Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-749).

This paper analyzes the link between relative market value of representative subsets of athletes in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and individual wages. NBA athletes are categorized with respect to multiple performance characteristics utilizing the k-means algorithm to cluster observations and a group's market value is calculated by averaging real annual salaries. Employing GMM estimation techniques to a dynamic wage equation, we find a statistically significant and positive effect of one-period lagged relative market value of an athlete's representative cluster on individual wages after controlling for past individual performance. This finding is consistent with the theory of prototype heuristic, introduced by Kahneman and Frederick (2002), that NBA teams' judgment about an athlete's future performance is based on a comparison of the player to a prototype group consisting of other but comparable athletes. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

The aim of this paper is to estimate the effect of FDI and trade openness on wages in the CEECs in the post-transition era. We utilize a cross-country sector-specific eceonometric analysis based on one-digit level panel data for manufacturing industry in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, for the period of 2000-2004. The results suggest that the increases in productivity are reflected in wages only to a modest extent, even in the long-term, leading to a steady decline in the share of labor in manufacturing industry in almost all sub-sectors in all countries. Meanwhile, the high significant and negative effect of unemployment on wages shows that the labor market is flexible in terms of wage flexibility. FDI has a positive effect on wages only in the capital and skill intensive sectors. The results also show that the increase in trade with EU did not lead to positive prospects for wages in manufacturing industry, contrary to the expectations of pro-market policies and traditional trade theory. The long-term net effect of exports and imports is negative, suggesting that integration of CEECs to EU via trade liberalization have worked at the expense of labor. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Economides (1986) has shown that within a linear city an equilibrium exists in a two-stage location-price game when the curvature of the transportation cost function is sufficiently high. One important point is that not all of these equilibria are at maximal differentiation. In this paper we include an additional stage with decentralized wage bargaining. This intensifies price competition resulting in locations that are nearer to the extremes of the city. The magnitude of this effect depends on the bargaining power of the unions. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Dans le premier chapitre, après une présentation des institutions responsables des négociations salariales en France, je me penche sur l'utilisation, par les grandes entreprises, des salaires planchers pour évincer la concurrence. En effet, les salaires négociés au niveau de l'industrie s'appliquent à l'ensemble des entreprises, qu'elles soient présentent lors des négociations ou non. Ce chapitre possède une partie théorique où il est montré que les plus grosses entreprises ont un intérêt à augmenter les salaires planchers, pour réduire le profit des plus petites entreprises, et ainsi récupérer leurs parts de marché. Par conséquent, plus les syndicats patronaux représentent les intérêts des grandes entreprises, plus le salaire négocié au niveau sectoriel est important. Cette prédiction est testée en utilisant des données françaises. L'utilisation d'une stratégie instrumentale permet de montrer que plus les entreprises négociant les salaires planchers sont grosses par rapport à la moyenne de l'industrie concernée, plus le salaire négocié est important.Dans le second chapitre, je regarde l'effet des négociations sectorielles sur l'innovation. J'utilise un modèle avec compétition monopolistique. Je trouve que, dans le cas d'une négociation salariale au niveau de l'industrie, les parties à la négociation prennent en compte le fait que l'augmentation du coût du travail va diminuer les investissements, de leurs concurrents. En effet, avec la négociation sectorielle, l'augmentation du salaire plancher implique que les revenus tirés d'une innovation diminuent. Cette baisse des investissements permet aux entreprises dominantes de sécuriser leur place, ce qui possède un effet négatif sur l'innovation et la croissance.Dans le dernier chapitre, je trouve que la compétition internationale réduit l'importance des effets mis en avant précédemment. En effet, les négociations sectorielles permettent aux entreprises dominantes de former des accords collusifs. Cependant, les entreprises étrangères du même secteur ne sont pas sujettes à ces accords salariaux. Cela vient donc empêcher la mise en place de ces effets de cartel. Ce chapitre est basé sur un modèle de type Melitz. De plus, des donnés sur les salaires négociés en France sont utilisées. L'augmentation des échanges avec la Chine est utilisée comme un choc exogène. Il est prouvé que cela réduit la rente extraite lors des accords de branche. / In the first chapter, after a presentation of institutional settings, I will focus on the use of sector-level agreements by large firms to reduce competition. Indeed, wage floors are binding for all firms of the industry, whether they sit at the negotiating table or not. This chapter provides a theoretical framework showing that such agreements can be used by dominant firms to reduce competition. In this framework, the higher the over-representation of large firms in employers' federations, the larger the bargained wage floors. This leads to the eviction of small firms. This prediction is tested on French administrative data. I document the domination of large firms within federations and devise an instrumental strategy to show that when the bargaining firms are relatively large compared to the industry standard - ie the lower the federation's representativeness, the higher are wage floors.In the second chapter, I look at the effect of sector-level agreements on innovation. It is based on a model with monopolistic competition between products of an industry on the one hand, and between industries on the other hand. First, I find that when the bargaining process occurs at the industry level, negotiating parties take into account that a wage increase will deter investments of competitors. Indeed, when the wage negotiated at the industry-level increases, the labor cost increase implies that the reward for innovations decrease. As this will reduce the probability to be outperformed, this will generate a wage surplus when the bargaining takes place at the industry-level, reducing both production and employment. Furthermore, it will decrease the research effort of the industry reducing the productivity growth.In the final chapter, I find that international competition mitigates the previous effects. Indeed, collective wage bargaining allows firms of a given industry to coordinate. However, international competition makes this collusive equilibrium unsustainable. Indeed, domestic firms face competition from foreign competitors which are not bound by those agreements. To support this argument, a Melitz-type model is developed and its implications tested on French data using the China Shock as a source of exogenous variation. The rent extracted during sector-level agreements no longer exist when domestic firms face Chinese competition.

