Opposite Effects of Competition and Rents on Collective Bargaining – Evidence from Germany

Why do firms and workers bargain individually or collectively? I test the effect of product market competition and rents with German establishment data. Against intuition, competition and rents have opposite effects. Competition has a u-shaped effect on the probability of collective bargaining. This contradicts the existing theory (Ebell and Haefke 2006; Boeri and Burda 2009). By contrast, firms with higher rents are more prone to collective bargaining. For both competition and rents, the effect is stronger for sector-level than for firm-level collective bargaining. Indicators of higher productivity also matter: A higher export share drives firms into individual wage bargaining, while a higher share of workers with higher education drives firms into firm-level bargaining. Thus, the interplay between productivity, competition, and the wage setting regime is much more subtle than suggested by the existing theory.