Organized labor, labor market imperfections, and employer wage premia

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Authors

  • Sabien Dobbelaere
  • Boris Hirsch
  • Steffen Müller
  • Georg Neuschäffer
This article examines how collective bargaining through unions and workplace codetermination through works councils relate to labor market imperfections and how labor market imperfections relate to employer wage premia. Based on representative German plant data for the years 1999–2016, the authors document that 70% of employers pay wages below the marginal revenue product of labor and 30% pay wages above that level. Findings further show that the prevalence of wage markdowns is significantly smaller when organized labor is present, and that the ratio of wages to the marginal revenue product of labor is significantly larger. Finally, the authors document a close link between labor market imperfections and mean employer wage premia, that is, wage differences between employers corrected for worker sorting.
Original languageEnglish
JournalIndustrial and Labor Relations Review
Volume77
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)396-427
Number of pages32
ISSN0019-7939
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 05.2024

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Laszlo Goerke, Fabian Lange, and Todd Sorensen for very useful suggestions. We further appreciate comments by participants of the EALE/SOLE/AASLE 2020, the EEA 2020, the Verein für Socialpolitik 2020, the RES 2021, and the IAAE 2022 conferences, of the 21st IZA/SOLE 2022 Transatlantic meeting and the IAB 2023 workshop on “Imperfect Competition in the Labor Market,” and of presentations in Amsterdam, Basel, Halle, and Lüneburg. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under the grant title “Firm Wage Differentials in Imperfect Labour Markets: The Role of Market Power and Industrial Relations in Rent Splitting between Workers and Firms.”

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

    Research areas

  • Economics - collective wage agreements, employer monopsony, employer wage premia, labor market power, wage markdowns, wage markups, worker monopoly, works councils