One of the long-standing puzzles in economics is why wages do not fall sufficiently in recessions so as to avoid increases in unemployment. Put differently, if the competitive market wage declines, why don't employers simply force their employees to accept lower wages as well? As an alternative...

One of the long-standing puzzles in economics is why wages do not fall sufficiently in recessions so as to avoid increases in unemployment. Put differently, if the competitive market wage declines, why don't employers simply force their employees to accept lower wages as well? As an alternative...

Within a small open economy fair wage model with unemployment of unskilled workers, we show that exogenous unskilled immigration increases the welfare of natives if the elasticity of the inverse labour demands exceeds a positive finite threshold. This threshold depends positively on the...

We show that equilibrium involuntary unemployment emerges in a multi-stage game model where all market power resides with firms, on both the labour and the output market. Firms decide wages, employment, output and prices, and under constant returns there exists a continuum of subgame perfect...

This chapter reviews options of labour market modelling in a CGE framework. On the labour supply side, two principal modelling options are distinguished and discussed: aggregated, representative households and microsimulation based on individual household data. On the labour demand side, we...

Standard welfare analysis of horizontal mergers usually refers to two effects: the anticompetitive market power effect reduces welfare by enabling firms to charge prices above marginal costs, whereas the procompetitive efficiency effect increases welfare by reducing the costs of production...

In this paper we tackle two shortcomings of present efficiency wage models. Firstly, they do not fully account for labour heterogeneity, thus implying that high-effort and low-effort units of labour are interchangeable. Secondly, building on this assumed homogeneity of labour, the models derive...

To tackle mass unemployment and increase participation rates, the German government over recent years has mainly focused on supply side strategies, including 'making work pay' policies. The 2003 Mini-Job reform introduced an extended subsidy of social security contributions for low wage workers....

This paper contributes to the analysis of central vs. decentral (firm-level) labour market negotiations. We argue that during negotiations on a central scale employers and employees plausibly take output market effects into account, while they behave competitively during firm-level negotiations....

When workers are faced with the threat of unemployment, their relationship with a particular firm becomes valuable. As a result, a worker may comply with the terms of a relational contract that demands high effort even when performance is not enforceable by a third party. But can relational...