Central banks need to be concerned about wages since they are a major driver of inflation. Rising wages are needed to signal directions for market adjustments to ensure growth. Wage growth is driven by relative scarcity, labor productivity and expectations about inflation and future growth....

This paper discusses the sensitivity of the labor market outcome in the standard bargaining paradigms - monopoly union and efficient bargaining - to the existence of a budget constraint pending on the financing of the unemployment benefit. Consequences of how the unions value members and...

This paper investigates how demographic change affects the financial sustainability of a defined benefit pay-as-you-go social security system in an environment with collective bargaining on the labor market. Temporary equilibrium analysis shows that the contribution rate decreases, if the...

This paper investigates the demise of unionisation in British private sector workplaces over the last quarter century. We show that dramatic union decline has occurred across all types of workplace. Although the union wage premium persists it is quite small in 2004. Negative union effects on...

In the present paper an effort will be made to test empirically that unemployment is negatively affected by inflation, positively affected by labour union power, and not affected by globalization. Panel data analysis is used covering the period 1999-2005 for the countries: Austria, Belgium,...

This paper investigates how demographic change affects the financial sustainability of apay-as-you-gosocialsecuritysysteminanenvironmentwithcollectivebargainingonthe labor market. Partial equilibrium analysis shows that the contribution rate or the benefit level decreases, if the old-age...

What are the effects of firm- and sector-level trade unions on unemployment and aggregate output if individuals have rent-sharing motives? To answer this question, we extend a Melitz-type model to unionized labor markets. Because individual rent-sharing motives are only taken into account and...

This paper addresses the question under which circumstances unemployment can be lower if unions bargain over wages and employment in a general equilibrium framework. Thereby, it turns out that the unemployment rate may negatively depend on the wage rate, if the unemployment compensation scheme...

Dynamics of labour market dualisation have affected most Western European countries over the last two decades and trade unions have been often seen as conservative institutions protecting the interests of their core constituencies and as such contributing to labour market dualisation. However,...