This paper studies the impact of downward wage rigidity on wage dynamics and employment flows after the outbreak of major recessions over the last 30 years in Spain. Downward wage rigidity stems from collective agreements, which set province-industry-skill specific minimum wage floors for all...

This paper studies the impact of downward wage rigidity on wage and employment dynamics after the outbreak of major recessions in Spain. Downward wage rigidity stems from collective agreements, which set province-sector-skill specific minimum wage floors for all workers. By exploiting variation...

Conventional theory predicts that productivity gains lead to hikes in real pay. Efficiency wage theory hypothesizes that pay increases can lead to productivity improvements. But would such results be observed in a corporatist economy with centralized bargaining? For the case of Austria, a...

In search of a macroeconomic theory of wage determination, the agnostic reader should be puzzled by the apparent contradiction between two influential theories. On one hand, in the standard search-matching theory with wage bargaining, hiring cost and constant returns of labor, the bargaining...

In spite of their centrality for the study of collective bargaining, the treatment of puissance and pouvoir (power as a capacity and as its actualization) in the field of Industrial Relations has been unsatisfactory to date. This state of affairs can be explained partly by the absence of...

The paper argues that the form in which collective bargaining is organized might be a decisive factor in determining the performance of modern industrialized economies. The whole literature on corporatism is concerned with showing that the degree of centralization and coordination in wage...

In this paper we investigate the effects on the real gross wage of the collective bargaining agreements signed at the beginning of 2009 between the employers' confederations, trade unions (with the exception of CGIL, tha largest union) and the Government (as an employer). We use a dynamic model...

In France, the relative decline of sectoral collective bargaining, as well as changes in the law relating to the employment contract during the late 1980s, have restored some flexibility to the employer and employee in determining contract terms, thus contributing to a process of...

This paper studies how different unionisation structures affect firm productivity, firm performance, and consumer welfare in a monopolistic competition model with heterogeneous firms and free entry. While centralised bargaining induces tougher selection among heterogeneous producers and thus...