Even when international product market integration is taking place between fairly similar countries with low labour mobility, it may have important effects for labour markets by increasing the mobility of jobs. This creates both opportunities through exports and threats from imports. Is there...

In search of a macroeconomic theory of wage determination, the agnostic reader should be puzzled by the apparent contradiction between two influential theories. On one hand, in the standard search-matching theory with wage bargaining, hiring cost and constant returns of labor, the bargaining...

The eastward enlargement of the European Union and the requirements of the European Monetary Union increase pressure for flexibility of labour markets. This paper analyses main changes in the Baltic States? labour market over the period 1990 - 2001 giving emphasis on the problems of labour...

The paper studies the major institutional changes that are at the root of the increase in the west European unemployment rate in the last quartercentury from below 3 percent to 11 percent. The institutional characteristics of wage bargaining, the tax wedge and the legal rules hamper the...

A matching model with labor/leisure choice and bargaining frictions is used to explain (i) differences in GDP per hour and GDP per capita, (ii) differences in employment, (iii) differences in the proportion of part-time work across countries. The model predicts that the higher the level of...

We analyze the welfare and employment effects of different wage bargaining regimes. Within the large firm search model, we show that collective bargaining affects employment via two channels. Collective bargaining exerts opposing effects on job creation and wage setting. Firms have a stronger...

Conventional theory predicts that productivity gains lead to pay hikes. Pay increases, however, can influence labor productivity. But what about in a corporatist economy? Focusing on Germany, we use an innovative technique developed by Geweke to disentangle the relationship between pay and...

The traditional and almost universal method of expressing real wages is by index numbers, according to the formula: RWI = NWI/CPI: i.e., the real wage is the quotient of the nominal (money) wage index divided by the consumer price index, all employing a common base period (here: 1451-75 = 100)....

Bei einer repräsentativen Befragung im Rahmen des IAB-Betriebspanels 2005 gaben 13 Prozent der Betriebe mit Tarifbindung an, dass für sie Öffnungsklauseln im Tarifvertrag bestehen (viele weitere wussten darüber nicht Bescheid). Rund die Hälfte dieser Betriebe hatte davon Gebrauch gemacht....

There is a growing concern about collective wage agreement and employment dynamics in Germany. In this paper, evidence is provided on the way collective wage agreements affect the adjustment of working hours, employment and other production factors when firms from the service sector are faced...