Endogenous wage bargaining institutions in oligopolistic sectors

Summary. This paper explores the endogenous emergence of wage bargaining institutions in a union-oligopoly framework. Technological asymmetries among firms are shown to be the driving force for the emergence of alternative wage bargaining centralization structures that are observable in real life. As wage deals at the sector-level obtain the consensus of all unions and the efficient firms, a regulator has an incentive to authorize those deals by activating/establishing a Minimum Sectoral Wage Institution(MSWI). If productivity differences are high enough, wage setting above the established wage floor may subsequently occur in efficient firms. Otherwise, a completely centralized wage bargaining structure emerges and the sector-level wage deal is simply confirmed as the firms wage rate. If, however, productivity asymmetries are rather insignificant, firms and unions have conflicting interests and a completely decentralized wage bargaining regime prevails in equilibrium.Received: 17 December 2001, Revised: 9 June 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: J50, J31, L13.Correspondence to: Emmanuel PetrakisParticular appreciation is expressed to an anonymous referee who has greatly helped us to improve our work upon an earlier draft of this paper. We also wish to thank T. Kollinzas, J. Padilla, H. Bester, J. Sakovics, K. Uwe-Kühn, J. J. Dolado, J. L. Ferreira, A. Matsui and C. Martinelli for their helpful comments and suggestions.     

Insiders and outsiders in labour market models

The monopoly union model and the wage bargaining model are analysed in light of the distinction between insiders and outsiders. It is shown that a possible outcome of the wage bargaining is the wage level where all insiders keep their job, but no outsiders are taken on. In this situation, small variations in the bargaining situation of the union will not affect the wage and employment outcome. Furthermore, it may even be the case that the union does not wish a higher wage, because this would lead to lay-offs among the insiders. Thus, the monopoly union model and the bargaining model may yield the same wage and employment levels.This paper is part of the research project Wage Formation and Unemployment at SAF Center for Applied Research at the Department of Economics, University of Oslo. Comments from Michael Hoel, Andrew Oswald, Åsa Rosén, Asbjørn Rødseth and an anonymous referee on earlier drafts are gratefully acknowledged.     

Strategic union delegation and strike activity

Abstract.  We develop a model of wage determination with private information, in which the union has the option to delegate the wage bargaining to either surplus‐maximizing delegates or to wage‐maximizing delegates (such as senior union members). We show that the wage outcome in case of surplus‐maximizing delegates is not necessarily smaller than the wage outcome in case of wage‐maximizing delegates, even when the wage bargaining with private information is close to one with complete information. However, if it is commonly known that the union is stronger than the firm and the demand is sufficiently elastic, then delegating to wage‐maximizing delegates definitely increases the wage at equilibrium. The maximum delay in reaching an agreement is greater whenever the union chooses wage‐maximizing delegates instead of surplus‐maximizing delegates and remains finite even when the period length shrinks to zero. JEL classification: C70, C71, C72, C78     

Labour market institutions and the industry wage distribution

The paper studies the industry wage structures of Austria, Norway, the union sector of the U. S. as well as the non-union sector of the U. S. We make comparable regressions for each country, and are thus able to compare the sectoral earnings patterns controlling for the usual individual characteristics. Our results confirm the hypothesis that the pattern of the inter-industry pay structure is largely independent of labour market institutions: High paying industries in a non-union environment tend to pay high wages also in regimes where bargaining is very centralised and coordinated.This, however, does not mean that collective bargaining does not matter. The influence is mainly on the amount of wage dispersion: We find considerably lower industry pay gaps in centralised Austria and Norway than in decentralised U. S. Within the U. S., pay differentials within the union sector slightly exceed those of the non-union sector.The results give support to non-competitive explanations of the labour market. If efficiency wage mechanisms are the reason for wage differentials we expect central bargainers to internalise these effects. Competitive explanations, on the other hand, would predict no difference between the non-union outcome and a central agreement aiming at achieving full employment.This work was conducted while we were both affiliated with the University of California at Berkeley, and we thank the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California, Berkeley, for its support and hospitality. The research was supported by the Austrian Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung under the project JO548-SOZ (Zweimüller) and the Norwegian NORAS under the LOS program (Barth). A preliminary version of the paper was presented at the Labour Seminar at the University of California, Berkeley. We thank the participants, especially Bill Dickens and Jonathan Leonard for valuable comments. We are indebted to Bill Dickens also for giving us access to the U. S. data set CPS 1983. Thanks also to Herbert Walther for useful comments.     

