In this paper, we investigate the effects of the boom in education on the wage structure in Europe. We use detailed information on the distribution of wages, estimated from microdata from 12 European countries from the beginning of the 1980's to the present, to analyse the changes both between...

A number of recent studies have documented extensive downward nominal wage rigidity (dnwr) for job stayers in many oecd countries. However, dnwr for individual workers may induce downward rigidity or "a floor" for the aggregate wage growth at positive or negative levels. Aggregate wage growth...

A number of recent studies have documented extensive downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) for job stayers in many OECD countries. However, DNWR for individual workers may induce downward rigidity or a floorʺ for the aggregate wage growth at positive or negative levels. Aggregate wage growth...

This paper explores the existence of downward real wage rigidity (DRWR) in 19 OECD countries, over the period 1973-1999, using data for hourly nominal earnings at the industry level. Based on a nonparametric statistical method, which allows for country- and year-specific variation in both the...

This paper reviews the literature on the effects of low steady-state inflation on wage formation, focusing on four different effects. First, under low inflation, downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) may prevent real wage cuts that would have happened had inflation been higher. Second, wages...

Debate over labor market flexibility focuses mainly on firing costs, while largely ignoring wage determination and the need for collective bargaining reform. Most countries affected by the euro debt crisis have two-tier bargaining structures in which plant-level bargaining supplements national...

A large and growing literature has identified several conditions, including exporting, that contribute to plant survival. A prevailing sentiment suggests that anti-sweatshop activity against plants in developing countries adds the risk of making survival more difficult by imposing external...

In the past decades unemployment in the Netherlands has gone down substantially. The main suspects responsible for this decline are the growth of part-time labor, the reform of the benefit system and wage moderation. Nevertheless, in 2002 the unemployment rate in the Netherlands has increased...

In the years before the economic crisis, Portugal had low growth, a decline in export competitiveness and rising imbalances that included a large current account deficit and a strong expansion of the non-tradable sector. Strengthening export performance is therefore one of the principal...