Estimation of price-cost margins and union bargaining power for Belgian manufacturing |
| |
Authors: | Sabien Dobbelaere |
| |
Affiliation: | SHERPPA, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium;LICOS Centre for Transition Economics, K.U. Leuven, Leuven, Belgium;IZA, Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany |
| |
Abstract: | This paper extends Hall's (1988) [Hall, R.E., 1988. The relationship between price and marginal cost in US industry, Journal of Political Economy, 96, 921–947] methodology to analyze imperfections in both the product and the labor market for firms in the Belgian manufacturing industry over the period 1988–1995. We investigate the heterogeneity in price-cost mark-up and workers' bargaining power parameters among 18 sectors within the manufacturing industry as well as the relationship between both parameters. Using a sample of more than 7000 firms, our GMM results indicate that ignoring imperfection in the labor market leads to an underestimation of the price-cost margin evaluated at perfect competition in the labor market. These findings are confirmed in the sectoral analysis. Sectors with higher workers' bargaining power typically show higher price-cost margins. |
| |
Keywords: | Efficient bargaining Workers' bargaining power Market power Price-cost margins |
本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录! |
|