Wage incentives and wage rigidity: A representative view from within

A recent literature has used surveys of those who set wages to learn about the nature of wage incentives and the sources of wage rigidity. Methodologically, we overcome many of the objections that have been raised against this work. Substantively, we find that: (i) the reasons for real wage rigidity differ significantly between large and small firms, and between the high- and low-end of the labor market; (ii) efficiency wage mechanisms reinforce rigidities due to worker bargaining power; (iii) money illusion is a widespread phenomenon across all segments of the labor market; (iv) unions reinforce nominal wage rigidities due to external pay comparisons; (v) there appears to be gender differences in pay bargaining and work morale.     

Wage drift and minimum contractual wage: Theoretical interrelationship and empirical evidence for Italy

A two-stage wage setting process whose outcomes are identified in the wage drift, at the local level, and in the tariff wage, at the central level, is analyzed. The impact of insider and outsider factors in each stage of the bargaining process is investigated both theoretically and empirically for Italy. In the light of its extreme policy relevance, particular attention is devoted to the analysis of the interrelationships between the wage drift and the tariff wage. Panel data estimation carried out on a sample of 105 Italian three-digit industries and 41 contract groups, reveals that: (1) Insider factors (productivity, inventories and the insider workers power) are important determinants of the wage drift while outsider factors (aggregate wage and unemployment) have a prominent role in determining the tariff wage. (2) Wage drift and tariff wage are closely interrelated.     

The verdict on the minimum wage: guilty on all counts

Some recent research in the US has challenged the long-held view among economists that raising the minimum wage reduces employment. However, most economists continue to hold to the orthodox view, which continues to be confirmed in academic journals. Furthermore, research continues to find other negative effects from the minimum wage that are sufficient to oppose it even if there is no loss of employment.     

Rising wage inequality,the decline of collective bargaining,and the gender wage gap

This paper investigates the increase in wage inequality, the decline in collective bargaining, and the evolution of the gender wage gap in West Germany between 2001 and 2006. Based on detailed linked employer–employee data, we show that wage inequality is rising strongly — driven not only by real wage increases at the top of the wage distribution, but also by real wage losses below the median. Coverage by collective wage bargaining plummets by 16.5 (19.1) percentage points for male (female) employees. Despite these changes, the gender wage gap remains almost constant, with some small gains for women at the bottom and at the top of the wage distribution. A sequential decomposition analysis using quantile regression shows that all workplace related effects (firm effects and bargaining effects) and coefficients for personal characteristics contribute strongly to the rise in wage inequality. Among these, the firm coefficients effect dominates, which is almost exclusively driven by wage differences within and between different industries. Labor demand or firm wage policy related effects contribute to an increase in the gender wage gap. Personal characteristics tend to reduce wage inequality for both males and females, as well as the gender wage gap.     

Bankruptcy, Takeovers, and Wage Contracts

Takeovers give raiders the opportunity of breaking implicit contracts inside the firm. If implicit contracts are adopted by workers and management to reach more efficient outcomes, then the possibility of takeovers may cause a welfare loss. We show that, under some conditions, this argument can go through even if the firm and the workers can write explicit and complete contracts. The crucial assumption is that the profitability of the firm is linked to its financial situation, in the sense that a firm which has a high probability of bankruptcy will face fewer opportunities than a financially solid firm. In this framework, the possibility of takeovers imposes constraints on the set of feasible employment contracts, leading to inefficient outcomes.     

Noncompete agreements,training, and wage competition

We study the effects of noncompete agreements in an environment where firms invest in training junior workers. After obtaining employer-provided training, trained workers can choose whether to remain loyal to their initial employer or switch to the competing employer. We evaluate the effects of noncompete agreements on wages, employment, investment in training, production, profits, and total welfare. Firms earn higher profits and pay lower average wage when they require workers to sign noncompete agreements.     

minimum wage, maximum unemployment

The Minimum Wage is now a controversial part of the political debate in the run-up to the General Election. Martin Summers, a research associate of the Institute of Economic Affairs, reviews the evidence of how the minimum wage has worked in other countries and concludes that the creation of unemployment is almost the least of the evils it causes.     

