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Let's take bargaining models seriously: The decline in union power in Germany, 1992 - 2009

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  • Hirsch, Boris
  • Schnabel, Claus

Abstract

Building on the right-to-manage model of collective bargaining, this paper tries to infer union power from the observed results in wage setting. It derives a time-varying indicator of union strength and confronts it with annual data for Germany. The results show that union power was relatively stable in the 1990s but fell substantially (by almost one-third) from 1999 to 2007. Two-thirds of this fall in union power follow from the reduction in the labour share relative to the capital share whereas changes in the gap between the net wage and the income when unemployed account for the remaining third.

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  • Hirsch, Boris & Schnabel, Claus, 2011. "Let's take bargaining models seriously: The decline in union power in Germany, 1992 - 2009," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 10/2011, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:iwqwdp:102011
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Amélie BARBIER-GAUCHARD & Francesco De PALMA & Thierry BETTI, 2020. "Monetary policy with weakened unions," Working Papers of BETA 2020-26, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    2. Hirsch, Boris & Schnabel, Claus, 2011. "Let's take bargaining models seriously: The decline in union power in Germany, 1992 - 2009," FAU Discussion Papers in Economics 10/2011, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Institute for Economics.
    3. John Addison & Paulino Teixeira & Jens Stephani & Lutz Bellmann, 2012. "Can German Unions Still Cut It?," GEMF Working Papers 2012-19, GEMF, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.
    4. Schnabel, Claus, 2012. "Union membership and density: Some (not so) stylized facts and challenges," Discussion Papers 81, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair of Labour and Regional Economics.
    5. Addison, John T. & Teixeira, Paulino & Stephani, Jens & Bellmann, Lutz, 2014. "Union Decline and the Coverage Wage Gap in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 8257, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. John Addison & Paulino Teixeira & Jens Stephani & Lutz Bellmann, 2015. "Declining Unions and the Coverage Wage Gap: Can German Unions Still Cut It?," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 301-317, September.
    7. Pia Rattenhuber, 2014. "Building the minimum wage: the distributional impact of Germany’s first sectoral minimum wage on wages and hours across different wage bargaining regimes," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(4), pages 1429-1446, June.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    trade union power; wage bargaining; labour share; Germany;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General
    • J51 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects

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