IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ctl/louvre/2008032.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is Competition or Collusion in the Product Market Relevant for Labour Markets?

Author

Listed:
  • Fabian BERGÈS

    (Toulouse School of Economics (GREMAQ, INRA, IDEI))

  • Stéphane CAPRICE

    (Toulouse School of Economics (GREMAQ, INRA))

Abstract

In non-union models, there is an ambiguous relationship between collusion on the product market and the resulting impact on the labour market. We can derive some conclusions by assuming a dual labour market with qualified and unqualified workers taking into account the efficiency effect when employing qualified workers. The framework adopted here consists of two firms competing to hire workers on the qualified labour market, and then competing (or colluding) on the product market to sell their production. While qualified workers are heterogeneous in their specialization, firm sell imperfect substitute goods on the product market. First if the two firms collude in the setting prices on the product market, this leads to an increase in the symmetric equilibrium wage in the qualified labour market, as well as a rise in productivity. Unions are not considered. Second, altough the number of unqualified workers hired decreases along with the total employment, the wage bill can rise because of intensified competition on the qualified labour market.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabian BERGÈS & Stéphane CAPRICE, 2008. "Is Competition or Collusion in the Product Market Relevant for Labour Markets?," Discussion Papers (REL - Recherches Economiques de Louvain) 2008032, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
  • Handle: RePEc:ctl:louvre:2008032
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://sites.uclouvain.be/econ/DP/REL/2008032.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pedro Gonzaga & António Brandão & Hélder Vasconcelos, 2013. "Theory of Collusion in the Labor Market," FEP Working Papers 477, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    2. George Symeonidis, 2008. "Downstream Competition, Bargaining, and Welfare," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(1), pages 247-270, March.
    3. George Symeonidis, 2008. "Downstream Competition, Bargaining, and Welfare," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(1), pages 247-270, 03.
    4. Pedro Gonzaga & António Brandão & Helder Vasconcelos, 2014. "Theory of Semi-Collusion in the Labor Market," FEP Working Papers 522, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Rent-Sharing; employment; oligopoly; Collusion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • Q13 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Markets and Marketing; Cooperatives; Agribusiness

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ctl:louvre:2008032. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sebastien SCHILLINGS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iruclbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.