The relationship between wage growth and wage levels

We estimate the covariance between the permanent component of wages and a random coefficient on experience in models both with potential experience and with actual experience. Actual experience is allowed to be arbitrarily correlated with both the permanent component of wages and the random component on experience. We find no evidence that workers of higher ability experience faster wage growth. Our point estimates suggest that a worker with a one standard deviation higher level of permanent ability would have a return to annual potential experience that is 0.61 of a percentage point lower. The analogous point estimate for actual experience is 0.87 of a point lower. Contrary to the popular perception, wage growth among low‐skill workers appears to be at least as high as that for a medium‐skilled worker. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Product market integration,wage dispersion and unemployment

International product market integration enhances both the export possibility of supplying to foreign markets and the import threat of foreign firms penetrating into domestic markets. These mechanisms affect labour markets since they amount to increased job mobility. At the same time heterogeneity may increase since it is unlikely that the opportunities and threats are uniformly distributed across different groups/sectors. In a Ricardian trade model admitting heterogeneity in the labour market, it is shown that lower trade frictions are associated with aggregate welfare gains, increased trade and specialization, but also more dispersion in wages. Structural labour market problems caused by union market power are reduced while those caused by minimum (reservation) wages are strengthened.     

Efficiency wages,wage comparison,and public sector budgeting

We develop a government decision model where efficiency wage mechanisms affect the allocation of resources between different public services. We show how the introduction of interdepartment wage relativities modifies the standard Solow wage setting conditions. We compare the outcome under centralised and decentralised wage setting, and show that a decentralised wage setting system creates a distortion. Finally, we discuss the possibility of elimination this distortion using alternative financing systems.Final version: 08 April 2003JEL Classification: H23, J45We are grateful to Jan E. Askildsen, Daniel L. Rubinfeld, Agnar Sandmo, participants at conferences and seminars in Trondheim, Uppsala and Åsgårdstrand, and several anonymous referees for helpful comments. The second author is grateful to The Norwegian Research Council for financial support. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Verifiable wage offers and recontracting: effect on wage and consumption profiles

This paper analyzes the effect of recontracting and matching verifiable wage offers on the intertemporal structure of contract wage and consumption profile for a two-period economy. A contract firm provides specific training for a worker during the first period, which increases his productivity if he stays in the second period, but the worker may quit to accept an alternative wage offer after a successful search. Wage offers are private to the worker but can be presented to the contract firm for matching. This paper shows that when capital markets are imperfect and wage offers are verifiable, the contract firm recontracts and matches any wage offers the worker receives up to the second-period productivity. The ex ante contract wage profile will be flat. Inefficient quits will be eliminated and there will be complete ex ante consumption smoothing. It is significant to note that the result of rising wage profile derived in numerous contract models is fragile with respect to assumptions on mechanism of interfirm labor mobility.     

Financial advantage,outsourcing and FDI under wage uncertainty

This paper investigates outsourcing and foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions in North–South trade under conditions of wage uncertainty. The North has a financial advantage to raise capital, but the South has the advantage of low wages. If the expected outsourcing cost is lower than the in-house production cost, some outsourcing to a Southern firm is optimal. However, outsourcing to an FDI firm is superior to outsourcing to a Southern firm as well as in-house production. This finding is consistent with the rising foreign direct investment in China by Northern firms.     

