We study the distributional effect of a wage indexation mechanism - the Scala Mobile (SM) - that heavily compressed the distribution of Italian wages during the 1970s and 1980s. The SM imposed large real wage increases at the bottom of the distribution and was essentially irrelevant for...

Optimal training decisions require employers to have accurate information about their workers' training needs. However, little is known with regard to the key factors determining the accurate transmission of worker training requirements. Using one of the few linked employer-employee surveys in...

This survey reviews the recent literature on the double-dividend hypothesis of environmental taxes and discusses some extensions of the standard model such as the distributional consequences and the importance of the non-separability assumption between consumption goods and environmental quality...

Pacts for employment and competitiveness are an integral component of the ongoing process of decentralization of collective bargaining in Germany, a phenomenon that has been hailed as key to that nation's economic resurgence. Yet little is known about the effects of pacts on firm performance....

Key aspects in economic integrated areas like the EU are both the internationalization of productive activities, which usually occurs in unionized countries, and the ongoing process of labor market integration. In a symmetric two-country duopoly model with integrated product markets, this paper...

Adopting a simple Phillips curve framework, we show that different labour market institutions across EU countries are associated with significant differences in the response of inflation to unemployment and exchange rate shocks. More wage coordination and higher union density flatten the...

Despite declining bargaining power, unions continue to generate a wage premium. Some feel collective bargaining has had its day. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have recently called for the removal of bargaining rights from workers in the name of wage and employment flexibility, yet...

There are large international differences in the gender pay gap. In some developed countries in 2010–2012, women were close to earnings parity with men, while in others large gaps remained. Since women and men have different average levels of education and experience and commonly work in...

Labour market performance as measured by employment rates conceals significant differences among EU countries. In 2014 the variation was between 48.8% in Greece and 74.4% in Sweden. Average employment rate for the EU28 was at 64.8% in 2014, perceptibly below the Lisbon goal of 70 percent....

Eine Auswertung von Tarifkonflikten in Deutschland zeigt, dass Spartengewerkschaften eine hohe Konfliktbereitschaft aufweisen. Treten mehrere konfliktfreudige Gewerkschaften bei einem Arbeitgeber in Konkurrenz, kumulieren sich die Konflikthandlungen. Im Extremfall gerät ein Arbeitgeber von...