IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cuf/journl/y2004v5i1p27-46.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Efficient Union Contracts in the Presence of Homogeneous Labor and Differentiated Unions

Author

Listed:
  • Ana Paula Martins

    (Universidade Catolica Portuguesa)

  • Rui Coimbra

    (Departamento de Economia, Universidade Catoica Portuguesa)

Abstract

This paper discusses the features of the labor market outcome in the presence of homogeneous labor and multiple unions. It is argued that contract curve agreements, or at least efficient bargaining among unions, may be improved upon by a solution with differential or non-uniform wage payments for workers affiliated to different unions. The equilibrium solution in terms of employment and/or wage bill shares implied for each union with uniform and multiple wage is investigated and confronted for the cases of: a. efficient bargaining among the unions, b. fully efficient bargaining, considering Stone-Geary union utility functions and labor demand is linear.

Suggested Citation

  • Ana Paula Martins & Rui Coimbra, 2004. "Efficient Union Contracts in the Presence of Homogeneous Labor and Differentiated Unions," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 5(1), pages 27-46, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:cuf:journl:y:2004:v:5:i:1:p:27-46
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://aeconf.com/Articles/May2004/aef050102.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://down.aefweb.net/AefArticles/aef050102.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Svejnar, Jan, 1986. "Bargaining Power, Fear of Disagreement, and Wage Settlements: Theory and Evidence from U.S. Industry," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(5), pages 1055-1078, September.
    2. John H. Pencavel, 1984. "The Tradeoff Between Wages and Employment in Trade Union Objectives," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(2), pages 215-231.
    3. Dobson, Paul W., 1994. "Multifirm unions and the incentive to adopt pattern bargaining in oligopoly," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 87-100, January.
    4. Oliver Hart, 1982. "A Model of Imperfect Competition with Keynesian Features," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 97(1), pages 109-138.
    5. Ana Paula Martins, 2005. "Union duopoly with heterogeneous labour," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 32(4), pages 339-383, April.
    6. Davidson, Carl, 1988. "Multiunit Bargaining in Oligopolistic Industries," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(3), pages 397-422, July.
    7. Dixon, Huw David, 1988. "Unions, Oligopoly and the Natural Range of Employment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 98(393), pages 1127-1147, December.
    8. Rosen, Sherwin, 1970. "Unionism and the Occupational Wage Structure in the United States," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 11(2), pages 269-286, June.
    9. Dowrick, Steve, 1989. "Union-Oligopoly Bargaining," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(398), pages 1123-1142, December.
    10. Oswald, Andrew J, 1979. "Wage Determination in an Economy with Many Trade Unions," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 31(3), pages 369-385, November.
    11. Gylfason, Thorvaldur & Lindbeck, Assar, 1984. "Competing wage claims, cost inflation, and capacity utilization," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 1-21.
    12. repec:bla:econom:v:51:y:1984:i:202:p:129-39 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Byoung Heon Jun, 1989. "Non-cooperative Bargaining and Union Formation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(1), pages 59-76.
    14. Clask, A. & Oswald, A., 1992. "Trade Union Utility Functions: A survey of Union Leaders' Views," Economics Series Working Papers 99132, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    15. McDonald, Ian M & Solow, Robert M, 1981. "Wage Bargaining and Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 896-908, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Heidhues, 2000. "Employers’ Associations, Industry-wide Unions, and Competition," CIG Working Papers FS IV 00-11, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG).
    2. Thorsten Upmann & Julia Müller, 2014. "The Structure of Firm-Specific Labour Unions," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 170(2), pages 336-364, June.
    3. Bill Yang, 1995. "Unionized oligopoly, labor-management cooperation, and international competitiveness," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 33-53, February.
    4. Claus-Jochen Haake & Thorsten Upmann & Papatya Duman, 2020. "Wage Bargaining and Employment Revisited: Separability and Efficiency in Collective Bargaining," CESifo Working Paper Series 8422, CESifo.
    5. Mulder, C B, 1993. "Wage-Moderating Effects of Corporatism: Decentralized versus Centralized Wage Setting in a Union, Firm, Government Context," The Manchester School of Economic & Social Studies, University of Manchester, vol. 61(3), pages 287-301, September.
    6. António Brandão & Joana Pinho, 2018. "Productivity Shocks in a Union‐Duopoly Model," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 86(6), pages 722-756, December.
    7. Kuhn, Peter & Gu, Wulong, 1998. "Centralization and strikes," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 243-265, September.
    8. Claus-Jochen Haake & Thorsten Upmann & Papatya Duman, 2019. "The Decomposability of the Nash Bargaining Solution in Labor Markets," Working Papers CIE 128, Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics.
    9. M. Correa-López, 2006. "A model of unionized oligopoly in general equilibrium," Economics Discussion Paper Series 0605, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    10. Mulder, C.B., 1989. "Efficient and inefficient institutional arrangements between governments and trade unions : An explanation of high unemployment, corporatism and union fashing," Other publications TiSEM 1c31a27a-c57e-4c86-a708-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    11. Pierre Cahuc, 1990. "La théorie des négociations salariales : une revue de la littérature," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 92(1), pages 21-30.
    12. Domenico Buccella & Luciano Fanti, 2025. "Bargaining Agendas as Strategic Tools," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 68(1), pages 99-118, March.
    13. Emanuele Bacchiega, 2007. "Wage bargaining and vertical differentiation," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 54(1), pages 35-52, March.
    14. Carsten Eckel & Hartmut Egger, 2017. "The Dilemma of Labor Unions: Local Objectives vs Global Bargaining," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 534-566, August.
    15. Dobson, Paul W. & Waterson, Michael, 2007. "The competition effects of industry-wide vertical price fixing in bilateral oligopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 935-962, October.
    16. Fanti, Luciano & Buccella, Domenico, 2015. "Bargaining agenda, timing, and entry," MPRA Paper 64089, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Falch, Torberg & Strom, Bjarne, 2007. "Wage bargaining and monopsony," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 202-207, February.
    18. Nicholas Lawson, 2011. "Is Collective Bargaining Pareto Efficient? A Survey of the Literature," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 282-304, September.
    19. Buccella Domenico & Meccheri Nicola, 2024. "Management Centrality in Sequential Bargaining: Implications for Strategic Delegation, Welfare, and Stakeholder Conflict," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 24(1), pages 159-193, January.
    20. Banerji, A., 2002. "Sequencing strategically: wage negotiations under oligopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(7), pages 1037-1058, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unions; Wage determination models; Union bargaining; Union cooperation; Contract curve agreements;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J51 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • D49 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Other
    • C79 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Other

    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:cuf:journl:y:2004:v:5:i:1:p:27-46. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Qiang Gao (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/emcufcn.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.