 The employment effects of collective wage bargainingJournal of Public Economics, 2023, vol. 227, issue C Abstract: This study examines the wage and employment effects of Italian collective wage bargaining. It analyzes monthly data on the population of private-sector employees, matched with the information on contractual pay levels set by industry-wide agreements, which were bargained by the representatives of trade unions and employers at the national level. The research design exploited the generalized wage growth induced by changes in the contractual pay levels, whose timing and size differ across collective agreements. The specification adopted compared the outcomes of interest within sectors and geographical locations, and among workers subject to different collective contracts. The study results show that contractual wage growth raised the actual pay levels and had significant negative effects on employment. These employment effects were broadly consistent with the Hicks–Marshall laws and with several hypotheses of traditional centralized wage bargaining models. Keywords: Collective bargaining; Labor demand; Employment; Contractual wages; Industrial relations; Trade unions; Employer association; Minimum wage (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:227:y:2023:i:c:s0047272723001883 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.105006 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier |
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