Bargaining over a Menu of Wage Contracts

We investigate an infinite horizon bargaining problem in which a firm and a worker bargain over two dimensions, quality and wage. The worker has private information about his type. Only the uninformed firm makes an offer and it can offer a menu of quality-wage contracts instead of single one. We show that for all discount factors, the unique sequential equilibrium outcome is separating without delay; the firm separates the types of worker with a menu of contracts in the first period. Our result shows that in multi-dimensional bargaining, the "Coase Conjecture" holds in the sense that the game ends in the first period. But it fails in the sense that the uninformed party can preserve the entire bargaining power.     

Reciprocity and matching frictions

The ability of search and matching models to replicate stylized facts—such as volatilities and correlations—has been a center of attraction over the last couple of years. This paper introduces the Akerlof (Q J Econ 97:543–569, 1982) fair wage approach into an endogenous separation search and matching model. Within a RBC general equilibrium context, we show that the efficiency wage model outperforms its benchmark Nash bargaining pendant. In particular, the model generates the empirically observed volatilities in response to a productivity shock and replicates a strong Beveridge curve. Furthermore, we derive the Solow condition in a search environment and discuss the interactions of search and efficiency wage frictions. We show that search frictions create a wedge between the optimal wage/effort solution in the search and the competitive equilibrium. The efficiency wage consideration adds an additional margin to the firm's decision problem. As effort varies over the cycle, it changes the firm's optimal response to exogenous disturbances and amplifies the response to shocks.     

Research policy and endogenous growth

This paper studies the effects of different types of research policy on economic growth. We find that while subsidies to private research, public funding of private projects, and basic research performed at public institutions have unambiguously positive effects on growth, performing applied research at public institutions could have negative growth effects. This is due to the large crowding out of private research caused by public R&D when it competes with private firms in the patent race.JEL Classification: O31, O38, O40I thank the helpful comments of Jordi Caballé, David Pérez-Castrillo and two anonymous referees. I also aknowledge the financial support of Fundaci ón Séneca project PB/3/FS/02.     

Wages and International Tax Competition

We introduce wage bargaining and private information into a model of profit shifting and tax competition between a large and a small country. Shifting profits to the small country not only reduces a firm's tax bill but also creates private information on profitability, altering the wage bargaining in favor of the firm. This additional shifting incentive makes the tax base of the large country more elastic and leads to higher outflows, lower wages, higher firm profits and lower equilibrium tax rates. Tax rates are no longer the only determinant of the direction and extent of profit shifting.     

Insider Bargaining Power, Starting Wages and Involuntary Unemployment

Recent studies of wage bargaining and unemployment have emphasized the distinction between insiders and outsiders, and that unions act in the interest of insiders. Yet it is typically assumed that insiders and recently hired outsiders are paid the same wage. We consider a model where the starting wage may differ from the insider wage, but incentive constraints associated with turnover affect the form of the contract. We examine under what conditions the starting wage is linked to the insider wage so that increased bargaining power of insiders raises the starting wage and reduces the hiring of outsiders.
JEL classification : J 23; J 31; J 33     

Union-oligopoly bargaining and entry deterrence: a reassessment of limit pricing

This paper introduces wage bargaining in the framework of Milgrom and Roberts (Econometrica 50(2):443–459, 1982) where the workers’ reservation wage is the private information parameter critical for entry. We show that entry threat significantly distorts the wage, which in some cases adversely affects the firm’s ability to signal through price. Consequently, the separating equilibrium (in price) does not always exist. If, however, wage agreements are made public, signalling occurs with or without distortions in wage depending on whether the union’s bargaining power is high or low. Pooling equilibrium also exists and it features similar distortions. We also examine which signal, wage or price, generates greater social welfare. We would like to thank two referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. This paper is partially based on a chapter of Pal’s PhD thesis done at Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), India. For remaining errors we are solely responsible.     

