Collective bargaining in Germany takes place either at the industry level or at the firm level; collective bargaining coverage is much higher than union density; and not all employees in a covered firm are necessarily covered. This institutional setup suggests to explicitly distinguish union...

Using linked employer-employee data from the German Structure of Earnings Survey 2001, this paper provides a comprehensive picture of the wage structure in three wage-setting regimes prevalent in the German system of industrial relations. We analyze wage distributions for various labor market...

In Spain, as in several other European countries, sectoral bargaining agreements are automatically extended to cover all firms in an industry. Employers and employees can also negotiate firm-specific contracts. We use a large matched employer-employee data set to study the effects of firm-level...

This paper aims at answering the question: How does a typically 'European' bargaining system - with collective bargaining, extension mechanisms and national minimum wage - coexist with low unemployment rate and high wage flexibility? A unique data set on workers, firms and collective bargaining...

Increased wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers is a stylized fact, which can be observed in many developed countries. Among the explanations advanced for this phenomenon is the increasing globalization, a skill-biased technical progress, restructuring of the firms, and last but...

This paper analyses the heterogeneous effects of the decentralization of collective bargaining on the incidence of wage increases and wage dispersion in Finland. We use linked employer-employee panel data for the 2005-2013 period, which includes major changes in bargain-ing systems and economic...

A number of studies have reported that union decline is associated with rising overall wage inequality, not least in Germany where the phenomenon has been linked to economic resurgence. The present paper takes an unconventional approach to this potential source of rising inequality by examining...

Income inequality has been lower in periods when trade unionism has been strong. Using observations on wages by occupation, by geography, and by gender in collective bargaining contracts from the 1940s to the 1970s, patterns in movements of wage differentials are revealed. As wages increased,...

Researchers contributing to the empirical rent-sharing literature have typically resorted to estimating the responsiveness of workers' wages on firms' ability to pay in order to assess the extent to which employers share rents with their employees. This paper compares rent-sharing estimates...

Researchers contributing to the empirical rent-sharing literature have typically resorted to estimating the responsiveness of workers' wages on firms' ability to pay in order to assess the extent to which employers share rents with their employees. This paper compares rent-sharing estimates...