). The unions' workforces can be substitutable ("tariff competition") or complementary ("tariff plurality" or "craft unionism"). If unions are substitutable,...