Trade and unions: Does size matter?

Our empirical analysis builds upon the hypothesis that unions are detrimental to a firm's efficiency. Using a rich survey of German manufacturers, we investigate firm-level determinants on the probability of collective wage bargaining with particular focus on the impact of a firm's engagement in foreign markets. An interesting and very robust finding is that exporters are less likely to engage in union wage bargaining. This finding is in line with a pessimistic perception of unions. The negative effect of collective bargaining can be offset by efficiency gains for larger exporters, who can benefit from operation cost saving effects. Size does matter as larger firms export and may find bargaining with a single entity representing the workforce more convenient than bargaining with each worker individually. We are using firm level information on IT investment as instrument for the export dummy and successfully test for the validity of this instrument.     

Fiscal policy and private consumption behaviour: The Spanish case

In this article we analyse whether the Ricardian equivalence hypothesis is a valid approximation for Spains economic reality or whether there exist deviations from that situation which would be more in line with the conventional Keynesian perspective of the effects of debt on private consumption-savings decisions.Our aim is to contribute to the rather sparse empirical literature on the subject for the Spanish case. The analysis is based on annual aggregate data for Spain covering the years 1955 to 2000, and uses both the structural and the Euler equation approaches to test the neutrality proposition, and is thus to be considered as a generalization of foregoing work on the Spanish economy.The findings indicate that support for Ricardian equivalence is mixed, while we also find very little support for the Keynesian specification of consumption and fiscal policy.First revision received: March 2003 / Final version received: October 2003The authors wish to thank M. Ferré, J.M. González-Páramo, A. Marchante, P. Meguire, F. Pedraja, J.L. Raymond, J. Salinas and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions on this paper. We also thank the participants in the V Encuentro de Economía Aplicada (Oviedo, Spain, June 2002) and the XVII Simposio de Análisis Económico (Salamanca, Spain, December 2002) for their comments. Any remaining defects are our responsibility. We also are grateful to the Institute for Fiscal Studies of Spain (Ministerio de Hacienda, Secretaría de Estado de Hacienda) for its financial support.     

An Experimental Study of the Effect of Private Information in the Coase Theorem

We investigate, in an experimental setting, the effect of private information on the Coase theorem's predictions of efficiency and allocative neutrality. For a two-person bargaining game, we find significantly more inefficiency and allocative bias in the case of private information compared with the case of complete information. We also find substantial bargaining breakdown, which is not predicted by the Coase theorem. For the case of private information, we reject the Coase theorem in favor of the alternative of a generalized version of the Myerson—Satterthwaite theorem, which predicts inefficiency, allocative bias in the direction of the disagreement point, and some bargaining breakdown.     

Commodity Taxes, Wage Determination, and Profits

We examine the effects of two different types of commodity taxation, specific and ad valorem, on wages and profits. We analyze two models of wage determination, one with efficiency wage setting and one with union-firm bargaining. In the former, a (locally) revenue-neutral shift from specific to ad valorem taxation leads to an increase in both employment and wages and a reduction in profitability. In the latter, the effect on wages and profits may be reversed: predominantly ad valorem taxation raises employment but lowers wages, and under certain circumstances, the net effect is an increase in profits.     

