<p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2010. Felaktigt angivet år på spikbladet</p>

<p>Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Universitet, 1992, Härtill 4 uppsatser</p> / digitalisering@umu

The paper investigates the formation of wages in the New Member States in Central and Eastern Europe, in particular the question what the relative role of national and sectoral factors is. While the labor relations in these countries are still in the process of change, some pattern and national differences have emerged. The question is thus to what extent these differences in labor relations are reflected in wage formation. The literature on Western OECD economies is unanimous that coordination of wage bargaining does reduce the wage spread, but disagrees on its effects on unemployment and inflation. The paper analyses wage formation in Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Lithuania by means of a panel analysis for manufacturing sectors. The average wage (in the total economy) serves as a national factor and sectoral productivity serves as a sectoral factor. In variations of the basic estimation equation the role of FDI and openness and of capital intensity and skill are also discussed. The results between countries are compared with the recent index of the coordination of collective bargaining by Visser (2005) and with cross country data on union density. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

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.

Die drei Aufsätze dieser Dissertation liefern einen Beitrag zur empirischen Literatur bezüglich der Lohnbildung mit besonderem Fokus auf die Rolle von Arbeitsinhalten. Der erste Aufsatz analysiert das Lohngefälle zwischen Männern und Frauen in Hinblick auf die geschlechtspezifischen Tätigkeitsinhalte. Mit Hilfe eines neu zusammengestellten Datensatzes, der deutsche administrative Paneldaten mit individuellen Tätigkeitsinhalten kombiniert, wird der Zusammenhang zwischen ausgeübten Tätigkeiten und Löhnen sowie die Entstehung von Lohnunterschieden zwischen den Geschlechtern in Deutschland zwischen 1986 und 2004 geschätzt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sowohl Arbeitsinhalte, als auch deren Erträge geschlechtspezifisch sind. Außerdem tragen relative Preise für Tätigkeitseinheiten wesentlich zur Entwicklung des Lohngefälles zwischen den Geschlechtern bei, wobei sich Heterogenitäten entlang der Lohnverteilung zeigen. Der zweite Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit der strukturellen Veränderung in der Nachfrage nach unterschiedlichen Berufsgruppen und nutzt die deutsche Wiedervereiningung als Quasi-Experiment. Die Berücksichtigung der Charakteristiken der Nachfrage nach bestimmten Berufen ermöglicht die Schätzung des kausalen Effekts eines erzwungenen Berufswechsels auf Löhne. Der abschließende Aufsatz fokussiert sich auf die Veränderungen der Arbeitsinhalte und deren Relation zu Individuallöhnen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Lohndifferenziale bei einem Berufswechsel stark mit der Ähnlichkeit der Inhalte zwischen dem Ausgangs- und Zielberuf zusammenhängen. Außerdem liefert dieser Aufsatz neue Evidenz hinsichtlich der positiven Relation zwischen den sich verändernden Arbeitsinhalten und den Löhnen von Arbeitnehmern, die keinen Berufswechsel erleben. Dieses Ergebnis zeigt, dass wachsende Kompetenz in Tätigkeiten einen Teil des positiven Zusammenhanges zwischen Löhnen und der Dauer des Beschäftigungsverhältnisses erklärt. / This thesis consists of three essays that contribute to the empirical literature on wage formation regarding job contents. The first essay analyzes the formation and the closing of the gender pay gap with respect to gender-specific task inputs in 1986-2004 in Germany. Using a newly constructed data set that combines administrative panel data on wages with individual-level task information, I am able to estimate the association of individual task profiles with wages and their contribution to the formation of the pay gap. The results document that task contents and returns to them are gender-specific. In particular, relative prices for task-specific units are substantially related to the formation of the wage gap, though the evidence exhibits heterogeneity along the wage distribution. The second essay is devoted to the shifts in the demand for occupations based on the quasi-experimental case of occupational demand shifts in East Germany after reunification. Taking the parameters of the demand for particular occupations into account helps to identify the causal effect of imposed occupational change on wages. The magnitude of the estimated wage effect is huge and persistent, though it points towards a positive selection of the group of employees who experienced an occupational change due to reunification. The third essay focuses on the changes of job contents and their relation to individual wages. The estimation results show that the wage differential due to an occupational change correlates significantly with the degree of similarity between the source and the target occupation. Moreover, the essay provides novel evidence on the positive relation of changing occupational contents with wages for employees who stay in their occupation, which implies that a part of the effect of tenure on wages is due to the increasing proficiency in job tasks.

Cette thèse se concentre sur trois aspects très différents de l'éducation mais qui affectent chacun la qualité de son offre. Dans le premier chapitre, nous étudions le comportement stratégique adopté à la fois par l'université et par les professeurs, afin pour les uns d'attirer les meilleurs universitaires et pour les autres d'accéder aux meilleures positions, en faisant un compromis entre salaires élevés, sécurité de l'emploi et possibilités de mobilité ascendante. Dans un deuxième chapitre, nous étudions comment la répartition des revenus dans les districts scolaires affecte la qualité des écoles publiques, par la voie des votes locaux et de la fiscalité. En effet, un district scolaire avec une polarisation de revenu plus élevée conduit à un vote pour une faible taxation et donc de plus basses dépenses pour l'école publique impliquant une moins bonne qualité de cette dernière. Enfin, dans un dernier chapitre, nous montrons que les attentes des garçons et des filles concernant leurs futures carrières ainsi que les antécédents scolaires sont façonnés par des stéréotypes de genre. Par exemple, le stéréotype selon lequel les hommes sont meilleurs en mathématiques crée un stéréotype négatif sur les aptitudes des filles en mathématiques. Les stéréotypes représentent l'explication principale dans les différences entre les garçons et les filles en matière de confiance en soi et ont des conséquences importantes sur les chemins qu'ils suivent tout au long de leur vie. / This thesis focuses on three very different aspects of education but which all affect in their way the quality of its provision.In the first chapter, we investigate the strategic behavior adopted by both the university and the professors, in order, for the first to attract the best academics, and for the second to access the best positions making a trade-off between high salaries, job security and upward mobility possibilities. We question the efficiency of such system in attracting, but also in keeping, the best academics. In a second chapter, we investigate how the income distribution of school districts affects the quality of public schools through the channel of local votes and taxation. In fact, an income polarized school district (more poor and rich at the expense of the middle class) leads to a vote for low taxation and thus low expenditure toward public school and a poorest quality of school. The mechanism being that the richest households send their children to private schools and thus are not concerned by public school quality while poorest households can not afford a too high taxation.Finally, in a last chapter we show how boys' and girls' career expectations and educational background are shaped by gender stereotypes. For instance, the stereotype that men are better at mathematics creates a negative stereotype on girls aptitudes in mathematics. Stereotypes represent the main explanation in boys and girls differences in self-confidence, and have important consequences on the paths they take throughout their lives.

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. <p>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. <p>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. <p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished