Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University, 1923. / Vita. Published also as Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science, ser. XLIV, no. 3.

Thesis--Stockholm. / Bibliography: p. 96-104.

Texte remanié de: Tesis doct.--Facultad de ciencias económicas--Universidad de Valladolid, 1991. / Bibliogr. p. 93-95.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Fakultät für Volkswirtschaftlehre und Statistik--Mannheim, 1995. Titre de soutenance : Die Auswirkungen der internationalen Zuwanderung auf den deutschen Arbeitsmarkt. / Bibliogr. p. 379-406. Index.

Th. Ph. D.--economy--London. / Bibliogr. p. 170-172.

Les rigidités du marché du travail ont souvent fait l’objet de spéculations dans la littérature en réponse à la volatilité excessive du chômage. Les questions d’économie positive mais aussi les questions normatives liées au fonctionnement des institutions du marché du travail ont animé un important débat. Cependant, les deux aspects du débat n’ont été que très peu orientés sur les interactions entre ces rigidités et la configuration optimale des institutions. L’objectif de cette thèse est de mettre en lumière le rôle de ces rigidités sur la dynamique du chômage et de l’inflation. On s’intéresse aux sources de fluctuations du marché du travail ainsi qu’aux questions liées au financement de l’assurance chômage en privilégiant les systèmes d’experience rating. Les résultats principaux sont les suivants. Premièrement, la prise en compte de frictions d’appariement et de rigidités de salaires est cruciale pour expliquer la dynamique du marché du travail mais leur estimation révèle que les chocs spécifiques au marché du travail comptabilisent une partie importante des fluctuations du chômage et des emplois vacants, impliquant une certaine déconnection avec les autres marchés. Deuxièmement, les systèmes d’assurance chômage basés sur l’experience rating stabilisent fortement les fluctuations du marché du travail en réduisant de façon considérable la volatilité du chômage et des séparations d’emplois mais également le coût en bien être associé aux imperfections du marché du travail. La prise en compte des non linéarités de ces systèmes permet de rendre compte des distorsions dans le comportement d’embauche et de licenciement des entrepreneurs. / The excessive volatility of unemployment has raised an intense debate on the positive and the normative aspects of labor market rigidities and labor market institutions. However, on both sides of the debate there is little discussion on how rigidities interact with each other nor on the optimal design of institutions. The purpose of this thesis is to highlight the role of labor market rigidities for unemployment and inflation dynamics. We are interested in the sources of labor market fluctuations as well as the unemployment insurance financing mode. We focus on experience rating systems. The main results are the followings. First, matching frictions and wage rigidities are crucial to explain the labor market dynamics but estimations of structural models show that the bulk of variation in labor market variables is solely explained by disturbances pertaining to the labor market. Second, unemployment insurance experience rating systems reduce considerably the volatility of labor market outcomes and the welfare cost coming from labor market imperfections. The tax schedule of experience rating is highly non linear, which induce sizeable distortions in the firms' hiring and firing behavior.

Proefschrift--Economische wetenschappen--Leuven, Katholieke universiteit, 1979. / Bibliogr. f. 231-237.

Texte remanié de: Th État--Sci. économiques--Aix-Marseille 3, 1984. / Bibliogr. p. 463-479.

