Understanding wage determination in a multi-level bargaining system: a panel data analysis

This article presents an estimation of the elasticity of actual wages to industry-level collective bargaining thereby quantifying empirically the role of industry-level bargaining on wage determination. For this purpose, we use a unique employer–employee panel dataset covering the entire Belgian employment population over 9 years (1998–2006). Like several other European countries, e.g. Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands, Belgium has a relatively centralised wage bargaining system, with the industry level playing the most important role. Regression results confirm that wage increases collectively decided at the industry level are, on average, fully passed on to individual wages. In addition to industry-level bargaining, we are interested in the supplementary wage increases granted at the firm level, referred to as wage drift or wage cushion in the literature. Our estimates show that wage drift is affected by company size, by the economic performance of the industry and to a much lesser extent by labour market tensions as measured by the local unemployment rate. Interestingly, our results show that industry-level bargaining also takes most of these features into account.     

Globalization and labor market outcomes: Wage bargaining, search frictions, and firm heterogeneity

We introduce search unemployment into Melitz's trade model. Firms' monopoly power on product markets leads to strategic wage bargaining. Solving for the symmetric equilibrium we show that the selection effect of trade influences labor market outcomes. Trade liberalization lowers unemployment and raises real wages as long as it improves average productivity. We show that this condition is likely to be met by a reduction in variable trade costs or by entry of new trading countries. Calibrating the model shows that the long-run impact of trade openness on the rate of unemployment is negative and quantitatively significant.     

Outsourcing and firm productivity: a production function approach

This paper is aimed at analyzing the relationship between outsourcing and productivity. Specifically, this paper deals with outsourcing at the firm level and focuses on the role of contracting out of manufacturing activities. I obtain new insights on this topic, mainly using a precise measure for outsourcing and analyzing differences across industries. Using an unbalanced panel of Spanish manufacturing firms, I estimate a production function depending on traditional inputs (labor, capital, and materials) and an index of production subcontracting. I find that for manufacturing as a whole, outsourcing intensity has a positive effect on productivity, showing an elasticity of output with respect to outsourcing around 0.15. When analyzing industry level results, I find that outsourcing intensity has a positive effect on productivity, mainly for firms belonging to light industries.     

Economic transition and gender differentials in wages and productivity: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing enterprises

We use firm-level data to analyze male–female wage differences in Chinese industry in the late 1990s. Our estimates indicate that employers' discrimination against women was not a significant source of the gender wage gap in Chinese state-owned enterprises. Instead, we find that the relative wage of unskilled female to male workers was higher than their relative productivity. This result indicates that unskilled female workers in the state sector had historically received wage premiums and consequently accounted for a disproportionate share of the sector's labor surplus.     

Governance and foreign direct investment: a panel gravity model approach

This paper investigates the link between governance and foreign direct investment in the case of 14 transition countries by using a panel gravity model approach in two alternative ways. First, the level of governance in the target country is studied. Second, the absolute difference in the governance level between the source and target country is investigated. In both cases the results suggest that the lack of good governance does not deter, in fact it encourages, foreign direct investment.     

Cost economies,efficiency and productivity growth in the Chinese banking industry: evidence from a quarterly panel dataset

This article examines cost economies, productivity growth and cost efficiency of the Chinese banks using a unique panel dataset that identifies banks’ four outputs and four input prices over the period of 1995–2001. By assessing the appropriateness of model specification, and making use of alternative methodologies in evaluating the performance of banks, we find that the joint-stock commercial banks outperform state-owned commercial banks in productivity growth and cost efficiency. Under the variable cost assumption, Chinese banks display economies of scale, with state-owned commercial banks enjoying cost advantages over the joint-stock commercial banks. Consequently, our results highlight the ownership advantage of these two types of banks and generally support the ongoing banking reform and transformation that is currently taking place in China.     

Macroeconomic performance index: a new approach to calculation of economic wellbeing

Since the rise of the global financial crisis, there has been revival of interest in performance indexes that measure the overall stance of the economy and the wellbeing of households. Such indexes typically consist of inflation, growth, employment and long-term interest rates. We develop such an index by appending exchange rate and weighting each variable by the inverse of its variance in order to prevent the more volatile variable to dominate the index. We call this macroeconomic performance index (MPI) and argue that such an index better explains the overall economic stance especially in emerging economies. We generate the index using data from three emerging economies, namely Turkey, Brazil and Poland. Our analysis indicates that the index has a nonlinear structure and hence we analyse its behaviour using threshold autoregressive (TAR) model. It is observed that MPI captures the economic stance and main economic incidents quite successfully in each subject country. To further see the relevance of the MPI, we run TAR cointegration analysis with consumer confidence indexes (CCIs) for the subject countries with TAR cointegration test. The results indicate long-term relationship between the MPI and CCI in all three countries.     