Temporary employment and segmentation in the Spanish labour market: An empirical analysis through the study of wage differentials

We aim to add empirical evidence to the already studied field of wage differentials between temporary and permanent workers in Spain. Our goal is to find out which determinants of wage differentials are relevant when explaining such differences. Furthermore, the endogeneity of such feature (the type of contract) is controlled for. The same exercise is done with two data sets: the ECHP and the Structure of Earnings Survey. Results show that wage differentials between temporary and permanent workers are explained by the differences in the distribution of personal and job characteristics in both groups, but not by differences in the rewards for those characteristics. These results remain mostly unchanged during the second part of the 1990s, using information from five waves of the ECHP, and are robust to different changes in the econometric specification.JEL Classification: J31, J41The authors would like to thank the participants in the 3rd Summer School of Labour Economics (organised by IZA in Amersee, Munich), in a seminar in the University of Alcalá and in another seminar in the European University Institute in Florence and especially Alison Booth, Luis Toharia, Juan F. Jimeno, Juan José Dolado and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. Florentino Felgueroso kindly helped us with the handling of data. The usual disclaimer applies. The ECHP is being used on behalf of the contract reference ECHP/15/00 between the University of Alcalá and EUROSTAT.     

UNIONS' RELATIVE CONCERNS AND STRIKES IN WAGE BARGAINING

We consider a model of wage determination with private information in an oligopoly. We investigate the effects of unions having relative concerns on the negotiated wage and the strike activity. We show that an increase of unions’ relative concerns has an ambiguous effect on the strike activity.     

Wage Bargaining Versus Efficiency Wages: A Synthesis

We construct a model integrating the efficiency wage model of Shapiro–Stiglitz (1984) (SS), with an individual wage bargaining model in the Diamond–Mortensen–Pissarides (DMP) tradition where firms and workers form pairwise matches. We show that when workers may threaten to shirk on the job and there is individual wage bargaining, the wage is always higher and employment lower than in either the SS model, or the (appropriately modified) DMP model. When firms determine workers' efforts unilaterally, efforts are set inefficiently low in the SS model. In the bargaining model, effort is higher, and is first best when the worker non–shirking constraint does not bind. The overall equilibrium allocation may then be more or less efficient than in the SS model, but is always less efficient than in a pure bargaining model with no moral hazard.     

The codetermined firm in a Cournot duopoly: A stability analysis

This paper aims to study the stability issue in a Cournot duopoly with codetermined firms. We show that when both firms codetermine employment together with decentralised employees' representatives, a rise in wages acts as an economic (de)stabiliser when the wage is fairly (high) low, while under profit maximisation a rise in wages always acts as a stabilising device because the parametric stability region monotonically increases with the wage in such a case. Moreover, a rise in the union's bargaining power has a de-stabilising effect, except when the wage is low and the firm power is already high. Therefore, under codetermination a change either in the wage or firm power in the Nash bargaining plays an ambiguous role on stability. We also show with numerical simulations that complex dynamics can also occur.     

Zur Geschichte der Theorie des „Deficit Spending“: Der Spätphysiokrat Germain Garnier

Ohne ZusammenfassungDie Übersetzung der im Text enthaltenen Zitate aus Garniers Abrégé élémentaire des principles de l'économie politique habe ich selbst nach dem französischen Original vorgenommen. Alle übrigen Zitate, einschließlich der Kommentare Garniers zu Smiths Reichtum der Nationen, sind im Original wiedergegeben.Für wertvolle Literaturhinweise bin ich Prof. T. W. Hutchison und R. L. Meek zu tiefem Dank verpflichtet, desgleichen Sir R. F. Harrod für Anregungen und P. Sraffa für Informationen betreffend den literarischen Nachlaß und die private Bibliothek von J. M. Keynes. Selbstverständlich bin ich für die in der vorliegenden Arbeit vertretenen Ansichten allein verantwortlich.     

The “Dorfman Steiner” rule

Conclusion When this research was started, it was guessed that the Dorfman-Steiner rule would lose its relevance in an intertemporal setting. This belief has turned out to be false: along the optimal paths ofp (t) ands (t), and must be equal. The only difference with the Dorfman-Steiner result is that they will be different from unity.The author is chargé de cours at the Faculté Universitaire Catholique de Mons (Belgium). He has greatyl benefited from comments by M. Beuthe and J. J. Lambin.