This paper explores the role that employers’ associations may play in centralized wage bargaining processes. It thereby adds to the literature on labor markets, in which the relationship between union behavior and unemployment has been explored quite extensively, while employers’...

This paper explores the anticompetitive effects that wage determination between an employers. association and the industry.s labor union may have when wages are generally binding. It is shown that employers. associations can, under certain circumstances, use generally binding standard wages to...

This paper offers a cartel explanation for the stability of German collective bargaining institutions.We show that a dense net of legal safeguards has been yarned around the wage setting cartel. These measures make deviation by cartel insiders less attractive and simultaneously erect entry...

In this paper we apply standard cartel theory to identify the major institutional stabilizers of Germany's area tariff system of collective bargaining between a single industry union and the industry's employers association. Our cartel analysis allows us to demonstrate that recent labor policy...

This paper examines how unionization structures that differ in the degree of wage centralization affect firms' incentives to increase labor productivity. We distinguish three modes of unionization with increasing degree of centralization: (1) “Decentralization” where wages are determined...

Der vorliegende Beitrag interpretiert die Standortentscheidung von Unternehmen als den Abschluß eines impliziten Franchisevertrages zwischen dem Standort als Franchisegeber und dem Unternehmen als Franchisenehmer. Standorte bieten ein Bündel von Dienstleistungen wie die Nutzung von...