Ziel des Beitrags ist es, den Blick auf einen Trend sozialstaatlichen Umbaus lenken: die Vertariflichung sozialer Sicherung. Darunter versteht der Verfasser die zunehmende Überantwortung der Wohlfahrtsproduktion an die kollektiven Akteure des Systems der industriellen Beziehungen, also an eine Aushandlungs- und Gestaltungsebene, die sich durch ihre Eigengesetzlichkeiten von Sozialstaatlichkeit ebenso deutlich unterscheidet wie vom Handeln individueller Akteure auf Wohlfahrtsmärkten. Die Beteiligung der Tarifpartner an der Wohlfahrtsproduktion ist für sich genommen nichts Neues. Neu ist, dass die von Tarif- und Betriebsakteuren ausgehandelten Elemente sozialer Sicherung vermehrt substitutiv statt komplementär zu sozialstaatlichen Leistungen fungieren sollen. Einleitend beleuchtet der Autor das Verhältnis von Tarifsystem und staatlicher Sozialpolitik; dabei zeichne ich historische Prozesse der funktionalen Differenzierung beider Systeme ebenso nach wie deren in jüngerer Zeit zu beobachtende partielle Entdifferenzierung (1). Diese Richtungsumkehr wird ausführlicher an zwei sozialpolitisch relevanten Bereichen sichtbar gemacht: an der Gestaltung des Rentenübergangs und an der betrieblichen Altersvorsorge (2). Dann werden die Folgen der Entdifferenzierungsprozesse für die Akteure im System der Industriellen Beziehungen diskutiert (3) und Überlegungen zu den daraus resultierenden wahrscheinlichen Konsequenzen für den Staat angestellt (4). Der Beitrag schließt mit einem Ausblick und mit dem Versuch, die Vertariflichung sozialer Sicherung mit den anderen, oben genannten Entwicklungen in Beziehung zu setzen (5). (ICB2)

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In a model with a unionised immobile labour force we analyse how labour taxes and transfers towards unemployed workers are optimally cho- sen when a welfare maximising government faces oligopolistic and partly mobile firms. We consider two polar types of government: one whose objective consists of maximising the sum of domestic producer's and con- sumers' surplus and one that aims at maximising employed and unem- ployed workers' payoffs. We show that depending on the combination of foreign labour costs, the degree of domestic union bargaining power, and the sunk costs of relocation, the former type of government may choose to set taxes so as to induce an outward relocation of production. (author's abstract) / Series: Discussion Papers SFB International Tax Coordination

In a model with a unionised immobile labour force we analyse how labour taxes and transfers towards unemployed workers are optimally chosen when a welfare maximising government faces oligopolistic and partly mobile firms. We consider two polar types of government: one whose objective consists of aximising the sum of domestic producer's and consumers' surplus and one that aims at maximising employed and unemployed workers' payoffs. We show that depending on the combination of foreign labour costs, the degree of domestic union bargaining power, and the sunk costs of relocation, the former type of government may choose to set taxes so as to induce an outward relocation of production. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Why can junior management consultants bill four-digit dollar amounts a day for working with corporations and industries where they have no experience? Why do blue-collar workers organise in industry-specific unions involved in collective wage bargaining, while white-collars organise according to educational or professional background, offering résumé proof-reading, or don’t unionise at all? The doctoral thesis Contract-Theoretic Analyses of Consultants and Trade Unions consists of three self-containing essays in Economics of Organisation. What Do Consultants Do? asks why firms pay large fees to outsiders in core activities like management. Standard explanations that see the consultant only as an expert fail to rationalize several industry phenomena. This paper instead focuses on the consultant’s role as a truth-teller in governance. The model finds a trade-off between being an expert and being a truth-teller, and that branding is more important for the latter category. Furthermore, there are natural barriers to entry among truth-tellers, which helps explain the high fees of the most well-renowned players. The Nature of Management Consulting evaluates the theoretical results in the previous chapter. Using market data from Sweden, the study finds that the upward price effect associated with a global brand is smaller for consultants with a broad range of services than for those with a narrow focus. This is hard to reconcile with the expertise explanations, but is consistent with the truth-telling theory. Interviews with experienced management consultants support this interpretation and several other predictions from the truth-telling theory. A Guild Theory of the Trade Union is an independent essay, developing a model where unions, like pre-industrialisation guilds, strike a balance between strengthening the bargaining position and fostering human capital. It links the organisational form of unions to investments in human capital and bargaining power. The predictions resemble evidence from the Nordic labour market. Groups with white-collar characteristics will be more prone to form profession-specific unions and advocate individual bargaining than blue-collar groups. Furthermore, there is path dependency in union formation, which fits the international pattern of unionisation rates. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2007 S. 3-15: sammanfattning, s. 19-123: 3 uppsatser</p>