IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwwuw/wuwp042.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is Wage-Leadership an Instrument to Coordinate Union's Wage-Policy? The Case of Imperfect Product Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Grandner

    (Department of Economics, Vienna University of Economics & B.A.)

Abstract

Given an oligopolistic product market, trade unions organized at firm level want to coordinate their wage bargaining activities, even if they are self interested. In this paper a situation is analysed, where for some exogenous reasons a complete centralization is not possible. Unions could try to coordinate wage-setting by ''wage leadership''. The outcome of such ''wage leadership'' is compared with the outcome of an uncoordinated bargaining and results in higher utilities for all unions. But the resulting wages and employment levels are not symmetrically neither for the unions nor for firms. Employment levels will change in different directions. In the ''wage leader'' firm employment falls and in the ''follower'' firm employment rises compared to an uncoordinated wage bargaining. This may cause problems with the implementation of ''wage leadership''

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Grandner, 1996. "Is Wage-Leadership an Instrument to Coordinate Union's Wage-Policy? The Case of Imperfect Product Markets," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp042, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwwuw:wuwp042
    Note: PDF Document
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/inst/vw1/papers/wu-wp42.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Moene, K.O. & Wallerstein, M. & Hoel, M., 1992. "Bargaining Structure and Economic Performance," Memorandum 1992_010, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    2. Layard, Richard & Nickell, Stephen & Jackman, Richard, 2005. "Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199279173, Decembrie.
    3. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, December.
    4. de la Croix, David, 1994. "Wage Interdependence through Decentralized Bargaining," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(4), pages 371-403, December.
    5. Carlin, Wendy & Soskice, David, 1990. "Macroeconomics and the Wage Bargain: A Modern Approach to Employment, Inflation, and the Exchange Rate," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198772446.
    6. R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), 1989. "Handbook of Industrial Organization," Handbook of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    7. Oswald, Andrew J, 1985. " The Economic Theory of Trade Unions: An Introductory Survey," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 87(2), pages 160-193.
    8. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:1039-1089 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. 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.
    10. Shapiro, Carl, 1989. "Theories of oligopoly behavior," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 6, pages 329-414, Elsevier.
    11. Dowrick, Steve, 1989. "Union-Oligopoly Bargaining," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(398), pages 1123-1142, December.
    12. R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), 1989. "Handbook of Industrial Organization," Handbook of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Rocha-Akis, Silvia, 2006. "Labour tax policies and strategic offshoring under unionised oligopoly," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 99, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    2. Gerlinde Fellner & Matthias Sutter, 2009. "Causes, Consequences, and Cures of Myopic Loss Aversion – An Experimental Investigation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(537), pages 900-916, April.
    3. Eckhard Hein, 2010. "Shareholder Value Orientation, Distribution And Growth—Short‐ And Medium‐Run Effects In A Kaleckian Model," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 302-332, May.
    4. Hagemann, Harald, 2010. "L. Albert Hahn's Economic Theory of Bank Credit," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 134, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    5. Theresa Grafeneder-Weissteiner & Klaus Prettner, 2009. "Agglomeration and population ageing in a two region model of exogenous growth," VID Working Papers 0901, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
    6. Engelbert Stockhammer & Paul Ramskogler, 2009. "Post-Keynesian economics How to move forward," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 6(2), pages 227-246.
    7. Engelbert Stockhammer & Paul Ramskogler, 2008. "Uncertainty and Exploitation in History," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(1), pages 175-194, March.
    8. Grafeneder-Weissteiner, Theresa & Prettner, Klaus, 2010. "Agglomeration processes in aging societies," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 131, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    9. Pasquale Commendatore & Ingrid Kubin & Carmelo Petraglia, 2009. "Footloose Capital and Productive Public Services," Chapters, in: Neri Salvadori & Pasquale Commendatore & Massimo Tamberi (ed.), Geography, Structural Change and Economic Development, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Riedl, Aleksandra & Rocha-Akis, Silvia, 2007. "Testing the tax competition theory: How elastic are national tax bases in western Europe?," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 112, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    11. Engelbert Stockhammer & Lucas Grafl, 2010. "Financial Uncertainty and Business Investment," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 551-568.
    12. Grandner, Thomas, 2007. "Product differentiation in a linear city and wage bargaining," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 109, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    13. Paul Ramskogler, 2007. "Uncertainty, market power and credit rationing," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp105, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    14. Steidl, Annemarie & Stockhammer, Engelbert, 2007. "Coming and leaving. Internal mobility in late Imperial Austria," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 107, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    15. Özlem Onaran, 2007. "International financial markets and fragility in the Eastern Europe: "can it happen" here?," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp108, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    16. Martin Currie & Ingrid Kubin, 2005. "Fixed Price Dynamics versus Flexible Price Dynamics," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp089, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    17. Riedl, Aleksandra & Rocha-Akis, Silvia, 2007. "Testing the tax competition theory: How elastic are national tax bases in western Europe?," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 112, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    18. Grafeneder-Weissteiner, Theresa, 2010. "Demographic change, growth and agglomeration," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 132, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    19. Smet, Koen, 2007. "Stuck in the middle? The structure of trade between South Africa and its major trading partners," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 115, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    20. Figerl, Jürgen & Grandner, Thomas, 2008. "Job quality and wages in duopsony," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 121, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.