物价水平、工资差异与审计定价

中国审计市场具有明显的地域特征,上市公司的地域位置会对审计定价产生影响。物价水平及工资水平与审计定价间关系的实证检验研究显示:物价水平越高的地区,上市公司审计定价越高;工资水平越高的地区,上市公司审计定价越高。进一步的研究发现,物价水平和工资水平间的相互关系削弱了区域差异对审计定价的影响,工资水平与审计定价间的关系依赖于物价水平。     

Regional factor specificity,wage differential and resource allocation

We developed a two-region, rigid-wage model incorporating features of a region-specific factor (in addition to the primary inputs) and an inter-regional wage differential. While full employment of capital is always maintained, labor, however, is subject to unemployment in both regions because of wage rigidity. The model was deployed to examine the effects of a change in the specific factor and a non-specific factor on regional resource allocation, output production and total employment. It is demonstrated that an increase in the factor specific to region 1 will result in a reallocation of resources from the second region to the first region and a decrease in the capital rentals in both regions. Thus, the output production will expand in region 1 at the expense of that in region 2. However, total employment in the nation may increase or decrease depending on whether or not the production in the second region is relatively capital intensive.     

平均工资、缴费下限与养老保险参保

研究目标：研究养老保险参保缴费逆向激励产生的原因、作用机制以及后果。研究方法：通过构建刻画参保者行为的生命周期模型,数值模拟分析平均工资增长对参保者效用的影响;借助自然实验构建固定效应工具变量回归,实证研究平均工资增长对参保行为的影响。研究发现：基于在岗职工平均工资的缴费下限设定,增加了低收入者的实际缴费负担,随着平均工资的提高,在借贷约束的限制下,为保障当期消费,低收入者会退出养老保险制度;平均工资上涨会显著降低参保职工人数,导致缴费遵从度下降。研究创新：通过研究平均工资变化对实际费率负担的影响,揭示低收入者的参保行为。研究价值：为养老保险制度改革,提供理解参保者微观行为的理论框架和实证依据。     

Wage curve, unemployment duration and compensating differentials

In this study unemployment effects on individual pay are investigated following the study on ‘wage curves’ by Blanchflower and Oswald (1990). In bargaining models, higher unemployment should lower wage pressure; due to compensating wage differential arguments, on the other hand, workers who take jobs with higher layoff risks should be rewarded. In a cross-sectional study on Austrian data, a negative wage curve is confirmed. Contrary to the results by Blanchflower and Oswald no U-shape is found, also long-term unemployment seems to be important. No conclusive evidence of compensating differentials has been determined.     

Monopsonistic discrimination, worker turnover, and the gender wage gap

Motivated by models of worker flows, we argue in this paper that monopsonistic discrimination may be a substantial factor behind the overall gender wage gap. Using matched employer–employee data from Norway, we estimate establishment-specific wage premiums separately for men and women, conditioning on fixed individual effects. Regressions of worker turnover on the wage premium identify less wage elastic labour supply facing each establishment of women than that of men. Workforce gender composition is strongly related to employers' wage policies. The results suggest that 70–90% of the gender wage gap for low-educated workers may be attributed to differences in labour market frictions between men and women, while the similar figures for high-educated workers ranges from 20 to 70%.     

效率工资、效率工资增长模型

本文首先介绍了效率工资的经典模型——夏皮罗一斯蒂格里兹模型,探讨了效率工资的形成以及非自愿失业出现的原因,及失业的“威胁”作用。另外,本文在符合效率工资模型的基本假定条件下,融合代理理论和强制性储蓄假说,构建了效率工资增长模型,提出了效率工资增长模型的关键等式,且由等式隐含地决定了效率工资的最优增长率。此外,还分别分析了效率工资的最优增长率与贴现率、厂商生产技术和工人偏好之间的关系。最后,探讨了最优就业路径和调整成本问题等等。     

Wage bargaining,productivity growth and long-run industry structure

This paper studies the innovation dynamics of an oligopolistic industry. The firms compete not only in the output market but also by engaging in productivity enhancing innovations to reduce labor costs. Rent sharing may generate productivity dependent wage differentials. Productivity growth creates intertemporal spillover effects, which affect the incentives for innovation at subsequent dates. Over time the industry equilibrium approaches a steady state. The paper characterizes the evolution of the industry's innovation behavior and its market structure on the adjustment path.