The theoretical literature has argued that a centralized wage bargaining system may result in low regional wage differentiation and high regional unemployment differentials. The empirical literature has found that centralized wage bargaining leads to lower wage inequality for different skills, industries and population groups, but the evidence on its impact on regional wage differentiation is s...

Wage Distributions by Bargaining Regime: Linked Employer-Employee Data Evidence from Germany Using linked employer-employee data from the German Structure of Earnings Survey 2001, this paper provides a comprehensive picture of the wage structure in three wage-setting regimes prevalent in the German system of industrial relations. We analyze wage distributions for various labor market subgroups ...

The impact of international trade on wages has received substantial attention in recent decades; but only recently have the specific effects of exporting on wage inequality been investigated in detail. This paper employs the unexpected 1999 Brazilian exchange rate devaluation to identify the effects of exporting on Brazilian manufacturing firm-level wages using employer-employee linked data. We...

Bargained Wages, Wage Drift and the Design of the Wage Setting System This paper aims at answering the question: How does a typically 'European' bargaining system with collective bargaining, extension mechanisms and national minimum wage coexist with low unemployment rate and high wage flexibility? A unique data set on workers, firms and collective bargaining contracts in the Portuguese economy...

Both human capital accumulation and Lazear contracts can explain the raising wage of salary/wage worker through job experience or tenure. To distinguish between these two effects, Lazear and Moore (1984) used self-employed workers’ wage growth to partial out the effect of human capital accumulation from salary/wage workers’ wage growth. When the human capital accumulation behavior is identical ...

This paper examines how closely the minimum wage has been set to the most popularly stated goals of minimum-wage policy. I first estimate these goals: the minimum-wage rate at which the relevant labor demand is unitary elastic—maximizing the total earnings of minimum-wage workers (about $5.35)—and the level that would lift a typical minimum-wage worker’s family out of poverty (about $5.17). I c...

This paper analyzes the gender wage disparities among rural-urban migrants in urban China using a nationally representative data set. On average, female migrants earn only 66% of their male counterparts’ average hourly wage. And the gender wage gap is not uniform across migrants’ wage distribution with differentials much higher at the top end than at the bottom and the middle. The mean decompos...

This paper examines the role of regional unemployment in wage determination. Recent empirical studies have found a negative relationship between local unemployment and the level of wages. The resulting downward sloping curve in the wage-unemployment space has become known as “the wage curve.” While the existence of the wage curve has been well established, little is known about what gives rise ...

BACKGROUND In Australia a persistent and sizable gender wage gap exists. In recent years this gap has been steadily widening. The negative impact of gender wage differentials is the disincentive to work more hours. This implies a substantial cost on the Australian health sector. This study aimed to identify the magnitude of gender wage differentials within the health sector. The investigation a...

When Congress or a state legislature passes a minimum wage increase, there is often a period of several months between the passage of the increase and its implementation. During this period, employers know the level of the current binding minimum wage, but they also know the level of the minimum wage at a defined future date. Although this “future wage,” as I call it, is not yet binding, employ...