    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. Grandner, Thomas, 1996. "Is wage-leadership an instrument to coordinate unions' wage-policy? The case of imperfect product markets," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 42, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    2. Thomas Grandner, 1998. "Market Shares of Price Setting Firms and Trade Unions," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp061, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    3. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.
    4. Luís Cabral, 2018. "We’re Number 1: Price Wars for Market Share Leadership," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(5), pages 2013-2030, May.
    5. Kovác, Eugen & Vinogradov, Viatcheslav & Zigic, Kresimir, 2010. "Technological leadership and persistence of monopoly under endogenous entry: Static versus dynamic analysis," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1421-1441, August.
    6. Kovenock, Dan & Phillips, Gordon M, 1997. "Capital Structure and Product Market Behavior: An Examination of Plant Exit and Investment Decisions," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(3), pages 767-803.
    7. Kenneth Flamm, 1993. "Semiconductor Dependency and Strategic Trade Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 24(1 Microec), pages 249-333.
    8. Neary, J Peter & Leahy, Dermot, 2000. "Strategic Trade and Industrial Policy towards Dynamic Oligopolies," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(463), pages 484-508, April.
    9. Grandner, Thomas, 2001. "Unions in oligopolistic, vertically connected industries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(9), pages 1723-1740, October.
    10. Hildenbrand, Andreas, 2013. "Is a firm a firm? A Stackelberg experiment," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 7, pages 1-26.
    11. Philippe Cyrenne, 1999. "On Antitrust Enforcement and the Deterrence of Collusive Behaviour," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 14(3), pages 257-272, May.
    12. Zhang, Anming, 2005. "Competition Models of Strategic Alliances," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 75-100, January.
    13. Raymond Hartman, 2001. "Price-Performance Competition and the Merger Guidelines," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 18(1), pages 53-75, February.
    14. Kazuhiro Ohnishi, 2007. "Wage-Rise Contract and Entry Deterrence: Bertrand and Cournot," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 8(1), pages 155-165, May.
    15. Desmond (Ho-Fu) Lo & Stephen W. Salant, 2016. "The strategic use of early bird discounts for dealers," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 97-127, June.
    16. Guttorm Schjelderup & Lars Sorgard, 1997. "Transfer Pricing as a Strategic Device for Decentralized Multinationals," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 4(3), pages 277-290, July.
    17. Esperanza Gracia, 1999. "Márgenes y cuotas de mercado. Un análisis con un micropanel," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 23(3), pages 393-428, September.
    18. Matsushima, Noriaki & Mizuno, Tomomichi, 2013. "Vertical separation as a defense against strong suppliers," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 228(1), pages 208-216.
    19. Chia-Ling Hsu & Rafael Matta & Sergey V. Popov & Takeharu Sogo, 2017. "Optimal Product Placement," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 51(1), pages 127-145, August.
    20. James A. Brander & Barbara J. Spencer, 2015. "Endogenous Horizontal Product Differentiation under Bertrand and Cournot Competition: Revisiting the Bertrand Paradox," NBER Working Papers 20966, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    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:wiw:wiwwuw:wuwp042. 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: Department of Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.wu.ac.at/economics/en .

    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.