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 bargaining systems and economic...

This paper studies how decentralization of wage bargaining from sector to firm level influences wage levels and wage dispersion. We use a detailed panel data set covering a period of decentralization in the Danish labor market. The decentralization process provides exogenous variation in the...

I study how firms adapt to exogenous changes in labor costs induced by collective bargaining agreements. I use data on collective bargaining agreements in Sweden and study the impact of the nationwide bargaining that took place in 2004. I make a difference-in-differences analysis and compare...

An obvious answer to this question is the capital-skill complementarity hypothesis originally proposed by Zwi Griliches (1969). But the relatively poor performance of this hypothesis suggests that other explanations are needed. Here we consider the labour union behaviour in the wage bargaining...

This paper studies the considerably higher level of wage inequality in the United States than in nine other OECD countries. We find that the greater overall U.S. wage dispersion primarily reflects substantially more compression at the bottom of the wage distribution in the other countries. While...

I study how firms adapt to exogenous changes in labor costs induced by collective bargaining agreements. I use data on collective bargaining agreements in Sweden and study the impact of the nationwide bargaining that took place in 2004. I make a difference-in-differences analysis and compare...

Sectoral contracts in many European countries set wage floors for different occupation groups. In addition, employers often pay a wage premium (or wage cushion) to individual workers. We use administrative data from Portugal, linked to collective bargaining agreements, to study the interactions...

Collective bargaining in Germany takes place either at the sectoral 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 distinguish explicitly between...

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...