REAL WAGE CYCLICALITY IN GERMANY AND THE UK: NEW RESULTS USING PANEL DATA (2011) (original) (raw)

Wage cyclicality and the wage curve under the microscope

Using large data sets from the German employment and unemployment register 1985-2004, we investigate aggregate wage cyclicality and the wage curve for establishment stayers and movers. We find that movers' wage responses to aggregate unemployment rate changes exceed these of stayers by about 30-40 percent. A new finding is that the increments of movers over stayer responses to regional unemployment shocks are considerably greater and amount to about 150 percnet. This difference in differences (responses to regional compared with aggregate cycles and responses of movers compared with stayers) can be explained by the importance of centralized wage bargaining in Germany.

Estimating Compensating Wage Differentials Using Voluntary Job Changes: Evidence from Germany

ILR Review, 2007

The author develops a model predicting that in a labor market that attaches a wage premium to jobs with a disamenity (a compensating wage differential), the premium's upper bound will be defined by the average wage change of voluntary job movers whose consumption of the disamenity rises as a result of their move; its lower bound, by the wage change of those whose consumption of the disamenity falls. These predictions will not hold if, as predicted by a “segmented” labor market model, the labor market attaches a wage penalty to workplace disamenities. Using longitudinal data on job characteristics and wages in Germany in 1984–2001, the author estimates the market returns to four workplace disamenities: heavy workload, job insecurity, poor hours regulation, and a mismatch between skills possessed and skills required. The results broadly support the existence of compensating differentials in the German labor market.

Job Changes and Wage Dynamics

2000

In this paper we investigate the relation between wage growth and labour mobility on a panel of Italian dependent workers observed between 1986 and 1991. We use an employer-employee linked panel of 30167 workers, built from Italian Social Security (INPS) administrative sources.

Differences and changes in wage structures

Journal of Labor Research, 1997

This paper uses international microeconomic data to document the existence of an inverse relation between workers' pay and the local rate of unemployment. This relation, or wage curve, is estimated for regions using data for Britain,

Wage Cyclicality Under Different Regimes of Industrial Relations

Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 2013

Since there is scant evidence on the role of industrial relations in wage cyclicality, this paper analyzes the effect of collective wage contracts and of works councils on real wage growth. Using linked employer-employee data for western Germany, we find that works councils affect wage growth only in combination with collective bargaining. Wage adjustments to positive and negative economic shocks are not always symmetric. Only under sectoral bargaining there is a (nearly symmetric) reaction to rising and falling unemployment. In contrast, wage growth in establishments without collective bargaining adjusts only to falling unemployment and is unaffected by rising unemployment.