WAGE BARGAINING AND MERGER INCENTIVES WITH ASYMMETRIC COSTS

This paper examines how wage bargaining within each firm influences the relationship between an equilibrium ownership structure and the most preferred ownership structure from the viewpoint of social welfare, in a unionized oligopoly of asymmetric firms with respect to productivity of capital. We consider the merger incentive of each firm’s owner when the wage level is determined through bargaining between the firm’s owner and union. We derive a condition for both the degree of cost asymmetry among existing firms and the relative bargaining power of each firm’s owner to her/his union such that each ownership structure can be observed in equilibrium. We also show that although the two types of ownership structures with the merger involving the least efficient firm can be equilibria and socially optimal, these structures are observed only when both the degree of cost asymmetry and the relative bargaining power of each firm’s owner are moderate. Finally, we analyse the relationship among the cooperative game approach employed in this paper and two non‐cooperative merger formation approaches, and examine the robustness of the results obtained in this paper against the change in the assumption regarding each firm’s cost function.     

Increased sorting and wage inequality in the Czech Republic

This paper makes use of a linked employer–employee dataset to examine the evolution of wage inequality in the Czech Republic during 1998–2006. We find evidence of slightly increasing returns to human capital and diminishing gender inequality and document sharp increases in both within‐firm and between‐firm inequality. We investigate several hypotheses to explain these patterns: increased domestic and international competition, decentralized wage bargaining, skill‐biased technological change and a changing educational composition of the workforce. Domestic competition is found to lower within‐firm inequality whereas we find no evidence that increased international trade at the industry level is associated with higher between‐ or within‐firm wage inequality. The key factors driving the observed increase in wage inequality are increased educational sorting and the inflow of foreign firms to the Czech Republic.     

Unions and Efficient Training

The paper examines the optimal level of training investment when trained workers are mobile, wage contracts are time-consistent, and training comprises both specific and general skills. The firm has ex post monopsonistic power that drives trained workers' wages below the social optimum. The emergence of a trade union bargaining at the firm-level can increase social welfare, by counterbalancing the firm's ex post monopsonistic power in wage determination. Local union-firm wage bargaining ensures that the post-training wage is set sufficiently high to deter at least some quits, so that the number of workers the firm trains is nearer the social optimum     

R&D INVESTMENTS AND SEQUENTIAL WAGE NEGOTIATIONS*

This paper analyses how the structure of wage bargaining affects R&D investment by firms that increases the productivity of labour in a Cournot duopoly. We find that total expenditure on R&D is greater when wages are set simultaneously than when they are set sequentially. Thus sequential wage negotiations reduce the incentive for firms to innovate and affect the productivity of labour. When wage negotiations are sequential the productivity of labour is greater (lower) in the follower (leader) firm than when negotiations are simultaneous. We also obtain that for same parameter values it is possible for the firm with the lower productivity to end up paying a higher wage than the firm with the higher level of labour productivity.     

The Organisation of Wage Bargaining in Divisionalised Firms

This paper analyses the organisation of wage bargaining in multiproduct firms since it affects the distribution of power between workers and firms. We assume that each firm has two plants and chooses who bargains the wage with the workers: either the head of the firm or the manager of each plant. Similarly, in each firm, its workers choose whether they set up plant unions or a single union.     

Operating efficiency and output insensitive employment contracts for capital management

Summary This paper considers a problem in which an agent is hired to manage a capital investment and subsequently receives private information regarding the productivity of the capital investment. The capital manager must decide whether to invest capital supplied by the firm (the principal), or to divert these investment funds to perquisite consumption. If the manager decides to invest, the manager must then select the level of operating efficiency (productivity) of the capital investment, this latter choice being unobservable and constrained by the (maximal) productivity of the investment. In this setting we demonstrate that the optimal employment contract, from the perspective of the firm hiring the manager, is the contract whichminimizes the dependence of the manager's compensation on firm output. This contract pays the manager a fixed wage whenever output from the investment exceeds the wage and provides the manager with all of the projects rents whenever output falls below this level. Thus, we provide a setting in which fixed wage contracts are the optimal incentive contract even when agents are risk neutral and contracts can be costlessly written on future output.We would like to thank the participants in the Princeton Economics and Finance Workshop and the Ohio State University Finance Workshop for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The second author gratefully acknowledges the research support of the Georgia State College of Business Administration Research Council.     

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.     

Sunk capital,unions and the hold-up problem: Theory and evidence from cross-country sectoral data

In this paper we study the hold-up problem by considering the effect of union bargaining power on the level of investment per worker across sectors characterised by different levels of sunk capital investment. We develop a search and matching model with heterogeneous sectors and ex-post collective wage bargaining and test the predictions of the model using a difference-in-difference approach on manufacturing sector data in a set of OECD countries during the period 1980–2000. We find that union power reduces investment per worker particularly in sunk capital intensive industries. We refine our empirical analysis showing that the underlying hold-up problem is exacerbated when strikes are not regulated after a collective contract is signed and there is no arbitration, while the presence of social pacts may sustain cooperative equilibria that alleviate the hold-up problem. Our results are robust to a series of controls and possible endogeneity of union power.     

Collective bargaining,firm heterogeneity and unemployment

We compare labor market outcomes under firm-level and sector-level bargaining in a one-sector Mortensen-Pissarides economy with firm-specific productivity shocks. Our main theoretical results are two-fold. First, unemployment is lower under firm-level bargaining, due both to a lower job destruction rate and a higher job-finding rate. Key to this result is the interplay between firm heterogeneity and wage compression under sector-level bargaining. Second, introducing efficient opting-out of sector-level agreements suffices to bring unemployment down to its level under decentralized bargaining.     

Union–firm bargaining: Order of play and efficiency

This paper shows that a modified alternating offers Rubinstein model can provide a Pareto superior outcome in the context of the right-to-manage union–firm bargaining. Two examples of bargaining protocols that yield a superior outcome are provided. In the first example, the parties engage in a game in which the order of play is determined as part of the bargaining. We show that the game has a unique subgame perfect equilibrium in which the firm always moves first in the wage bargaining game. The equilibrium wage is, therefore, unique. In the second example, we examine a two-part-tariff alternating offers bargaining protocol, where the parties bargain over the wage and transfer payments. We show that this bargaining protocol has a Pareto efficient, unique subgame perfect equilibrium. Thus, although the parties do not bargain over the level of employment, the outcome under this protocol is, nevertheless, socially optimal.     

A model of the socialist firm in transition to a market economy

This paper models the dynamic adjustment path of a socialist firm in transition to a market economy by a price shock that renders old capital obsolete. The firm can adjust with investment in more productive capital equipments. The optimal time paths of investment, output, and employment are analyzed and the impact of fiscal incentives like investment subsidies and a reduced corporate income tax rate are studied. Like output, the aggregate capital stock follows a J-curve. The conditions for viability of firms and the impact of variables such as wage increases on the value of the firm are discussed.     

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.     

How Does the Minimum Wage Affect Firm Investments in Fixed and Human Capital? Evidence from China

This paper empirically analyzes the impact of Chinese minimum wage regulations on the firm decision to invest in physical and human capital. We exploit the geographical and inter‐temporal variations of county‐level minimum wages in a panel data set of all state‐owned and all above‐scale non‐state‐owned Chinese firms covering the introduction of the new Chinese minimum wage regulations in 2004. In our basic regressions including all Chinese firms, we find significant negative effects of the minimum wage on human capital investment rates and no overall effects on fixed capital investment rates. When grouping firms by their ownership structure, we find that these results hold for most firms. Foreign‐owned firms are an exception to some extent, because the likelihood that they invest in human capital has not decreased in response to the policy.     

Relative wages, labor specialization and bargaining patterns

The goal of this paper is to study the effects of centralized and decentralized bargaining patterns on wage inequality when there are two different types of labor, skilled and unskilled. We present two models where labor is specialized between firms, that is, there are two types of firms, each one employing one type of labor. We show that the revenue shares of the production factors in each type of firm and the union power are crucial determinants of the relative wage. In contrast, the relative expected wage is the same across models and bargaining patterns.     

A Note on Franchising and Wage Bargaining

A franchising contract relocates distributable rent between franchisor and franchisee. With decentralized wage bargaining relocation modifies the position of the union in the wage bargaining. If the rent is relocated to the franchisor completely, then even a strong union is not able to raise wage above reservation level in the franchisee's firm. If franchisor and franchisee negotiate on rent division, there is an incentive to increase the franchise fee at the expense of the union. Therefore the overall rent assigned to labor depends on the differences of labor intensity in the franchisor's and franchisee's firms. Firm owners may be able to transfer distributable rents from a firm with a strong union to one with a weak union. Furthermore, a franchising contract shows a first mover advantage. A franchising contract is placed before wage bargaining, benefiting the franchisor.     

Wage Bargaining, Inventories, and Union Legislation

This paper analyses a strategic bargaining game where the firm may or maynot be able to sell out of its inventory of finished goods during astrike. Firms and the union are both risk neutral and have the same discountrate. It is shown that the wage equilibrium corresponds to the axiomaticNash bargaining solution where the threatpoints are the agents' payoffsshould bargaining continue indefinitely. We use the 1980 and 1982 EmploymentActs to test this theory, interpreting that legislation change as changingthe firm's threatpoint but not its bargaining power. This allows us toidentify the value of the firm's threatpoint post-1982. Formal testssupport the theory. Also consistent with the theory, it is found that unionwages decrease with inventories after 1982, but not before, and that theunion wage gap is smaller after 1982.     

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.     

Profit sharing as entry deterrence mechanism

In a right-to-manage framework, this paper analyzes the optimal choice of the pay scheme (profit sharing vs. fixed wage) in a unionized duopoly with potential market entry and decentralized bargaining. The paper shows that, depending on the institutional features, both pay systems can arise as equilibria in Nash strategies. Under duopoly with committed bargaining, the fixed wage is the Nash equilibrium; with flexible bargaining, an agreement between the incumbent firm and its union about profit sharing arises as Nash equilibrium, if the union is not too strong. A monopoly with threat of entry reinforces the selection of profit sharing as a deterrent mechanism.     

Entry Threats and Inefficiency in ‘Efficient Bargaining’

We study limit pricing in a model of entry with asymmetric information, where the incumbent firm's wage is endogenously determined through ‘efficient bargaining’ with its union. In the presence of entry threat, the incumbent firm‐union pair may face a conflict between rent sharing and transmitting its cost information. When the wage is not observable to outsiders and employment is the only signalling instrument, over‐employment features in all entry deterring contracts. When the wage is also observable, information transmission becomes easier. Most of the time, then, but not always, the efficient contract deters (induces) entry against the low (high) cost incumbent.     

Labor taxation, public finance, and wage determination: evidence from OECD countries

This paper analyzes the relationship between unemployment, average effective labour tax rates and public spending in 17 OECD countries. The focus is on the degree of centralization and cooperation in wage setting. Estimation results from a dynamic time-series-cross-section model suggest that the countries where wage setting takes place at the firm level have used labour taxes less extensively in financing welfare spending, compared to countries with centralized or decentralized bargaining. This is consistent with another finding, according to which labour taxes distort the labour demand the least in the countries with firm level bargaining.