In the first chapter,a harmonised linked employer-employee dataset is used to study the impact of firm-level agreements on the wage structure in the manufacturing sector in Belgium, Denmark and Spain. To our knowledge, this is one of the first cross-country studies that examines the impact of firm-level bargaining on the wage structure in European countries. We find that firm-level agreements have a positive effect both on wage levels and on wage dispersion in Belgium and Denmark. In Spain, firm also increase wage levels but reduce wage dispersion. Our interpretation is that in Belgium and Denmark, where firm-level bargaining greatly expanded since the 1980s on the initiative of the employers and the governments, firm-level bargaining is mainly used to adapt pay to the specific needs of the firm. In Spain, the structure of collective bargaining has not changed very much since the Franco period where firm agreements were used as a tool for worker mobilisation and for political struggle. Therefore, firm-level bargaining in Spain is still mainly used by trade unions in order to reduce the wage dispersion. In the second chapter, we analyse the impact of the bargaining level and of the degree of centralisation of wage bargaining on rent-sharing in Belgium. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that considers simultaneously both dimensions of collective bargaining. This is also one of the first papers that looks at the impact of wage bargaining institutions on rent-sharing in European countries. This question is important because if wage bargaining decentralisation increases the link between wages and firm specific profits, it may prevent an efficient allocation of labour across firms, increase wage inequality, lead to smaller employment adjustments, and affect the division of surplus between capital and labour (Bryson et al. 2006). Controlling for the endogeneity of profits, for heterogeneity among workers and firms and for differences in characteristics between bargaining regimes, we find that wages depend substantially more on firm specific profits in decentralised than in centralised industries , irrespective of the presence of a formal firm collective agreement. In addition, the impact of the presence of a formal firm collective agreement on the wage-profit elasticity depends on the degree of centralisation of the industry. In centralised industries, profits influence wages only when a firm collective agreement is present. This result is not surprising since industry agreements do not take into account firm-specific characteristics. Within decentralised industries, firms share their profits with their workers even if they are not covered by a formal firm collective agreement. This is probably because, in those industries, workers only covered by an industry agreement (i.e. not covered by a formal firm agreement) receive wage supplements that are paid unilaterally by their employer. The fact that those workers also benefit from rent-sharing implies that pay-setting does not need to be collective to generate rent-sharing, which is in line with the Anglo-American literature that shows that rent-sharing is not a particularity of the unionised sector. In the first two chapters, we have shown that, in Belgium, firm-level bargaining is used by firms to adapt pay to the specific characteristics of the firm, including firm’s profits. In the third and final chapter, it is shown that firm-level bargaining also allows wages to adapt to the local environment that the company may face. This aspect is of particular importance in the debate about a potential regionalisation of wage bargaining in Belgium. This debate is, however, not specific to Belgium. Indeed, the potential failure of national industry agreements to take into account the productivity levels of the least productive regions has been considered as one of the causes of regional unemployment in European countries (Davies and Hallet, 2001; OECD, 2006). Two kinds of solutions are generally proposed to solve this problem. The first, encouraged by the European Commission and the OECD, consists in decentralising wage bargaining toward the firm level (Davies and Hallet, 2001; OECD, 2006). The second solution, the regionalisation of wage bargaining, is frequently mentioned in Belgium or in Italy where regional unemployment differentials are high. In this chapter we show that, in Belgium, regional wage differentials and regional productivity differentials within joint committees are positively correlated. Moreover, this relation is stronger (i) for joint committees where firm-level bargaining is relatively frequent and (ii) for joint committees already sub-divided along a local line. We conclude that the present Belgian wage bargaining system which combines interprofessional, industry and firm bargaining, already includes the mechanisms that allow regional productivity to be taken into account in wage formation. It is therefore not necessary to further regionalise wage bargaining in Belgium.

Nous étudions l’évolution des salaires horaires au Canada au cours des trois dernières décennies à l’aide de données confidentielles du recensement et de l’Enquête nationale sur les ménages. Nous trouvons que le coefficient de variation des salaires chez les travailleurs à temps plein a presque doublé entre 1980 et 2010. La croissance rapide du 99,9e centile est le principal facteur expliquant cette hausse. Les changements dans la composition de la population active expliquent moins de 25% de la hausse de l’inégalité. Toutefois, des effets de composition expliquent la majorité de la hausse du salaire horaire moyen sur la période, alors que les salaires stagnent pour un niveau de compétence donné. / We consider changes in the distribution of hourly compensation in Canada over the last three decades using confidential census data and the recent National Household Survey. We find that the coefficient of variation of wages among full-time workers has almost doubled between 1980 and 2010. The rapid growth of the 99.9th percentile is the main driver of that increase. Changes in the composition of the workforce explain less than 25% of the rise in wage inequality. However, composition changes explain most of the increase in average hourly compensation over those three decades, while wages stagnate within skill groups.