The paper examines the role of collective bargaining systems as a determinant of the inter-industry wage structure. It compares wage patterns of six countries: Austria, Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the U.S.. We use comparable wage regressions from micro cross-sections data to calculate...

The paper studies the relationship between wage dispersion and centralization. We distinguish between two sources of wage differentials: Heterogenous -workers with different skills and firms with varying levels of economic rent per employee. The corresponding dimensions of centralization, i.e....

When work groups support the goals of the firm, firms will want to narrow wage dispersion in order to increase group cohesiveness and productivity. This narrowing of wage differentials has several implications: (1) Firms will pay wages that vary less than marginal productivity; (2) Firms that...