Democracy and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: a panel data approach

This paper studies the link between democracy and economic development for 28 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1980–2005 in a panel data framework. A democracy index constructed from the Freedom House indices. A variety of panel data unit root and cointegration tests are applied. The variables are found to be integrated of order one and cointegrated. The Blundell–Bond system generalized methods-of-moments is employed to conduct a panel error-correction mechanism based causality test within a vector autoregressive structure. Economic growth is found to cause democracy in the short-run, while bidirectionality is uncovered in the long-run. In addition, the long-run coefficients are estimated through the panel fully modified ordinary least squares and dynamic ordinary least squares methods. Democracy has a positive impact on GDP and vice versa. These results lend support to the virtuous cycle hypothesis.     

The endogenous objective function of a partially privatized firm: A Nash bargaining approach

We establish a model wherein a private firm competes with a partially privatized firm whose objective function is endogenously determined through bargaining between owners—the welfare-maximizing government and dividend-maximizing private shareholders. Many existing works on partial privatization have assumed that privatization increases the weight of profits in the partially privatized firm's objective, whereas it decreases the weight of welfare. However, our bargaining approach shows that this result can be reversed.     

Renewable energy innovations in Europe: a dynamic panel data approach

We investigate the determinants of renewable energy R&D intensity and the impact of renewable energy innovations on firm performance, using several dynamic panel data models. We estimate these models using a large data set of European firms from 19 different countries, with some patenting activity in areas related to renewable energies during the 1987 to 2007 period. Our results confirm our priors on the determinants of the rapid development of renewable energy R&D intensity during the past decades. Additionally, we find evidence that renewable patent intensity has a significant dynamic impact on the stock market value of firms.     

The growth of university spin-offs: a dynamic panel data approach

Evidence suggests that a significant percentage of the university spin-offs (USOs) have a low growth capacity, putting in question the use of public funds to promote this kind of entrepreneurship. In addition, previous studies of the USOs’ growth have not dealt with the dynamic nature of firm growth, which might have led to questionable results. This paper analyses whether the university origin of a firm conditions its growth by applying a methodology which captures this dynamic nature of growth. Using a sample of 469 Spanish USOs and an equivalently matched group of 469 Spanish non-USOs over the period 2001–2010, we find that USOs have more growth than non-USOs, both in terms of sales and employment. In addition, the USOs’ growth is influenced by a set of determinants that differ from those of non-USOs. On the basis of the results, we propose some policies to foster the USOs.     

Technical efficiency of Spanish manufacturing firms: a panel data approach

This paper estimates the levels of technical efficiency reached by Spanish manufacturing firms, through an econometric estimation of frontier production functions for fifteen sectors of activity, and also, obtains other relevant technological measurements of these productive processes such as the scale and the technical progress parameters. The methodology used is the panel data methods (Schmidt and Sickles, 1984). The statistical source is provided by the Survey on Business Strategies (Encuesta Sobre Estrategias Empresariales), a panel of data covering 855 Spanish manufacturing firms observed over the period 1990-1994. Our econometric results confirm the great heterogeneity in the firms' efficiency, the predominance of constant returns to scale and the great rate of technological progress.     

Union bargaining power, employment, and output in a model of monopolistic competition with wage bargaining

This paper examines the implications of a rise in the bargaining power of workers on the real wage, income distribution, and the levels of employment and output using a macroeconomic model with monopolistic competition and worker-owner Nash bargaining at the firm level. It thereby provides optimizing microfoundations to Kalecki's macroeconomic analysis of the positive effect on output of a rise in trade-union power, and contrasts it with the neoclassical view based on the diminishing marginal productivity of labor.     

Unemployment insurance and union bargaining — an insider-outsider approach

A trade union is required to tax its own members to fund unemployment benefit paid to its unemployed members in an insider-outsider model of union bargaining over wages and employment. An increase in unemployment benefit imposed by the government increases employment overall but not necessarily the employment of insiders if the tax rate is exogenously fixed by the government.This paper has benefited from comments of Mick Common, Dipak Ghosh, Bob Hart, and Robin Ruffell. The comments of two anonymous referees and the advice of the Editor have greatly improved the presentation of the paper. Any remaining errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors.     

The earnings effects of health and health-related activities: a panel data approach

We investigate the effects of health and health-related habits on earnings in China using panel data to control for unobserved heterogeneity related to individual traits and job characteristics. Health-related habits include smoking cigarettes, drinking tea, frequency of drinking alcohol and physical exercising. We find a significant and large impact of health status on earnings, controlling for schooling, experience and the unobserved individual heterogeneity and job heterogeneity. We also find that smoking has a strong negative effect on earnings net of health status, while the estimated effects of other health-related activities are statistically insignificant.